THE DAILY DIVERSION

My birthday

2011-07-05T12:21:00.000-05:00

Well, here's year number 36 of my life! So much has happened and so much still to happen!

John Burton is now a little over a year old and amazes me every single day!

My fantastic wife put together a surprise party for me last night where so many of my great family and friends were able to come (one of the perks of having a birthday right next to a holiday)! I don't know about everyone else, but I had a great time! Thank you to everyone who was able to make it!

Reflection...

2010-08-19T00:38:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog, so I'll do a little housekeeping to start, then get to my point.

Actually, I can't remember when the last time I posted, so I'll start from leaving Memphis. Adrianne and I took a huge leap of faith (more her taking a leap of faith in me than anything else), quit our well-paying jobs in Memphis, and came home to Owensboro to open Gambrinus Libation Emporium. We opened in December of last year, but that's getting a little ahead of ourselves.

After our 2nd year of marriage we decided to try to start having a family, since we were both tired of "practicing"! However, we had no luck. Then, not a month after we move home, we find out one morning that we're pregnant! Again, I guess fate is fickle sometimes!

Well, we got the business open in a matter of 4 months, opened December 22nd, and have been cruising along pretty well. Our beautiful, if I do say so myself, son, John Burton Condray IV, was born June 18th, 2010, at 2:59 pm. He weighed in at 6 pounds, 15 ounces, and was 20 and a half inches long. As I type, he's sleeping in a swinging chair, although I'm supposed to be keeping him up for another hour, when his next feeding is supposed to happen. Whoops!

Anyway, I'll get around to posting some pictures of him sometime soon, otherwise just check my Facebook, as that's pretty much all I post these days. If you're not my Facebook friend, just send a request and let me know you read my blog. Then we'll be Facebook friends! Whoopee!

Okay, now to the point of this post... A few years ago I posted a pretty long open letter to someone. It had a lot of unkind things to say, and while that's how I felt at the time, I know I should let it go.

Today I attended the wake of a man who was very important to me and who really shaped me into the man I am today. I'm speaking of Frank St. Charles. I was honored to call him my stepfather for the better part of a third of my life. I've thought about typing long paragraphs about all of the great things he taught me, but I think bullet points make it easier:
- My personal fave, which is why I'm starting with it... A little saying: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."
- Golf. Frank introduced me to the sport when I was about 9 years old. When I was an early teen, and a pretty decent golfer for my age, he used to let me round out his foursome when he'd take clients out to the country club. I can't begin to tell how many things I learned on those trip!
- Work ethic. I really wanted to be a slacker and just half-ass do my chores, including mowing the lawn, but Frank would never have any of it. I remember not getting to go out on a date once because I didn't mow the grass. Sure, I was pissed at the time, but, as time has gone on, I've realized you can't party until the work is done. I am, professionally, where I am today because of this.
- Etiquette. Frank and my Mom sent me to etiquette classes when I was pretty young. I knew how a true place setting was supposed to be put out when most kids were learning to swing a baseball bat (although I got to do that too). I was rewarded by attending some pretty awesome dinners, at a very young age. I've carried those teachings with me since those days. Even today I try to use "Yes, Sir" and "No, Ma'am" as often as possible and will even, occasionally, open the car door for my wife (I always open the door to stores, restaurants, etc for women, I just can't help myself).
- Love for Notre Dame athletics. Sure it sucks right now, since Notre Dame hasn't been doing so well, but it was something else getting to see Tim Brown and The Rocket do what they did with someone who truly loved the Golden Dome.
- Banking. My entire banking career was because of Frank. He always looked so great in those suits and that, as a youngster, really made my eyes widen. I think I did okay as a banker. However, I'm happily retired from that field now!!
- Calling a place HOME. Frank taught me home is where the heart is. I've moved away from Kentucky several times, but I've always loved this state that he brought me to, all the way back in 1985.
- Last, and most importantly... Father figure. Frank was the absolute best father figure a kid could have. Sure, he had his faults, but he told me something very important early on... "Do as I say, not as I do". I know I have made my share of mistakes in my life, but all I can hope is that I can be a great role model for my son, like Frank was for me.

Frank, I know we haven't talked since 1992, but please know that I still love you and that I believe I've become a man you'd be proud of.

In loving memory of Mr. Francis Ignatius St. Charles, III (another thing we shared). May your soul rest peacefully in the hands of God.

For Gina, Angie, and Chip... I love you! All of my thoughts and prayers are with you and if you ever need anything, please don't hesitate to call me!

Follow up to the Triple Nickel

2009-02-25T19:47:00.007-06:00

I was right! It took a few extra hours, but I got a welcome surprise this morning. It definitely dealt with the number "5" along with a few zeroes behind it.

That's what I'm talking about! Fate, you can really be a bitch sometimes, but when you come through, you REALLY come through!

It's good to be a believer!

Okay, here are some more pictures...

Here's another one from Memphis...

These are from Owensboro, last weekend...

Triple Nickel

2009-02-24T20:30:00.006-06:00

Okay, so I woke up this morning at 5:55 and I really thought that it wasn't going to be a coincidence and today something good was going to happen.

Well, I'm still waiting.

I like to believe in fate and just happening to have my bladder wake me up, exactly at 5:55 in the morning, doesn't just happen. Or does it?

Maybe by the time I hit the sack tonight, fate will come through, like it usually does.

So, in the meantime, I'll talk a little about what's been crackin' on my end. I've been working, as usual. My wonderful wife has been working as well. She celebrated a birthday a couple of weeks ago and I got her an Iphone, so she could spend more time with the one's she loves, or something like that.

I've taken up a new hobby. We bought ourselves a nice, new Sony 10 megapixel digital SLR, so I've started taking pictures as often as possible. We've walked around downtown taking pics of this and that, so I thought I'd share some of them here. Here goes:

They are much bigger, but I didn't want to suck up tons of bandwidth.

A new direction...

2008-12-18T22:25:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I know I don't post every day, not that anyone but me is reading anyway, but I thought I might actually update more often if I had things to talk about. For the most part, right now, I don't have much to talk about.

Actually, I have a ton to talk about, but can't, because it might jinx it all and that would not make me a happy camper.

So, what I'm thinking is that I'll try to update as I try new beverages. I've been buying new beers as Adrianne and I have been going out to liquor stores and I thought I'd share my thoughts on those, again, like anyone cares.

So, tonight, while watching the Toppers pull out a 3 point win at South Alabama, I enjoyed a Unibroue "16", which is a beer they made in celebration of their 16th anniversary. It is 10% Alcohol by Volume, and comes in a 750 mL bottle. Basically, it is the equivalent of drinking about 5 Budweisers, but actually has some flavor.

Now, I'm not a pro at "rating" a beer like the folks at Rate Beer are, but I know what I like.

"16" is a strong ale, with quite a bit of spice and a long-standing aftertaste. Also, being high alcohol content, it only takes one. In other words, it pretty much knocked me on my ass tonight. I was actually standing up cheering for WKU, instead of sitting on the couch. (I'm glad I didn't go into the chatroom on the Haven however, as I heard things got interesting.)

The beer is not too hoppy, which is just up my alley.

However, I did not enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed Unibroue's Trois Pistoles, which I had the other night. WOW! The only way I can describe it is... "An explosion of flavor in my mouth!"

Yeah, that sounds pretty dirty, but that's the way I like it!

Coming up soon (I've already purchased these, but haven't tried them yet):

Rogue's Imperial Stout
Here's the commercial description:

"Deserving the title "Emperor of Ales" (unlike the bourgeois "King of Beers"), Imperial is the strongest and fullest of all stouts. Imperials originally were brewed with large quantities of hops and a high alcohol content to withstand long, unrefrigerated journeys. Rogue Imperial Stout, considered the high end of stouts, is made of 2-row Great Western Harrington & Klages, Hugh Baird XLT-80, Black, Munich and Chocolate Malts; Willamette, Cascade and Chinook hops; rolled oats; and two secret ingredients. Unfiltered and unfined, Imperial Stout is best when aged for one year. Imperial Stout is available in a new 12-ounce bottle (replacing the older 7-ounce XS-line package) and on draft.
Measurements: 26 degrees Plato, IBU 87.5, Apparent Attenuation 77, Lovibond 258 "

Rogue's Mori Moto Imperial Pilsner
Here's the commercial description:

"Golden in color with a dry hop floral aroma and intense hop bitterness supported by a big malty backbone which culminates into a hedonistic mouthfeel. Yee haw!"

And a picture:

The descriptions and picture came from Ratebeer.com, so check them out!

I also bought a half-case of New Belgium's best, which includes Fat Tire (awesome!), Mothership Whit (like Blue Moon), and two others that I can't remember off the top of my head. I'll dabble in those over the weekend, as I'm bootlegging and taking them up to Kentucky with me. I call it bootlegging, because New Belgium doesn't sell their beers east of the Mississippi River (at least not commercially), so me taking them to Kentucky is, as Judas Priest would say "Breakin' the Law"!

I'm such a BAD ASS!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

2008-12-13T12:03:00.001-06:00

(Note: I started this post last night, when I got in from work. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to finish talking about my dream, so it got bumped to getting finished today.)

I'd really like to know that myself, then maybe I could've eradicated that song from my head this morning. Unfortunately, the way I usually do it is by just listening to the song and "POOF" it's gone. Well, I don't own the song or album and I'm not paying $1 to download it from Itunes for 3 minutes. I just sucked it up and rocked out at work for a bit.

Anyway, I had the wackiest dream last night. I recorded it a little different than my old-school style of trying to write down everything I could remember. A couple of weeks ago I found a voice recorder App on Itunes for my Iphone. I haven't really used it up to this point, but I will going forward. I got it because I had been in the car a few times with some great ideas banging around in my head but no way to capture them. I can't remember things as well as I used to.

So, when I wake up from my dream I immediately grab my phone, kick on the recorder and start telling the story. Here's what I got...

I'm at our first house in Bowling Green, over on Catalina Dr. Mom is divorced, but has the house and all of the stuff in it. For some reason she's out of town for a week, so I'm staying there. I've got the room at the stop of the stairs on the left (my actual room when we lived there).

I wake up really early one morning, before the sun is up, and notice the front door standing open. This isn't a big deal, but then I notice the glass storm door is also open about a foot or so. This is when I know something is wrong. I head back into my bedroom and find my big maglite and head downstairs.

As I reach the bottom of the stairs, there's a closet that been ransacked and a couple of rifle's are laying out. There's also another flashlight like the one I have in my hand, so I grab it.

I start looking around the house and saying "Okay, I know you're in here. I don't want any trouble and I know you don't want any, so just go out the back door or something." I walk into the living room and the big TV is gone, as well as pretty much everything else. This is where I run into the skinny little guy.

He tries to run from me, but I catch him and throw him to the ground. For some reason he isn't wearing a shirt and I whack him in the ribs a few times with the flashlight, all while saying "I have to do this, it's self defense!".

While I'm holding him down I keep trying to call the police with my cell phone, but every time it goes straight to someone's voicemail. The very first time is actually goes to Daultry Grave's voicemail (we went to high school together, damn you Facebook!).

By this point I'm getting pissed that I can't get in touch with the police, so I head over to someone's house who has a land line. It just so happens it ends up being my in-laws, but not at the house they really own. They're in some little one bedroom shack. I come in and I'm roughing up the guy that was in my house. I throw him over in the corner and just berate the shit out of him. "Don't even think about fucking getting up or saying anything!" I yell at him.

My in-laws are just in shock that I'm talking to anyone that way. Then my Mom shows up. She's asking me what's going on and I try to explain that he was robbing the house, until a really pale woman comes in with long, wavy red hair. Somehow she's connected with the other guy. I start to interrogate her as well. She says that she sold all of the stuff to some place with a really long name. I say "So, basically, that's a code word for pawn shop?" and she nods her head yes.

I tell her that she's an accomplice to this whole thing and that she's going to jail too. She just say's "So what?"

The guy in the corner is trying to stand up and I kick him once saying "Sit your ass down or I'll kick the shit outta you!"

Mom doesn't like this at all and tells me I need to let them go and that she doesn't care about what they did. At this point I'm beyond pissed, so I say "What is wrong with you all? I'm pissed here because Mom has never had anything and I bought most of this stuff for her, because I wanted her to have nice things. Now, you don't care! They have no remorse for doing it, and I'm the only one that gives a shit!"

Everyone gets up and starts filing out the front door. The two criminals are walking out last, right in front of me, as I'm trying to gather up something. I yell out "Somebody needs to hold on to them so they don't run away!" but no one does.

They all leave and I'm standing there, still pissed off!

When OCD routines go wrong!

2008-12-11T17:23:00.003-06:00

Well, once again, I have learned that I really need to just stay in bed until about 10 am every day. Otherwise I just screw something up. Luckily today it didn't have anything to do with large amounts of money, otherwise I'd be blogging from jail, but it was pretty silly nonetheless.

It seems as though my brain really doesn't function much prior to about 10 am every morning, with the exceptions of weekends. During the week I struggle to get out of bed when I need to, then the first few hours of the day are just a blurry haze. On the weekends though, I have no problem waking up, ready to take on the world (or a Memphis bum or two, not that they'd be up and fighting at that time), at 7 am. It's just borderline insane that my body works like that. I'm guessing it's just my overall disdain for work, period.

That, or it could be that I'm awakened 5,000 times every night/morning during the week by firetrucks, police cars, garbage trucks, bums screaming, neighbor's shouting, or you name it. During the weekend, none of that shit seems to happen and I don't know why.

I've tried to sleep with earplugs in, but that gets kind of dangerous. If Adrianne doesn't wake me up when she leaves in the morning and pulls them out, I can easily not hear my alarm clock. Then I'd really be late to work. Speaking of which, what is "late to work"? One minute? 5 minutes? An hour? Not showing up at all? Well the last one isn't technically "late" I guess.

So, anyway, I'm half dazed and most confused this morning, as usual, and I hit the shower, brush my teeth, shave, and get dressed, just like I usually do. Actually, I sleepwalk through it most days, as it's just a routine I'm used to. I'm seriously OCD in that regard. Everything in the exact same order: use bathroom, brush teeth, take vitamins, take shower, deodorant, shave, fix hair, drawers - left leg first, undershirt - left arm first, socks - left foot first, dress shirt - left arm first, pants - left leg first, tuck in shirt - from the back to the left then front then right, collar stay - left first, button sleeves - left first, belt, left shoe, right shoe, tie tie, clean glasses and put them on, name badge on belt, wallet in left breast pocket of coat, coat on, make smoothie.

This morning was no different. All of those things in that exact order. However, I found out, at 2:30 this afternoon, I put my underoo's on backwards. To be honest, they're tagless and seamless boxer briefs, so it's not hard to mix up the front and back. However, I did feel like an idiot at the time.

The good news is that I can wear them again tomorrow! GROSS!

Coming around...

2008-12-08T21:18:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I've caught all kinds of flak that I never blog any more. Well, here you go. Just so you know, the reason I quit blogging was because I couldn't do it at work any more. Blogging, alone, usually got me through the monotonous routine of my average work day. So, you can imagine how much fun I'm having at work these days, right?

My last post was kind of depressing, to say the least, so I'll try to liven it up a bit. I'll start with the easy stuff...

Adrianne and I are doing great. We're both healthy and happy. We're still in Memphis, for better or worse. Bums still bother the shit out of me on nearly a daily basis. I finished another soccer season and still didn't score a goal, but got a lot closer than ever. I did the little things that a decent needs to win. We finished 4th in our league, which is pretty good.

I've been dreaming like crazy again and am expecting a fun-filled night tonight, as I had spicy Italian for dinner, along with a couple of glasses of wine. That usually does the trick.

I had a couple of crazy dreams over the weekend, both about my co-worker/buddy Bryan and his wife. One was fun, the other was sad and frustrating. Anyway, here's how it went down...

The first dream: I'm just chillin' and Bryan calls me up acting all giddy, like a little girl. I ask him what's going on and he tells me that he and his wife are pregnant. I become a little girl just like him and wish him the best. That's all I can remember about that one.

The other dream: Bryan calls me and he barely talks to me. I know something is wrong, but he won't say it. Finally I extract the following from him: "We lost the baby!" Not really knowing what to say, I just tell him "I'm sorry!" and that I'll be wherever he is in minute to hang out with him. So, he stays on the line and I keep trying to talk with him, but he won't talk back. I end up going through mazes and a bunch other mess, but I can never get to him. He finally lets his pain get the best of him and lashes out at me, which I take, because I know he's hurting.

So, that was great news, no? I told him about the dreams this morning. Is it weird that I dream about my co-workers? There's no homo-eroticism there at all, don't worry!

To close, I'll share a funny story from work.

So, as a team, my office was given a goal to accomplish by this Friday. As the weeks have gone by we've tracked our progress toward this goal with a thermometer style gauge, where the red goes up as we get more done. So, as of last Friday we blew our original goal away. To mark this momentous occasion, I updated our gauge with the red exploding out of the top and sent it to the bosses.

As my boss is leaving Friday afternoon, he says to Bryan and I "Yeah, we're gonna have to change the success meter, as it's a little too sexual. It looks like some guy just blew his load!"

We changed the geyser output into stars instead of droplets. I still wanted to put a picture of Peter North next to the gauge though.

Still Learning...

2008-03-03T19:45:00.002-06:00

While this last week was a pretty bad one for me, some good did come out of it. Through all of the sadness and mourning, I found out a lot about my family, their history, and, especially my Grandpa.

I found out that for nearly 150 years there has been a Condray living in Dent County, Missouri. As of the evening of Sunday, February 24, 2008, there were no longer any Condray's living there. From the original family from Dent County, only three people continue to live. Those would be myself, my sister, and my father.

It is known that my Grandpa was one of the last of the descendants from the original settlers of the county. His mother, Mabel Adams, was a direct descendant from the original Adams' family that settled in the area in the early 1800's, with links to many other "famous" Adams'.

My last name, Condray, is French, while we have quite a bit of Cherokee, Welsh, and English in the family. Of course, I get some other things from the other side of my family, but I didn't really know about the French side.

I found out that, somewhere down the line, I am related to nearly every single person who has lived or currently lives in Dent County, especially Salem, Missouri. Obviously some people have moved in, which I wouldn't be related to, but we started the joke that it was a good thing I married someone not from Missouri, because I would probably be related to them otherwise.

Lastly, and most sadly, I found out what kind of man my Grandpa was. Like I said in my previous post, I didn't really know him. As children we weren't really around him that much, but we quickly found out that he really thought the world of us and constantly talked about us to everyone he knew. We found out that he never put on airs and was always who he was.

I heard tons of funny stories from the people who knew him best. I learned about his passions, his loves, and just about everything I never knew. This is exactly what makes me the most sad. Much like my Mother's father, I never really knew my Grandpa. He was never open with me, nor did it ever seem like he went out of his way to spend time with us.

However, I know he loved us dearly and we meant the world to him. Because of that, my heart aches. My heart also aches for what could have been and for that relationship that was never forged.

Losses...

2008-02-26T21:02:00.002-06:00

Well, I've yet to have to make an entry about a loss in my life. So, this isn't a post I really how to approach. I guess I'll just start with the story and see how it goes.

Adrianne and I made it home from Bowling Green at about 6 pm on Sunday and we were just hanging out and relaxing, preparing for a long week, all while looking forward to being home next weekend, for only the second time this year. At 8 pm my phone rang. "Mom" showed up on my caller ID. I knew I remembered to call her when I got in, so I was thinking maybe I forgot something important at her house.

I answer in my typical "Helllllooooo", but her voice is low and she says "Hold on! Wait, let me call you right back!"

Immediately I knew something was wrong. Adrianne looked up from her work at me with a curious "What's wrong?" look on her face. I just sat there, looking at my phone, waiting for it to ring again, even though I got a feeling that I really didn't want to hear what was going to come out once I answered it.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was less than two minutes, the phone rang again, with "Mom" on the caller ID. I answered "What's going on?" this time.

Mom: "Well, your Grandpa Condray's friend Chuck called here trying to get a hold of your sister, after not being able to get a hold of your Dad."

Me: "Okay?!"

Mom: "Well, he found your Grandpa passed out on the floor and he's passed away."

Me: silence

Mom: "I'm so sorry son!"

Me: more silence

Mom: "I've tried to call your sister, but I can't get in touch with her." (Sis was on vacation/business in Las Vegas)

Me: "Okay"

Mom: "Do you want to give me your Dad's numbers and I'll call him?"

Me: "No, I'd better do it."

Mom: "Okay, you get in touch with him and make sure he calls Chuck (gives me the number) and I'll keep trying to get in touch with your sister."

Me: "Okay"

Mom: "I love you! I'm so sorry son!"

Me: "I love you too Mom!"

I sit back against the couch trying to catch my breath/breathe/understand what is going on. Adrianne looks at me, gets up off the other couch, and come sits next to me. "What's wrong? What's going on?"

"Grandpa Condray passed away" is pretty much the only thing I can get out. "I've gotta call Dad and tell him" comes out next. She puts her arms around me and hugs me. "I'm so sorry baby!"

I get up and walk around a little bit. Just trying to think about what I'm going to say to my father, when I have to tell him his father is dead.

I look up his first number in my cell phone's phonebook and press "call".

Someone on the other end: (lots of noise in the background) "Yellope?"

Me: "Hey!"

Someone on the other end: "You wanna order a pizza?"

Me: "Excuse me?"

Someone on the other end: "This is Joe's Pizza, you want something?"

Me: "No, I'm trying to get a hold of John Condray."

Someone on the other end: "John?! John! You over there?! Yeah, hold on! He's sitting in the corner drinkin' a beer!"

Me: "Thanks."

Dad: "Hello?"

Me: "Hey. Its your son."

Dad: (joking tone in his voice) "It is? What the hell's going on?"

Me: "Are you coherent?"

Dad: "Yeah? What's going on?"

Me: "I need you to be coherent and get away from everyone else that is around."

(the noise ends)

Dad: "What's going on?"

Me: "Well, I've got some bad news."

Dad: "What is it son? What's going on?"

Me: "Well, Chuck, Grandpa's friend, has been trying to get a hold of you, but couldn't get you. Then he tried to call Michelle but got Mom instead."

Dad: "Okay?"

Me: "Well, Chuck found Grandpa passed out on the floor. He's passed away."

Dad: silence

Me: "I'm so sorry Dad."

Dad: silence

Me: "I really didn't want to have to tell you this."

Dad: "I know. Its okay."

Me: "I'm sorry."

Dad: "You don't have to be sorry about anything. Yeah, this is bad. Bad news. I, I hadn't talked to him in a little while. He was doing so well."

Me: "I know. Chuck wants you to call him. I've got his number right here."

Dad: "No, no I've got it here on my phone. I'll call him."

Me: "Okay"

Dad: "Have you talked to your sister?"

Me: "No, not yet. Mom is trying to get in touch with her."

Dad: "That's right, she's still in Vegas, right?"

Me: "Yeah, Mom's got a couple calls in to her."

Dad: "Okay, I'll try to call her too. I gotta call Chuck."

Me: "I love you Dad."

Dad: (noticeably weeping) "I love you too son."

Me: "Give Chuck a call and call me back. It can be tomorrow if need be. Just let me know what's going on and what you need me to do."

Dad: "No, I'll call you back after I get off the phone with him."

Me: "Okay. I love you Dad. I'm so sorry."

Dad: "Its okay. I love you too. I'll talk to you shortly."

Me: "Okay. I'll talk to you then. Bye bye."

I don't ever want to have to do something like that again. I can't even imagine what its like to be a police officer and have to tell someone that one of their loved one's has died.

So, tomorrow we're heading to Missouri. The viewing is Thursday night and the funeral is on Friday afternoon. I thought I'd go up there a day early to be with my Dad for a little while. He's an only child, and with his Mom in a nursing home up there, he's basically got no one else besides Michelle and I.

I know things have been bad between he and I in the not so distance past, but now is not the time to worry about that stuff. Now is a time for healing and helping, and that's what I'm trying/planning to do.

The thing is, I don't really know how to feel. Of course I'm sad, but I'm not overwhelmed with grief, like most would be. I didn't really know my Grandpa. I never really spent much time with him when I was growing up. I'd see him about every time we visited Missouri, but it would sometimes be 2 or 3 years in between times we'd see him, because we couldn't run him down. So, I didn't have a real relationship with him, like I have with both of my Grandma's.

I guess I have some things to deal with?

Dream coverage, a few days late...

2008-02-18T20:17:00.002-06:00

I had a crazy dream last Thursday night and, luckily wrote down as much of it as I could remember, when I got to work on Friday. Unfortunately, I've forgotten all about the dream since, thus I won't be able to fill in anything extra. So, without further adieu...

Adrianne and I are traveling, along with three young children (possibly the three kids Adrianne used to babysit for, before we got married), when we couldn't find our house. So, we pulled our car by a pool within a gated community, because it would be easy to find later on. We all get out of the car and into the pool (somehow we're in our swimsuits already).

We're only in the pool for a few minutes when tornado's are forming in the sky all around us. I make everyone get out of the pool and head inside the community common area (actually reminds me of a hunting lodge or something). Unfortunately, none of us have towels, so we're just standing there, soaking wet.

I find the clothes I had on when we were in the car and put them on over my swimsuit. Obviously, doing this was not a good idea, as my clothes also immediately became soaked. I decide I want to put on some dry clothes, regardless of what I have to get them. What this means is I have to go out and weather the storm (gotta love a little play on words). So, I suck it up and run out to the car.

The wind is blowing violently (like wind does in tornado-like weather) and our car (our old Accord) is now in a garage (a detached garage, with at least 5 bays). I'm trying to get my luggage out of the trunk of the car when the garage door opens. A older gentleman in a work truck isn't quite expecting me to be in his parking spot, so I walk out to meet him at his driver's side window, apologizing about being in his spot. He tells me that its okay and that he'll just park in another spot. He opens the garage door two spots down and pulls in.

Everything seemed kind of odd to me, because he looked like a blue collar worker (manual laborer or something), but we were in a very high end neighborhood, but I didn't say anything to him. We start chatting and he tells me that he and his wife are going to a play later on that evening and that he'd see if he could get his friend's three extra tickets for us to use. I politely refused, since there were five of us, but only three tickets. He says "just leave two of the kids and go anyway."

That's all I got. I woke up right as he said "leave two of the kids".

Now, I can explain 90% of this dream with relative ease, as they are just everyday things that ended up showing up in my subconscious. The gated community comes from work. Over the past 4 months I've been looking at loans to home builders and have had numerous run-ins with the loan officers about how crappy the market is, even in the best areas.

The tornado's are simple as well, since we had tornado's all around our area just a week ago and they are still making headlines in the news here. The older gentleman in the work truck also comes from my daily life, as there are tons of workers outside our building working on adjacent building.

I'm not sure why I thought about our old car or about a play. So, not a lot to gain out of this dream, just my every day life.

I'm out!

Almost back to back

2008-02-13T21:38:00.002-06:00

Yeah, I know I missed posting yesterday. You wanna make something of it?

I just didn't really have much to discuss. That and I just didn't feel like typing last night.

Anyway, I thought I'd get a little something off my chest. The truth is, I'm really, really tired of my boss. For starters, he won't do what is best for us, as employees.

Several months ago, we had a new senior manager join our team. This gentleman immediately made some drastic changes and not necessarily for the worst. Changes were needed, in a bad way. Our department had lost a lot of credibility throughout the organization and we needed to get that back, and quickly.

While all of us "underlings" were on board, and, at least in my case, excited about being more empowered with our jobs, my direct boss continued to maintain the status quo from the old regime. Truthfully, its not his fault either, as he's never known anything but the way he's been doing things. This is due to the fact that he's never had another job at a different place. The rest of us have all worked elsewhere and brought our experiences with us.

Fast forward to more recent times...

We've been working on a project and our new senior manager told us, at the beginning, to take charge of what we are doing, make intelligent decisions, and move on. If we did that, he would back us 100%. That's the way empowerment is supposed work and really made me feel like I could do my job without all of the bullshit we've had to put up with prior to now. (background info: at my job there has been a serious power struggle throughout the company's history and politics, more often than not, overrule common sense and intelligent business decisions)

Well, my boss doesn't necessarily follow this path. Instead, he's still doing it the old way, where we know what we want to do, then we put it out for discussion with others, let them come back with their opinions, then we go back and forth for a month, before we finally come to a conclusion. The problem with this way is that we were supposed to be done at the end of January. The decisions I made were done by that time, but, until today, we were still in the negotiating process. All the while, my boss has made no effort to go to our senior manager with our findings, so he could back us up, and we could move on.

So, in the end, all of us "underlings" look like we're not doing our job efficiently, because our boss won't do what he's supposed to do. Instead we are stuck sitting on our hands, getting things done at a snail's pace, and having senior management look at in bewilderment (as to say "what is taking so long?"). I can't go say anything to senior management, as my boss makes life really shitty for me. I've been there and done that, but I don't know how much longer I can put up with this idiocy.

Okay, I'm done for now. I'm really not in a bad mood today. I didn't do any work at all today and my Hilltoppers blew out yet another team in Diddle Arena. Also, tomorrow is Valentines Day, with Adrianne's birthday following the day after.

Eons and eons

2008-02-11T20:34:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems like ages since I've posted. Part of that is due to my workload (at work, what a surprise), with the other part due to me being lazy. Its not that I haven't been up to anything, its just that I haven't had time to put pen to paper (as I used to do when I'd have ideas worth writing down and discussing). Also, it appears that the firewall at work has now added "blogger" sites to their "don't even think about it" list. It used to be all I had to worry about was not checking out porn at work! What will they block next? ESPN.com? Yahoo?

So, where do I really start? I'm thinking the first thing I could talk about is married life. All is well in this environment. I love my wonderfully beautiful wife and, as far as I can tell, she loves me in return. We don't get to spend enough time together, between work (for both of us), her graduate school stuff, my sports (I'll get to that later), and after work extracurriculars, we get maybe 2 good, waking hours to see each other every day. That's really not enough to discover each other, but we're doing the best we can.

Adrianne's class this year is hell on wheels. She thought she had a few bad apples last year, but, outside of just a couple of kids, this year's group are all like her absolute worst kids from last year. Its rather taxing on both of us, as she actually has to deal with them every day and I have to be understanding of what she has to deal with.

On a personal note, as much as I hated capital punishment (paddlings and such) when I was a kid, I believe kids these days need that kind of thing more than ever. Back when I was a kid (God I'm getting old) we were scared to death to ever do anything wrong at school because we knew our asses would get worn out when we got home. These days, the kids just don't care. Their parents aren't going to discipline them when they get home, so they aren't afraid of them. Then they get to come into the schools, where there's no reason to be afraid of teachers, principals, or guidance counselors, so they can get away with anything. The power is completely in the hands of the kids, instead of the other way around, and people have the nerve to wonder why this country is going to hell in a hand-basket. Well, you wanted it, so guess what you got!

Okay, enough on that rant. I just wanted to kind of get that out there. Now, what's on my mind lately you may ask? Well, my grandmother (Dad's Mom) hasn't been doing very well as of late. Less than a month ago we had to move her out of her old assisted living center because she was unable to do what was necessary to take care of herself. She had deteriorated far enough that she had to be in the hospital for at least a week and the old place wouldn't let her come back in that condition.

Luckily, we had already scouted out a different locale for her while we were there over Thanksgiving, and they had an opening. Talk about luck.

Sis and I converged on Salem and Rolla, Missouri and did everything we needed to do. Actually, Michelle did most of the work before Adrianne and I could get there, so all we really had to do was try to comfort Granny. Now, fast forward to two weeks ago...

Something happened (yet to be determined) and Granny was rushed to the hospital in Rolla from her nursing facility. From all accounts she was about as close to death as possible and to the point where they put her in a hospice room, assigned her a social worker, and got her a hospice nurse. From what I've gathered, she had pneumonia in both lungs, but I don't know what else. I wasn't able to get away from work and everything else on such short notice but Michelle and Mom got up there as quick as they could.

It was kind of "touch and go" for a couple of days, but Granny got through it. I think most of it was due to Michelle being there, as I think most of Granny's problems are psychological, as in she's severely depressed. She has no desire to get out of bed to do anything and its killing her. Without being active, and in some cases not eating or drinking anything, she's obliterated her immune system, making her susceptible to infection, disease, and everything else that runs rampant through nursing homes, schools, mall, etc.

So, this last weekend Adrianne and I went up to see her. Friday was wonderful. She was sitting up in bed and talking up a storm. She'd take short, 15 second breaks to catch her breath, then start in on another story about any and every thing. We had a great visit and my hopes were pretty high that she'll be a fighter and pull through all of this.

Well, Saturday those hopes were dashed. For every second she spent sitting up talking to us on Friday, she was laying down drifting in and out of consciousness and/or complaining about being tired or in pain on Saturday. When they came in to get her to go to lunch, she just told them to go away, that she didn't want to eat. I was able to talk her into going to eat, so Adrianne and I could take a little break to grab a bite as well and run a few errands for her (pick up a couple of things she needed/wanted). After lunch was no different. I spent the time watching TV on mute while Adrianne worked on her graduate class.

I spent very little time sleeping Saturday night, knowing my inevitable conversation with Granny the next day. No matter how many times you go over stuff like this in your head, its never easy to come out and say it.

When we went in on Sunday morning, she was in the same or slightly worse shape than the day before. This time she wouldn't even complain about pain or being tired. She just wanted to lay there in peace. I got up close to her so I could whisper in her ear, instead of talking aloud to her. She told me was so tired and just wanted it all to go away. I asked her if she wanted the Lord to come get her. Her first response was "if he wants to", which was later changed to "yes, I'm ready". I told her that we (myself, Adrianne, Michelle, Dad) didn't want her to be where she is and be miserable and "if the Lord comes for you, we want you to go with him". She was okay with that. Really, I think that's the best I can do.

Anyway, I'm tired of talking about that, as it depresses me. Hmm... other things going on in my life???

Well, I successfully played the entire fall season in my adult soccer league. I didn't score any goals and may have had a couple of assist (I never checked the stats), but I didn't completely suck. Well, at least not in my mind anyway. My teammates may disagree. So, I've signed up to play again in the spring. The season starts at the end of February and we've had a couple of practices, both of which I've missed due to being out of town. I'm back out of playing shape again and need to get to work on it. You can't realize how hard it is to get outside to run around some during the winter in an urban environment. First of all, its been dark two hours before I even get off work. Next, I've got two places I can go kick a ball around, and neither are safe for a honky at night.

Speaking of being out of town, Adrianne and I have had 3 weekends, tops, here in Memphis since Thanksgiving. One of which we had company come visit. Most of that is my fault, as I have an undying desire to go watch basketball games in Bowling Green, with other trips to Owensboro and Missouri to see the family.

Speaking of basketball, I don't know if anyone is paying attention, but the Hilltoppers are 19-5 with a nice, long winning streak going into yet another Wednesday conference clash, this time against the Troy Trojans. I say lets burn those rubbers! Right now I'm planning on going over to Murfreesboro on Saturday to watch the tilt against the Blue Raiders at the Murphy Center. MTSU has been playing well as of late, as much as I hate to admit it. However, we beat the dog shit out of them in Diddle a little while back and we're playing much better basketball right now.

I know I said this last time, but I'll say it again... I'm going to try to post a little more often. I found my username and password, so I have no excuse. Also, Adrianne's Mom is opening a coffee shop in downtown Owensboro, and has mentioned that she might like to use some of my "Rules of Thumb" for t-shirts, cup sleeves, and stuff like that. So, I have to put the mind into overdrive and start cranking some more "Rules" out. However, first, I have to fix the template, as its gone haywire!

Well, that's enough for now! Hopefully we'll see you soon!

TWO MONTHS

2007-06-21T08:32:00.051-05:00

Well, it's hard to believe that it's been two months since I've posted anything. Believe me, it's not been because I haven't had anything to write about. I've had tons of stuff going on, but so little time to actually devote (while at work of course) to putting it all down.

The main reason why I'm breaking my silence is due to a couple of dreams I had last night. Well, actually, one was a nightmare and the other a dream. However, I guess I should try to play a little "catch-up" before I get into those, just to let everyone (if anyone is still checking this spot out) know what's been going on.

To start with, obviously, it's been busy at work. My time has actually been devoted to doing my job, which is a shame, because my talents could be used, much more prominently, elsewhere (like playing video games), but I digress.

My beautiful wife and I celebrated out 1st wedding anniversary back at the end of May. My wife is way too good to me, and, unfortunately, I think she knows that! She set up a weekend away where she got us tickets to my first ever professional soccer game (we went to Columbus, OH and watched the Columbus Crew versus Toronto FC). It was absolutely fantastic! I'll work on getting some pictures up, at some point in time.

Then, just last week, we went on vacation, back to our spot in Mexico. What a wonderful week! The only problem is that I had to come back to work this Monday, so that was kind of crappy!

Anyway, on to the good stuff...

Dream #1: Adrianne and I decide to host a huge New Year's Eve party at a concert hall. Tons of people show up early and it basically turns into a Frat party, meaning that they really wreck the joint. What winds up happening is Adrianne, our friend Harsh, and myself end up cleaning the place up and completely miss the striking of the midnight hour, marching in the New Year.

The most notable pieces to this dream are the fact that, for some reason, we had black cloth napkins, which people had strewn everywhere and that our personal towels were all over the place. The other notable thing is that the men's room didn't have an sit-down stalls, but just a wall with four small drains for urinating in. I bet you can't guess what caused me to wake up? It has something to do with the men's room.

Dream #2: (the nightmare) Well, it didn't really start out as a nightmare, it was more of a comedy. A friend and I were watching TV and as I was scrolling through the movie channels he noticed the movie "The Haunting" on and said he wanted to watch it. Well, it turns out that we became part of the movie, but not actually that movie.

Somehow, these three guys show up at our house (no I don't own a house, I know) and are trying to set these ghastly, ghoulish fiends free in our house. The ghosts are kind of following the three guys around, waiting for their chance to come to life. However, they aren't quite fully formed and can't become solid enough to actually do anything.

So, one of the guys goes into a bedroom to try to conjure the spirits to their full fruition (**inside joke! Just for you honey!). As he's working, one of the other guys is trying to get the ghosts to come through a sliding glass door (not an opened sliding glass door mind you, but still closed and actually forming through the glass itself), but just as they're pulling their heads through I keep punching them back outside. My buddy and I start making a game out of until the ghosts start actually fully forming, becoming harder and harder with each punch.

At this point I realize I have no clue where the third guy is, but I don't have time to worry about that, as I have to stop the guy who's conjuring the ghouls up. I kick through the door to find him chanting incoherently toward this small plant with pink flowers. While he's chanting I grab his head and spin it around, hopefully breaking his neck. I do some chanting of my own, hoping it ceases the gestation. Then, I grab the small plant and sprint out the back to dispose of it.

At first I just want to throw the thing in the dumpster, but I realize they could just get it out and continue their plot. So, I break all of the limbs off and pull the flowers from the limbs. I throw the hulk of the plant into the dumpster, put the flowers in my pocket, and carry the limbs back inside to the kitchen.

This is where things get bad. In the kitchen I find the third guy behind my wife with his arm around her neck (threatening, not in a loving manner) and with a meat cleaver in his other hand aimed at the top of my wife's head. I try to reason with him to let her go, but, instead, he pops her on top of the head with the cleaver once, knocking her unconscious.

I just absolutely lose it. I pounce (that's the best work I can possibly think of to describe my movement toward him) on the guy, wrestle the cleaver away from him and start smashing the hell out of his head. As soon as he's unconscious (which is a matter of seconds) I grab my wife in one arm and grab the phone to dial "911" with my free hand.

She's in and out of her daze, but can actually speak to me. Unfortunately, I can't make out anything she's saying though. However, it doesn't seem as though her cut is too deep, as she's not bleeding profusely, unlike the guy laying on the floor, in a pool of his own blood.

As I'm trying to get an ambulance and police officer on the phone the "911" service is going through what seems like an infomercial for something. I can't really make it all out, as I'm kicking the guy on the floor in the face every time he starts to move a little bit, and, I forgot to mention, I'm crying like a little girl!

So, there you have it! That's my first post in a while. I've been asked to post one of my presents to my wife for our anniversary, and I'll try to get around to that soon. I just don't want to do it on the same day as I had two dreams, especially when one is kind of a nightmare.

15 DAYS...

2007-04-19T14:12:00.000-05:00

As I was wasting a little time today, I realized it had been 15 days since my last post. I know for some people that's not a big deal, but there are times when I'm posting daily. Obviously this isn't one of those times.

I've been pretty busy at work. I've been in the middle of two projects as of late (which I think I mentioned during my last post), and we've actually rolled out the pilot on one of them. The other one is getting ready to roll out. Once they both get going I'll probably be spending most of my time cleaning them up and making sure the input information (from other users) is correct.

So, I've pretty much gone from an internal bank examiner to a programmer of bank usable software. Hmm... I haven't noticed an increase in my paycheck though.

Anyway, I've had some crazy dreams these last couple days and I thought I'd share what little I can remember of them. I think part of the reason I've been dreaming this way is because I've been taking Melatonin prior to going to sleep. Yes, I've been having problems sleeping again (mostly getting to sleep and staying that way), which makes my takes even less tolerable. To learn more about this fascinating, and cheap drug, check it out here. I usually take a 5mg tab, whereas my wife will take the 3mg tab.

This is actually the brand I use...

Okay, so where was I before I got off course? Oh yes, dreams!

Well, I had two crazy ones a couple of nights ago, but can only one main theme in one of them. The theme was that, somehow, a shark had gotten loose in a house, and it could swim under the floors. Yeah, I know that's a bunch of crazy talk, but it happens. I can also remember that I was jumping from chair to chair, making sure not to touch the floor. Every now and then you could see some movement under the carpet.

Last night I had a couple more dreams, but can only remember one of them, or at least the main focus of one of them. I really would rather not talk about it, but then what would be the point of my bringing it up, right?

So, I'm watching an episode of "Criminal Minds" (we watched it last night, so that's why it was in my head), and the main guy, Mandy Patinkin,

and the second in command, Thomas Gibson,

keep putting a huge vibrator up Matthew Gray Gubler's ass.

Supposedly they are testing to see how much pain he can take and it gets to the point that he can't even feel it, unless they turn it on and it starts vibrating loudly.

This is where things are really, really crazy. I am actually pulling in things from the waking world on this as Adrianne's alarm (her cell phone set to vibrate) is what is actually "buzzing" and I'm hearing it in my dream. I finally wake out of the dream but I don't hear the vibrating any more. However, I do roll over to see what time it is, and it's 6:00 am (on the dot at that), so I wake her up to see what time she was supposed to get up (since it's usually prior to 6 am). She searches for her phone, which she usually keeps under her pillow, and it had found it's way to the floor, thus the reason she didn't hear it.

So, my disgusting dream about a poor actor getting a vibrator shoved up his ass actually turns out to be a positive. It helped my wife to get up on time and not be late for work. I told you there was some craziness going on!

I decided to add this video on here, because it makes me laugh out loud. Enjoy!

Kung Fu Masters!

TIME KEEPS ON TICKIN'

2007-04-04T16:28:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't really have much of a reason to post right now, other than it's been a while since I've done it. I've been absolutely swamped at work lately.

I've actually been developing two projects for my department using Microsoft Access. It's odd, because on a couple of the people I work with have ever even heard of it, and none of them know how to use it, even thought it's much simpler than setting up and dealing with VBA Programming for Excel (which is the program the people who started the project were working with).

Luckily for my bosses I'm able to learn on the fly. Actually, I've used Access for several years now, but I am self taught with it, so there's probably a ton of things I'm not using that would be very helpful. I should just buy a book about it, but I like discovering things for myself.

I guess since I was a little kid I always like to reverse-engineer things. I used to take my GI Joe's apart and put them back together, with different body parts of course. I would also take apart electronics, just to see what their make-up was all about. Once computers were accessible to me, well, all hell broke loose. I can't begin to say I'm an expert using one, but I know my way around a PC pretty well.

Anyway, I just thought I'd check in and let anyone who cares know that I'm still alive and kicking. Well, work is kicking my butt as well as my allergies, but that's another story!

MAKING ME PROUD...

2007-03-19T15:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm sure most people in this world don't know this, but there is basketball played outside of the NCAA, at the college level. My alma mater, Brescia University (or College, when I attended back in the good ol' days), competes at the NAIA level.

Every year the NAIA has a national tournament, both men's and women's, consisting of the best 32 teams in the country. The men's tournament is held in Kansas City, Missouri, while the women's is held in Jackson, Tennessee.

Brescia's men's team made the tournament in back to back years, just a few years ago, while the women actually made the final four back in 2004. The basketball gods haven't been so polite to my beloved Bearcats since those times though, as both teams have fallen on some hard times.

For example, the Lady Bearcats went a combined 3-30 last season. Yes, that is three wins and thirty losses. The guys hovered somewhere around .500.

However, this year, under a new coach (and one of my best friends as his assistant coach), the Lady Bearcats made the biggest turnaround of any collegiate program in the country, at any level. In the regular season, the Lady Bearcats finished 19-11, while winning the independent tournament (since we are not a member of any conference). Winning this tournament automatically qualified the team for the National Tournament, but the record actually bumped our ranking from playing the overall #1 seed to playing worst of the four #1 seeds, in Lee University.

I know, many have probably stopped reading already, if they were reading at all, but this is actually where the story gets interesting. Lee University is led by the same coach who took the Lady Bearcats to the NAIA Final Four in 2004. When he left Brescia for Lee, he took nearly all of the freshmen on that team with him, sans one or two.

Well, this game was as good a chance for some "pay back" for the ladies and program he left behind to rot. Well, they did exactly that.

Brescia led most of the way and lost the lead, momentarily, around the seven minute mark of the second half, due mainly to an "iffy" call at best. However, the Ladies continued to fight and wiggled their way into overtime. Down to a very short bench, due to an injury and two players fouling out, Brescia dominated the extra session, never relinquishing the lead they got within 20 seconds of the tip.

Now, you've got a team that won a whole three games the season before, with 20 wins on the season. There's turning around a program, and then there is this!

I'm really proud of the coaches and the ladies. It is an accomplishment, in and of itself, to even have a basketball program at a school like Brescia, which puts so little in the athletic coffers that the coaches end up paying for most of the traveling expenses out of their own pockets.

I have a strange feeling this isn't the last we'll hear out of these coaches, kids, and this program.

Now, this takes me to a whole other subject (well, back anyway)...

I think I've adequately explained how incredibly horrendous the attendance was at the Sun Belt Conference tournament, earlier this month, and how horribly marketed it was. Now, on the other hand, Jackson (and the people of this city) made Lafayette look like a bunch of dingle-berries.

I'll start with the first thing I saw when I got off the I-40 exit which took me to the arena in Jackson. As I'm turning right off of the off ramp, there is a huge, illuminated billboard stating "Welcome all NAIA Women's National Championship Fans! Thank you for coming to Jackson!"

Gee, do you think they were happy to have the extra tourism? That was just the first sign I saw. In other words, I actually knew there was a basketball tournament being held in the city and I knew the city was happy it was there. Needless to say, I didn't get either of these feelings in Lafayette.

Now, on to attendance... There was not a single game at the Sun Belt Conference Tournament that had more attendance than any game at the NAIA Women's National Tournament (that I saw anyway, and I watched four or five). This is sad on so many levels, but I'll give you this...

The average enrollment at Sun Belt schools is somewhere around 13,000, with several schools having enrollments in excess of 30,000. Now, the average enrollment at most NAIA schools is about 1,800 (all of the NAIA schools combined, probably total the enrollment of the Sun Belt Schools). So, how in the world can there be more fans at this tournament than at the Sun Belt Tournament? Enquiring minds want to know!

Okay, I'm done ranting for today. I want to close by saying, again, how proud I am of the Lady Bearcats and their coaches. You all did a wonderful job and made at least one alumnus very, very proud!

WAITING...

2007-03-13T08:22:00.000-05:00

(I actually wrote this down last night while I was laying in bed, unable to sleep)

Yeah, I like the movie, but when it comes to fruition in real life, well, that's another story.

We weren't even back in Memphis for two hours before the first calamity took place. Being that is was nearly 80 degrees when we made it home, we decided to it would be a perfect evening to take a walk, followed by a nice dinner out.

We walked south down Main Street to the Orpheum and had pretty much decided that we were going to eat outside at the Majestic, but we wanted to stroll a little longer, since we'd been cramped up in a car for about five hours (speaking of which, I'll get to another story about some adventures in driving a little later).

So, we walked over by the FedEx Forum to see how the construction was going on the new hotel, then back north up 3rd Street toward Peabody. I remembered there was a Crepe place that opened up not too long ago that we hadn't tried yet, so we stopped by, just to check out the menu.

Unfortunately, they didn't have their menu posted on door, like most places here in Memphis, but no sooner than we turned to walk away did one of the chefs come out and greet us with a smile, a friendly face, and an offer of one of their "to go" menus. He also said "We'll delivery too, if necessary."

Knowing what we know now (several hours later), we should've just walked in and placed an order. We didn't though. We just took the menu and headed back up toward the corner of Peabody and Main, where the Majestic resides. All the while, Adrianne is focused on the menu we received at the Crepe place.

So, we get to Majestic and step inside, planning on eating outside on Main Street. No problem there. We're quickly seated and a couple of waiters pass us by, paying us no mind. This actually doesn't bother me much, as I assume they are handling other tables and one of them would probably be with us shortly.

A few minutes pass when our server approaches our table. He promptly asks if we would like something to drink. We oblige and place our drink orders. This, in and of itself, shouldn't be difficult, right?

Well, somewhere in between us speaking English and him bringing us our beverages there was a serious lapse in communication.

Now, rewind for a moment... About five minutes after we were seated, a family of six or seven people were seated at a table just behind us.

Back to the present... About five minutes after placing our drink order, the family seated behind us received their drinks, while we sat with two sets of silverware, neatly rolled in a cloth napkin, and two menus, closed, at the edge of the table (as we had long since decided on what we were having for dinner).

I really can understand taking a few minutes to retrieve drinks from the bar, especially when someone orders a rare port or single-malt scotch (where you actually have to go to the cellar to see if you have it in stock), but when the order is a Sprite and a water, with lemon, I kind of lose my understanding. I guess the lemon part was too difficult? Or could it be that the lemon's weren't ripe enough to serve?

Either way, after waiting 15 minutes for our drink order, which never came, we got up and left. Our server (if you actually want to call him that, since he didn't actually serve anything) was standing nearby when we exited the restaurant.

Now, I understand that this happens occasionally to tourists, and it's not that big a deal, since they probably won't be coming back anyway, but it really sucks when it happens to residents of downtown, who really want to spend their money down here, supporting downtown businesses. After all, I live, work, and enjoy playing downtown, and want to keep it that way.

The worst part of it isn't that this is first time this has happened at this restaurant. This is the fourth time I've eaten there, and not once have I been pleased with the service. If it wasn't for the food, I would've never given this place a second chance. I can assure you they will not get a fifth.

I know they probably don't care either, and that's fine with me. All of the waiters whom we saw outside were more worried about chatting with and catering to the two ladies sitting at the tables next to us anyway. I hope they were big tippers!

However, if I were an "undercover" restaurant reviewer, this would not look so good.

I love supporting downtown businesses, and it breaks my heart when one of them goes out of business. That being said, I sincerely hope that I am the exception to the rule at the Majestic, and not the norm when it come to service, other wise they won't be in business much longer.

Now, we did end up having a nice meal though, so don't think this story ends on a down note. We walked back down the street to the Crepe place and there was that smiling face, waiting to see us again. That was really a nice change of pace from what we had encountered only minutes prior to this.

We split a delicious chicken Caesar crepe and followed it with a "Triple Threat" dessert. The entree was wonderful, but the dessert was outstanding! This is the way the night should've gone to begin with. Now we know! Here is the restaurant: Crepe Makers

See, fate always finds a way to step in and make things right!

Now, let me tell you a little story about having some fun while driving. Better yet, read this short story from the Commercial Appeal...

I-40 pileup kills at least 1, shuts down eastbound lanes

By Associated
Press
March 9, 2007

DICKSON, Tenn. — At least one person was killed Friday night in a pileup on
Interstate 40 in Dickson County involving at least seven tractor-trailers and
six cars.
The chain-reaction crash started about 7:20 p.m. and shut down
eastbound lanes near mile marker 165 and backed up westbound traffic for miles,
according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The area is about 42 miles west of
Nashville.

At least one tractor-trailer overturned. The cause of the wreck was being
investigated.
Lanes were not expected to be clear until 2 a.m. Saturday.
Eastbound traffic was diverted to State Highway 48.

Yeah, well we left Memphis at 5:15 pm on Friday night, and at about 7:30 came upon a parking lot on I40. I'm guessing we were only about 10 to 12 miles from being involved in this accident, which is a relief. However, we were stuck in the aftermath for more than two hours because of this. After we had already finished watching "Anchorman" and started watching "BASEketbal" a TDOT truck came by telling us to cross the median and go to the closest exit, so we could be rerouted back to the interstate.

Well, we went a little different route. I decided, since I kind of knew where we were, to take an alternate route to Owensboro, thus avoiding the slow moving traffic that would be involved with getting back on I40. Needless to say, this was not a shorter route by any means.

Around 1:40 am we pulled into the driveway. In case you didn't know, it's a five hour drive from Memphis to Owensboro, pretty much any way you go. To say that we were exhausted when we finally go there would be a slight understatement.

I actually slept while a vehicle was in motion for the first time since I was a child, on Saturday, while we were heading to Lexington. That, alone, should speak volumes.

DUREX SHEIK...

2007-03-06T23:35:00.000-06:00

I call it this because I'm wrapping this puppy up, for my own safety.

It's 11:37 pm (when I'm starting this post), and I don't have a ton to say right now. I'm disappointed, dismayed, and at least four other words that start with "dis". However, I've still had a great time. I've made a new friend (Jay, I hope you enjoyed your first SBC tournament). I've had some absolutely incredible food. I've been drunk at least twice (that I remember). I haven't cried like a little girl, even as shitty as I've felt after the games on Saturday and yesterday. I've got to spend some "quality" time with my best friend (which you just can't put a price tag on). I'm bloated beyond belief. I'm going to be starting a full-fledged diet tomorrow night.

So, a lot of good things happen, several bad (just games), and I'm sure a lot of good things will happen because of this trip.

We did something kind of silly today. We actually went to the women's final this afternoon, no sweat. After the game we went and ate at Blue Dog Cafe and had a wonderful meal, including a couple of cocktails. Then, we came back to our hotel to hang out until the men's final came around. Well, 8 pm rolled around and none of the three of us even wanted to go back to the CajunDome. With a minimum of 25 hours spent sitting that godforsaken place, watching the same three commercials over and over, we figured enough was enough. So, we stayed here at the hotel and flipped between the Sun Belt final and the Horizon final. Both were good games, and I'm glad that we did what we did.

My stomach has been in pretty bad shape all day (starting last night during our game). It's gotten so bad that I've got, not one, but two mouth ulcers because of it. Sure, some of it is because of dietary changes, but most of it is stress related. I almost thing that I care too much about Western Kentucky basketball, because when it starts to change the way your body functions, then something's just not right.

I hate the fact that basketball season is over (technically it's not over, because there is still "March Madness" and such, but for any real Topper fan, it's OVER), but I'm also relieved. I'm relieved that we, as fans, can finally get off of the roller coasters. I think some of the players probably feel the same way. I'm hoping they can take some serious time off and rekindle that spark that seemed to be missing for a large part of the season (that's my opinion only, others may not have seen it that way). I hope the coaches take some time off too. I'd like them to get to spend some quality time with their families and friends and just be "human". I think it's what they need to get back to square one.

Okay, so it's right at midnight now, and I need to get a little sleep. We're planning on getting up and being on the road around 8 am. It's a long, boring haul home, and we're not necessarily going home happy, like we thought we would, but... We had a great time and made a few memories, and that's really the most important thing anyway.

I bid you adieu from Lafayette.

ELEVEN TWELVE

2007-03-04T23:17:00.000-06:00

Well, day two of the Sun Belt tournament is over with. The Toppers survived to fight another round and, hopefully, revenge a loss from earlier this season this season.

The only problem I have with any of this is that they won't hear me screaming for them. I was having a little problem with the pipes after yesterday's debacle, but I never thought this would happen. At the 11:12 mark in the first half I stood up to yell something at the refs, but all that came out was a gasp. My voice is absolutely shot. I've got nothing to give the team vocally now, but I'll definitely be clapping hard, stomping my feet, and waving my towel.

Now, on to the game, since anyone that's reading this problems only cares about that (unless you're my wife whose worrying about me now)...

Wow! That's all I can really say. I have to give Coach Walters a ton of credit. He's put together a nice squad down in Boca Raton, and I have a feeling this won't be the last we hear out of them (unless he's not there very long). They are graduating Mr. Money, Deandre (I hope I spelled that right, because I haven't looked it up) Rice. This guy was unconscious tonight, and, basically, unguardable. Western, for the most part, shut down FAU's best interior player (if you call giving up 19 that) by throwing man after man at him. This is what I thought we'd need to do in order to have an impact against him, and, for the most part, we did. That, in and of itself, is a success.

I haven't had the chance to look at the stats yet, but I will say this... Our boys brought their hard hats and lunch pails and went to work this game. We looked relaxed the entire way through, and this game just had that feeling that it was never really in doubt, no matter how close it was. The Toppers hustled, non-stop, for forty minutes and left it all out on the floor. That's really all you can ask, and just hope you get a win out of their effort. We got that tonight.

Now, onto other things...

Paul and I made a new friend today. A guy came down and sat by us during the first game of the early session and was just watching some hoops. I noticed he was carrying a laptop with him, but didn't think much of. Well, we ended up chatting a little bit, and, come to find out, he's the writer for FAU's school's newspaper and a fellow blogger. Well, he kicked it with us for the better parts of the first session, then accompanied us to a nice dinner at Don's Seafood.

Dinner was wonderful, as we are getting accustomed to. I had a half and half platter of Crawfish Ettouffe and fried Crawfish tails. Really, I love some crawfish, or, as I call them, crawdad's. I've tried to have them as often as possible since we've been down here. We were informed that the crawfish aren't big yet (or, in Kentucky terms, "in season"), so they aren't as good as they could be, but... They are FREAKIN' AMAZING!

Paul had some grilled catfish, which he said were excellent (those aren't his words, but mine, because I like using more syllables than what "great" and "good" have). He actually said "Their the shit".

We had to have subway for lunch, because we were running late (mostly my fault for sleeping in and messing around on the internet), and that was okay. We stopped by Charlie G's, but they weren't open yet. We probably won't make it there, since their cheapest entre was $25. Now, we enjoy some good food, but we're just not that interested in having a $50 check to pay.

So, there you have it for tonight. I'm sure I've missed several things and I'll think about them whilst I sleep (like I did last night). Whoops! I just thought of one!

We had a fan in the stands stop by and ask us about betting on the Toppers tonight. The spread was at 7.5 when he talked to us, and we told him not to take it. We haven't done that well against the spread this year, so I told him not to bet it. Fortunately for this guy, we were right. So, hopefully we saved this gambling addict a few bucks, so he can bet on something else tomorrow or lose some money and the mobile home casinos down here. We only saw five or so once we got past Hammond, on our way to Lafayette.

Alright, it's bed time!

Addendum to day 1...

2007-03-04T10:07:00.000-06:00

In my hastiness last night (and possible intoxication) I left out a few things.

First of all: FOOD.

We ate at two good places yesterday. We had a pregame meal at Olde Tyme Grocery, which is right by campus. It's got a real, old school feel, a half a Po' boy will take care of you, and for less than five bucks. Unfortunately, Murph's Olde Tyme Snowballs was closed (it was adjacent to the Grocery).

After the game we headed over to Pete's on Johnston's sportsbar. This is a pretty nice little joint. Did I mention it's smoke free? That comes in really handy when you're trying to enjoy a good burger. The beer there is pretty cheap too, so no complaints. If you ever happen to stroll in there, ask for Josh. He took good care of us!

Okay, now about the tournament. Who ever made the decision to have this tournament at the cavernous CajunDome needs to be slapped. It wouldn't matter if you 7,000 in this place, because it would still look empty. This place is huge and the court is forever away from the stands and benches. The stat boards are about 6 miles off the court and, without a telescope, are indiscernable. The lighting is okay, on the court, but it makes you feel like you're in a movie theater, since that's the only place where there is light. I feel sorry for the teams, because there's no backdrop behind the goals, which can be a real detriment for shooters.

Back to the Lady Topper's game last night. I've had some time to think about it, and I'm not changing my mind. We got a royal hosing last night. I looked over the stats after posting (which I shouldn't have, because it just made me a little more upset) and noticed a few things.

First of all, we outrebounded them 46 to 25, and had nearly as many offensive rebounds as they had total rebounds, with 22. We shot better than they did, shooting 48% to their 43%, all while shooting 7 more shots in the game. However, the only thing that made this game what it was was free throws. We shot 11 for the game, hitting 3 of them. Arkansas State shot 29, making 22 of them. Anyone see any a problem there?

Yes, turnovers were killers for us, being that we had 24 and they only had 11. However, if the officials called fouls on half of those supposed turnovers (which they should have), then it's a completely different ball game.

With all of that said, I still have to give Arkansas State credit for doing what they needed to do. They won and that's not going to change. I'll close with this, though... Good luck getting those calls tomorrow against the homestanding Lady Cajuns!

Sun Belt Tournament Road Trip, Day 1

2007-03-04T01:00:00.000-06:00

Well, we made it down to Lafayette around 2:30 this afternoon (technically yesterday, now that it is just after 1 am on Sunday). The trip was uneventful, which is always good. It's really a long, boring drive from Memphis to Lafayette, but Paul and I kept each other company, and Paul didn't even fall asleep on me!

Anyway, we missed the first session of games, but made it to see UL-Lafayette and Florida International in the first game of the night session. It would be remiss of me to say that the "Golden Dazzlers" were the highlight of this game. The Lady Cajuns pretty much owned FIU in this game, and the final score wasn't as bad as it actually was.

Then, we got to see one of the finest "hosings" I've seen in quite a long time.

The Lady Toppers took on Arkansas State in the nightcap, starting at 9 pm. The first half wasn't too bad. The LT's jumped out to an big, early lead, but couldn't hang on. They got three fouls on ASU's best player within about 1o minutes in the first half, but only held a two point advantage at halftime. During the first half the fouls were about even, with Western being in the bonus (with 9 fouls on ASU), while ASU didn't reach the bonus (WKU with 5 fouls), however the second half changed all of that.

ASU reached the bonus about halfway through the second stanza, while there were a total of 4 fouls called on ASU in the second half. Yes, four. That's it. They, somehow, started playing the most discipline, least aggressive defense I have ever seen in person (yes, there's a lot of sarcasm in there). We picked up 17 fouls in the second half to their 4. The only picked up the fourth in the last minute of action too, if that tells you anything.

Now, I've already lost my voice from screaming at the refs, and we still have three days to go. Well, that is, if the men can survive tomorrow night. If they get the same kind of officiating crew that the Lady's got tonight, then we're in big, big trouble. I'll be stuck with not a single team to root for. Yes, that would suck, but PT and I would still find a way to have some fun.

There's always "Illusions"! (Yes, that's an inside joke, but it's a funny one! I know I wouldn't mind 2-for-1 Tuesdays!)

TAP... TAP... TAP...

2007-02-28T09:47:00.000-06:00

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the last two days for me here at work. It seems as all I've been doing is tapping my fingers on my desk. Well, that and browsing the internet. However, no one, here in the office, is really busy right now. We're just kind of biding our time for something to do. Several people are leaving for the west coast this weekend, while others barely have any work assigned to them, so they're stretching it out as long as possible.

I, however, am just waiting. I'm waiting for the weekend to get here so I can head to Lafayette for the Sun Belt Conference basketball tournament. However, I can't really leave until my project is completed. I can't complete my project until we get the final word on one part of it, and until my boss proofreads it and lets me know what I need to fix. Then it has to go to his boss for proofreading, before we can ship it out. We've been basically done with it for a month now, but one small thing is holding the completion up.

So, I'm tapping my fingers on my desk. Some people would twiddle their thumbs, but I prefer to just tap away. When I'm not tapping I'm listening to music (more because the bag of douche next to me has been in rare form the last two days than anything) and finding different things to keep me occupied. Yesterday I started looking at Marvel.com, the comic book site. If you register, which is free, you can read a lot of comics online. So, I did that for the better part of yesterday afternoon.

Anyway, on to other things...

I had a dream this morning. Usually I would say last night, but it was this morning. I woke up right at 6 am out of it, and decided to write some things down. Here's what I got:

I'm at a gas station and I'm driving a white Ford Econoline van (like the one in this picture, but with blue striping).

I'm getting ready to go to school (high school I'm assuming), but I don't have the right shoes to go with what I'm wearing (yeah, this is sounding really gay to start off). I'm wearing mostly gray with red trim, but my shoes are my suede navy blue adidas. So, I take them off and throw them in to the passenger seat when my Dad and Step-Mom show up on a small raft and offer to take me to the house to get my red shoes.

All of a sudden we're floating around in some kind of bay, where they park huge boats. Mind you, we are pretty much on a Tom Sawyer type raft, floating amongst all these monstrosities, and just their wake from sitting there is tossing us all around. My Dad is steering the craft from the back, while my Step-Mom and I are laying on our stomachs, trying to keep our bodies out of the water.

I don't know how, but we're at a house, and we're waiting on my sister to show up. She finally does, and she's wearing a sweater that looks like a pair of socks I own. There are two cups of iced tea sitting on an end table, one in a blue cup and one in a red cup, and we're trying to figure out which one is mine. I tell her that mine is the red one, but I'm pointing to the blue cup. I'm confused so I wake up.

Now, I'm going to do something that I haven't done in a while, and try to analyze this thing. There are so many different aspects, and I'm going to go by the book (like the old days).

1. The colors "red" and "blue", since they are recurring items in this dream. Here is what "DreamMoods.com" had to say about the color Blue:

Blue

Blue represents truth, wisdom, heaven, eternity, devotion, tranquility, loyalty and openness. The presence of this color in your dream, may symbolize your spiritual guide and your optimism of the future. You have clarity of mind.

Depending on the context of your dream, the color blue may also be a metaphor of "being blue" and feeling sad.

and here is what they said about Red:

Red

Red is an indication of raw energy, force, vigor, intense passion, aggression, power, courage and passion. The color red has deep emotional and spiritual connotations.

Red is also the color of danger, shame, sexual impulses and urges. Perhaps you need to stop and think about your actions.

I find it odd that I'm trying to get away from Blue and change to Red. They are pretty much opposites, with Blue being more passive and Red being more aggressive. Maybe I've been bored lately and need to do a little more with myself?

2. The Bay or Harbor that we're traveling through. Here's what was said about it:

Harbor

To see a harbor in your dream, signifies shelter from a stormy relationship or chaotic situation. You may be seeking refuge until you can recollect your thoughts and prepare for the challenges ahead.

Well, as many of you (if you read relatively often) already know, I have a less than desirable relationship with my Father right now. I think it's important that he and my Step-Mom are in this part of the dream, because I'm hoping it's a sign of something. I know we need to deal with our issues, but I guess I'm just biding my time right now.

3. I find it amusing that my sister comes in to the events after the Harbor scene. She is usually the mediator between us and I hate putting her in that situation. I had no clue what the tea could symbolize, until I looked it up, and it kind of brings everything together and makes some sense:

Tea
To dream that you are making or drinking tea, represents satisfaction and contentment in your life. You are taking your time with regards to some relationship or situation.

So, does it all make sense to you? No? Me neither! Have a good day anyway!

TWO FOR THURSDAY...

2007-02-22T10:23:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was official "Bums Night Out" in Memphis.

Actually, we had ourselves a little heat wave yesterday. I don't know exactly how high the temperature got, but it was really, really nice outside, even at nearly 9 pm.

A new restaurant, Flying Fish, opened downtown yesterday, so we decided to go try it out. If you like Po' Boys, fried catfish-oysters-crawfish (I call 'em "crawdads")-shrimp, fish tacos, oysters on the half shell, shrimp cocktail, boiled shrimp (okay, I'm starting to sound like Bubba from Forest Gump), etc, then you'll like this place. The atmosphere is pretty funny too. They currently have a deal going where if you bring in your "Singing Billy Bass" (hopefully you remember what that is), then they'll give you a fried catfish basket for free. They've already got several mounted on the wall up front.

The restaurant is on Second Street, in the old J. Beck location, across from the Peabody Hotel/Texas De Brazil. Check them out!

Now, onto "Bums Night Out"... Normally there are "Girls Night Out" deals at the local bars, where women pay no cover and get good deals on drinks all night. Well, last night was a little different. With our heat wave came the normal "other things" that come out of the woodwork, more specifically, BUMS!

They were out in mass last night. Just sitting in Flying Fish we saw at least five different guys hit up tourists and locals for money. At one point a group of three guys, trying to decide if they wanted to come in and try out Flying Fish, stopped and gave a bum some money. I just wanted to yell out to the guy, who actually pulled his wallet out of his back pocket where the bum could see how much money he was carrying, not to do it, but it was too late.

So, we finished up our tasty meals and headed home. No sooner than we made it out of the front door there was a bum waiting for us. We'd already seen him "working" the entire time we ate. We politely said "Sorry" and we meandered off.

We got to the corner of 2nd and Union and, again, got hit up. I was carrying my "To Go" box, so the guy asked "Do you have any food for the homeless?" The sad thing was, this guy was dressed a little better than myself, so I seriously doubt he was homeless (mind you I was wearing a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and sneakers).

Then, we get across the street and another bum starts following us. He's keeping his distance of about 15 feet behind me, which just makes me more and more nervous, because I don't know exactly what his intentions are. All three of us turn around and look back in his direction, just to keep an eye on him, on several occasions before he finally asks something incoherently. Not know exactly what he said, but assuming he's asking for money, I just say "Sorry" again, and he turns around and walks off.

This is the shit that I hate dealing with in Memphis. I can't go to dinner with my wife and a friend, when it's nice outside, without having to virtually wade through panhandlers and hustlers. I really feel sorry for tourist who have no idea what they're getting when they come to downtown Memphis. I wish there was a flyer given to every tourist that gets to Memphis that says "If you plan on going downtown, be prepared to say "No" and "Sorry" every other second, because you will be bombarded by panhandlers and bums." Man, I hate the fact that I have to say that, but you've been warned.

Up until last night things had been a lot better on the panhandling front. The police have been great about keeping them away from the more populated areas. However, Memphis' finest had other things to deal with last night. Last night was the first "Bike Night on Beale Street" event of the season. We saw plenty of police officers heading that way, which meant there were less of them to patrol around The Peabody and the surrounding area. Also, who could blame them for having a little less patrol units out. It is February after all. How could they have known it was going to be 65 degrees?

Speaking of "Bike Night"... I have a little bit of a pet peeve. Now, don't get me wrong, because I think some motorcycles are absolutely beautiful to behold. However, once you have your dinner, movie, TV show, ball game, or sleep interrupted enough times by the wailing of these beasts, it just gets old. Last night we had to actually stop our dinner conversations until the groups of motorcycles went by, on numerous occasions. They're just loud and obnoxious. Really!

It kind of disappoints me that there are noise ordinances in place for car stereos, but a motorcycle that is 20 times louder than any car stereo I've ever heard is allowed to "rev" up their engine and "rumble" down the street without any problems. Does anyone else see a double standard there?

Okay, well on to work now!

A TALE OF TWO CITIES...

2007-02-22T09:44:00.000-06:00

I'm sure you've heard the saying "She's a little bit Country. I'm a little bit Rock and Roll." Well, this is also the case for cities in which I have lived/do live. In this case, I'm changing the saying to "It's a whole lot Country, and the other is a whole lot of Blues and Soul."

I've been thinking about this entry since last Saturday night.

Background information first:

For my wife's family's birthdays, there are three in a six day time frame (15th, 17th, 19th) and a couple others spread across February, we try to get everyone together, almost like a family reunion. This time around we all met up in Nashville, which is a nice, central point for all of us. No one has to drive much further than anyone else, so it works.

I lived in Nashville for one year, after we left Biloxi, and before we moved to Bowling Green. Of course, once I lived in Bowling Green, I traveled to Nashville plenty. Now, obviously, I live in Memphis.

So, this brings us to the point of this post...

Nashville is a whole lot of Country, and Memphis is a whole lot of Blues and Soul.

If given the choice, I'm very, very happy where I am. Personally, I find it amazing the complete different cultures that reside only 200 miles apart, within the same state.

Memphis and Nashville are like night and day. Well, that was a bad pun, and not intended to be racially motivated. Yes, Memphis has a much larger African-American makeup than Nashville, but its not to say that Nashville is just a town of a bunch of Honkeys!

In Memphis, most everything is geared toward the target market, and the same can be said about Nashville. Memphis radio stations are packed with Hip Hop, R&B, Soul, Gospel, and Blues stations, whereas Nashville has more Country (broken in several genres) and not a whole lot else.

I could explain the TV programming too, but I think you get the idea (We get a lot of "The Steve Harvey Show", "Bernie Mac", and "The Parkers" in Memphis. I don't know the programming in Nashville necessarily.). Memphis has relatively few White TV/News personalities, whereas Nashville's are predominantly White.

I guess a part of it is that I've never embraced Country Music. As a matter of fact, I find 99% of it deplorable, especially the newer stuff (although I do find it amusing that the Dixie Chicks can piss off our President enough that they're basically blackballed for a couple of years, then come back with an album about it and clean up at the Grammys, but that's another story). I can handle some of the old stuff, like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and a few others (because there was a lot soul in it. I mean, c'mon, "All My Ex's Live in Texas". That's awesome!). However, I cannot stand whiny, twangy music. It's depressing. It makes me want to consume large quantities of alcohol, possibly beat the living shit out of my wife (which I would never, ever do), while wearing a tank top with beer and pizza stains on it, all after I got out of my Ford or Chevy pickup with a full gun rack in it, and at least fifteen #3 or #8 stickers on the bumper/tailgate.

On the other hand, I can sit around and listen to some Blues and Soul, have a couple of cocktails, and be perfectly happy. I can even handle most of the Hip Hop that is prevalent around Memphis. Neither Blues, Soul, nor Hip Hop have ever made me feel like life was over and there was no hope. I can live with that.

Now, I know I've rambled on about this, but the point is this... I like Memphis, even with all the crap that we have to deal with living here. I can't imagine living in Nashville right now. Maybe as I mature, or find different places to go to in Nashville, I'll change my mind. But, as of right now, there is no way in Hell I can willingly spend an inordinate amount of time in Nashville and be happy. That's just me though!

Oh yeah, and I hate Cowboy Boots and Ten Gallon Hats! Always have! Neither one of them are sexy, nor purposeful in an urban environment, unless your purpose is to piss off someone standing behind you trying to see something.

VALENTINES DAY...

2007-02-14T16:22:00.000-06:00

You had to know that I wouldn't get out of here today without a Valentines Day post. So, in honor of the "Day of Love", I give you this...

Valentines Day is a horrible holiday for men. It really is. If, per chance, we do something right (for once), we're fully expected to trump that the following year. If we don't, we have to hear things like "Wow! Do you remember what you did back in 1985? That was so romantic!" Yeah, I hate to tell you ladies this, but we, men, don't remember what we did 25 minutes ago, so we're sure as hell not going to remember one day, ump-teen years ago. Please don't hold us to that standard. We're lucky enough if we have the ability to recall that there's a day in February where we're supposed to express our undying love for you (if we don't do it every day, that is).

If (yeah right) we do something wrong, like get the wrong gift, or get the same card we bought the year before, or don't realize you're not there just to have sex (which one of these is what usually happens), then we're in the doghouse and get no lovin'. All that effort with nothing to show for it. (This, alone is why I disliked high school, but that's at least 3 other stories.)

All this is, of course, assuming you're lucky enough to have someone to share "love" with.

I've stated it a thousand times, and I'll probably state it a million times more, but, I'm happily in love. If I have to "one up" my Valentines Day gift every year, then so be it! I wouldn't trade it for the world.

However, I would like a break between Valentines Day and my wife's birthday. That's not happening though!!

LIFE IS COMEDY... COMEDY IS LIFE...

2007-02-13T14:17:00.000-06:00

Now, I think that I'm a relatively humorous person. I try to make sure those around me are nearly always amused. However, this morning I had someone else really put a smile on my face.

I don't know if you've seen the movie "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy", but I love it. There's one part of the movie where Ron and one of his buddies, Brian Fantana, are discussing colognes. Brian has a specific scent called "Sex Panther". Anyway, I'm not going to go through the entire scene, but if you want to watch it for yourself, here it is:

Anyway, this morning I was introduced to a fragrance that may rival even the mighty "Sex Panther". Not necessarily in odorous emanations, but definitely in name. Yes, someone here at work has a perfume called "Delicious Pussy".

Really, I can't make that up! The bottle it comes in looks just like a fingernail polish bottle, but it has a very generic label on the front with "Delicious Pussy" spelled out. It's just silly!

So, every time I've walked by this person today, I've had to say "Man, it smells delicious in here!" This is how we amuse ourselves in a cubical world!

Now, onto something not as funny. Well, at least to me anyway!

Last Saturday morning at 10 am, tickets to a March 30th show in Southaven, Mississippi by my favorite band Tool went on sale through all ticketmaster outlets. Since I didn't know of any outlets in Bowling Green, I decided to purchase my tickets online.

Promptly at 10 am I clicked the "find tickets" link and was given the option to purchase 2 tickets in section 106, row M. Now, these seats aren't bad at all. They are the second section away from the stage, so we'll still have a good view of everything. I thought I did great, to tell the truth.

When we got back to Memphis on Sunday night I thought I'd look to see what, if any, seats they had left for the show. I went through the same process as before and this time it said there were only upper deck seats available. I was happy. I knew that I got the best seats available and didn't really think anything of it.

Then, yesterday, I was talking about it with my co-worker, and decided to look again to see what was available. I checked it out and they had section 110, Row A available. These tickets aren't better than mine, as they are directly in front of the stage (which looks like about 75 yards away). However, I got to looking more at ticketmaster's website and noticed they have an "auction" area on there.

This piqued my interest so I went to see what they had available for auction. I figured this was where people who bought tickets that they didn't need were putting them back on the market for sale. Boy was I surprised.

It appears as though ticketmaster holds out specific tickets (yes, makes them unavailable to purchase outright), namely floors seats in the first through fifth rows of the first section (basically stage seats) and the first 5 rows of the lower sections adjacent to the stage (the section closer to the stage than my tickets), and offers these tickets "at auction" for considerably more than the face value of the tickets.

Personally, I thought "scalping" tickets was illegal. The opening bid price on the floor seats, first row are $205, while the face value is $48. Does that make sense?

It just pisses me off that I don't have a fair chance to purchase these tickets, outright, for their true price, but, instead have to pay the "going rate" for them. I think it's a sham and they should be reported to the Better Business Bureau. I'm going to look into it, and I'm also going to try to let the band know that someone is ripping off their fans.

Geez! I just realized that I really sound like a baby. No, I'm not pissed about not getting floor seats or anything. Truthfully, I don't want to be on the floor. I like where our seats are. They are a little further away from the stage than our seats at the John Mayer show, but it's also a smaller venue, so we might be just as close.

However, I am pissed that I don't even have the remote option of getting those tickets, as I'm not going to pay in excess of $200 for concert tickets, when I know the money isn't going to the band.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox!

IT'S THURSDAY NIGHT, DO YOU KNOW WHERE TOMMY LEE JONES IS?

2007-02-09T08:27:00.000-06:00

Yeah, we had a pretty cool night last night. My wife got to enjoy some sushi and we got to hang out and have a few drinks and chat (outside of work) with some friends. Tommy Lee Jones was just the icing on the cake.

We went to Bluefin (downtown) for some sushi. Of course, I had a pizza, but sampled some of Adrianne's sushi. About 20 minutes before we were going to leave, Tommy Lee Jones walks in with two other men. I'm assuming one was a body-guard of some sort, because he kind of cased the joint before they sat down.

Adrianne remembered that she heard he was in the area filming a movie, but couldn't remember if it was in Mississippi or Arkansas. She did know it wasn't Memphis though. I guessed that he was staying at the Peabody, since that was the closest hotel to the sushi restaurant.

Anyway, I didn't ogle TLJ too much, and I didn't bother him while he was eating. I just thought it was neat to see a big movie star dining at the same place I was.

Okay, I'm going to go spend some time reading the junk on the Haven this morning. It's always fun after a loss. Now we have back-to-back losses, so we must be the absolute worst team in the league. I'll have to check with some of the brilliant minds over there to make sure though.

By the way, the weather here sucks! We've been getting freezing rain since early this morning. We've got wrecks everywhere and several bridges closed. However, schools are open. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, right?

EEK! SPIDERS!!!

2007-02-07T11:12:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm coming around full circle and trying to post a little more often on here about things going on both inside and outside of my head. Today I thought I'd discuss this goofy dream I had last night.

I'm not sure how it started, but all of a sudden I'm back in the first house we lived in when we moved to Bowling Green, on Catalina Way. I'm in my room, complete with double beds. I'm my current age, but my room is decorated like I was 9 again.

I'm not doing much around my room when I decide that I need to use the bathroom. I head out into the hallway, but see that the bathroom door is shut. I know my sister is in there, so I don't bother her too much, but say "Hey Sis I gotta go!", just so she knows what's up. (This was a pretty common occurrence when we were growing up. Of course, I also had two older step-sisters, so me getting to use the bathroom was iffy at best, ever. We had a half-bath downstairs that was my bathroom. I'm the only person that ever used it, unless we had house guests.)

Anyway, back to the story... I head back into my room and right off the bat I see a spider crawling across the floor. Immediately I stomp on it, smashing it in to the carpet. Out of the corner of my eye I see a huge spider (like Komodo Dragon compared to an Iguana huge) crawling under the closet door to get away from me.

I yell for my sister to come in and help me kill the spiders and she immediately busts through the door. I say to her "See, I've already killed at least seven of them, but they're everywhere!" They were too. They were every size and color you could imagine. A couple even looked like they were stuffed animals, because they were so goofy colored.

We started smashing them by stomping on them with our shoes, throwing things at them, and my sister even just started to crush them with her bare hands. I remember saying somethign to her like "You shouldn't do that! What if one is poisonous and bites you as you're squashing it?"

Then I woke up. That's the only dream I remember having last night. However, I did get some more ideas for the movie that I'm slowly but surely putting a script together on. I don't remember if I ever mentioned that on here. Anyway, I had a dream a while back about something that I thought would be a funny movie. I've been using a lot of stuff in my dreams lately to put in the movie, thus I haven't been discussing them too much. I'm just hoping my script, if I ever get it written doesn't come across as a strung out bunch of one liners.

Anyway, I'm going to put my thoughts on paper about that now. Have a good one (whatever it is)!

ALSO...

2007-02-06T09:20:00.000-06:00

I forgot a couple of things about the Super Bowl commercials yesterday.

First and foremost, many of them were based solely around violence. Don't get me wrong, I love some blood and guts, but really? That's all they can throw out there? Pretty weak folks! Pretty weak!

Secondly, unless you go to the theaters relatively often you wouldn't realize this, but... About half of the commercials from the game have been showing prior to movies for the last 6 months. The Coke ad (cartoon) where the "bad" guy turns good, well that one I saw back when I saw "The Prestige", and again when I saw "Smokin' Aces". The Honda CR-V (Crave) commercial? Same as the Coke commercial. All in all, there were probably 8 commercials which had already been seen.

So, to sum it up, again, they did a truly shitty job on the commercials for the Super Bowl, all except the Nationwide "Life comes at you fast" commercial with K-Fed. That one was amusing.

Okay, I'm finished ranting about that!

SUPER BOWL WEEKEND...

2007-02-05T14:09:00.000-06:00

I'm sure there are 6 billion blog today talking about the Super Bowl and how great the game and commercials were. Well, I'll get to that, but I'm going to hit on some other highlights and lowlights of my weekend.

First off, as a birthday present for my beautiful wife, I bought two tickets to see John Mayer here in Memphis at the FedEx Forum. She'd been talking about going to see him for a while, and while I was skeptical about paying for it, I still led her to believe we weren't doing it. Originally, we had thought the Western had a home basketball game this weekend, so we were going to do that. When I realized that the game was the next weekend I had to switch gears. She had already made plans to visit everyone and their Mother, so I had to act fast.

I got with my contact at the Forum so that we could get some decent seats. After all, if I was going to pay for the show, I at least want to see it up close and personal. My tickets were sitting, waiting at will-call Tuesday morning. However, Adrianne had already talked with her Mother about spending time together and didn't want to crush her feelings by telling her we weren't doing anything this weekend and weren't coming in. So, with my hand forced, I called her Mom to let her know what was going on. I didn't want my birthday present surprise ruined, so it was worth it.

I picked up the tickets Thursday afternoon and found a birthday card for my love. I had originally planned on putting it in her bag that she takes to school with her, so she'd find it sometime during the day. All the while, leading up to this point, I made her think we didn't have any plans all weekend, even when she kept pushing and pushing.

Anyway, at 4 am on Friday, we found out that Shelby County Schools were canceled, so I had to adjust slightly. I knew she would be grading some papers sometime throughout the day, so I strategically placed the card inside her laptop. As they say, the rest is history!

The show was really good. We had good seats, just at the left-hand corner of the stage, about 4 rows up. Other than one drunk-assed idiot that kept standing up dancing, we had a great, unobstructed view of the entire show. I'll give this much to John Mayer... He sure can wail on a guitar.

We were supposed to meet up with some friends after the show, but we waited outside the club for what felt like half an hour (actually probably 10 minutes or less), but it was freezing cold, so we called it a night. Adrianne was happy with her birthday present, and we were both happy because we got to do something other than sit around watching TV.

Saturday came around and we didn't have much in the way of plans. Adrianne's been needing some new dress pants, so we went on that mission. The mission was, pretty much, a failure, except that she found some pants that she likes, but didn't want to buy them here. She's going to look in Kentucky this weekend, and, hopefully buy them there. I, on the other hand, found a pair of Johnston and Murphy brown shoes for $71. They were regularly $130, bu the store was going out of business and everything was 50% to 70% off. They didn't have much in the way of clothes left and I didn't feel like I was getting a good deal on a shirt that was still $135, after it had been reduced. That's just me though.

Saturday night rolled around and I decided I'd make Adrianne, Mary Jo, and myself some Indian food. I started cooking a little after 6 pm and finished shortly after 7. I missed Western's tipoff, but didn't think too much about it. It's a rarity that we get to sit around and hang out. I did have the internet radio broadcast on, but could barely hear it.

By the time we finished up eating and hanging out it was nearly halftime. I think I heard the last 2 minutes of the first half, and, needless to say, I wasn't happy. I listened through halftime, just to see what Mike and Hal had to say about our performance, anxiously awaiting the second half, and some serious change in our fortunes.

Well, it didn't happen. We came out in the second half as crappy as we were in the first half. Adrianne was sitting on the couch flipping channels when I decided, for the first time I can every remember, "Screw this! I'm not going to let this game ruin my evening. I'd rather watch a movie with my wife than end up being pissed off that we won. If we comeback and win, great. If not, then I'm not missing anything." Anyway, I was getting pissed off at the people in the chat room, so it wasn't doing my blood pressure any good.

We were down 17 when I closed Winamp and shut the lid on my laptop. We went on to watch the movie "16 Blocks" which was pretty good. After that we hit the bed. Yes, it was only about 10:30, but we planned on watching Saturday Night Live. I made it through most of it, but Adrianne was knocked out about 45 minutes into it.

Sunday morning we were both up pretty early, with nothing to do. There was nothing on TV and we couldn't go anywhere yet. It's amazing that, even in the day and age of everything, all the time, most stores still don't open up until at least noon. So, we sat around doing nothing. I read through all of the stupid posts (and a few good ones) on Hilltopper Haven and browsed the internet for anything of interest.

We ended up running out to a TJ Maxx to hunt down some pants for my wife. We found them, but, of course, she didn't like something about them. So, we returned home, still, with nothing to do. I ironed a couple week's worth of work shirts while Adrianne cleaned the kitchen and graded papers. We couldn't wait for the Super Bowl to get here.

We both were rooting for the Colts. Adrianne likes Peyton Manning and all of his goofiness. I like the Colts because I started watching them back when I lived in Owensboro. My old roommate there is a cousin of Ken Dilger, who was a tight end for the Colts at the time. He took me to a few games where I got to meet the whole family, so I just kind of latched on. It didn't hurt that my favorite team, the Raiders, absolutely suck balls!

Anyway, we both had our Colts t-shirts on and were ready to go. We made up a batch of meatballs, and, since we weren't having a crowd over for the game, I decided to just make some spaghetti and serve dinner before the game. We invited Mary Jo to come on down and watch the game with us too.

Obviously the game was enjoyable for us. We liked seeing Peyton get the proverbial "monkey" off his back. I hope, now, that all of the talking heads will just shut up about him, and let him continue toward being one of the greatest QB's of all time. I also had a soft spot in my heart for Tony Dungy. He's always seemed like a class act to me, even when he was with Tampa Bay (where he got ZERO acknowledgment for building the team that Jon Gruden ended up winning the Super Bowl with against my Raiders).

Now, onto the important stuff... I was thoroughly displeased with the commercials. There is always so much hype, but ZERO substance this year. Outside of two or three commercials, they pretty much sucked. I liked the Kevin Federline commercial and a couple of the Bud Light commercials, but really, cares about how much some computer program can boost your sales ability. Did they really need to show that one twice?

If you ask me, the commercials this year were a bust, and totally forgettable. However, Prince was pretty good during the halftime show. It, definitely, was better than seeing the Rolling Stones or Janet Jackson with JT. At first I didn't want to watch the halftime show, but once I realized it was going to rain, I knew I wanted to see it. Truthfully, I just wanted to see how Prince would handle it. He's never seemed like that "macho" of a guy, so I assumed he'd be a little bitch and half-heartedly do the show.

No way! He totally went balls out and played his ass off. I commend him for that. Actually, I even admire him for it. Hell, he could've easily been electrocuted out there, while playing an electric guitar in a driving rain storm. That's insane if you ask me. However, he played like a champ, and gets some major "cool points" from me.

Yeah, this was a long one, but I wanted to let everyone know what was going on!

Lastly, today is my big sister's birthday! Happy Birthday Sis!

WHAT A MORNING!

2007-01-25T10:15:00.000-06:00

Well, before I got out of bed anyway! Man, I had a ton of crazy dreams last night, but one was pretty disturbing.

For some reason my parents are back together, but much younger. I'm my current age and Adrianne is hers, and we're together. However, I'm in high school again. To make matters crazier, I already know everything that happened after high school.

So, I'm piling books into a duffel bag and getting ready to head to school one morning. My Dad is laying on his stomach on the couch, apparently naked under just a small blanket. My Mom is sitting on the couch with him, right around where his torso is.

We're discussing something, but I'm not sure what it is. I know I'm talking about another male child, and I'm guessing that I have a younger brother somehow. Come to find out he was caught with comic books at school and all I can say is "I didn't know he liked comic books, where are they?"

So we continue chatting and I say to my Mom "Well, we already know that I graduated, so I don't understand why I'm going again". Which she replies "Well, don't get so cocky. You're not done just with school just yet."

I go to walk out of the door when all of a sudden there's a loud "BANG", much like a gunshot.

I immediately wake up (in real life). I sat up for a second and I couldn't hear anything. I got out of bed and kind of ran to the other bathroom where Adrianne was getting for work. I ask her "Did you just hear a loud bang, like a gun shot?"

She looks at me perplexed and says "No".

I go back to bed, but begin thinking, instead of sleeping. I start thinking about all of the things I've heard about brain aneurysms and how, supposedly, the last thing the person hears is a "BANG" or "POP".

So, I start thinking "Did I just die? Am I just laying here in bed, waiting for Adrianne to find me, dead? Oh, I hope that hasn't happened."

I'm pretty frazzled by it all. I've been having some premonitions of things that have been happening lately, and I was hoping this wasn't one of them. I even pinch myself to make sure I can still feel pain. It takes a few tries, but I finally pinch hard enough for me to feel it.

I stay awake until Adrianne comes into the room to let me know she's heading to work. I wanted to make sure that if I was dead that I saw her one last time.

She comes in, gives me a kiss on the cheek, and tells me she loves me. My day can finally begin the right way!

I love dunks!

2007-01-24T09:42:00.000-06:00

Here is the video from Tyrone Brazelton's dunk the other night against New Orleans. Enjoy!

"http://www.youtube.com/v/90MxgYz77M8">

WKU at UALR on January 17, 2007

2007-01-18T10:32:00.000-06:00

Here are the pictures and the video that I took of their "halftime entertainment". Actually I think the video was shot during a timeout, but I can't remember. It was funny regardless. Enjoy! Check out the video ---> HERE!

"Dick" in a box

2007-01-12T11:24:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I'm a little behind, but I love this skit:

TRAVELIN' MAN...

2007-01-10T15:38:00.000-06:00

Well, my buddy PT and I started making our plans for a trip in March. We're planning on going to the Sun Belt Conference Tournament in Lafayette, Louisiana from March 3rd through the 6th.

Thus far, I've booked our hotel. We'll be staying at the Best Western Posada Ana, which is supposed to be pretty new and easily accessible. It doesn't hurt that it's only $70 a night, which is highly affordable when you're splitting it two ways. The hotel actually looks night, and I think Best Western has stepped up their building in the last few years. I remember when Best Western hotels/motels were the equivalent of staying at a HoJo, sans the "Jo".

I know for some it's not a big deal, but it sure does come in handy for me, but, the hotel has in-room high-speed internet. That'll work for me, especially since I plan on doing daily blog updates from the tournament. I had planned on, a couple of years ago, writing daily summaries of the NAIA National Tournament I went to, but, unfortunately, my buddy and I ended up staying out all night drinking, and I was far too wasted to put a single coherent thought together.

I'll try to do better this time around though. I'll also try to comment on the local cuisine, which I plan on sampling to the extreme (yikes, I just had the line "To the extreme, I rock a mike like a vandal" from Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby" go through my head). I've already started a list of places I'd like to eat. Here's hoping I don't spend 99% of my trip sitting on the toilet!

Check out the links above for more information on the tournament and the hotel we're staying in. It would be nice to see some of our fellow Topper fans while away from "home", and to have some other folks to go out and have a little fun with. Be sure to let me know if you're making the trip!

THE COLD, HARD TRUTH...

2007-01-08T09:33:00.000-06:00

The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Well, I have a problem and here I am stating it.

I AM A JUNKIE.

Now, before you really get worried about me, let me explain. There are good and bad junkies. Luckily, I don't do drugs (unless you've got some!), so I'm not that kind of junkie. However, I'm a good kind of junkie, unless you ask my wife.

Actually, I'm a junkie about a lot of things. I'm a video game junkie, a TV junkie, a music junkie, a movie junkie, a trivia junkie, a Suduko junkie, and the list goes on and on. However, first and foremost, I am a Sports Junkie. Yes, I capitalized both words, just so you know I mean business.

I am a sports junkie in the worst form. I'll take it any way I can get it. By being a newlywed, I have taken some time away from "the games" so as to not make my wife feel neglected. This, in turn, has forced me to deviant lifestyles. I used to just sit around and watch whatever game I chose. Now, I have to catch sneak peaks whenever I can.

If my wife and I are watching a show and she gets up to go to the bathroom, get a drink, or whatever, I immediately pull up the channel guide and find the closest game I can (which depends on what "season" we're in). Then, I have to make sure to time things perfectly so I don't hear "Did you change the channel to sports again?!"

I've also found myself staying up later than I really need to, just in order to catch the highlights of the day in sports. "Sportscenter" is no longer part of my daily regime. Both "Around the Horn" and "Pardon the Interruption" aren't the first things I see when I get home from work. I have to pick my spots and, usually, when I get home, I want to play a video game or two, since I have more chance of getting to watch bits and pieces of a game than playing video games later on in the evening.

So, here's where we are right now. The only games I get to watch (or listen to on most occasions) are the Hilltopper basketball games. I am given a specific allotment of time to do this every week (since usually Topper basketball games aren't on TV). My wife is no dummy either. If I'm still sitting there after 9:30 pm, with my headphones on, staring intently at my laptop, while banging away on the keyboard, she knows I'm messing around and not spending time with her. That's about the time I hear "I miss you!"

Yes, that is the worst thing in the world to hear for a sports junkie. We (sports junkies in general) want what we want, with no interruption or outside attachments, until we have our fill.

Now, last night, after my wife fell asleep, I stayed up way too late again. First of all, I wasn't tired. I was working on Suduko puzzles, but the light was keeping my wife awake. So, I turned the lights off and started flipping channels. Nope, didn't want to watch the World Series of Poker for the five millionth time (really, can ESPN2 not find something else to show?). I forget what was on ESPN, but it was lame. Fox Sports had their highlight show on, but I had seen what I wanted to of it. So, I wandered back around to ESPN Classic, hoping "Cheap Seats" or something else funny like that would be on. To my surprise I found the Mike Tyson - Trevor Berbick fight from 1986.

Yes, I was 11 at the time this fight took place. At the time I didn't think much of it, but now I have realized that Mike Tyson is the sole reason I started watching boxing, and the only reason I'm a fan. Here's where the junkie in me comes out.

I actually remember watching this fight on HBO back when I was a kid. I went out of my way to watch Mike Tyson fight back then. I don't remember there being a ton of hype to the fights then, like their is now, but this fight was a big one. This fight would make Mike Tyson the youngest Heavyweight champion ever, at just over 20 years old.

On to the fight... This fight didn't last very long. Few Tyson fights did back then. Tyson bumrushed Berbick early in the first round. Most of the time, the fighters meet in the middle of the ring to start pummeling each other. In Tyson's fights he was usually about three quarters of the way across the ring before his opponent knew what hit him.

It didn't take long, but Tyson was nailing Berbick with everything. He didn't knock him down in the first round, but he knocked him absolutely silly once. He knocked him so off balance that Tyson couldn't catch up with him to finish him off and knock him down (Berbick was wobbling and stumbling all over the ring, in case I didn't get that point across).

Now, the funny thing about watching sporting events in retrospect, especially when you know what's going to happen is the way the players, coaches (in this case trainers), announcers, etc. act prior to the end of the event. In this case Berbick, after getting knocked senseless in the first round, actually taunts Tyson by giving him the universal sign for "Come On!" (i.e. underhand waving toward yourself).

The reason it's amusing is because Tyson did "Come On" in the second round. He actually knocks Berbick down pretty quickly, but Berbick got right up. He didn't look hurt, even though the pounding Tyson gave him was pretty bad. After the first knock down it just got ugly.

Tyson methodically stalked Berbick around the ring and waited for the most opportune time to finish him off. Really, Tyson was like a shark back in the day. If he smelled blood, you could forget about him not finishing the job off. Well, the blood was in the water.

Tyson hits Berbick under his ribcage with a right, just to feel him out. Berbick winces a little bit, but seems unharmed. Tyson ducks low, then fires up a nasty right-handed uppercut, missing Berbick entirely. As the punch is missing, Berbick has this crazy look on his face. Its almost as his face is saying "Good lord! That would've killed me!"

Well, Trevor my fried, you weren't so lucky on the next punch. Tyson comes with an over-hand left and hits Berbick square on the right side of his face (encompassing the entire eye, temple, nose, and cheek area). Berbick just collapses to the ground. His legs looked like the road under Lois Lane in the Superman movie, when the earthquake hit. Yes, crumpled is the word.

He tries, vehemently, to recover and stand up, but all that ends up happening is he stumbles around the ring, falling all over the place. The first time he tries to get up, he falls nearly out of the ring into press row. The next time he tries to get up he stumbles all the way across the ring collapsing again to the mat. All of this happens right in front of Tyson who's just standing there, not in amazement or bewilderment, but with no expression on his face. I actually think he wanted to hit Berbick a few more times, if he would've actually gotten up.

Finally, Judge Mills Lane grabs a hold of Berbick and waves the fight over. Berbick is a mumbling, bumbling mess after the fight, while Tyson just stands there as if nothing had happened.

I've now thought back to watching Berbick stumble around the ring after getting clobbered by Tyson and all I can say is this... I've watched many a drunken fiasco, and I've never seen anyone as messed up as Berbick was after Tyson landed that over-hand left. Man, it was ugly!

Now, I'm done being a junkie and I'm going to get to work!

IT'S A MIXED BAG...

2007-01-04T08:29:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm happy and I'm kind of disappointed, all at the same time. Last night the Toppers pulled off a heroic comeback and beat a team that they probably should've beat more handily, but, at the same time, Notre Dame looked like a big ol' pile of wet dog crap in their game against LSU.

I didn't get to see any of Western's game, but I listened to bits and pieces on the radio. We were down 3 with 5 seconds and change left on the clock. They had one of their best free throw shooters on the line and he clanks it. Courtney "Mr. Go To Guy" (for my boy Murph) Lee grabs the board and races down the court to drain a 3 to send it to overtime. The Toppers shut out Troy for most of the overtime and end up winning by 4. At this point in time last night, Notre Dame was still in the game, so I was still happy!

One reason I'm upset is that I can't believe I stayed up past halftime to watch that piece of crap,when, obviously, Notre Dame didn't. It was a good game in the first half. Notre Dame kept it close and came back to tie it after being down 14 very, very early. The defense was absolutely atrocious, and that continued all night long (wow, that puts the Lionel Ritchey song in my head, which makes me feel a little better). To make matters worse, the offense got three possessions in the 3rd quarter and did absolutely nothing with them, therefore forcing the much maligned defense on the field for nearly 10 minutes during the quarter. When that happens, you know it's not going to be pretty.

For the most part, the defense played decently. They stopped the run and force LSU to several field goal attempts. However, their Achilles Heal came back up and bit them thoroughly on the ass once again. Big play after big play sealed their fate. It's as if the defensive philosophy of the game was to stop the run, but try to play prevent defense at the same time. There was little to no pressure on the quarterback (nothing new there) and mini-Daunte Culpepper just sat back and picked apart the zone. I don't have enough fingers, toes, and appendages to count how many times one of their receivers was sitting down in the zone just waiting for JaMarcus Russell to lob the ball to him. It was silly. The worse part is that Russell rarely threw a good ball. Most of the time the ball came out of his wobbly or off target. That didn't matter though, because there was never a Notre Dame defensive back within 10 yards of their receivers to make a play on it.

Just to rub things in, the LSU faithful proved once again why they are some of the least classy fans in the world. It's not bad enough that they pelt visiting team buses with eggs and bags of urine is it? Well, last night, while leading 41-14, these classy bastards decided to break out the "OVER-RATED" chant. Umm... Folks... You're ranked higher than Notre Dame. I just thought I'd let you know that.

Yet another team I'll put on my "dislike list" because of their stupid fans. Maybe one day I'll actually write that list down?

THE HOLIDAY SEASON...

2006-12-27T09:35:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been somewhat lazy when it comes to posting, but I've been somewhat busy at work up until now. This week should be a breeze. There are no bosses here, at all. That could mean that anarchy may reign supreme. It also may mean that I just won't get much done. Either way, I'll take it easy and do things at a leisurely pace.

The only problem is that the boisterous idiot next to me decided to actually come in to work today and is supposed to be here tomorrow too. So, I've got to deal with him. There are a total of 6 people on our floor today, and I'm the lucky one who's sitting next to the most asinine and rude one of the bunch. Lucky me huh?

Oh well! I've got my headphones on and the music cranked up. I'll have to remember to bring in my Ipod this afternoon though, because I can only listen to the 4 albums I have on my phone so many times before I go bonkers.

So, lets get down to the nitty gritty and talk about Christmas!

Overall, my wife and I had a great Christmas. We got to see everyone that we needed to. I didn't get to see one of my friends, but he went home to spend time with his parents, so its not that bad.

We spent Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday in Bowling Green and had our Christmas with my family on Saturday before heading to Owensboro. We got to the "O" right around 6 pm Saturday night and attended a party at Adrianne's former employer. It was great seeing the kids again and it's amazing how quickly they grow. Just six months ago the youngest, Chloe, wouldn't string five words together. Now, she'll talk your ear off if you're not careful.

After the party we headed to Adrianne's Mom's house. We were there until Tuesday and got to see all of the babies. I know this is killing my wife, because the more she sees our nieces and nephew, the more she wants to have a baby.

While we've talked about it and I've made excuses about why we shouldn't, yet, I know that we'll have to start sometime soon, or she'll go crazy. Right now, I'm sticking with the excuse that I'm not ready to share my Xbox. She knows that it's really because we need time to get used to each other and get used to being married and doing things for each other before we complicate all of that.

Personally, I think the worst thing a couple can do is never get to really know each other before throwing something else into the mix, because they'll never know each other and will regret it down the line. I keep worrying that, if we have a kid right now (actually in 9 months or so), then we'll wake up when we're fifty and the kids are out of the house and say "You know, I don't know anything about you" and that we'll have sleepwalked through all of those years and possibly be miserable (like both of our parents were). I'm not big on repeating history, just in case you didn't know that.

Okay, enough about baby-making... I made sure to give almost everyone on my list a phone call on Christmas to wish them well, except one person. You guessed it... My Dad.

After Thanksgiving I decided that I'm finished trying to make it happen. I talked to my Grandma about it (his mother) and just told her what all has gone down, and I'm leaving it at that. He and I actually had some business to discuss, but, rather than calling me to discuss it, he had my stepmother email me the question. So, no, I didn't get a call from him on Christmas. It's his loss and I'm not going to think about it any further. I just wanted to get it out there.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say that this one was an "8". My father docks it 4 points, but getting to see or talk to everyone else that I love and care about brings it back up 2 points and makes it a damn fine Christmas.

Now we just have to start planning our New Year's party that we're hosting. Well, if you can call two or three other couples coming over to hang out a "party". Tonight we shop for booze and "whores dee O-vores!"

TGID-BFF!

2006-12-15T16:16:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I'll go ahead and translate that for you...

THANK GOD (or GOODNESS, whichever you prefer) IT'S DOUCHE-BAG FREE FRIDAY!

Man, it's been a pretty good day! I woke up in a good mood with some shenanigans on my mind! You do know that Friday's are meant for Shenanigans, right? Well, there may be some more in store before this day is over.

My beautiful wife and I are going to a Christmas Party tonight, complete with "Dirty Santa" gifts. I love the whole idea of "Dirty Santa". As I get older I'd prefer to only receive "Dirty Santa" gifts. That way I know I'd be getting something either A) really good or B) really trashy. Either way I'm a winner!

We had our office Christmas party today also. I ended up getting to eat a couple of Corky's pulled pork BBQ sammiches! Yum! Yum! For my Tum Tum!! Adrianne will be hating me later on though, because I went for seconds on the baked beans. Yes, unfortunately, I love to torture her occasionally!

Now, on to the important stuff...

Some folks on Hilltopper Haven (and sometimes my wife too) believe that I don't get anything done at work, no matter how many times I tell them how "efficient" I am. Well, in between some shenanigans, 2 Corky's BBQ sammiches, getting to see Sportscenter in it's entirety (by viewing it in four separate sittings), and singing a few Christmas tunes I was able to get nearly half of my entire work done for the week. Yes, I completed 40% of my total workload for the week today. Take notes people, because this is how it's done!

Well, actually I just cruised through a bunch of things that I had already made notes on last week while I was in Chattanooga, but I still completed them and got them turned in. That's how I get down!

Alright, I'm gonna bounce! It's almost quittin' time and I gotta get my game face on for tonight!

Have a great weekend and GO TOPPERS! BEAT THE VOLS!

ANOTHER DREAM...

2006-12-14T16:28:00.000-06:00

Well, I had a dream last night that I can actually remember part of. It was straight out of the movie "Can't Buy Me Love". Really, I'm not joking. Why this movie would pop into my mind is way beyond my rational thinking.

Anyway, here's what I recall:

I have a blonde-headed friend who's a real dork (I don't know who it is though, as I never see his face). For some reason he wants to be popular so he does something to get this girl to take his money and "hang out" with him.

Well, she doesn't do anything with him. He gives her money and she does whatever she wants. Supposedly they're hanging out at the mall, but, instead of her walking and talking with him, she's with one of her friends and he's trailing some 10 to 15 feet behind her, like a mangy mutt.

It ends up growing old with him, but he can't confront her, at all. So, he tells me all of the awful things she does and how he's paying her to befriend him, yet it's the exact opposite and it makes him look even worse. This is where I step in.

I go to the girl's house. By the way, she looks just like Anna Farris (from Scary Movie and several others). Actually she looks just like she does in this picture.

So, I go "pay her a visit" and basically ridicule the shit out of her, making her cry, twice. I give her several options for how she can cure the situation (of which I can remember none right now), and she agrees that she'll take care of business and make things right.

It ends up that she and my friend become actual boyfriend-girlfriend, but I can't stay asleep long enough to find out what happens in the end.

That happens when they're remodeling buildings next door and start working at 6:30 in the morning. It's always fun to wake up to something that sounds like gun fire, even when it's just guys dropping very heavy pieces of concrete, steel, or wood.

So, there you go! Another visit inside my head. Like I've done on my most recent dream recalls, I don't plan on breaking it down. I'll only say this... I don't like making people cry!

HOME AGAIN!

2006-12-11T15:57:00.000-06:00

Yes, I finally made it back home yesterday. I'm back in the office today trying to catch up on emails, reading Hilltopper Haven, and filling out expense reports.

I logged 875 miles from Friday, December 1st to Sunday, December 10. That's good for $389.38 in my pocket! Not too shabby, huh?

I've decided that I like Chattanooga, just not the drive there. I can't stand going up and down mountains. It's bad enough with me trying to control my vehicle around tight corners at 80 miles per hour, I don't need a tractor-trailer doing the same thing next to me! Those roads over there scare the hell out of me, and I couldn't imagine driving them in the rain, sleet, or snow.

My travels were relatively uneventful though. I got most, if not all, of my Christmas shopping completed (and wrapped too) while I was gone. I still have a couple of ideas, but we'll see if I can make them happen or not.

I had a couple of nice meals while on the road, but with the budget restrictions my job has put us travelers, we had to cut it back a bit. I will make one recommendation... If you happen to travel to Chattanooga, be sure to stop by Sticky Fingers BBQ. It's good stuff. They've got several sauces, which are all tasty! I had the rib sampler, where I could have four different sauces. I didn't get to thoroughly enjoy the habanero sauce because I was full from eating the three other styles. It was spicy though!

I didn't get to go to a couple of places I really enjoyed during my prior trip to Chattanooga though. That one meal, in and of itself, would've eclipsed my daily per diem for food, and I would've had to do some "creative accounting" to get that one paid for. Oh well! Maybe when I take my honey there sometime we can go there (on our own dime. Yikes!).

Really, there's not to much else going on here. I'm getting ready to start up a whole new "project" which will mean that I'll be insanely busy, again. It'll also mean that I might be a bit grumpy! My boss told me this morning that they'd like to have it done by the end of January. I gave him my best "good luck with that" face. We just started a "project", which I have plenty of work to do on, and they want to yank me off of it to start another one. Remember folks, you can only stretch a rubber band so far before it breaks and comes back and slaps you square in the face. Right now, there are a bunch of rubber bands that are pulled pretty damn tight!

On a positive note, since I didn't mean to vier off into something negative... I finally got to see my honey again! It seemed like it had been several weeks since we last saw each other, and I sure did miss her! I guess she missed me a little bit too. I think I made her day by not making her watch any sports yesterday once I got home! We'll see if that trend holds out tonight!

ON THE ROAD AGAIN...

2006-12-01T10:48:00.000-06:00

It's been a while, try about 14 months, since I've been on the road for work. Next week I will be terrorizing the fine folks in Chattanooga and Cleveland, Tennessee.

I've never been to Cleveland, but I really like Chattanooga when I was there last year. Of course, last year, when we made our visit, it was summer time and the weather was beautiful. I don't know if we're going to have the same luck this time around. I'm sure it will be cold, if nothing else.

Anyway, I'm packed and ready to go. I'm actually packed for a couple of separate occasions. I'm heading to Bowling Green this afternoon (depending on what time my boss lets me get out of here. Usually he lets us leave early if we're traveling on our own time.) to spend the weekend and watch the Hilltoppers face rival (if you want to call it that) Eastern Kentucky University.

Then on Sunday I'll be leaving BG to head on down to Chattanooga. I'll be there all week before heading back to Bowling Green the following weekend, so I can catch what should be a great matchup between Western and Southern Illinois University. SIU has had a really good basketball team for several years now, and this year is no different. The following Sunday I'll head back to Memphis to be with my sweetie-pie again.

I like traveling and getting to see a little different scenery occasionally. This week, again the only week I've traveled this year, just happens to be the only week I don't want to travel.

At the bank, we do not have a Christmas part. Hell, outside of a couple of us hanging out outside of work, we don't do anything together, other than work. However, my wife is having her Christmas party this week, as well as a fund raiser-type basketball game in which she's supposed to be a cheerleader. I really don't want to miss these things.

I'm the only husband that's not been out to the school to be shown around to all the other teachers. This week is/was my one chance. It was the chance she had to prove that I actually exist and am not a figment of her imagination. Well, I hate it, but it's not going to happen. Even if I tried my damdest, I couldn't get back to Memphis in time. It sucks!

Not only am I going to be missing my honey, but I'll be missing a couple of events that mean something to her also. I'll see if there is some way I can make it up at some point in time.

Okay, so I'm going to pack my stuff here at work that I will need for the trip. I'm hoping to be out of here by 3 pm today, so I can get to BG by dinner time! Next week means that I probably will not post anything on here, so deal with it!!

Just kidding! Have a great week!

LIFE AT WORK...

2006-11-30T11:34:00.000-06:00

Today I'm going to discuss something that has become more than a bit trite with me. WORK.

Actually, it's not work that actually bothers me. It's all of the things associated with being in an office trying to work that makes me truly dislike it.

I think I'll start with fellow employees. I won't say co-workers, because I actually like all of mine. We have a good group of people that respect each other and don't mind being together, whether in the office or not. I'm talking about other people that work for the bank, in the same vicinity as myself.

I know I've complained incessantly about the pile of shit that sits next to me. Anyone who regularly reads this blog is probably tired of hearing about him. Well, imagine actually having to be next to him and having to deal with it in a professional manner?

Here is the most recent turn of events. He's having some remodeling done on his house. I know this because everyone on the floor knows this. This means he has to take personal calls on his cell phone in order to make sure things are progressing. Well, unlike most people who respect their fellow employees and either turn off their cell phones or put them on vibrate, he keeps his ringer on, full blast. It wouldn't be too bad, if he didn't have the gayest, stupidest ring tone ever. Hell, splurge (meaning spend 99 cents) and get an actual piano concerto on there!

It's not uncommon for his cell phone to ring 10 to 15 times a day. It's also not uncommon for him to actually tell a business associate, with whom he's having a work related (meaning he's actually doing his job) conversation, that he's got to hang up on them, because he has another call.

Hmm... I always thought that when you were at work you were supposed to put your job in front of personal business. I must be wrong? I'll be sure not to test it with my boss though, because I enjoy being gainfully employed!

Okay, I'm done talking about Douche Bagarino. So, onto another topic...

Heating and cooling. For some strange reason the company I work for thinks it is a cost-saving and intelligent thing to do to shut down the A/C and/or Heat over the weekend. The shutdown starts early Friday afternoon. So, what happens, is when the employees show up Monday morning, it is either boiling hot or freezing cold. It usually takes until late Monday afternoon just to get the temperature back to a moderate level.

The company also has some silly way of splitting the heating and cooling into two parts on each floor. In the morning, the east side of the floor gets the heat while the west side receives cooling. It swaps right around 11 am.

It just so happens that I sit right near the equator. I can take 10 steps out of my cube and encounter nearly 20 degrees difference.

Last thing...

I hate revolving doors. I do. I refuse to use them. I think I'd rather jump out of a window from 5 floors up than try to pass through a revolving door. Is there a technical name for that? If not, I think I'll call it "Roundaboutaphobia".

THE LETTER THAT WILL NEVER BE SENT...

2006-11-28T16:34:00.000-06:00

This is from a little while back (actually about 6 months ago, while we were on our Honeymoon in Mexico) and it directly relates to things that I have been thinking about lately. I thought about never posting it on here. I want it to be better. I guess, somehow, I believe that if I get this out there, then it will make some difference.

For what it's worth:

Dad,

I'm not really sure where to start this, but I think "I love you" is a good place. Regardless of everything else I may say in this letter, just remember that.

I do love you, despite everything. Despite your selfishness, your faults, your childishness. I gave up a long time ago trying to understand what you want out of life or how you plan to be there. I gave up a long time ago the thought of you being more than just a "good buddy". I knew that you had the potential to be a great influence on my life, but you never strived to reach that.

There is so much good in you, and you know so much, yet you never seem to want to stick it out through the hard times and fight for anything, unless it benefits you somehow monetarily. It seems, anymore, that the only time you reach out to your children is to belittle us and make us out to be bad people. What really needs to happen is you to look in the mirror before you pick up that phone.

Believe me, we love to hear from you. We like to know that our father is okay and cares about us. However, we don't like to be told that we're selfish and be doing such and such. If you truly believe that, then come up (get off your ass and do something) and tell us personally. In other words... Lead by EXAMPLE! It's what I try to do in my life. It's one of few lessons that Frank taught me that I've tried to hold on to.

I have tried very hard to make sure Grandma is happy. I know I'm the closest to Missouri, thus making me the "point man" with her. However, I can't always be there. Neither can Michelle. We try to though. We make the effort, as feeble as you may think it is. I only have so much time I can be away from my job, and, unfortunately, my career is important.

Yes, I have a career. I plan on being with it for a long time, and, sometimes, I have to sacrifice other things in my life for it.

That being said, if there has been an emergency, you know who has been there and who hasn't. So, don't you ever pull that shit again on either Michelle or I, unless you plan on "walking the walk" and doing the same thing you're saying we should do.

Now, onto what this letter is really about...

I have forgiven you for a lot of things you have done over the years. I've repressed memories just to try to keep some positive ones of you in my head. I've tried so hard never to be vengeful or spiteful toward you, and even to respect you (because you are my father) even when I probably shouldn't have.

With that being said...

I will never forgive you for what you did to me on my wedding day. You were the ONLY person who made me feel anything but joy and happiness that day. You are the ONLY person who made me cry tears of sadness and anger that day.

They say there is a time and a place for everything. I do believe your timing was 100% wrong.

There's nothing that can be done about it now though, since it's already happened.

I've been trying to enjoy my honeymoon, but the only fucking thing that keeps rattling in my head, both awake and asleep, is you making me sad on my wedding day, and I finally had to get it out, before it absolutely ruined this beautiful time for me.

I sincerely hope you read this letter and can understand where I'm coming from. It may make you angry, and probably should, but, more than that, I hope it makes you think about your relationship with your children (even though we're not kids anymore). After all, we're all you really have in this life.

We've always wanted you in our lives, and have tried, painstakingly, to make it happen. However, it feels, to both of us, that it's a one way street, and we're always the one's doing all the work.

I'm not asking anything out of you. I've tried not to, up to this point, and won't from here on out. Michelle won't ask anything of you either.

If you are content with the relationship you have with your children, then we are set. Nothing will ever get any better or, possibly, worse. If you are not happy with "our" relationship, then the ball is in your court. We've both resigned to the fact that you have your own little world, and we won't do anything out of the ordinary to disrupt it.

I've been torn up inside for too long about all of this. I'm tired of fighting a battle I can't win. If you want more, please, at least try, because we've both given up.

Love,

John

GOOD, BAD, INDIFFERENT...

2006-11-27T14:21:00.000-06:00

Well, I feel like updating the world on what's been going on, but I decided I'd break it down into three sections, which pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

THE GOOD

1. Today is the 6 month anniversary of the day my wife and I were wed. I know she won't read this until much later on, so I'll go ahead and tell all what my plans are. I'm going to take her out for sushi, just the two of us. She loves sushi and has been saying that she's going finally get to go there when I'm out of town next week. I also plan on getting her some flowers, but the closest flower shop is a good jaunt away (and I can't get out of the parking garage without the pass card, which she has), but I'm going to try to make it there!

2. The Hilltoppers rebounded after a big loss to Florida on Friday night to beat Ball State by 10 last Saturday night. I think a game that quickly is a big test of a team's psyche. A win tells me a lot about them, especially with all of the youth on the squad.

3. Next week I'm getting to travel for the first time this year for work!

4. I didn't see much of #4 on "THE BAD" list. However this does keep me from having to hear all of the hype around another Ohio State - Michigan matchup.

5. We made it to Owensboro and back in one piece.

THE BAD

1. The Hilltoppers got crushed by the Florida Gators on Friday night. The final difference was 33 points, but it felt a lot worse. I ended up drinking way more Newcastle during that game than I really wanted to.

2. The Irish stunk it up against USC on Saturday night, ending all possibility of a National Championship contest with Ohio State. It also will bring out all of the idiots (national pundits) saying that Notre Dame is way overrated, they didn't play anyone, and that they don't deserve a BCS bowl. It's frustrating, really it is.

3. I get to travel for the first time this year for work. I mentioned this already, right? Well, the week I'm traveling just happens to be the same week my wife has things at school that I can actually attend. They're having a charity basketball game (faculty and staff, she's not playing, but is going to be a cheerleader) and they're also having their Christmas party next week. Oh, did I mention that I'm traveling to Cleveland? Tennessee?

4. Traffic was abysmal this weekend. Really, it was horrible! I understand having bottlenecks in major metropolitan areas, but in the middle of nowhere on the interstate? Some people really need to learn how to get out of the fastlane and let quicker moving vehicles go past them. I'm not going to really get into it, but I've never understood why people want to slow down when they pull up next to a semi (tractor-trailer). I always try to move past them as fast as possible, so there's less possibility of something happening.

5. The douchebag next to me (not my co-worker buddy, but the "other" guy) is making up for his not being in the office shouting at his speakerphone last week today. Headaches are pretty much common around here now. The only days I get a break from them are when he's not here. Coincidence? I highly doubt it!

6. On Friday, I will start a nine day period where I will not see my "Boo Boo" (aka my wife). It will be the longest period we'll have been apart since we got married. I'm sure she needs the break anyway, so it may not be all that bad! (for her)

7. I lost my debit card yesterday. I went to eat today and couldn't find it. So, anxiety ensued, but now it's okay. The card has been located... In Bowling Green Kentucky. Good Times!

INDIFFERENT

1. I'm at work, with not a whole lot to do. So, I'm wasting time blogging and catching up with message board chatter.

2. I've got to drive quite a bit over the next two weeks. I'll probably double the mileage I've put on my car this year with my trips. Gotta love not having to drive, right?

3. Just knocked down from "THE BAD" list... I didn't hear from my Dad over the weekend. I called on Thanksgiving and got his voicemail. His birthday was the Friday afterwards, so I wished him an early birthday too. I asked him to call me back, but still haven't heard anything. My feelings were pretty hurt, up to about 20 minutes ago. I got off the phone with my sister only to find out that he didn't try to call her either. He called our Grandmother though, so at least we know his phone works. I guess that lets us know where we stand. I'm not going to fret over him any more. I'm done with it. I'll just concentrate on the people in my life that actually show me that they love me. There are plenty of them, and I'm really happy I have them!

4. Did I mention I'm at work? Well, it's a beautiful day. I think the temperature is right around 70 degrees and the sun is out. Not exactly a day made to keep oneself inside. However, this is why it's on the "Indifferent" list, it's supposed to get silly-ass cold this weekend. So, I'm not getting all giddy about the great weather, because it'll change to being shitty soon enough.

Okay, that's it for today. I may come back tomorrow and post something I should've a long time ago. It directly relates to item #3 on the "Indifferent" list.

So, have a great day! If the weather is nice where ever you are, try to enjoy it!

IT'S CALLED "DRIVE AND DETERMINATION"

2006-11-22T12:25:00.000-06:00

Personally I call it stupidity. That's exactly why I'm sitting here at work at 12:20 on the day before Thanksgiving. I should already be on the road to Owensboro, so we could get there before it gets dark, but no.

For some crazy reason my boss believes that we should stay until 2 pm at the latest. So, we're all just kind of sitting around, playing solitaire or browsing the internet. Really, there's nothing for us to do. We know we're not staying here all day, so we're not going to start something new, but, instead of saying "Hey guys, go ahead and take off", we're here, and I'm getting more and more pissed by the minute.

To make matters worse, my boss actually left to go to lunch and said "I'm going home" to one of my co-workers. Sure, he says that all the time, and is joking about it, but today just isn't the day to do it.

So, I'll sit here and wait. Hopefully he'll come back from lunch and tell us we can leave. I doubt it, but I'm still hoping. After all, this is the same person that let everyone leave at 4:15 one day, but forgot to come down and tell me and a coworker, so we were sitting here at 5 pm, when everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, else was gone.

Now, instead of getting home around 5 pm, it'll probably be after 7 pm, and that will also be putting me in Nashville right around 5 pm, which is something I am so looking forward to.

Sad thing is, I actually like my Boss. Usually anyway.

THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG...

2006-11-13T11:59:00.000-06:00

Of all of the bonehead things I say and do, you knew that it wouldn't take too long in this marriage for me to be relegated to the couch.

Well, it happened last night.

There was no screaming, yelling, gnashing of teeth, or even arguing between us. It was a simple matter of smell preferences.

I know, I know! You're thinking that I'm stinky (which is true, sometimes) and my wife kicked me out of bed. That's not how it went down though.

I'll start a few months ago... (imagine a blurry swirling pattern representing the beginning of a flashback)

My wife ordered some Skin So Soft body spray from our favorite Avon supplier. I don't think she thought it would smell exactly like the mosquito repellent, but a softer, smoother scent. Well, she was wrong!

Not only did it smell exactly like the stuff they use to ward off those little vampires, but it was actually ten times stronger. The first time she sprayed it on I told her "Hell no!! That smells horrible!"

So, it sat on the shelf for a while. Then, out of nowhere, she decides to pamper herself with it again last night. It took some time for me to notice it. I would catch a sniff of it in passing, but nothing I couldn't handle. It wasn't until it was bedtime that I got the full effect of SSS.

We laid in bed watching some TV before falling asleep. The door was closed and the ceiling fan was turned off. There was no place for the "aroma" to escape! Adrianne quickly drifted off to sleep, while I watched a really, really old episode of CSI.

My coughing started off small, but before long I was in full-fledged hacking mode, with the back of my throat on fire. Not long after that my nasal passage began to swell and wheezing ensued. The last straw was the burning in my eyes. They hurt bad enough that I didn't want to close them, yet I was so tired I couldn't keep them open.

So, there I am, butt naked under my 29 year old Superman blanket, with only a sheet between my body and the couch (just in case anyone reads this that might come over and hang out, the couch is safe! I promise), resting somewhat peacefully with my earplugs in. Well, until about 4 am. Sometimes I just hate my bladder!

There you have it! The misses did not kick me out of bed, per se. Instead, I traded a night full of snuggling with my lovely wife for one of uncomfortableness (yes, I know that's not a word) on the couch, just because of my stupid dislike for Skin So Soft!

(Footnote: In my wife's defense, she did not think that the smell would stay around as long as it did. She thought she'd spray it on -- right around 9 pm -- and it would be gone by the time I joined her in bed, around 11 pm. The smell did not bother her and had no affect of her allergies, sinuses, etc. Therefore, how would she know how it would mess me up?)

(Footnote #2: It did suck sleeping on the couch. For all of the time, prior to our wedding, we were apart, the only thing I really wanted was to be able to sleep through the night with her. I've enjoyed every night since May 27th that we've slept together. I like waking up and her being there. So, for it not to happen last night was really depressing! I just thought I'd add that in there. I know I'm usually very light-hearted and humorous, but I hurt sometimes too!)

WHAT'S CRACKIN'?

2006-11-06T16:03:00.000-06:00

Well, what do I want to talk about today? I've thought of a few things, and I'll do my best not to be sooooo long-winded, like I have been in the past.

The Race for the Senate
Basketball season officially starting
Why I hate Fantasy Football, but can't quit playing

I'll try to go in order here...

#1: I'm ashamed of living in Tennessee right now. Our race for the Senate seat, between Harold Ford and Bob Corker, is ridiculous. Frankly I'm sick of it. My wife asked me last night if I was going to go vote and I told her emphatically "NO". She asked me why and I replied "because neither one of those assholes deserves to be there representing us". That still holds true. The entire system needs an overhaul. This race, since day one, has not been about what each candidate can do for us, their statesmen/women. The race has been about what each person has done wrong and why they are a horrible person.

I, for a fact, know that no one is perfect. We've all made mistakes. We try our best to move past those and achieve a better life. Right now, however, I don't feel like either one of these guys are working toward that. I have this crazy feeling that after it's all said and done tomorrow night that these two will still be slinging shit at each other, and it'll last for at least four years. I hate politicians!

#2: Something near and dear to my heart!! I love WKU basketball! I yearn for it from the moment the season ends (usually abruptly in the NIT or NCAA tournament). I'm such a sadist that I've gone back and watched several games from last season, just to get me through to this point. I even tried to quench my thirst by watching the NBA. Don't get me wrong, I like the Grizzlies. They're the first Professional franchise that I feel some "real" attachment to, but... They aren't my Hilltoppers!

#3: I hate fantasy football because I end up rooting for teams (specifically individuals) that I wouldn't have pissed on if they were on fire years ago! For example... I found myself watching the Denver/Pittsburgh game yesterday afternoon and I was cheering for Denver. Denver is a mortal enemy of the Oakland Raiders (my favorite NFL team). It is a sin to root for them! However, I only had a slim lead and my competition still had two wide receivers playing on Monday, so I needed all the points. By the way, my guy (Javon Walker) came through with a monster day (netting 38 points) for me, and giving me a 111-64 lead with his two WR's going against each other tonight. I'm now rooting against Jerry Porter of Oakland.

Do you see why this is seriously fucked up?

Anyway, I'm angry over the BCS standings. I need to decide to just root for Notre Dame and not pay attention to the other stuff. The Irish have been winning and hopefully can win out the rest of the season. It should be exciting, with USC on the slate to bring the regular season to a close.

Okay, that's it! I said I'd try to make my updates a little more regularly. I can't promise every day, like in the past, but I'll do my best.

ODDITIES AND ABNORMALITIES...

2006-11-01T16:37:00.000-06:00

Okay, so it's been a little while since I last posted. I know that. However, I'm going to try to keep this short and too the point (which never happens).

We had something very strange happen today. It was actually snowing when I went to lunch today. Yes, at 12:35 pm, in Memphis, on November 1st, 2006, we had snow flurries. It wasn't really coming down hard or anything. I know! Some people would say, "John, you're an idiot! That was just rain. It was drizzling!"

Well folks, I know the difference between rain and snow, and this, my friends, was snow. It didn't last long and it never showed up on the ground, but it was hitting me in the face on my walk home. My co-worker will back me up on this.

Another thing of note...

I started writing again today. It's not anything that I plan on posting, because I'm hoping I can put it all together and have something really special. It all relates to a dream I had this morning. I woke out of it, but couldn't find my pen and paper. So, I made a voice record on my phone, but didn't need it. I remembered everything about the dream when I actually got up, and had some more stuff to add to it by the time I got to work. I need to do some research on quite a bit of stuff to really bring it all together, but I'm hoping for something great. Wish me luck!

Okay, I'm out! Hopefully not for as long as last time!

COMPLETION...

2006-10-10T09:40:00.000-05:00

There's always this feeling of relief when you complete something that has been consuming your life for far too long. My work has been the deterrent to my personal life over the last two months. My blog has seen very little action as a result. My readership has dwindled, which I don't blame the people that usually read for that. However, Friday was a very, very odd day.

I made a post that day about the fires, because that was what was consuming my thoughts. However, I finished up my project on Friday also. I was able to get the report finished faster than anyone else prior to me, but without giving up the quality. I did something much more important than that though. I made my bosses very, very happy. That, in and of itself, is a major accomplishment. Everybody is happy when the bosses are happy.

This occurrence has opened up some opportunities for me too. Since I made my bosses happy, they've kind of given me free reign. They let me leave at 2 last Friday and are letting me take a half day off this Friday. Actually, my boss told me "You can do whatever you want to do!" That's a bad idea, Boss, but I like your thinking!

So, I'm just kind of hanging out at work today. I'll probably do that most of this week. I've got one small project to take care of (it's for one of my co-workers) and it'll probably only take me a couple of hours to do. Other than that, I'm in good shape.

Oh, and one last thing...

Have I ever mentioned that I love long weekends? No? Well, now you know.

Maybe I'll come back in a little while and discuss my weekend. I'm a little upset at a certain head football coach right now, and, no, it's not Charlie Weis. We'll get to that later!

WHAT A DAY, ALREADY...

2006-10-06T09:28:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been up, pretty much, since 4:30 this morning. I was originally woken up by Adrianne coughing, but it was the smell that made me jump out of bed. There are some smells in the world that are unmistakeable. My Mom's lasagna is one of them. Clean sheets straight out of the dryer is another one. However, this wasn't either of those wonderful, unmistakeable smells. This was the smell of something burning. Something big was burning, but I didn't know where.

I, literally, jumped out of bed and started scouring our apartment for anything that might be on fire. The daze of sleep escaped me the moment I smelled the smoke. I was no longer worried about crawling back in bed to catch some more shut-eye before I had to be to work this morning. I was worried about the safetly of my wife, first and foremost, and my safety was an afterthought. I ran around ever corner of our apartment looking for flames or smoke, but found none.

We keep our blinds closed in our apartment, because is keeps the heat out during the day. We keep them closed at night for privacy. After I realized that the smell was not coming from inside our apartment, I decided to look outside. The first, and only, place I looked was at the Goodwyn Building, which is very close to us. I figured the potential for it to be on fire was higher, due to it being in the middle of renovation. The building was fine, so I didn't bother looking anywhere else.

I creeped back toward bed, with the smell still lingering in the air. I just figured it was somewhere else around downtown, but not close enough to make a big deal about. Then my phone rang at 5:40. Mary Jo simply asked me "Are you all watching the Lincoln Tower burn?"

Of course, I jump out of bed again. "What? Are you kidding me?"

"Go look out your window. You should have a good view of it from your place. I'm up on the 14th floor watching it. It's something else."

Adrianne both get out of bed and head to the living room. I pull the blinds completely up and, there, right in my face, is a towering inferno. I'd never before in my life seen a building on fire, live. I've seen it on TV before, just like everyone else, but I've never been so close to something so powerful. It was surreal.

We stood there in awe for who knows how long. Finally, I turned the TV on, just to see what was going on. Apparently a fire started in the basement of The First Methodist Church downtown, at 2nd and Poplar. That building was one of the oldest in downtown. I say was, because it's pretty much gone now. There are still some bricks standing, but it's lost. I think they said it was built in 1893.

However, the church building was a good four blocks away from what I was seeing in front of me. My first thought, prior to hearing the news story, was about a serial arsonist or something. Unfortunately, my brain can sometimes work way too fast and strong. What had happened was some of the embers from the fire at the church got up in the air, and the wind brought them down our way.

When all was said and done, downtown Memphis has lost one of it's oldest churches, two other buildings that are listed on the national historic registry, and one building that we're not sure about yet (Lincoln Tower, it's still burning right now). Three of these building, including the Tower, were in the process of being renovated. From what I hear, they were going to be condos, apartments, various shops, and a grocery store. Here's hoping things will find a way of getting back to normal.

One last comment on this event... From all news reports, all of the buildings were empty, and no people were injured or killed during the events, include the firefighters who did a wonderful job getting everything under control.

Man, it's been a long day for me, already. I can't imagine what those guys feel like, since they've been out there doing it since 2 am, when the church fire supposedly started. I know I don't give thanks much, but I want to give a sincere "THANK YOU" to our Memphis Fire Department. You may have very well saved thousands of lives today by getting the blazes under control. Again, THANK YOU!

CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES, C'MON...

2006-09-28T09:23:00.000-05:00

Well, my wife and I celebrated four months of marital bliss last night. I know a lot of people don't pay attention to anything but annual anniversaries, but we're goofy like that. Also, it gave us a reason to leave work on time so we could spend a little more time together.

In honor of our anniversary we did the usual things: haircut, pick up a couple things at Wal-mart, look for Adrianne a shirt at Marshalls, etc. Obviously I'm joking about that, but it did lead us to something much better. While we were waiting for me to get a haircut we heard a commercial on the radio that reminded us of a friend we hadn't talked to in a while. So, before I hopped in the chair, I called him up, only to get his voicemail.

He called me back while I was being sheared, so Adrianne took the call. We quickly changed our plans from eating at Red Lobster to Bluefin downtown. This is a big difference, but a good one. Bluefin is a sushi bar just down the street from us that Adrianne never gets to go to, mostly because I'm not a big fan of sushi. However, she'll go anytime someone else wants to, and I just get dragged along. This time, however, I didn't mind going. I don't get too much time with my friend, or my wife for that matter, so it was good company. I had also heard that Bluefin's pizzas were pretty good.

We met up with John just after 7 pm at Bluefin. It was a nice evening, so we decided to enjoy the great outdoors for our meal. I wanted a tasty libation, so I ordered a Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Adrianne had a glass of Reisling, and John had his usual Miller Lite. Well they didn't have my beer, so I had to order something different. I ended up getting a Xingu, which is a Brazilian beer, which is black, but isn't a stout. It's pretty tasty regardless.

Adrianne and John discussed the various types of sushi they wanted while I went over the checklist of options for my pizza. I decided on the tomato sauce, with mozzarella & parmesan cheese, spicy Italian sausage, pepperoni, capicola ham, and mushrooms. They chose the Hurricane, Tornado, Spicy Crawfish, Crunchy Crab, Eel, and two other kinds of sushi. I tried all of them except the eel. The Crawfish and crab were both good, and I could probably eat them again. I've found out that it's the cream cheese in a lot of them that I just don't like. As long as there is no cream cheese, then I'll probably like sushi. I think I was ruined a long time ago by trying some really, really bad sushi at a place that was not known for sushi. At that time, however, the options for sushi where I lived were less than stellar.

So, we sat around, ate, drank, and were married/merry (okay, I stole the eat, drink, and be married from a wedding we went to over the weekend. I really liked that phrase and have wanted to sneak it in some conversation since I saw it). It was fun catching up with John. He's about 1,000 times busier than myself, and works more hours than he should. Adrianne is working on hooking him up though, so we'll see how that goes.

The food was really good, of course, but it had some lastly after effects. I had the craziest night of dreams that I've had in a long time. I slept really well too, so that helped it out. I know I had at least five dreams, but I was having mini-dreams in between me hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock this morning, so I probably had close to ten or more dreams. Unfortunately, I only remember two of them. I'll try to keep them short and sweet (but don't count on it):

Dream #1: I'm somehow in the middle of the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's not the old one, nor the remake, nor the new one coming out. It's my own special version of the movie. It ends up that it's Adrianne, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and myself starring in the movie. Leatherface is actually a teenage boy who is a little off his rocker, to say the least. There was a lot of things that happened prior to the starting of the chainsaw killings. I ended up trying to fight off Leatherface with a golf club (a putter to be exact). I'm not sure how it worked out for us, but I know I said "Run... Bitches... Run..." at least five times in the movie. I can't remember how the movie ended.

Dream #2: Adrianne, John, and myself are back at Bluefin. We're sitting outside in the exact spot where we sat last night for dinner. The patio is full of fellow patrons. We're doing exactly what we were doing while eating dinner. All of sudden this guy comes walking down Main street. He's got a baseball cap on and has his t-shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth. He's shouting about polish sausages and something, but I can't make it out. Our server walks over to him and says something (trying to keep him from bothering us) and the guy just says "Fuck you!"

The shouting guy doesn't say a word as he walks by all of the people at Bluefin. However, once he rounds the corner, four more guys dressed the same way come around another corner toward all of us. They have guns and stick us up. John says something sarcastic toward the guy looking over our table. I tell him to "chill out" and that we should just give him our money.

Personally, I didn't think I had any cash on me. I didn't that night, so why would it be any different in my dream. However, as I reached into my pocket, I had several twenties and a few fives. I tried to only give the guy some of it, but he saw my wallet (which had some bills sticking out of it) and snatched it out of my hand. Once he opened it up he saw that I had pictures of our ringbearer and flower girls in there. He asked me "Are these your kids?" I looked at Adrianne and then looked up at him and said "Yeah, that's two of them. We don't get to go out very often, and don't make much money, so this is a big treat for us to be out tonight."

The guy feels sorry for us and says "Well, I can't take food out of these kids mouths, and I can't steal your money, so here you go." He gives me back my wallet and a bunch of twenties he had taken from everyone. I actually think it was more than he had taken from me.

Next thing you know, they all run off back around the corner they came from. I look at John and Adrianne and say "I wonder how long it'll take the cops to get here?" No sooner had I gotten the words out of my mouth, at least four police cars came flying by us. They stopped right at the corner where the robbers ran off, which was still in plain sight of us. A UPS type truck backed out onto Main Street, crashing into one of the police cars. They peeled out as they took off, but didn't get to far when one of the police cars t-boned them, stopping them in their tracks. All of the people at the restaurant stood up and clapped. It was insane.

There's actually more to this dream, but I've gotta get to work. That's all the best parts of it though!

This just goes to show you... Lying can get you through life!!

By the way, I posted a new "Rule" today, finally. You can check it out HERE. Have a great day!

IN THIS WORLD FULL OF PEOPLE...

2006-09-26T15:56:00.000-05:00

I get stuck working with some of the biggest idiots out there. Actually, it's not that they're idiots, they just can't follow simple directions. Unfortunately, this does not have anything to do with the people that work here in Memphis with me. We have people across the state that do my job also. We all work together and intermingle work.

For the project I've been working on, I had all of our people working together. This means that I had to coordinate each and every person and make sure they have plenty of work and completed their work on time. Neither of these things ended up being problems, as all of the work was turned in on time (which was a monumental feat in and of itself). However, the work that was turned in was less than stellar.

These guys all know what they are doing, since they've been doing it longer than I have (and longer than I've been alive in a few cases). However, when I make assignments to everyone, I set them up automated information, that is filled in with the pertinent information, that should not be changed under any circumstances. If that information is changed, then all of my reports that I have to do after the fact will not match back to my original information.

Well, I thought we "nipped this muthafucka in the bud" early on, after I noticed one of the guys putting different dollar figures on his final product than what came with the automated information. I talked to my boss and we specifically addressed it. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast my dear... Now, after everything has been turned in, I've started trying to build my reports from the information. Doing this means I have to take the information our assistant has gathered during the process. In the perfect scenario, everything would match back to the original stuff. Well, I've spent a day and a half double-checking the information, and I haven't been able to finish the first page (of SIX). Once I get everything corrected it shouldn't take much time to push out the rest of the reports. However, I can't even start on the reports until everything is corrected. It's just a vicious circle.

Anyway, I feel like I've wasted two working days, since I've gotten absolutely no where. I'm going to start from scratch tomorrow with our assistant and, hopefully, we can make some headway tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll work on formatting issues, which are few, and think about how this should be tackled.

I'm heading out shortly and I'm thinking about taking out my frustrations on NCAA College Football 2007 (season #3 of my Dynasty -- yes, back to back National Champions for The Fighting Irish) and a bottle of Crown Royal. Wish me luck!! I hope I win!

PS -- I'm hoping to get back to posting regularly here soon. I've actually been working my ass off (if you saw me you'd notice that I have no ass) lately, and I haven't been able to squeeze it in my working day. Once I'm done with this piece of shit (AKA "project") I'll have some free time to do the things I want to do. In the meantime, I'm still here in Memphis while all of my coworkers head to either San Diego, Seattle, or San Francisco for work. Yeah for me!

JUST HEART BROKEN...

2006-09-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

Okay, I updated the "Rules" today, for the first time in a long time. You can check it out here ---> The Rules of Thumb.

Now, I've been hurt by my favorite sports teams before. You can see the Toppers during the Sun Belt Conference tournament last year and the following game against South Carolina and you can see Notre Dame against Boston College back in 1993 (after beating Florida State). However, this weekend was just horrible. I wouldn't mind too much if Notre Dame had lost to Michigan State this upcoming weekend. At least that game was up there and they've been a thorn in our side before, but... Michigan? Fucking Michigan?

The only thing Lloyd Carr had to do was not lose the game. It was that bad. The Irish gave Michigan every opportunity to destroy us, and they took advantage of every single one. There was not one screw up by us that Michigan didn't capitalize on. For that I give them the utmost credit. They did what they were supposed to do. Kudos. However, if I don't see a fire lit under their asses this weekend (which I probably won't get to see the game), then I'm going to be really, really angry. Fortunately, for Michigan fans, Lloyd Carr has his ass off the hot seat now, and they deserve to have him for another year! Have fun with that!

That's about it for this weekend. Except... My fantasy football teams sucks!!

ONE MORE WEEK...

2006-09-15T10:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm closing on D-Day for my project. We're supposed to have everything turned in by next Friday. Currently, however, we have only turned in 71% of the work we have. A big chunk is finished and will be here Monday morning. I don't think it'll make up 20%, but it'll get us pretty close to the 85% mark or so. That's really important, because it will make the bosses happy. I figure that we'll probably have 90 to 95% of the work turned in by next Friday. That only leaves a few stragglers out there, and my boss has already told me that's okay.

I've actually slept really well the last couple of nights. My wife, on the other hand, has not. It seems that she's fallen victim to "The Car Alarm". It's almost like clockwork now. It goes off at 5:05 every single morning. It's also started going off just after 10 pm too. I haven't talked to our building manager about it since I gave her the information, but I need to. It's really getting tiresome and the guy doesn't know it, but he may find his car without the entire front half one day soon if he doesn't fix that piece of shit.

Oh, I almost forgot... I've slept well because I've started wearing my earplugs to bed at night. I used to not be able to sleep through the night with them in, but it hasn't bothered me lately. I just have to be sure that my wife comes in and makes sure I take them out before she leaves for work. Otherwise, I'd probably never hear my alarm and I wouldn't make it to work by my usually late 8:15 or so. By the way, I was early today! It was only 8:05!

My in-laws are here with us this weekend. I've decided that I don't like the term "in-laws". It just has a negative connotation to me. Any time that I have ever heard the term it's usually said like this "My fuckin' in-laws are visiting". Mine aren't like that. I like Adrianne's Mom and Stepdad. They're good people!

Larry and I are actually going to hang out on Saturday and watch football while the girls go do girly things (and probably cost me an arm and a leg shopping). I'm planning on watching the big Notre Dame-Michigan tilt on Saturday. It's been a while since I've been this excited about a college football season. I'm hopeful that the Irish can be in the mix for the national title. If they can pull it off this weekend, then the road gets a little easier. They still have Michigan State next weekend, but after that, until the final week against USC, it should be smooth sailing.

I posted a "Rule" a couple of weeks ago that stated "Truth is stranger than fiction" or something along those lines. Yesterday I got an email from a buddy of mine that really brought that point home. It was just pictures, but man, it's just crazy. Here they are:

Okay, this one scares the shit out of me. The only reason it really does is not because horses just randomly jump through car windshields, but we've got a bunch of horses roaming around downtown Memphis. Everyone who drives should fear for their lives. Luckily I don't drive very often.

Really, I'm shocked and awed by this. I mean, really, who hasn't had a boulder drop through their ceiling before? However, to crush a perfectly good recliner is beyond the call of good taste!

These two pictures prove one thing, and one thing only... There are a lot of people with money that are far too stupid to have that money. What's next? An idiot as our President? (okay that was a low blow, even for me)

This is frightening, yet funny. First of all, I never load my bombs on forklifts. I always just use a handtruck (commonly called a dolley). Secondly, I love how there is not a person within shouting distance. It just makes me laugh.

There were actually more pictures (most of them involved military things) and if you'd like to see them, just let me know.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE...

2006-09-12T11:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I took some time off from blogging. I didn't do it because I had writer's block or any of that shit. I've just been too busy at work. Some people would probably say "Well, you shouldn't be doing it at work anyway. Why don't you blog at home?"

Well, to those people I have the following answers:

I usually blog first thing in the morning when nothing is going on.
I usually blog when my brain isn't geared toward "doing work".
I try to have a little time every day with my wife, whom I only see at night, after work.
I'm lazy.

Yeah, that should cover it. Anyway, what's been going on with me you ask?

Oh, just a little of this and that. We went back "home" over Labor Day weekend. I spent most of Saturday with my buddies in Bowling Green watching football. I arrived in Owensboro just in time to catch the very end of a wedding shower. Then I watched some more football. Yes, I know I'm an asshole for not hanging out with everyone. However, I really wanted to watch Notre Dame play. My heart needed the stress! Anyway, I got to see everyone else all day on Sunday, so it worked out.

I'm continuing to be engulfed in my "project" at work. The work is starting to really come in and, hopefully, by the end of this week we'll be close to 80% finished. I say "hopefully" because we're supposed to be finished by next Friday with all of the leg work. Then I get to start the report writing part of the deal. That is actually the most fun. I get to use my stunning verbosity in the real world. It also gives me a chance to "show off" for my bosses and let them know why they are paying me (not to mention give them more reasons to give me larger than average raises every year).

Last weekend I invited a few friends over to watch some football (yes, it's that season). We watched the Mississippi State versus Auburn game, which wasn't much to watch. Then, the main event! Notre Dame versus Penn State. It was less of a game than I thought. I really did think that Penn State would put up a fight, but they were out of the game well before halftime, and that's kind of sad. I felt sorry for Joe Paterno. I didn't want him to beat the Irish, but I didn't want him to get humiliated either, and that's what happened. This week, however, I hope we put a severe ass-beatin' on Michigan. I just don't like Michigan!

One funny story from the ND/Penn State game and I'll close up shop for the day...

The three of us are sitting there, late in the 3rd quarter (or early 4th), when the camera is panning the sidelines. All of a sudden it browses by something and I stand up and shout "Holy Shit! Chewbacca!!" My friends both look at me and say "What?" Then they show it again, and it's Penn State's mascot. Needless to say, I had been drinking. It was funny at the time.

I don't have a new "Rule" today, but you can read some of the old ones, just to catch up. I'm going to try to write a little more often, but it may not be daily, until this "project" is all finished up. Then I'll have time to waste every morning, like I used to.

FOOTBALL SEASON STARTS...

2006-08-31T09:23:00.000-05:00

Well, the college version anyway. I'm planning on going out to a bar with a few Mississippi State grads tonight to watch their Bulldogs take on South Carolina. Being that it's both teams first game of the year, I feel like it'll be close, with a bunch of mistakes on both sides of the ball. Either way I'm excited that college football is starting up. Saturday is going to be great. I get to watch both of my favorite teams on TV. Western is playing Georgia during the day and the Irish are playing Georgia Tech that night. It doesn't get much better than that. Well, for Adrianne it does. She may miss the calm, normal me?

We were not woken up at 5 am this morning. The guy had to park on a different floor and he wasn't right under our window. I checked it out before we went to bed last night, just so we'd know. I turned in his information to our office manager last night. She she said she'll call one of her police buddies so she can find out who's car it is. Then she'll talk with him, if he lives in our building. I hope it makes something happen. Adrianne was a little more upset yesterday morning than I thought about it. She was feeling like I did a couple of weeks ago, when it woke me up, but didn't wake her. We both know what it's like now.

It seems that both Adrianne and one of her fellow teachers had a kind of bad day yesterday. So, to make things all better we went to Rio Loco and had Margaritas. Well, I had two jumbos. Yes, I was tanked, but not "knock-down drunk". Her co-worker and I had to have a dance off on Main Street, because she challenged me. Adrianne got some of the video on her phone, but didn't get the best parts.

Well, that was our exciting night. I've got some work to get to. Actually, again, I'm working on someone else's work. It'll probably take me most of the day.

I updated the "rules" today. See the new on here. Adios!

CONSECUTIVITY...

2006-08-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

Adrianne and I, both, now have a problem. I'm trying to figure out how to solve it, and I'm going try something today to fix the problem, but who knows. I know what you're thinking... No, we're not having marital problems already.

Instead... The FUCKING CAR ALARM HAS WOKEN BOTH OF US UP AT 5:05 AM THE LAST TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS! We're both pretty pissed about it too. Adrianne actually drove by it this morning and got the license plate number, make, model, etc. I'm going to talk to our office manager, since the guy who drives the car lives in our building (and the owners of the parking garage own our building too), just to see if she knows who owns it and if she can talk to him. I'm afraid I may bash his brains in. This is just getting ridiculous. How many posts have I made where I reference this stupid car alarm?

Anyway, to lighten the mood... I'm going to try this "10 Thing You Probably Don't Know About Me" thing. So, here's what I've got:

I have a very deep fear of snakes. I'm not afraid of most animals, even the ones that can eat me alive, but something about those slithering bastards just scares the bejesus out of me!
Truthfully, I fear being alone more than I fear death. I can live with dying (yeah, that sounds funny), but I couldn't be the last person on Earth until I died. That would be boring!
I was engaged once before. However, I know I got it right the second time around. I suppose everyone needs a practice run, especially with big decisions like this one.
I learn things better by actually doing them. I could sit in classes for a year about how to split an atom, and it wouldn't matter. However, let me sit down in front of one and I could blow the world up.
I have a horrible case of ADHD (that's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). When I was a kid we didn't have big names for problems like this. We also didn't have Ritalin and other drugs to make people in zombies. Instead, they told my Mom not to feed me so much sugar. I truly feel sorry for the Vitamin R generation.
I have three tattoos. Each one means something. Ask me about them sometimes. One is a screw up too. It's a funny story!
My wife loves me. She added that on my list that I had written down, so I thought I'd throw it on here.
By the age of 8 I had an IQ above 100. I'm not sure what it is now, but I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy. At least people don't tell me I'm a dumbass anyway.
I have never been challenged, mentally. By this I mean school has never been difficult. Work has never pushed me. The only time I really feel like I'm working is when I'm playing. I love trivia and puzzles (things that make the little hamster up in my head start to make the wheel go round). Those things still don't challenge me though. They just make me think. Man I sound like an egotist! Really, I'm not!
This is the most important one... I truly feel like I am a very lucky man and have been blessed. I have a wonderful wife. I have a great family (most of them anyway). I have great friends. I have a good job. I am educated. I can afford the things in life that I want. I have a roof over my head. My life gets better every day (no matter how many times that stupid car alarm wakes me up)!

Okay, so there are 10 things you may not have known about me. I guess I could've put #11 on there and had it say "I'm crazy", but who doesn't already know that? Anyway, I have a new "rule" today. You can check it out ---> HERE! Have a great day!

YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME...

2006-08-29T08:35:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of people I have problems listening. Well, for long stretches of time that is. I can sit there and act like I'm listening to you all night, but, in reality, I'm off in "la la" land. Just be sure not to ask me to recap what you said!

Anyway, my wife doesn't believe that I listen to her. Imagine that! Well, just to let her know that I'm listening, my brain decided to take all of the stuff she's been telling me about her days and dump them into one of my dreams last night.

Here are the things I can remember:

I'm a third grade student in my wife's class. I actually look like myself and she knows we're married, but I think I'm doing some kind of undercover work or something.
I go to switch classes for math, and suddenly I'm sitting there with no pencil or paper, while everyone else is writing stuff down. I ask if I can go to get my pencil and paper, and she lets me.
I walk back to the other classroom, but they've moved around the desks and I can't find which one is mine. So, I start walking down the hallway to find my locker. In this maze of a school I get lost and end up over near the 7th and 8th grade classrooms, which is bad news.
A fifth grader walks up on me and tries to bully me around. We get into a scuffle and I actually get the best of him. Then he pulls out a butane lighter that he says would be a torch if it had any "gas" in it. We become friends (I think), he gives me a little dap (fist bump if you don't know what it is), and points me in the direction of my locker.
I walk down the hallway toward my locker, trying to remember the combination. Suddenly the fifth grader, whom I thought was my friend, comes running at me with a knife. I scramble around and, with kung fu like agility, hop up on top of the lockers. Now I'm hanging from the ceiling tiles fighting off his advances with my feet.
About this time an 8th grader strolls up, not noticing me. It just so happens to be Gary Dourdan, the guy who plays Warrick Brown on CSI. He asks the 5th grader whats going on. I think he's trying to help me out.
Things turn quickly and he starts trying to pull me down. Supposedly he wants my lunch money. I tell him I don't have any. While hanging, I somehow pull out my wallet and money starts flying everywhere. Most of it is counterfeit though. Instead of having Lincoln and those guy's mugs on the face of the note, I've got some guy named Ferguson and something else not even remotely close to one of our Presidents (I can't remember right now).
I tell them I've got plenty more where that came from, if they'll leave me alone. I tell them that I can get them $30,000 in bills tomorrow. They let me go.
I start heading back to my classroom, but get lost. At the same time I realize that I don't have my backpack, nor did I get my paper and pencil.

So, there you have it. I am listening to my wife on a daily basis. I like being the one that she talks to about her daily going's on. I'm glad I don't really have to tell her mine though. If I continue to have days like yesterday then I'm probably going to have to start drinking more. Really, all I wanted to do yesterday when I got home from work was grab a bottle and start giving it the "business".

I didn't though. I sat down on the couch, relaxed a little bit, then played some Xbox. Speaking of my gadgets... We ordered a new phone for me over the weekend. I got pretty much the same thing I had before, but it's the updated model. I got the RAZR V3i. It actually comes with Itunes built in, and an expansion slot that can hold up to 1 Gig in memory. Now that's not quite as stout as my Ipod, which holds 40 gigs of music, but it'll get me by. Adrianne actually asked me if she could have my Ipod. Anyone care to guess my reaction?

No, I didn't throw a backhand pimpslap down, but I think I might have said "Trick, please!" Actually, I think I said "Well, possibly. We'll see." Yeah, I'm a big puss, and wouldn't talk to my wife like that!

Anyway, I actually got around to getting this up this morning, for once. I thought I'd do it before I started dealing with everyone's problems. We've already got one going this morning. I had a voicemail waiting for me when I got here. Well, a couple of things have happened, and our stock is down 5% already today. They're thinking it might tumble as far as 15%, all today. See, this is what happens when other people try to tell you how to do your job! (well, I don't know that this is true, but I thought I'd stick my tongue out at the people that are trying to tell us how to do our job).

Last thing... Here is the updated "rule". Have a good one! (whatever it is)

SAME STUFF... DIFFERENT DAY...

2006-08-28T10:41:00.001-05:00

I love the line off of the movie "Office Space"... "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!"

When I hear it, it really does make me want to punch something. Today, however, is the perfect case. First and foremost, again, I haven't been able to actually work on any of my stuff this morning at all. It's just after noon right now, and I'm going to be starting my work.

Part of this is due to one of my co-workers. Luckily he isn't here in Memphis with me, otherwise I'd probably have already ripped his head off! All I'm really going to say about it is this... Some people take the simplest of tasks and turn them into the grandest of events. I need him to do one simple thing and I sent him a fairly simple email about it. It read like this "Mr. X, would you mind looking at a small sample of such and such when you are reviewing credit X and Y?"

Of course, I assume a person that's been doing this job for 20 years would be able to use his own discretion and get the information and take care of it. Instead, I got 15 emails on Friday, before I said "Fuck it" and talked to my boss. After discussing things with him, I sent out another email clarifying what we wanted. Problem solved, right?

No, my luck is never that good. Instead I get an email first thing this morning, and he thinks we're not looking at his stuff at all now. I'm still confused how he got that idea, especially when I mentioned him by name in the "clarification" email.

Round and round we go. It always seems this way, especially when I have a ton of shit to do!

After getting this email this morning and resolving the issue (or so I thought), we all get together for a staff meeting. We rarely have these because we're usually so busy that we just don't have time. We got some bad news. Not bad like we're losing our jobs, but bad enough. Some other departments are trying to push more work down on us, when it needs to go to a completely different department. Also, another division is trying to restructure how we do our jobs, when it's evident they have no clue what we actually do. If we were to do as they say, it would take us about two days to do what usually takes about a month. Wouldn't that be fun? It wouldn't be correct, or assess any risk, but it would be quick! We could get our entire year's worth of work done in about two weeks, then we could just sit on our asses and browse the internet for the other 50 weeks of the year. Hmm... maybe I need to reconsider my stance on this?

Anyway, today is just one of those days. I'm not going to let it be as bad as that day I had a while back though. I'm going to go home here in a few, grab a bite to eat, and just relax a little bit. I did one of my buddies over at Hilltopper Haven a favor this weekend, so I've gotta run over to the post office and mail it to him. I enjoy making people happy, even if it is just for a fleeting moment.

I had planned on posting "10 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me" today, but since it's gone the way it has, and since I'm short on time, that will just have to wait for another day. I only had a couple of things in mind anyway, so that will give me a little more time to think of things.

So, I'll close with my update to the "Rules". I hope you have a better day than I am having!

GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE...

2006-08-25T15:08:00.000-05:00

If it's the last thing we ever do!

Man, I've been busy today! It's a Friday for crying out loud! I'm not supposed to work on Friday. The saddest thing is that I haven't actually done anything on any of my work. I've been working on everyone else's problems. Yes, every now and then it sucks to be in charge, because all of the questions roll up to you. Good thing these projects don't last year round, because I'd have to get paid a hell of a lot more to put up with this all the time!

Anyway, I posted a new "rule" this morning, but as soon as I started to work on this blog I got busy. Here is the "rule of thumb" for today. This one is courtesy of my beautiful wife. She actually thought of it while driving home the other day. A truck in front of her, for some strange reason, stomped on his brakes, causing her to do the same, and every car behind her too. Anyway, she (as well as myself many times before) was amazed at how the brain just knows to do these things, so I thought I'd add this one to the list. So, help your brain out every now and then, and stop doing meth!

I had a long, crazy dream last night. So many things happened before and after the part I'm about to describe, but I couldn't remember them by the time I got around to writing things down in my journal. Anyway, here are my notes:

I was participating in a demolition derby that was actually in a parking garage.
I was driving a huge 70's model Cadillac that was a neon Carolina blue color (very pimpish I might add)
Suddenly the cops show up to break up our little party, so we leave our car behind and head to the top of the parking structure. From there we climb onto a huge brick fence (like a castle wall) that surrounds the back yard of a huge house.
For some reason I'm hanging out with a girl named Jennifer that I went to high school with (no, we never dated, and no, she wasn't really attractive)
This house is situated right next door to my Mom's house (or so I'm telling everyone)
The house had just been purchased, so I'm strolling through it introducing myself to everyone.
I had been told stories about this house being haunted but never had any "close encounters" of my own.
I'm told that the owner is upstairs, so we head up there.
I reach the top step and am suddenly held strictly in place by some "unseen" force.
I plead with the "force" to let me pass, but it won't. The only thing I can do is go back downstairs.
I tell the people downstairs that the ghost doesn't want me to find what's upstairs for some reason.

That's all I remember. It was kind of crazy and really all over the place.

So, that's what you get for today. This is what happens when I'm rushed and busy on a Friday. What did I talk about last Friday? Hmm... Yet another movement toward senility? Anyway, I'll leave this little picture for the weekend (I forgot to post it yesterday):

This is a picture of my goofy ass trying on sunglasses at this silly store over on Beale Street. I meant to send this picture to my boy PT, but forgot. Imagine that?

THINGS THAT MAKE ME LAUGH...

2006-08-24T09:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, with all of the recent negativity I've had on here (and don't worry, because there will be more later), I decided I'd devote a day to some pictures and ideas that just make me smile from ear to ear.

First off is my "Rule" update for the day. I cannot take credit for this one. Mary Jo down the hall actually said it, and I'm just spreading it to the world. Every time I read the sentence I almost bust out laughing. I did last night and almost shot beer out of my nose. I guess that would be funny to some, but it would be damn painful to me!

Now, yesterday I mentioned that my phone is kaput, right? Anyway, it will still turn on, so I hooked it up to my computer last night and tried to save everything over, just in case I get a new phone (so I can put all of that crap on it too). While I was going through all of the pictures and contacts I ran across some pictures I had forgotten I'd taken with my camera phone. Here they are:

Okay, the first one I took on the way home from work one day. I'm guessing this person either A) Really, really likes pink, or B) Is a very low end Mary Kay dealer. Either way, the car is funny as hell looking.

Picture two is of one of my favorite things... Fireworks. This one was actually taken on the rooftop on July 2nd or 3rd. I can't remember which. Either way, I've talked about how much I love fireworks before on here, so I won't get into it all again!

This third picture makes me roll on the floor. This is our niece. We were at Adrianne's Mom's salon one day a while back and someone had left a wig there. First I put it on, just to see if I looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Well, I did, but it got even better. We put the wig on Grace, and what you see in the picture is how it went down. She was confused at first, but had a short fuse with the wig, and tossed it off her head.

The last picture I took while I was shopping for my wife's wedding present. To a lot of people this isn't funny at all. However, to me, it just made me laugh. I kept thinking to myself "Abba Zabba, you're my only friend!" You'd have to have seen the movie "Half Baked" to get that joke. Yes, potheads are funny to me!

Okay, I've had some fun today! I hope you've enjoyed the pictures and maybe I was able to brighten one person's otherwise shitty day! Have a great one!

BACK ON TRACK...

2006-08-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've had enough of ranting, for now. Instead, I'm going to try to get back in the flow of just talking about what's going on everyday with me and my beautiful wife.

However, first I have to give a link to my updated "Rules". I only do this because "someone" tells me they never check over there unless it's linked to in my post here. Somehow the link over to the right is too difficult to find, or something. Look over there -------->

Okay, so I'm getting soft in my old age. That, or marriage has just loosened me up some. Back when I was younger (yeah, like that was eons ago or something) I would get amazingly angry about little things. These days, however, I try to take things in stride. As I try to explain to my wife, there's nothing you can really do about it, because things happen.

I think a lot of it harkens to my feeling that fate plays it's hand in so many parts of our lives. It was, after all, fate that brought Adrianne and I together. I've told that story already. If you missed it, check it out here. Anyway, I feel like things happen for a reason. I'm not quite sure what the reasoning fate has for making my phone short out when a little wine got on it is, but we'll see, won't we? We're currently in the process of looking for replacements. I really liked my Motorola RAZR, so that's my first choice. I just don't plan on paying a couple hundred dollars for another new phone, so we have to get it cheap!

Work is going well right now. I've stopped being lazy and I'm actually working on my reviews. Our new employee is in Nashville doing some training, so I have a little time to work on things myself. It's too bad I've wasted most of the two days she hasn't been here, otherwise I could probably have close to half of my work done. It's alright though, because I'll probably get to pass off some of my work to other (only because they were assigned less accounts and somehow finished up early).

Married life is good too. It could be somewhat better, but we're both getting used to it. Adrianne's working late nearly every night, and I fully expected that. It just kind of sucks that she leaves before I'm awake in the morning and then gets home after I do every night. The only time we have together is after she gets home and on the weekends. After work is pretty much shot, because she has loose ends to take care of. We usually get about a half hour together every night where we have each other's full and undivided attention. It just so happens that time is usually dinner time.

I have, however, been working on my cooking skills. Having her work late pretty much puts me in the kitchen every night, which isn't a bad thing. I enjoy cooking for others. I hate cooking for just myself. At the same time though, I don't know that I could cook for an army either. I think the most I've ever cooked for is eight people, and it seemed like I was just running around from place to place, making sure everything was okay. That's not a whole lot of fun.

Anyway, tonight I'm making Indian food for Adrianne, Mary Jo, and myself. I'm hoping it's good, and that it doesn't make me spend 90% of my day tomorrow on the toilet! I'll leave you with that thought!

Uneducating America, Part 2

2006-08-22T10:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I spoke out about my dislike for some music genres. Today, I'm in a complete different zone. Today, the ilk of "Reality TV" has drawn my ire.

First and foremost, any show that actually calls itself "Reality TV" is not television about reality. The one and only "Reality TV" program ever created is "COPS". There are no judges. The audience doesn't have a say in the outcome of the program. You just get what the officers get. Sometimes someone goes to jail. Sometimes they go away in a bodybag. Sometimes they just go back home.

The only thing "Reality TV" actually is, is staged. It is staged for "drama". They want you to think that what's going on is real. The people there may not be actors, but they're playing their part. They're getting their 15 minutes of fame, and will do whatever they can to sustain it for longer. Why do you think there have been "wedding night" porno video's for half of the "cast" of Survivor?

Speaking of Survivor... Yes, I'll start with this true piece of shit. Actually, all I really want to say about it is this... There is no way in hell that a gay marketing exec out "survives" the most decorated and "grizzled" Navy Seal, ever. Period. Rudy (the SEAL) in "real" life would've ripped that douchebag's head off and shit down his neck, then tossed his rotting carcass into the ocean for the sea turtles to snack on. Well, maybe that's how I see "reality" anyway.

Most of the people they put on this show couldn't last 15 minutes stranded on a deserted island. They'd go crazy and start chewing on their toes or something, then end up wandering out into the sea and drown. Again, becoming fish food. Hell, these people probably couldn't survive being stranded at a Motel 6 in Las Vegas, with $10,000 in their pockets. Most of them are just complete idiots. I'm sick of "Survivor"!

Now, on to "The Real World"... Okay, I'll admit it... I watched the first season or two. I watched it to see who was going to get killed. It almost happened too, and it's just too bad it didn't happen, because if it would've, we wouldn't be subjected to all of the "reality" shit that is on the air now. All it really takes is one person dying on a "reality" show and the entire genre will die with it. Man, that can't happen soon enough!

As for "The Real World"... This is the only place that would try to mesh the following: militant black man, hippie slob, Gay man and/or lesbian, wanna-be porno actress, midwestern female with ZERO common sense, and a Redneck. All I can say is... WHY?

Why would you want to put all of these ingredients into a pot? You don't put a sleeping bag full of rattlesnakes, a grizzly bear, a porcupine, a skunk, a mongoose, a great white shark, and a velociraptor in a 1977 Volkswagen Bus and expect it to be a party, do you? Sure, hop on in there and have a ball.

There's nothing real about this. These people, no matter how nice they really are, would never go out of their way to befriend each other. Not even for 5 minutes. EVER!

Lastly, and this might be the most evil thing ever... American Idol. Really, these people have to be delusional, right? Who all has won so far? Their careers have been how long again? If I even though of trying out to get on the show I would think about two things: The woman who got thrown off for making a porno several years ago, and the Asian dude who was ridiculed mercilessly.

First off, I've done some shit in my day. The last thing I want is the entire world to know about it, strictly because I was on TV for 3 minutes, singing a Boy George song (that's the song assigned to me, not my preference). Secondly, it's just wrong. I make fun of people all the time, yet I kind of keep it low profile. This guy had the balls to get up there and give it everything he had. What did he get in return? I don't have to tell you, because you know.

However, he did end up being 1,000 more known about than the person who actually won the show, so it can't be all that bad. Personally, I prefer to be made fun of at a much lower level, than national TV. Yeah, "She Bangs".

I was so done with "reality" TV when it first started up. I still love "COPS" though.

Uneducating America, Part 1

2006-08-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

My beautiful wife suggested that I make this post (from yesterday) it's own story. That way it can be read separately from the normal silliness that I produce. Here you go:

As a forewarning, I have my opinion on things (obviously) and I'm not saying my opinion is correct. However, I've been thinking about this for a little while now, and I have to get this out there.

This may become a multi-part expose (missing the accent mark there), because it might become long. Anyway, I don't know if this is government sanctioned or not (but it easily could be), and that would be very paranoid of me to say so, and, thus, could be the end of this blog if they find out I know the truth, but...

Could it be that the government has intentionally pushed certain types of music into the mainstream in order to "dumb us down" as a nation?

If you look through the history of music there have been many types that were socio-political, yet never lasted. The hippies tried to push their agenda of peace through music, but that didn't last (drugs were part of the problem there). During the late 1980's, hip hop groups like Public Enemy were pushing the envelope with anti-political statements, yet never were widely accepted, nor played on the radio. Bob Marley consistently tried to battle the evils of the world through music, and there are a thousand conspiracies about his death (at a young age). The list goes on and on.

However, what types of music have endeavored and actually grown? First off, we have "pop" music. We're constantly bombarded with teen beauty queens that are all fluff and no substance. We get to hear the "catchy" hooks and rehashed beats and rhythms. That's great! Please play the same songs 1,000 times a day. I appreciate it.

Now we have something called "pop"-country. I have never liked country music. Period. However, I gave the pioneers their credit because, at least, their music had "soul". Their songs were about hardships and trying to overcome obstacles in their life (mostly alcohol abuse, but who's counting?). Now I'm asked if I "want a little yang in my ying-yang". Whatever the fuck that means?

Lastly, and most importantly, we have hip-hop. The greatest culprit in this melee of our intelligence. Single-handedly, hip-hop has destroyed the English language and millions of urban and suburanites ability to speak it. It has penetrated so deep into the entire culture of the world (not just the United State) that you can hear "Yeeeaaah!", "Holla", and "Grrrrl" all across the globe.

I pick hip-hop out the most, because it's what I hear the most, and I must listen to the people that are influenced the most by it trying to speak on a daily basis. Personally, I am a big proponent for the use of contractions. I don't enjoy speaking sentences that are forty words long, really (no matter how I type). However, what used to be people using "don't" for "do not", "shouldn't" for "should not", "couldn't" for "could not", "wouldn't" or "won't" for "would not", have been replaced with "do'n", "sho'n", "co'n", and "wo'n".

Then we have the lack of creativity in the new hip-hop lifestyle. They talk about how hip-hop is pushing the envelope and is being so ingenious. However, it doesn't take talent nor creativity, to completely remake a song that was done 30 years ago (and with some "soul") and call it new and fresh. Wearing a hat crooked isn't creative either. Great! Your eyes aren't shield from the sun anymore. I get it! Wearing clothes that are 6 times too big for you, so that they fall off is a great idea. I could understand this one, if, and only if, the person was buying the clothes so that they could wear them for 30 years, thus growing into them as they get fat and old.

I thoroughly enjoyed hip-hop back when the performers were singing the praises of their forefathers (Malcolm X, MLK, etc) and trying educate and make things better for themselves and their race (actually all races, through understanding the differences in us). However, those artists (Public Enemy, De La Soul, Afrika Bambaataa, Eric B. & Rakim, etc) never enjoyed hearing their hit single played nationwide, five billion times a day. However, just a few years ago you could hear Nelly talking about a fucking pair of sneakers (actually just repeating the same few words over and over) at least twice an hour on almost any radio station across the world (not just the hip-hop stations).

The norm now is to rap about "bling", "bitches", and how much money you have. The reality of it is this... Most Hip-hop artists don't have shit. The producers and record executives get all of the money. Most of what the artists have is rented and shines only in their videos. I won't even get started on that!

These "new" artists are pimped by the exec's that pick them, knowing they have no clue how the industry works. The exec signs them to some deal (probably a guarantee of some sum of money that is extraordinarily large to the artist-like $100,000, but, in reality is chump change to the exec, who's going to make millions off of the artist), then makes the artist bust their ass writing (if you call it that), performing, and getting face time on TV or at radio stations. For the exec it's a wise investment, but for the artist, it's just a new form of slavery (because they have to live up to the lifetime of the contract-multiple records, etc). The plantation is optional.

To wrap up this section of my rant... Music, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing. So much of it has "soul" and bleeds emotion where people can relate to it. However, this music isn't what is sold to the population via the radio, TV, and internet chat boxes. It must be found and put out there for everyone, so we can dispense with the idiocy.

So, do yourself a favor... Turn off the radio, stop watching the "booty shakin' " videos the CMT, BET, MTV or any other three letter channel wants you to see, and find yourself some real music. If you're a country fan, go look up the "ol' timers". If you like hip-hop, search out the roots of the genre (i.e. Grandmaster Flash--Go to IMDB.com and put that in the search bar at the top. It'll give you a list of similar artists and who influenced him and who he influenced. It's a good start.) If you like rock, well, there are so many places to start. First off, don't listen to anything that's played on the pop stations (i.e. Nickelback, Coldplay, Staind, etc). If you like pop... Well, I'm sorry, because you have to start from scratch.

I'll try tomorrow to enlighten you some more, if you've actually made it this far.

POST WEEKEND AND LOTS OF IDEAS...

2006-08-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, the weekend is over, again... As usual, it was way too short, and, as usual, I didn't sleep for shit last night. It wasn't because of the car alarm though. That only went off once this morning, and I'm not even sure it was the same car.

Adrianne went to sleep without me at 10:40 last night. I made it in there right at 11, but I wasn't even remotely tired. I just knew that I needed to go to bed, or I'd be paying for it today. Well, I'm paying for it regardless. I tried to watch TV for a while, but there was nothing on. So, I put on one of the relaxing "wave" sounds that I used to sleep to all the time. I tried to concentrate on it, but I kept singing the stupid song "Lonely No More" by Rob Thomas to myself. It's one of Adrianne's favorites, and we had just finished watching an interview with him on TV before she went to bed. I don't know if that was exactly why the song was in my head, or if me wanting to ask Adrianne the ever important question, "Does that song mean a lot less to you now that you know it's just a joke and not some super romantic ballad?" I say that because, during the interview, he commented on the song "Yeah, I had so many songs containing the words 'lonely' and 'angry' so I threw them in there to poke fun at myself". I thought this was hilarious, yet I didn't want to interrupt the show by asking Adrianne about it then. By the time the show was over I had forgotten about it, until the song popped into my head.

So, finally, I dozed off. I think it was around 2 am, but I'm not sure. I know it had been a while since I put my head on the pillow though. I had just fallen asleep when the hand-held shower head (that I had mounted earlier that day) fell off the wall (again). With a loud "whump" I was wide awake, again. Yes, this is how most of my nights of sleep go.

I'm not sure how long it took me to fall back asleep, but I think I quickly began dreaming. I had a really, really cool dream that was actually about the next Superman movie. I'm not sure how this got in my head, but I thought it was only going to be the trailer for it, but before long it was a full blown movie. It was pretty cool stuff too. You want to hear all about it? No?

Too bad! Here it is...

It begins with General Zod, flanked again by Ursa and Non (from Superman II), standing in front of an entire legion of Kryptonian evildoers, who are hell-bent on taking over Earth. Superman is face to face with Zod, while there are troops of Earthlings behind him with laser weaponry that can take down the enemy.

Before long, I'm actually Superman, but no one knows it. The evil forces have done tons of damage and forced most humans into hiding. I'm with an elite group of trained combatants and we're getting ready to start our last offensive. Before we go, some woman gives me a new set of golf clubs. For some reason, it's the greatest gift ever. However, our enjoyment quickly ended, when Zod's troops start attacking.

We're sent running for the hideout. I leave my clubs behind in the haste of running for the hills. However, as we're running, the person who gave me them tells me to go back to get them and meet them at the place. We get split up and they end up at the hideout. I run back, grab the clubs and have to make my way back to the hideout.

Somehow the hideout is underwater now, and the only way to get there is to flatten myself to the thickness of a sheet of paper, which I somehow can do. I do this and slip into the ventilation system. Most everyone is underwater (and breathing, nonetheless) when I join up with them.

I don't know what happens next, as I was woken out of my slumber by a buzzing sound. All I know is that if the next Superman is half as good as my dream, then we're in for another great movie. Did I mention that I truly loved "Superman Returns"? I can't wait for it to come out on DVD.

Before I get into the next thing... Here is the latest edition of my "Rules". This one is for my boy PT.

Now, onto to some ideas I had this weekend. As a forewarning, I have my opinion on things (obviously) and I'm not saying my opinion is correct. However, I've been thinking about this for a little while now, and I have to get this out there.

This may become a multi-part expose (missing the accent mark there), because it might become long. Anyway, I don't know if this is government sanctioned or not (but it easily could be), and that would be very paranoid of me to say so, and, thus, could be the end of this blog if they find out I know the truth, but...

Could it be that the government has intentionally pushed certain types of music into the mainstream in order to "dumb us down" as a nation?

If you look through the history of music there have been many types that were socio-political, yet never lasted. The hippies tried to push their agenda of peace through music, but that didn't last (drugs were part of the problem there). During the late 1980's, hip hop groups like Public Enemy were pushing the envelope with anti-political statements, yet never were widely accepted, nor played on the radio. Bob Marley consistently tried to battle the evils of the world through music, and there are a thousand conspiracies about his death (at a young age). The list goes on and on.

However, what types of music have endeavored and actually grown? First off, we have "pop" music. We're constantly bombarded with teen beauty queens that are all fluff and no substance. We get to hear the "catchy" hooks and rehashed beats and rhythms. That's great! Please play the same songs 1,000 times a day. I appreciate it.

Now we have something called "pop"-country. I have never liked country music. Period. However, I gave the pioneers their credit because, at least, their music had "soul". Their songs were about hardships and trying to overcome obstacles in their life (mostly alcohol abuse, but who's counting?). Now I'm asked if I "want a little yang in my ying-yang". Whatever the fuck that means?

Lastly, and most importantly, we have hip-hop. The greatest culprit in this melee of our intelligence. Single-handedly, hip-hop has destroyed the English language and millions of urban and suburanites ability to speak it. It has penetrated so deep into the entire culture of the world (not just the United State) that you can hear "Yeeeaaah!", "Holla", and "Grrrrl" all across the globe.

I pick hip-hop out the most, because it's what I hear the most, and I must listen to the people that are influenced the most by it trying to speak on a daily basis. Personally, I am a big proponent for the use of contractions. I don't enjoy speaking sentences that are forty words long, really (no matter how I type). However, what used to be people using "don't" for "do not", "shouldn't" for "should not", "couldn't" for "could not", "wouldn't" or "won't" for "would not", have been replaced with "do'n", "sho'n", "co'n", and "wo'n".

Then we have the lack of creativity in the new hip-hop lifestyle. They talk about how hip-hop is pushing the envelope and is being so ingenious. However, it doesn't take talent nor creativity, to completely remake a song that was done 30 years ago (and with some "soul") and call it new and fresh. Wearing a hat crooked isn't creative either. Great! Your eyes aren't shield from the sun anymore. I get it! Wearing clothes that are 6 times too big for you, so that they fall off is a great idea. I could understand this one, if, and only if, the person was buying the clothes so that they could wear them for 30 years, thus growing into them as they get fat and old.

I thoroughly enjoyed hip-hop back when the performers were singing the praises of their forefathers (Malcolm X, MLK, etc) and trying educate and make things better for themselves and their race (actually all races, through understanding the differences in us). However, those artists (Public Enemy, De La Soul, Afrika Bambaataa, Eric B. & Rakim, etc) never enjoyed hearing their hit single played nationwide, five billion times a day. However, just a few years ago you could hear Nelly talking about a fucking pair of sneakers (actually just repeating the same few words over and over) at least twice an hour on almost any radio station across the world (not just the hip-hop stations).

The norm now is to rap about "bling", "bitches", and how much money you have. The reality of it is this... Most Hip-hop artists don't have shit. The producers and record executives get all of the money. Most of what the artists have is rented and shines only in their videos. I won't even get started on that!

These "new" artists are pimped by the exec's that pick them, knowing they have no clue how the industry works. The exec signs them to some deal (probably a guarantee of some sum of money that is extraordinarily large to the artist-like $100,000, but, in reality is chump change to the exec, who's going to make millions off of the artist), then makes the artist bust their ass writing (if you call it that), performing, and getting face time on TV or at radio stations. For the exec it's a wise investment, but for the artist, it's just a new form of slavery (because they have to live up to the lifetime of the contract-multiple records, etc). The plantation is optional.

To wrap up this section of my rant... Music, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing. So much of it has "soul" and bleeds emotion where people can relate to it. However, this music isn't what is sold to the population via the radio, TV, and internet chat boxes. It must be found and put out there for everyone, so we can dispense with the idiocy.

So, do yourself a favor... Turn off the radio, stop watching the "booty shakin' " videos the CMT, BET, MTV or any other three letter channel wants you to see, and find yourself some real music. If you're a country fan, go look up the "ol' timers". If you like hip-hop, search out the roots of the genre (i.e. Grandmaster Flash--Go to IMDB.com and put that in the search bar at the top. It'll give you a list of similar artists and who influenced him and who he influenced. It's a good start.) If you like rock, well, there are so many places to start. First off, don't listen to anything that's played on the pop stations (i.e. Nickelback, Coldplay, Staind, etc). If you like pop... Well, I'm sorry, because you have to start from scratch.

I'll try tomorrow to enlighten you some more, if you've actually made it this far.

ODDS AND ENDS...

2006-08-18T08:38:00.000-05:00

Well, since it's Friday, and pay day nonetheless, I thought I'd just wrap up some loose ends.

First and foremost, I was only woken up twice, again, this morning. Luckily for me, both were shortly after Adrianne left, which I'm assuming was around 7 am. I know she didn't want to get out of bed this morning for anything. I think her alarm went off three times before she finally said "Screw it! I'll get up." I've noticed that I've been sleeping better with her in bed with me than when she gets out of bed in the morning. Almost all my morning problems have happened once she leaves me alone in the king sized world.

I haven't had a whole lot of time to start on my work that I need to do for our review we're working on right now. Between teaching one of our new employees and fielding phone calls from one of our independent contractors, I've been run ragged. I haven't pulled any of the information for any of my stuff, but, at the same time, I haven't set a deadline for all of the reviews to be turned in either, so it works out.

I don't believe we have any big plans this weekend. I know we have to go grocery shopping either tonight or tomorrow, because we're running low on a lot of things. If we get time we really need to clean up our apartment, because it's a wreck. A large part of it is my fault, because I've had my Xbox controller glued to my hand every second I'm home since Monday, thus I haven't done anything around the house. We've even eaten out twice this week, which never happens. I finally cooked last night for a change. I've also got a ton of work shirts that need ironing this weekend, otherwise I'm going to be wearing some wrinkly ones next week. Maybe Sunday I'll get around to it. That's the day I always set aside to do that sort of thing, well, before I was married anyway.

I'm starting to get anxious about football season starting. I didn't think I was going to be, but once I started playing the game on Xbox it got me shaking like a heroine addict without a fix. Outside of a couple of teams, I don't know of who will make a run for the national title. Personally, I'm hoping on Notre Dame. They're my favorite college football team, well, until the Hilltoppers make the move from 1AA to the big time. I'm hoping that is soon.

I should have a full Labor Day weekend. We're heading up north again. I'm planning on having Adrianne drop me off in BG on Friday night, so I can stay there and watch WKU play at Georgia Saturday morning, then Paul and I can meet up with them in Owensboro after the game. Then the Irish play Georgia Tech that night. Two football games in one day? OH MY! (my wife will hate me by the time the day is over, I promise!)

I posted another "Rule" this morning. Personally, I think it's funny, and, yes, it's meant as a joke. I hope that person takes it that way and doesn't get mad at me, because I'd much rather be there than anyplace else on this earth (notice I didn't mention in the Galaxy? Who knows what's out there!). Anyway, have a great weekend and we'll do some catching up on Monday, unless I get really bored this weekend (don't count on it).

ONLY TWICE! I'M THANKFUL THOUGH...

2006-08-17T08:39:00.001-05:00

Well, my tertiary alarm (aka jackass' car alarm) only woke me up twice this morning. Once at 6:51 and again at 6:56. Without actually seeing the vehicles come and go, I'm going to assume that the first time it went off is when one of the people that were parked next to him left their parking spot and it went off again when someone new pulled into that spot.

I decided yesterday that I was going to wait to write the note to him until I was calm, cool, and collected, and mostly just so I wouldn't come across as an asshole. I was really hoping today would be that day, because I didn't want to write it while I was mad. Well, yes, I'm still pissed. However, it's starting to become a little amusing. I'm starting to laugh at myself, because I'm changing my life because of a stupid car alarm. I'm beginning to think that I'm psychologically changing to expect it to go off, so I'm not sleeping as deep as I should, and I'm holding myself back. Also, I'm not dreaming because of it, and that's killing me!

Anyway, my day didn't get much better yesterday. As a whole, it sucked. It was one of the worst days for me ever, and, the worst part is, I let it be that way. My whole day was altered because of one event, and I should've done something to change my perspective during the day and turned the whole thing around. Instead, I stayed in the slump.

At lunchtime, I got one of my buddies from work to go to the one place downtown that should've made me smile. I'm sure some of you can guess. It's not quite a strip club, but close. Anyway, we went there fully expecting it to be "all you can eat Wednesday", but were informed very early that the event didn't start until 5 pm. So, Strike One! It just so happened that we had the least personable server at this establishment. Strike Two! First of all, she didn't bring us the necessary tools for our meal. Then, she never came around for refills. I had to grab one of the other servers to take care of those things for us. Finally, she put part of my friend's tab on mine, and knowingly brought it to us and a little too matter-of-factly said "Oh, I put this on your tab, but I can go back and change it." By that time I just said "Screw it! I'm not too concerned about 55 cents anyway. I just want to get out of here." Strike Three! You'rrrrre Out!!

As bad as my day was yesterday, I know it could've been worse. So, I put together a list of things that could've happened yesterday and made it a lot worse. Here it goes...

TEN THINGS I'M GLAD DIDN'T HAPPEN YESTERDAY

Cut my throat shaving with my electric razor.
Lose any teeth while brushing them.
Get hit by a car (while walking or driving).
Lose my job.
Get slapped by a server at lunchtime.
Have to work through lunch.
Have to start the "project" all over again.
Have to jump from a burning building.
Stay late at work.
Have to sleep on the couch and not get to snuggle in bed with my honey.

You have to actually say "I'm glad I didn't..." before each number for them to really make sense. Well, I did anyway.

Okay, I'm not letting today be as bad as yesterday. I think I've got all of the bad karma out and I'm only taking in the good stuff from here on out. So, here is your "Rule" update for today, and have a great one!

MUTHAF&%K YOU!

2006-08-16T09:02:00.000-05:00

Before I get into my rant today, and it's going to be a good one, I just wanted to focus on something much nicer. Today's "Rule" is a good one that I really want everyone to know about. So, check it out HERE!

Okay, I'm not having a good day so far and it all relates back to one single individual asshole. This guy (even though he probably doesn't even know it) has single-handedly started three quarters of my days during the last few weeks off on the wrong foot. See, here's how it goes down...

I'm guessing this jackhole got a new car (it's an early 2000's Chevy Impala, complete with plastic hubcaps) and decided with all of the break-ins that he'd get an alarm put on his pimpin' assed ride (actually it's as plain and ugly as can get). Well, sometime during the installation of his car alarm (which is the exact same as mine) they forgot to set up the sensitivity.

So, this piece of shit goes off anytime someone gets within two feet of his automobile. It goes off if there's a thunderclap. It goes off if someone farts into the wind. You get the point that it goes off non-stop, around the clock. Sometimes I don't hear it. More often than not, though, it wakes me out of my very light slumber.

Today, it just so happened to do it three times (5:05 am, 6:30 am, and lastly at 7:02 am). Now, I don't usually get out of bed until 7:20 am, but by the third time this thing woke me up, I was so pissed off that I couldn't go to back to sleep, even if I wanted to.

To rub salt in the wound, this jerky actually set the stupid thing off himself (which was the third time). The only reason I know this is because the alarm will chirp three times when you unset it to unlock the doors (if it's been set off). Well, the second the alarm went off the third time, he hit the unlock button and the thing started chirping. I'm almost wishing I would've heard matching gunshots after the chirping. However, I wouldn't be here typing this up this morning, I'd be down at 201 Poplar (the jail) standing in front of a judge. That probably wouldn't be good for my new marriage.

So, today I'm taking it on myself, for my sanity, to compose a polite letter to let this guy know that his car alarm is disturbing the peace. I'm not sure that it'll do anything, but I have to try. I'm going to try to leave emotions out of it (even though that's really hard, since I'm emotionally invested in getting some sleep). Adrianne suggested that I not call him a "shithead" too. So, I'm going to try to do that. If anyone has any suggestions, please, please leave me some comments. I'm on my last nerve about this. Maybe this is actually why I'm losing my sanity?

Now, just to make my day even more brighter... As I was walking to work this morning there was a bum hanging out at the end of our alley. He's one of the guys that I see down here all the time, and I recognize him because he's in a wheelchair and is missing one of his legs. I've actually given him some change a few times.

Now, just to piss me off... He's eating a fuckin' ice cream that he got from Walgreen's. Yeah, that $1.49 couldn't have been used for some real food!! He could've bought a loaf of bread for that much money and eaten for a week almost. I guess I have to look at it this way... At least he wasn't sippin' on a forty or some Thunderbird at 7:50 in the morning.

I've had enough of this day already. F&ck it! I'm out!

SLIPPING SLOWLY INTO SENILITY...

2006-08-15T08:39:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I do feel this way, and I'm way too young to be losing my mind. However, yesterday as I was leaving work I thought to myself "Did I post this morning? What did I do today?"

My entire day was a blur. Maybe it was because, once again, I was busy during every hour between when I got here and when I left. I don't know, but I hate to think that I can't remember the simple things that I do every day.

My wife brought me home a present yesterday that fit perfectly with the new crack I have. She bought me a college football preview magazine. Usually by this time of the year I've already collected three or more of them, but she gave me my first! Really, folks, she is the best!

Now, onto my new crack... I got NCAA Football 2007 the other day. I held off playing it all weekend and you don't know how hard that is, just seeing it sitting in the floor right in front of you beckoning you "Oh! You know you want to open me up and play me. Ooh! Just press the big circle and insert me in the machine. Yeah... That's sooooo good! Don't stop! Press 'A'! Now 'X'! Harder! Harder! No! Don't stop! I don't care if your wife just got home!!"

Whoa! What just happened? I kind of blacked out for a moment. Anyway, I held off on playing it all weekend, just to spare Adrianne the agony of watching me revert to being 8 years old. She already has to deal with the 15 year old version of me on a daily basis. I cranked it up yesterday while I was home for lunch, and, let's just say, my lunch ran a little longer than usual.

Really, it happens... I'm a video game junkie. I admit it. I could've stayed up all night last night playing and not thought anything about it. Adrianne went to bed without me, which will probably happen for a while, until I finish my first season. So far, I'm two games in and am 2-0. No, I'm not going to start blogging every day about my exploits on a video game!

Anyway, I've lost a little more of my mind this morning, so what I've tried to do is document it here and on "The Rules of Thumb". I hope someone enjoys watching me lose my mind?

WHEE!! IT'S JUST LIKE A ROLLERCOASTER!

2006-08-14T08:36:00.000-05:00

You all know how exciting it is going up and down the steep slopes of a rollercoaster, right? Well, imagine the exact thing, except when you're trying to sleep.

That was my night last night. I don't know what it is about me, sleep, and Sunday nights, but the three things do not work together. For some reason, I'd sleep like a rock for a little while, then wake up, then sleep a little while longer, then wake up again. This went on all night long. As you can guess, this takes a toll on the person trying to sleep. However, I did drag my carcass out of bed at 7:20 this morning and was at work on time!

Now, I'm not in much shape to do work, but my body is here, and that's what the boss's want, so I'm meeting their requirements, and that's good enough for me!

Actually, I will be doing some work today. Well, I'm planning on it anyway. I didn't do much on Friday, by my own admission, but I know how much we need to accomplish, and how quickly, so there won't be a lot of hanging out time.

I updated the "Rules" this morning, and it is directly associated to the only dream I can remember from last night. In my dream I was dreaming that I was the only person at work. I was here in the office, and everyone else's lights were off. I started thinking to myself "Why am I here? If no one else showed up, then do I really need to be here?"

So, I woke out of that dream and was thinking I don't want to go to work today. I'll just go drive around and see what's going on in Memphis during the day. So, I end up somewhere up in North Memphis at a store like TJ Maxx, at 8:20 in the morning. For some reason they are open, but I'm thinking "really, should I just go to work?" I call our assistant here and tell her to tell the bosses that I won't be in today, but, somehow, instead of talking on the phone I'm standing at her desk, and her desk isn't in our office any more. It's sitting outside someplace where it's sunny and beautiful. My boss wasn't supposed to come into work today, so I'm just telling her to lie to everyone else that I'm sick or something, and I tell her that it's because I had a dream about work and that it wouldn't go well today because of the dream. Some people call things like that an "omen".

Anyway, I'm getting ready to head back home from talking to her and my boss walks across the street, into another place, but looks directly at both of us. "Well, I guess that kills me going back home now. Doesn't it?"

Yeah, then I woke up. No, the first thing that popped into my head wasn't "Man, I don't want to go to work today!" That's a big surprise, even to me. Usually, when I have dreams about work it usually is telling me that I'm thinking about work too much and need a break. Now, however, I know I should've heeded the "omen" of my dream, because I've already got a splitting headache that's been reserved for afternoons here lately. Well, I guess I'd better go earn this punishment!!

FINALLY... RAIN...

2006-08-11T09:03:00.000-05:00

Yes, we finally got a break in the heat down here! It seems like it's been 6 months since the last time it wasn't 90 degrees at 8 in the morning. Well, this morning is was comfortably in the 70's, but it was raining at the same time. That's alright though, because the concrete downtown was needing some moisture!

We actually got pretty lucky last night. Adrianne and I went up to the rooftop to grill some burgers and eat, and it looked like it was going to pour on us at any time. However, we never got a drop while we were up there. We did, however, get one hell of a lightening show. We stayed up there long after we had finished our meal and cocktails just to watch the lightening that was to the east and south of us. It was awesome. There were some strikes that were hitting the ground, but most were upper atmospheric strikes, that branched out like spider webs. I love that kind of stuff.

Actually, I've kind of liked storms since I was a little kid. When we lived in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, every time there was a big storm my Mom, Dad, Sis, and I would crawl into our walk-in pantry and wait it out. I was always fast asleep on my Mom's lap, so I guess storms have always reminded me of that comfortable position, thus I'm not scared of them like a lot of people are.

Just to show you how relaxed I am during storms... In 2001 there was a tornado that ripped through Owensboro. I was still working at a bank downtown and they ordered all of us to report to the lobby and get into the big vault. I, however, went outside to watch the event instead. Some call that stupidity. I call it curiosity. Actually, I tried to walk into the vault but there were already people screaming and crying, and I know I would've ended up killing someone had I stayed there. So, there were two reasons!

Anyway, I was talking about the heat wave finally breaking...

I know I'm happy about it, in more ways that one. I don't mind too much being hot. I'd rather be hot than cold, any day. However, when my bank account starts crying about paying electric bills over $100, then it's time for a change. The first month after our honeymoon our bill was about $60, which was up from the $45 that I'm used to. The next month it had climbed up to $80, but still I did nothing to change my habits. I also thought that it was because we had been having a lot of visitors on the weekend, thus more usage. Then, last month, I got a bill for $110!

That was it! Adrianne called MLG&W and asked what was going on. They gave us some helpful hints. First off, we turned our thermostat from 74 to 78, and kicked off the fan that was running nonstop. Yeah, that made a difference.

Instead of sleeping comfortably every night, both of us are pushing each other away because we're sweaty and sticky. Beautiful! Ceiling fans can only do so much, and it really sucked because the A/C was never kicking on!

That's a whole other story though. The reason our A/C never kicks on is because of the placement of the thermostat. Instead of being back in the hottest part of the apartment, where it would actually know how hot it is, it's up by the front door, where it's nice and dark and cool. The reason it's so cool up there is because the hallway outside is kept at a comfortable 60 degrees, year-round.

Oh well! It was nice this morning! I almost wanted to pull the comforter back up on me and snuggle in for a long winter's nap. However, we're in the dog days of summer now, and I had to get up and go to work. I'm just kind of hoping that the cool temperatures stay through the weekend, so I can sleep a little longer and "catch up" on some rest. I know Adrianne needs it too!

Lastly, I updated the "RULES". For those of you who have actually read my gibberish for a while you'll recognize it from some of my past "issues". I still don't like "dem biatches", but I have to bite my tongue, since they outrank me!

WHEN?

2006-08-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

"When will I finally get the time to slam away on my keyboard and make a post?"

I asked myself this question around 12:40 pm today. It seems like I had been at my desk, working, since I got here at 8 am this morning, and there hadn't been a free moment to even think about blogging.

I've read recently that there is supposedly a Memphis Blogger gathering or two this week. There's supposedly one tonight and one on Sunday. I don't really know if I'm a part of the Memphis Blogging community, since, really, no one in Memphis even reads what I write (besides my wife). Also, it's at a bar/deli in Midtown, and I rarely go there. I'm a downtown person myself. I prefer to walk wherever I want to go drinking. I know if I attended either of these gatherings I'd probably have to have a few drinks. So, I probably won't be getting together with my fellow bloggers here in Memphis. I suppose that would make me a Rogue Memphis Blogger?

Anyway, I'm swamped again today. I'm trying to get all of our assignments in order and to the people that need to do them. Yes, it's nice to be all-powerful, but sucks that I can't really wield that power and say "You! You do my bidding!" Instead, I say things like "Here's what I got? If you can't take care of it, let me know and I'll take care of it."

Anyway, I gotta get back to work! I've still got assignments to do for two more people, and then myself. Yes, even the person in charge has to do work. Now that sucks!

Of course, I updated the "RULES" today. Check it out!

THE NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME...

2006-08-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days have been a blur. I've been swamped at work, even more so than I really should be. I'm working on my project, while training one of our newbies, and getting things in order for one of our independent contractors. I know, it doesn't sound like much, but I feel like I've been put on "the rack" and have been pulled in multiple directions.

To make matters worse, I'm exhausted when I get home. Last night I was supposed to head down to the South Main Association's monthly meeting. Well, it was almost six when I got home, and I had a splitting headache. All I wanted to do was have a beer and lay on the couch with my eyes closed. So, guess which I did?

If you said changed clothes and went to the meeting, then you are dead wrong, and don't know me at all! Adrianne didn't get home until eight last night, and we barely had a little dinner. I was even too tired to make us a real meal. Hopefully, tonight, I'll feel like being a good husband and preparing her a plethora of delightful delicacies. I might have to take a nap while I'm home at lunch though!

Neither one of us could fall asleep last night. Adrianne was just uncomfortable and I was a little tweaked after finding a spider crawling on me as I was originally falling asleep. I'm not afraid of spiders at all, but I don't like things crawling on me when I'm at my most vulnerable either. So, I was just kind of laying there with my skin crawling, thinking about what those creepy critters could be up to next. Finally, I got up and put on some classical music, Gustav Holst's "The Planets", and fell asleep. It was probably midnight by then. I did get up on time this morning though, but was somehow still a little late. I think it was only five minutes though, so that's not too bad.

I posted the "RULE" of the day a little earlier, and went back and read through some of my posts from July. It's amazing that I completely forget about things that I've written less than a month ago. Am I losing my mind?

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE...

2006-08-08T12:14:00.000-05:00

My time is very valuable today. So, I'm taking a few minutes of my lunch break to document my life findings of today.

First of all, I updated the "Rules". Today's isn't quite as good as yesterday's, but it still holds true.

I had some crazy dreams last night. Actually, I think all of them were related, so that would make it one crazy dream. The jest of the dream was that I was the leader of a group that was involved in a huge heist of some sort. My friend, Justin, was also involved, as was my Grandfather, which was really weird. One of the parts I really remember was messing some people up pretty bad, which isn't me at all. I'm not a proponent for violence in any way. I also remember Justin calling his friend Kevin and telling him, "You know how we set it up that if I had to disappear? Well, that time has come. So take care of everything." Then, my Grandfather was helping me set up a bomb of some sort, but I woke up before we got that squared away.

I've been following "Rules" today, as has one of our new hires. We've been working pretty much nonstop since I got here this morning. It just so happened that I was late, again. Today was a little worse than usual though. I was ready to leave at five 'til eight this morning, but my pineapple juice didn't want to play the "let's do this the easy way" game, and decided to spill out all over the place, thus forcing me to clean up the mess right away. Before I knew it, it was 8:15 and I was saying "Shit! I gotta go!" I guess it's a good thing that my office (cube to be exact) is on the opposite end of the floor than my bosses.

We've made a lot of headway on some reviews though, so all of the work has been good so far. I've got a ton of other stuff to be working on. I have to do this training, though, too, so I decided it's better to do it now, than wait for later, when it's crunch time!

Speaking of "crunch time"... Football season starts up soon. I'm in a NFL Fantasy league, but I've yet to check anything out. I just haven't found the time. I don't even know if we've already had our draft, but, if we have, I might be in trouble. I guess I'll need to check on that sometime soon. I've forgotten my username and password, so I can't do it at home. It automatically logs me in here at work, so I "have" to do it here, I guess. Aren't "cookies" great?

THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE...

2006-08-07T10:41:00.000-05:00

Today is the big day! My beautiful wife started her career, officially, this morning. By now, she's well into the day, and I'm sure she's doing great! I am very proud of her, and that's the truth. One of the stipulations of our getting married was that she'd get her education. She checked that off last December. I never made any stipulations that she had to have a job, but she wanted to (I think). I think she'll be a great teacher. First off, she loves kids, all of them; even the bad ones, really! Secondly, she loves school. Well, at least being in school and school supplies. All she needed was a reason to be around both all day. Of course, this may all change after a little while of running a classroom, but I doubt it.

I had a crazy dream this morning. I was dreaming that I couldn't wake up. I needed to wake up so that I could tell Adrianne something before she left. In my dream I was yelling at myself to wake up, but it did nothing. I was punching and slapping myself, hoping that would work, but it didn't. Somehow I ended up walking into the bathroom where she was getting ready and telling her "Honey, come wake me up! I can't wake up! Right now I'm sleeping and dreaming about talking to you, so I need you to wake me out of it!". She just looked at me like I'm crazy and told me to leave her alone.

I finally snapped out of my dream when I stopped breathing for a moment. Yeah, that was a lot of fun!

We didn't do too much this weekend. It was hot, hot, hot down here, and really didn't make you want to be outside too much. Also, it was Tennessee Tax Holiday weekend, so all of the shopping centers were nuts. We steered clear of them until yesterday, and they weren't all that bad.

We spent most of Saturday putting the finishing touches on Adrianne's classroom. I hadn't seen it yet, and I never saw the beginning product (well, I did in pictures), but she did an awesome job with the place! I did a couple little things here and there to help her out, but not too much. She put a lot of hard work into making her classroom look great!

Alright, well, I gotta get back to the grind. I've got people waiting on me to show them how to do things. Yeah, it's a riot being a teacher!

By the way, here is my latest installment of "RULES OF THUMB". I know it get old me posting about it on this blog, but Adrianne told me, otherwise, that she'd never find it, so you can blame (or thank) her for that one. I always forget to post it to, and have to come back and edit later on!

ROUGH NIGHT...

2006-08-04T08:44:00.000-05:00

I'll start off with the good stuff first. I added another "Rule" this morning. It's actually one of my favorites, so check it out!

Usually when someone has a rough night it's because they had some problems before they went to bed or they just didn't sleep well for some reason. Well, I had ZERO problems before I went to bed. In fact, I went to bed in a great mood. I also had no problem sleeping. I slept like a rock. However, while I was sleeping was a different story.

I started out this blog to keep a running journal of my dreams. I've kind of fallen out of that mode lately, and it's not been because I haven't been dreaming, but I haven't been writing them down or remembering them, so I just write about other things.

Well, I remember all of my dreams from last night, and most were not very pleasant, so this entry may get a little long today (it just depends on how much I really go into the dreams). I've decided against trying to break down the dreams, just because of the content and the events. So, here we go, again...

Dream #1: Adrianne and I have bought our first house. We spend all day trying to get things in the house, but nothing is in any order. For some reason our bedroom is in the basement, and our mattress is on the floor. We go to bed, but I've got a feeling about something. Before I fall asleep I think about some of the things I find in the house while I was cleaning it earlier that day. There was an old refrigerator in our bedroom and in it were a set of false teeth. Of course, I tossed them out, as well as the refrigerator.

I go through a mental checklist of things I needed to do before I went to bed, and it included locking the house up for the night. Or so I though. After I fall asleep (and just like in real life, I don't sleep very heavy) I hear our door open up, and know that someone else is in the room with us. I can't really move or open my eyes up all the way, but I reach my arm up and grab the throat of our intruder. Under the saggy flesh I feel a hard metal object, like a trachea tube, so I let go. I battle my eyes open and I can see a slumping figure with white hair.

I try to talk to the person, but it's difficult. I'm barely able to murmur "Wha... What... What do you..." I'm trying to ask what the person wants, but it just won't come out. Next, I feel the person sit down next to me and put their arm around behind my neck. I can hear Adrianne whispering "Say what you are trying to say."

I finally get it all out. "What do you want?" The person grabs my hand and puts it to their mouth, letting me feel the two teeth they have left. I say very lowly "teeth", then a little louder "teeth", and finally loud enough to wake myself up "TEETH!"

I actually said the last one out loud, because it woke Adrianne up too. She was laughing at me by this time, so I had to tell her about my dream. She had also just woken out of a dream, but I don't remember hers.

Dream #2: Bow-chicka-wow-wow! That's all you get to know about this dream!

Dream #3: This is one of the most disturbing dreams I've had in a very long time, and I hope it doesn't happen again for years!

I'm not sure how we got there, but Adrianne and I are sitting on a couch in some fictional house with yellow wallpaper that has little red flowers on it. The couch is an off-white color with a floral pattern on it. Obviously not something we'd own, so I'm assuming this wasn't our home.

Anyway, somehow a single bullet comes through one of the windows and hits Adrianne in the back. It doesn't kill her immediately, but she dies shortly thereafter, in my arms. In between the bullet hitting her and her dying, I have flashbacks of all of the wonderful times we've had together. It's a blur but I recognize bits and pieces. Our wedding was in there.

I have no recollection of a funeral, but the next thing I know I am walking through a field where I can see some flowers. They remind me of her and I want to take some pictures of them. Every time I approach them, they die. Somehow I'm in that house again, and when I get there I see a vase of beautiful flowers sitting on a window sill. As I approach them they wither and die.

I wake up crying.

That, I hate. I have no control over the complex emotions brought forth by my dreams, and they are hard to deal with in waking life. I can deal with them when they are presented while I'm conscious, but being unconscious is another story.

Adrianne's alarm clock went off just a moment or two after I woke up. She asked me if it was alright if she snoozed a little bit. I said "sure" and grabbed her and brought her closer to me. I was actually afraid she wasn't there with me. As though something actually happened to her as I laid there.

I whimpered to her... "I'm sad."

She asked "why?"

"I had a bad dream." It was like I was a kid all over again and telling my Mommy about a monster under my bed or something.

"Tell me, it's okay." She says.

"You died. I lost you." Tears flowing stronger as I eek it out.

Okay, I don't want to talk about it anymore today. Hopefully I'll get a chance to come back later and have a nice story to tell, because I don't like ending my entries on a sad note, because that's just not me. I'm too happy-go-lucky and like it that way.

JUST LIKE A PEANUT BUTTER AND CRACK SANDWICH!

2006-08-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

Okay, so yesterday I got hooked on this new form of crack. It's called Blog$hares. It's kind of like the stock market, but with blogs. Really, I just got started with it because I found out my blog was listed there and I was the 10th ranked blog in the "Memphis" industry (out of 31), and I wanted to find out how to be like George Jefferson, and "Move on up!"

I also spent all day waiting for the information, which I didn't get until this morning. It actually took my bosses boss making a phone call to get the person to get the info to me. I guess I was on the backburner, until upper-management stepped in. Yes, my ego is officially deflated now!

Actually it's not. I have too much work to do to really think about that whole situation anymore. I've got to dump all of the info into our database and then extract the stuff I need, clean it up, and compile my list again. Yes, it's sooooooooooo exciting!

I had another grand idea for my "Rules of Thumb" last night. Why it hit me when I was just on the brink of sleep is beyond me. Actually that's when most of my good ideas come to me. The only problem is that I rarely take the time to get up and write them down. Last night I did! Yippee!

Speaking of sleepy time... I discovered a new creature in my bed last night. Usually I just have a "Snuggler" in there with me, which isn't very obtrusive, but last night this rare animal showed up. I like to call it the "Diagonal Sleeping Snuggle Bear", or DSSB for short. The DSSB is rare in that it finds a way to completely cover from one corner to opposite corner, an entire King-sized bed, and push any other occupants into an uncomfortable sleeping position (commonly known as "Anywhere you can find room"). Here's hoping that this animal doesn't show up very often, because your's truly has a really, really stiff neck this morning.

DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE...

2006-08-02T09:05:00.000-05:00

You'd think by now that I'd get over being pissed off by other employees with my company, but I haven't. I discovered yesterday that the person who sends me the database information I'm using for my big project sent me the wrong information. He was supposed to send me information as of 6/30, but repeated the prior month and sent me 5/31. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you're dealing with sifting through nearly 7,000 accounts, it is. Now, whenever he sends me the correct information, I have to go through and do all of the things that I had been working on for the last two weeks, again. Yeah, it's loads of fun!

On a positive note... My honey surprised me with a great present yesterday. She's always too good to me, and always brings my spirits up! I know getting a movie isn't a big deal to some, but she got me a movie that she told me I wasn't going to get, unless someone got it for me as a present. I was already in the process of setting up a deal to get one of my coworkers to buy it for me as a gift, and then, in return, I would buy her lunch one day. At least that was the plan. I'm glad Adrianne got it for me instead, because it means a lot more coming from her!

We went and tried a new restaurant down here yesterday. To say it's "interesting" would be an understatement. The principal of the place is relatively simple. It's a hot dog parlor. They have all kinds of hot dogs, and the prices are really cheap. I got a chili cheese hot dog with chips (and they had baked Doritos) and a drink for less than four bucks! Here's the kicker... The name of the place is... DAWGIE STYLE!

Yes, "Dawgie Style"!

Let me give you a little sample of the menu items too, just to whet your appetite...

Mr. Dawgie Style $5.50 And you think size doesn't matter? This 13 inch Vienna Beef Dog served with your choice of toppings on a grilled sub bun will please any and all persons the Dawgie Style way.

The Sexy Dog $3.25 Served on a traditional or poppy seed bun, oozing with sour cream, tomato slices, shredded cheese, and one sports pepper, just to add some heat, and absolutely no onions.

Here's one of the last things on the menu:

You have entered the Dawgie Style position. So, now you have to choose... You can fix your specialty dog any way you like it. That's why we call it Dawgie Style, because you can do it your way.

Did I mention my hot dog was super tasty too? The smooth music in the joint was a little too romantic for three coworkers (two males and a female), but the place sure did put a smile on our faces!

Oh yeah, another update to the "Rules of Thumb".

THE LONG WEEKEND...

2006-08-01T08:49:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like taking a long weekend. Really! Usually our weekends end up being two days of driving and one day of running around trying to do everything and see everyone. Well, this weekend we actually got a little time to relax and do things we like to do.

I actually went golfing on Saturday with Adrianne's stepdad and his youngest son. After traveling to the middle of nowhere, we ended at Falls of Rough, Kentucky. If you know where it is, then I'm sorry. If you don't, then don't worry about looking it up or anything, it's not really worth your while. The golf course is pretty nice there though. The only problem is the price. I'm pretty sure that $48 for almost any course in Kentucky is a little pricy. We found out that every other day of the week the price is only $25, which is about right. It's a good thing we had a good time, otherwise I probably would've been pissed! As usual, I shot really, really poorly on the front 9, but my game started to come around on the back nine. My co-golfers did the exact opposite. They both shot pretty well on the front nice, but faded on the back nine. When you only place once or twice a year, it takes a little while to get used to what you are doing again. At least I got a nice blister on my heel for my troubles!

I spent most of Sunday with a splitting headache. Everyone kept telling me it was a hangover, but I knew it wasn't. I didn't even think it could've been from being dehydrated, because I was chugging water all day (both Saturday and Sunday). We finally decided that it was a touch of heat exhaustion, so I slept quite a bit that day. Adrianne went to a wedding shower and did some shopping with her Mom.

Speaking of the love of my life... Today is the big day! She "officially" started her career today. The kids don't report until next Monday, but she starts getting paid for being a teacher starting today, even though she'll just be in meetings and seeing new faces all day. Tomorrow she's got registration and "meet and greets" with the parents. Finally all of the stress and excitement has come to fruition.

As for me? I'm back at work, and trying to get back into the swing of things. I've got plenty of things to do, yet it's very hard to really start looking at anything. Truthfully, I could've probably taken another day or two off, just to keep the good times rollin'.

I've updated my "Rules of Thumb" this morning. I even added a second one today, since I was off yesterday and didn't put anything down. I wrote down one on Friday, which was the first post of the day, and another one has been rattling in my head since Sunday night, so that's the second one for the day. I've already got another "Rule" in my head, but I'm going to try to wait until tomorrow. I don't want to waste all of my good ideas. It's something that just bothers the shit out of me, and Adrianne thinks I'm an idiot for. Wait! That could be tons of things. I'd better start writing them down!

SEXY BITCHES AND DANCING ON THE CONSTITUTION...

2006-07-28T08:54:00.000-05:00

Okay, so one of these actually sounds pretty good, right? Yes, I thought so, and it just so happens that I consider myself a "sexy bitch" too! However, that's not what the title refers to. These were two focal points of a dream I had last night. Yes, I actually wrote a couple of things down.

What was going on was that I was with a huge group of friends in some big city where one of them lived. Anyway, my buddy keeps telling me that we have to go to "Grmhgpy's" (I couldn't make out the name of the place, and he said it at least ten times) because it's the only place where you could dance on the constitution. Not sure what that means, but you could supposedly do it there.

So, we go to this restaurant and the first thing that happens is we all sit down at this huge table and the server comes by and throws a huge turkey sandwich on the plates in front of us. He starts talking and says something like "Every time you hear (inaudible) you have to say 'SEXY BITCH'. Then, for every pound, (again inaudible) you have to do this dance!" The dance was kind of like the running man, but you had to get up on the table to do it.

It was all really odd, to tell the truth. He ended up asking a friend of mine (I guess, I don't really know who it was) that was sitting at the other end of the table some question, and everyone shouts out "Sexy bitch" and they all start getting up on the table to do the dance. I was just kind of sitting there. I was clueless. Such is life I guess.

Anyway, that was my crazy dream for the night! I've decided to start doing something on here, or maybe starting another blog about it, but, I'm going to start here, today. What I'm going to call it is my "Rules of Thumb". I'm always telling Adrianne, "As a rule of thumb, you should..." They're always little tidbits about anything and everything. It kind of came to me last night, right as I was trying to go to sleep. I'll try to post one everyday. Some may be helpful, most probably won't be though.

So, without further adieu...

Rule of Thumb #1:

Unless you were born in Bombay, have extensive knowledge of the backstreets of Calcutta, know where Muzaffarnagar is, or have the last name of Patel, then you probably should not try eating Indian food on three consecutive days. It's just not in your best interest. Believe me!

**EDIT: I started up another blog just for these "Rules". Check in HERE to see the details. It's not pretty, just yet, but I haven't had too much time to work on it. However, the rules will be there. I'll try to put a reminder on here every day though.**

WELL DUH!?!

2006-07-27T15:22:00.000-05:00

I just had an epiphany! It occurred to me while in the waning minutes of a "think session". I decided that I never want the outside world to control my little world. I see too many of my co-workers, bosses, and just business people in general that spend so much time watching the news, stock tickers, reading the Wall Street Journal or Business Weekly, yet have no idea about their own health, what's going on in their kids' and/or spouses' lives, or just what's happening right in front of them.

Personally, I think it's sad. Some may just say that I'm egotistical, and I should care more about what's happening across the globe and in New York (on Wall Street), but I don't. I own one stock, and that's because it's part of my retirement savings plan here at work. I don't have a clue how that stock is doing though. Nor do I care to watch it every second of every day. It's just not my bag of chips.

Okay, I'm done. I'm going back to my little world of thinking about "me" and Adrianne. Yeah, I might do a little work this afternoon too. Don't count on it though!

POOF! THEY'RE GONE!

2006-07-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I woke up this morning at 3:15 and had a great idea for my entry today. However, I fell back asleep before I wrote it down, so I've been struggling for thoughts. Instead, I've actually been working all morning. I know that's a huge surprise to many, but things have to get done around here. If I don't do it, then it won't get done!

Adrianne and I went to the ballgame last night with Mary Jo, and one of Adrianne's new co-workers and her husband. It was a good fit for us, since he's a sports guy, like myself, and his wife could care less, like mine. So, we ate some BBQ nachos in the first inning, then switched seats around so the fellas could talk sports and the girls could talk about whatever they talk about.

The game wasn't too great, since the Redbirds lost, again, but the company was good. We talked about a ton of things, and I may have found a football watching buddy to spend Sunday's with. That is, barring interference from our wives.

I decided to take lunch a little early today so that I could accompany my good friend Harsh to India Palace. You know good and damn well that I'm not going to pass up a chance to eat some Indian food, even though I've had it for three of my last six meals. Yeah, I'll pay for that later, but that's another story.

Okay, well a pretty boring post today, if I do say so myself. This is what happens when you can't stay awake long enough to write down the best ideas. I'm wondering how many times I've found the cure to cancer in my pre-waking thoughts. I guess it's a good thing I put that notepad by my bed, right?

OH GEEZ!!!

2006-07-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

What a crazy night of sleep I had! Because of it, I feel like I didn't sleep at all. There are only two things that I can blame it on though... Beer (Blue Moon to be exact) and Indian food. I didn't take any sleep aids or sinus pills last night, so that doesn't help. I had some crazy-assed dreams in there, one of which makes me realize that my wife is actually going to be working very, very soon!

I can't remember the dreams, but I know I had at least four of them, and one of my wife and I talking about her teaching and the kids and stuff. This is nearly amusing, because we had a good discussion about it while we were eating dinner.

For dinner I made some Korma Coconut chicken over Basmati rice. Yes, it's as tasty as it sounds. Actually, I was very, very pleased with how it turned out. I had some expectations, and it fully exceeded them. I think it'll be a long time before I head to India Palace, now, since it cost me less than five dollars for the whole meal, and I have enough leftover for another serving. The only thing we were missing was the Naan, and we're going to get that next time!

After dinner we met Mary Jo up on the rooftop to enjoy a cold beverage and a beautiful evening. We just barely missed the sunset, but that's okay. I may complain about the heat during the day, but the evenings have been nothing short of gorgeous! For some reason the humidity has been dissipating and there's been a wonderful breeze floating through downtown. Who could ask for anything more? TOYOTA!

One last tidbit... Those close to me already know this, but I had knee surgery back in 1994 (to remove a bone spur on my left knee). Anyway, for some crazy reason, I've, just now, started to really have some problems with it again. I can't leave my knee in any one position for more than about 15 seconds or it gets stiff and I can't move it to another position without some excruciating pain. Yeah, this doesn't really work into my sleeping schedule, as you could guess. So, right now, Adrianne and I are trying to figure out what kind of dietary supplement may help my problem. We've researched cherry juice, since it's supposed to be good for arthritis, which is what we're figuring my problem is (more like hoping, anyway). I've been on a steady stream of Tylenol and Advil for the past two weeks, and, truthfully, it's getting pretty old. But, some days are better than others, but it's really putting a damper on my walking up and down stairs (to get a little exercise in).

Oh well, there's the installment for today. I've got a big day of sifting through information! Hopefully I can find what I'm looking for! Damn, I wish "Zombie Day" was still here!

WHEN ZOMBIES ARE INVOLVED, COMEDY INSUES...

2006-07-25T11:03:00.000-05:00

There's really not much going on. I've been working on my "project" pretty much all morning, but thought I'd take a break, read some news, and make a short post. In the middle of all of this I wandered into our break room here at work and looked up at the TV. Most of the people here usually leave the channel on MSNBC, FOX News, or some sort of crappy channel like that (really, who wants to actually watch news all day long?). Today was no different.

As I looked up, I saw our President, George "Duh"-bya Bush, talking about Iraq. Nothing new there. He seems to be on the TV everyday talking about Iraq. Well, in between groping the German Chancellor and talking shit with English PM Tony Blair, anyway.

Anyway, I started to just head straight for the water fountain when something cool flashed across the ticker on the bottom of the screen. I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was close to "Zombies arrested for dancing in Minneapolis". My first thought was "Huh? I gotta check this out!"

Well, the news wasn't going off of President Bush anytime soon, so I v-lined it straight back to my desk to do a Google News search for "Zombie". Here's what it came up with. The story I was actually looking for is located here, but I'll give a synopsis. Supposedly, a group of people, all adults except one juvenile, were dressed up like zombies dancing around the Mall of America. They happened to have some backpacks with them that had radios or something in them, and the police, somehow, thought they had fake "Weapons of Mass Destruction". That was cause enough to arrest them.

That, however, wasn't the most interesting Zombie news of the day!! I was delighted that something is actually going on in Iowa these days (I lived there for a short while, so I'm free to poke as much fun as I want!). Well, if you can consider THE UNDEAD being "something going on". Zombies pillaged through the streets in Iowa City here recently, scaring the shit out of old people and children alike. I'm thinking I may just have to make it back up to Iowa the next time they have one of these "Zombie Rallies", because it sure as hell sounds like a load of fun!

Lastly, a little closer to my old hometown... This is going on in Louisville! You know that if I were back in BG or Owensboro, I would SO being heading to L'ville to be an extra in this movie. Really, who wouldn't want to be covered in blood while eating intestines? Sounds like a party to me!

Anyway, have a great "ZOMBIE" day! That's what I'm officially making July 25th, from here on out.

Oh, and I'm a horrible son! I forgot to call my Mom yesterday on her birthday. We, technically, celebrated it over the weekend, but I still should've called. I just happened to remember this morning when I flipped my calendar over to today.

So, the day after my Mom's birthday is now, officially, "Zombie Day". Well, I felt like a Zombie when I woke up this morning, so, at least, I'm doing my part!

IF YOU'RE HERE... THEN WHO'S TENDING TO HELL?

2006-07-24T11:17:00.000-05:00

That's kind of what I was thinking about last week, with the weather. Now, it doesn't really relate to any single person, but I'd almost swear that Satan, himself, came down to Memphis, just so he could warm up a little bit. Supposedly Hell's kind of cold this time of year?

Well, we got a reprieve from the scorching temperatures. I wasn't here in Memphis over the weekend, but, instead, was up in a little town called Salem, in Missouri. I'm not sure what the population is, but it's a little hole in the wall. Some of my family still lives there, namely both of my Grandmothers, which is reason enough to go back occasionally. This weekend, however, was our annual family reunion.

Most years the temperature is usually pushing the century mark, and the way it felt on Friday when we left, I assumed the same. We got a very nice surprise when we woke up Saturday morning and it was still in the 70's. The peak temperature for the day was 83 degrees, and there was a nice little breeze blowing. Absolutely perfect weather for a family reunion.

I spent most of my time with my cousins, playing softball. We don't have quite enough to get a full game going, so we altered things a little bit. I haven't played softball since I moved to Memphis, and I used to be a pretty decent player. Well, that's all gone! I was lucky to hit the ball out of the infield, and usually I just popped it up. I'm really going to have to get back into playing some sports around here! Otherwise, when Adrianne and I finally have a rookie or two, I won't be able to help them learn the game. That would suck!

Okay, so that's my update for today. I'm actually working away, again, this week. I've officially started my "project", and I'll be pretty busy for, oh, say the next three months! You'll be lucky to hear from me everyday, but I'll try!

GROUP INTERVENTION...

2006-07-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

Not for me though, even though I probably need it for something! I should probably forewarn you that this may get a little long today. I've got a lot to talk about!

Since getting married, Adrianne and I have been thinking about trying to get into some groups and activities in and around our new "home" here in Downtown Memphis. We had our first chance last night when we attended our first "Downtown Neighborhood Association" monthly meeting. It will probably be our last too. We invited our neighbor, Mary Jo, to join in the fun with us.

I don't really have too many problems with people being in their own little "cliques", even though I thought that was supposed to end in high school, but I have other issues with this group. A few of the folks who were members were nice enough. They introduced themselves and talked a little with us. We actually met a very nice couple that live further north down Main Street from us, whom I wouldn't mind hanging out with some more. Most of the people at the function were middle-aged and older, which is also fine with me. There were a few 30-somethings (which I guess I am now?), but very few young professionals (meaning still in their 20's), which was a big surprise.

There was one main MC and he did well and was very cordial. His wife was actually sitting behind me, but I'll get to that later. They had a few different speakers, all of which were interesting, and only spoke for a few minutes each.

The first speaker was a lawyer who was running to be a district court judge. It just so happened that he was on "The Apprentice" some time ago. Obviously everyone else knew this, but I didn't, so it didn't mean anything to me. Believe me! I'm not going to vote for someone based solely on the fact that they were on a crappy "reality" TV show. Instead, tell us your merits and what you'd like to do if elected. That means a lot more to me. Personally, I think he pushed the fact that he was on the TV show too much. That can't be the focus of your candidacy, can it?

The next speaker was the entertainment coordinator for Isaac Hayes restaurant. They have music acts there all the time, and are currently trying to revive "dinner theater" in Memphis. She talked about the show they are doing, which is "A Raisin in the Sun", and the actors, and, of course, the cost (which isn't bad at all). I think Adrianne and I may try to do this, but it is the day before her first day of teaching.

Lastly, the President of MLG&W, Joseph Lee, talked to us for a little while. By this time the natives were getting a little restless or drunk, or both. More often than not, I was straining to hear the speaker (whom I was actually interested in hearing what he had to say) because the two loudmouth women (yes, the MC's wife and her buddy) behind were constantly chattering. If they weren't talking, then everyone else behind them were wrapped up in their own conversations.

You know, it really is rude to talk while someone is on stage, taking time out of their personal schedule, to talk to you. I guess a lot of these people didn't get that idea. It infuriated me that the MC's wife was the worst of the bunch.

The nice couple we met (who have paid their dues and are part of the DNA) were even getting angry about it. More than 10 times they turned around and shot ugly glares at the two cocktail princesses behind me.

At several points I wanted to stand up, interrupt our speakers (any of them, since people were talking throughout all three of them), and just yell out "SHUT THE FUCK UP PEOPLE! WE HAVE SOMEONE SPEAKING UP HERE!!!" Obviously, I did the smart thing and kept my trap shut.

The meeting was held at a small little tavern on Main Street, in between Beale Street and the South Main Arts district. I'm not sure how many people showed up, but there was enough that we were packed in tight, and it was H-O-T, hot! As soon as Mr. Lee finished speaking we headed for the door.

This gave us an opportunity to actually talk to Mr. Lee a little while longer, which was a really pleasant experience. Personally, I think he has an eye on politics very soon. We thought he was a politician when he came into the bar in the first place, but that's another story.

Anyway, we talked for a little while outside of the tavern, and since we were walking back toward our humble abode, he walked and talked with us. We talked about a plethora of things, including, but not limited to, Memphis' growth. It's sad, but that was the highlight of the meeting for us.

All three of us left the actual meeting disappointed. Not a single one of us plan on attending again, nor joining this "association". It may be our loss, who knows? However, if most of these people can't show enough respect for people that have busy personal and professional lives, that are cutting into both to talk to you for a little while, then so be it. Also, when a speaker is talking to you, it's just rude to get drunk and not pay attention to them. You never know, you might have learned something if you were listening.

So, now we're going to try to find another "association" to join. Supposedly there is a South Main Neighborhood Association that meets monthly too. Now, we live at the very beginning of South Main, but I think we will still count. Supposedly it's a different group. I certainly hope it is. I might just get mad enough to say how I'm really feeling if I encounter the same thing again.

We did end the evening on a high note though. We stopped in for a little snack and some Texas Margaritas at Rio Loco. !!Que Bueno!!

Yes, tequila calms even the most savage of beasts!

HO HUM...

2006-07-20T11:44:00.000-05:00

Well, there's nothing really exciting happening here today. I've gone through my project, again, and checked to make sure everything is working properly. It looks like it is. Now comes the fun part... Implementation!

I really do feel sorry for my coworkers, because I just keep changing things on them. They get used to one thing, and I change it around, or work something else into it. However, if all goes well, this should be the last "major" update to the function. I'm sure there will be some small glitches here and there, but I fully expect that.

I've got one thing left to do this week, and I plan on knocking it out this afternoon. That would leave me with not much to worry about tomorrow. I could start on my next "BIG" project, but what fun would that be? Actually, I probably will start on it, because my bosses are already asking for information on it, and I have none. Zip, zero, nada!

Maybe I'll spend the better part of tomorrow cleaning out my overhead shelving units, because they are a mess. Every time Adrianne comes by to visit she tells me that I need to clean it up, but I never do. I have a little more control over her wishes when I'm here at work, so I have to take full advantage of it!

Oh, and one last thing... I got to tell one of the "power's that be" that they screwed something up today! How fun is that? This is one of the same people that kept important information away from me, so it made it all the more fun. Of course, I didn't call him a dumbass, like he (virtually) did when he found out I was working on this project. Instead, I was very nice about it, because I think he's figured out that I'm a little smarter than he originally thought. I love corporate politics!

WORK IS FUN!

2006-07-19T10:08:00.001-05:00

Well, sometimes anyway! Actually, it's not all that bad when you're doing something that you find interesting and challenging. It's not so much fun when you're sitting at your desk, in a cubicle, doing the same monotonous thing every single day since last September. Yes, it's been nearly a year since I was on the road for work.

Don't misunderstand me though, I am still here in Memphis, not in Atlanta, with the rest of my coworkers. I don't mind too much though, except that it would've been nice to get to see my friend Jason and his wife Aspen again.

Anyway, I've been working since I got here, shortly after 8 am this morning. Okay, shortly is stretching it. I was at least 15 minutes late today. However, I was here until almost 5:45 last night, so that makes up for it. I was the last person to leave the office, so I'll carry those "points" with me.

Lastly, since I'm just rambling today, I had to type into a "test" section on what I was working on, just to see how much it would take to fill up the area, and this is what came out of my head:

In the beginning there were only amoeba and sea creatures. The sea creatures became angry and wanted to see more than just the dark waters below them. So, they took the initiative to wander upon land from time to time. Before long, they began to like the land more than the water. The longer they stayed, the more their bodies started to change. After thousands of years they began sprouting limbs, and, before long, could use these limbs. Next came guns.

Umm... okay...

Oh yeah, that filled up the "test" section, so it was alright. Even the print preview was perfect. Now, back to the "GRIND"!

PROBLEM SOLVED...

2006-07-18T12:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, I had a 9 am meeting this morning with "The Power's that Be" and have been enlightened. Luckily for me, my BIG boss went with me. He asked the all important question that I wanted to ask. "Was that information is this (pointing to the manual)?"

The answer we received was... Wait for it... "Not explicitly."

Beautiful isn't it? There's nothing like intentionally hiding things to keep the rest of us ignorant, right? Sounds a lot like our government, no? Maybe "they" are aspiring for a career in politics?

Onward... After being "let in" on the secret, it took a matter of 10 minutes for me to fully interpret and install the missing pieces in my project, and guess what? It worked... PERFECTLY!

Imagine that! If you have the information things will work the way they're supposed to. Keep this in mind at all times people! You wouldn't try to start up a car without gasoline in it, right?

Okay, I'm done ranting for today. It's been a good morning. I've been busy getting this "automobile" functional, and I'm going to give it a full "test drive" this afternoon. Yep, I'm finished with car jargon for the day too.

ANGER MANAGEMENT...

2006-07-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

Very, very few things in my personal life ever piss me off. That is because, I, to some extent can control those things. I don't let arguments between my wife and I bother me too much. Nor do I let the stupid little things that I do bother me. Usually I just laugh them off.

However, my professional life is a complete different story. Nothing pisses me off more than something that is so far out of my control, yet affects me so much. I'm dealing with an issue like this as I type. I've been working on it all morning, and it's just gets worse and worse. The sad thing is that it would be okay if it ended at my boss's boss, but, unfortunately, it goes much further up the food chain.

Now, out of respect for Adrianne (who believes that she only learns things about me via reading this), I'm going to hold off getting into it all. I really do want to talk to her about it, even though I've already talked to my bosses, and they know I'm a little upset. Either way it doesn't matter, because no one that I talk to about it has any control, nor can change anything. This situation sucks with a capital "UCK"!

For once, it's not me being the idiot, but people that are making a lot more money than myself. Now that is scary!

Thanks for letting me get a little of it off my chest. I'll, probably, revisit this tomorrow.

SELF DEPRICATION...

2006-07-17T09:49:00.000-05:00

I know I call myself an idiot way too often, but, sometimes, it's just true. I have two proofs to back up my initial though, and they came this weekend.

#1: Exactly like I said in my post on Friday (which I was using to remind myself), I forgot to pack underwear. Needless to say, it was slightly warm in Owensboro this weekend, and there was definitely something needed to "soak up" the sweat from those special places. Luckily for me I have a loving wife that understands my shortcomings and that will go out of her way to go buy me some "backups".

#2: I still have some of the suntan I had when we went to Mexico on our honeymoon. Not all of it, mind you, but still a pretty good tan. Well, having a "pretty good tan" does not keep you from getting a nasty sunburn. I proved this so well on Saturday. However, I did look around the house for some sunblock, because I knew I'd need it on my shoulders and face. I couldn't find it however. I was "Home Alone" for most of Saturday, but without the hands on my cheeks and screaming. Also, there were no thieves trying to jack Adrianne's parent's goodies. I looked in the normal places, and even tried to call Adrianne to find out (which she didn't answer), but had no luck. So, I braved it without sunblock. I tried to do it relatively smart, by staying out in the sun for a little while, then getting out and sitting in the shade for a while, then repeating the process. Yeah, didn't work!

Do you realize how uncomfortable it is to put a long sleeved dress shirt on over badly sunburned shoulders and then walk out into 100 degree heat? No? Well, I'm telling you that it sucks. Maybe I'll stop being a dumbass sometime soon?

On another front... I had a dream last night where I returned to my old job in Owensboro. I had all of my knowledge from my current job, but it didn't help me too much, because I couldn't scale it down for the clientele up there. There were lots of familiar faces in the dream from that job too. They were all the people that I thought would've been at the wedding but didn't show up. Coincidence? I think not. I was discussing this with Justin over the weekend, that I didn't realize the people that weren't there until well after the event, and it was kind of sad (to me).

Oh well! They missed out on some crazy breakdancing!

DRUNKEN... STUPOR...

2006-07-14T09:18:00.000-05:00

It has become abundantly obvious that my tolerance for alcohol has severely diminished. I went out with one of my buddies last night and after four beers (Black and Tan's) in four hours, I was wasted. I'm talking about worthlessly wasted too. I made it home in one piece though. Luckily it was only a three block stroll.

When I got home, though, it was light's out! Actually I tried to get some things together for our trip up to Owensboro this weekend, but all I accomplished was spreading clothes all over the bedroom floor. Hopefully Adrianne is able to decipher my outfit choices. I guess I'll find out when I open up our luggage tonight when we reach our destination. I just hope she remembers to throw me some "drawers" (pronounced: "draaaaaaaws") in there, otherwise it might get a little interesting this weekend.

Not too much else going on. Today is my co-worker, and buddy, Kenny's last day with us. He's leaving the bank to go to graduate school up at Cornell, in Ithica, NY. Yes, that's an Ivy League school, and, yes, I'm pretty proud of my boy. I know there's no way I could do it. Not that I'm not smart enough, but I've been working long enough and just couldn't go back to being poor and in college, and that's the way it would have to be (most likely). I'm sure it probably wouldn't hurt my career to get my master's degree or something though.

Maybe I'll think about it? It's not going to be today though. I've got a pretty good sinus headache, from all of the smoke at the bar, and my tummy just isn't taking anything very well this morning.

NADA...

2006-07-13T09:21:00.000-05:00

Not really much happening on my front. I'm tired again this morning. However, I had a ton of dreams last night, with at least two of them being funny, since I woke up laughing. However, I wasn't coherent enough at any time to write anything down. That would be because I took a Melatonin vitamin supplement before I headed to bed. After the unrestful night of sleep the prior night, I didn't want to take any chances.

Adrianne's classroom is coming along, I think. She has worked hard on it since Monday, but wasn't able to take any pictures to show me. Unfortunately, they lock the joint down at 3:30 during the week, and don't open on the weekends, so I won't be able to help her out much at the school. I really need to help her out at home, with the stuff she brings home to work on, but I'm kind of burned out when I get home and have no desire to do anything. It was a struggle enough last night just to make us some dinner. However, I took care of it and we both received our necessary nourishment.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I actually woke up with a song in my head. I haven't been listening to much music lately, mostly because I've been doing some training at work and I can't really "rock out" while I'm trying to show someone how to do something. Anyway, I woke up with "All the Small Things" by Blink-182 in my head. Not sure why though. I kept singing "She left me roses by the stairs... Surprises let me know she cares."

Now, I'm sitting here wondering what silly things will pop into my head today. I talked to my boy PT last night, and it was the first chance we've had to discuss the World Cup Final. Zidane finally had a press conference yesterday and the Italian player supposedly called him "The son of a Terrorist Whore". Yeah, that would probably piss me off a little bit too. I doubt I would've headbutted him though. I think a piledriver would be more suitable. What an asshole!

WHY, WHY, WHY???

2006-07-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure why some things pop into my head, but they do. Just a few minutes ago was another prime example. I had the most inane, and, quite frankly, disgusting thought to date.

"What happens if an astronaut, in space, has to drop a deuce (take the kids to the pool, talk to a guy about a snake, poop, etc)?"

Really, I don't know why I would want to know this, but I was thinking that it could really get messy, with the whole "lack of gravity" thing. Am I wrong?

Man, I really need to concentrate on my work!

By the way, for some reason I've been arguing over on Hilltopper Haven a lot recently. I'm not sure why, but I apologize to anyone that's been caught in the wake of wake of my wrath! On the flip side, I haven't been arguing with my wife very much lately, so it's an equal trade off that I'm sure she's happy about!

VALUABLE LESSON LEARNED...

2006-07-12T08:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've heard that you're supposed to learn something new everyday, right? Well, I got my lesson late last night, or early this morning. It just depends on how you look at it. The lesson is this...

If you go to bed at 8:30, but don't immediately make yourself go to sleep, then you deserve to get a shitty night's sleep.

Adrianne and I went out to eat at Texas de Brazil for the first time ever last night. We went really, really early, only because that's when our 50% coupon would work, so, therefore, we were back home, stuffed, very early. I think we were home before 6:30.

Eating at TdB is kind of like Thanksgiving. You know you've eaten too much and you're going to be tired afterward, but for some strange reason you keep eating. I couldn't imagine trying to drive home after eating there! I'm sure I would've fallen asleep at the wheel. Luckily I don't fall asleep too often while walking. However, it was a miserable walk back home!

We got home and Adrianne wanted to work on something for her classroom, so I played some Xbox. By the time 7:30 rolled around both of us were struggling to keep our eyes open. I stayed on the couch as long as possible, but couldn't fight it any more by 8:30. So, I grabbed a movie and we headed to bed. I popped "The Bourne Identity" into the DVD player and fired it up. Adrianne lost consciousness about half-way through, and I battled on. I made it nearly to the end when I told myself "Enough is enough!"

It was just before 10 pm when I rolled over, and from then until 5:30 this morning it was a nonstop exercise in sleep futility. I couldn't get comfortable. If I got comfortable then I couldn't breathe. Once I got comfortable and could breathe, then I had to pee. So, you see how this is going, right?

By the time the alarm went off this morning I was completely exhausted. All around my mouth was covered with a nasty white film, which means when I did sleep, I was breathing through my mouth, which is not a good thing! I finally rolled out of bed at 7:44, and ended up at least 15 minutes late to work.

Man, I hope the day gets better than it started!

PART DEUX...

2006-07-11T15:20:00.000-05:00

Yaay for me! I passed! First time at that. I was sitting here this morning, shortly after posting and thought to myself "Self, why don't you go ahead and go now. There probably won't be anyone there right now."

How right I was. However, before I hopped in my car and traveled the six or eight blocks away I check their webcams to see how the traffic was. Amazingly enough, all three of the places were completely empty. The Washington Ave location is the closest to me, so I went there.

In order to get there, though, I had to travel by 201 Poplar. This place is known as "The Jail" down here, and there are always some interesting folks hanging out around this place. Today was no different, especially at 9:30 in the morning.

It's so nice to get out every now and then!

Now I just have to mail in my registration and I'm done with it all! Now I just have to decide if I want to sell my car! Ugh!

LIVING IN THE CITY LIMITS...

2006-07-11T08:51:00.000-05:00

Today I get to do one of the most time consuming things on the planet. I get to sit in line at the DWV and wait for my turn to get my 1998 Honda Civic tested for emission standards. Yes, it's a whole bunch of fun! You line up behind 30 other cars and sit in the heat and humidity with your windows down or A/C on for as long as it takes. This is one of the highlights of living within the city. We have to make sure that we're not polluting our air with our cars. I'm all for that, if I actually drove my car, ever.

However, what about all of the people that live out east, in the county, that drive down here every day? They don't have to be tested for emissions, and they're the one's the do most of the driving, right? I'm still working on figuring this one out. I would think that if you worked within the city limits you'd have to have your automobile tested for emission standards. That's just me though!

Last year I had the goofiest thing in the world happen while I was going through this exact process. I failed. Now, it wasn't miserably, but my car failed nonetheless. However, it wasn't that my car failed that was so silly to me. It was the fact that the two cars on each side of me passed (as far as I know anyway) that was ridiculous. To my right there was a late 80's Cadillac with a trunk that wouldn't close and a battered in passenger side. To my left was a 1982 Chevy Cavalier that didn't have a bumper nor any rear taillights. Yet my 1998 Honda Civic, in pristine shape didn't pass? Yes, I'm as confused as you.

So, I read over the paper they gave me that listed possible reasons for my failure. First and second on the list were "in need of an oil change" and "change out air filter". Well, I knew I was a little overdue for an oil change, but since I hadn't driven my car more than 700 miles since my last oil change I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. As for the air filter, I didn't remember the last time I had changed it out. So, I paid to get my oil change, which, if I had a place to do it, I would just do it myself and save the coin. I also went and paid $8 for a new air filter and replaced that. I returned to the emissions testing center and, surprisingly, passed with flying colors.

This year I went ahead and had the oil changed this last weekend and replaced the air filter. I'm not a big fan of doing something twice if I don't have to! Wish me luck!

At least I can just mail in my registration stuff, instead of walking down the street and waiting in line for them to take care of something that takes a total of 30 seconds to complete. I wish I would've started this blog when I first moved here, just so I could've told the stories of my getting my driver's license and my car registered. That was a ton of fun. Oh, and I almost forgot about registering to vote. I'm still not sure my vote was counted? Maybe Memphis is the reason we got another four years of "you know who"?

SHORT AND SWEET?

2006-07-10T08:42:00.000-05:00

I was recently told that my posts were way too long, so I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf and try to make them less of a marathon and closer to a mini-marathon. You have to understand that I'm a storyteller, and a long-winded one at that.

Luckily for anyone that may be reading this, I don't have a lot to talk about today. We didn't do much of anything this weekend. We're going to be on the road during every weekend, for the rest of the month, so we thought we'd just lay low.

About the only exciting thing we did was go see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest". It was, as expected, excellent. When has Johnny Depp made a shitty movie? Well, take out "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and we'll be on the same page. I'm a little disappointed with the ending of this episode of "Pirates", but I understand what is going on. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for the next episode though.

I will say this about our viewing of the movie, then I'll close for the day (in order to slim this post down a little bit)... Why do parents take small children to see movies like this?

I couldn't imagine, as a 6 or 7 year old, seeing this movie. I'd have nightmares for months. The movie is dark and scary, just like the first one, if not worse. Not to mention, one of the previews prior to the movie was for "The Descent", which is rated R and extremely scary looking. They actually showed lots of blood and the creature-people going after the main actors.

As for kids seeing "Pirates"... I guess that's up to the discretion of the adults. They make good, solid decisions all the time, right? Well, I know I don't, thus I don't have any children yet.

Lastly, we watched the final match of the World Cup yesterday and it was pretty good. Those crazy Italians pulled it off. I'm still scratching my head over what Zidane did late in the overtime. I'm going to go now and do some reading. Maybe he actually did an interview and said what really happened. I'm still perplexed over it!