Get Ready for Lies & Exaggerations

MDH and I are spending New Year's in Columbus and I can hardly keep still I'm so excited. Well, I guess I'm sitting still enough to write this blog post, but anyway, you'll just have to trust me - I'm excited. I'll be surrounded by my old friends in a city I know like the back of my own hand. Home.

We're not staying long (driving back early Saturday), but I think I've managed to work out a schedule which will maximize friend hanging time and also take full advantage of the old neighborhood while we are there. In fact I think I'm most looking forward to Friday afternoon because I've planned an unplanned day in our old neighborhood.

The beauty of planning an unplanned day is that I don't know exactly where we will end up, but I'm sure it will include lunch (maybe here or perhaps here) and possibly a movie. I don't care where else we go but we are definitely going here. Maybe.

Meanwhile I leave you with a super long winded post including a bullet point list of random bullshit I was thinking of yesterday at work when I was unable to concentrate from the anticipation of our trip.

• Remember weekend before last when I posted the snowy photo and bitched about having to go to the Supermarket? Well, here's what happened. I did not go. Not only did I not go, but I waited until the Tuesday before Christmas and made MDH go with me. Oh, and get this - he is the one who pushed the shopping cart through the slushy parking lot. It was pretty great.
  
  
• I realized on Christmas day when I was hanging out at my friend Rachel's that I haven't had a cigarette in well over 6 months. I hadn't been keeping track. All I know is this:
  
  I think I'm done smoking.
  
  I think about smoking sometimes, especially when I'm watching an old movie or god forbid a French movie, but then I remember that heavy feeling I used to have in my chest and the way my all coats used to stink and I get over it. It's not a horrible gnawing craving like I used to get, more like I think to myself Oh, this is a moment where I might normally want to smoke my fucking head clean off but I don't do that anymore.
  
  (I realize that I have posted about not smoking before, but this time I really mean it. I used to cheat here and there and I haven't even been doing that.)
  
• In related news I also realize at this moment, as I sit here typing this, my pants are too damn tight and that while it's all terrific and shit and goody for me that I haven't smoked for six months, I have meanwhile gotten fat as a fucking manatee, and am currently wishing that it would be acceptable behaviour for me to sit here in my cube with my pants off. Can't I at least unbutton my pants? Jesus.
  
  
• In other related news, as there was no one else around at the time to disagree with us, last week MDH and I declared for the record that there is no better vehicle for salt and butter than the potato. We decreed it officially a fact.
  
  
• Corn and many of it's related derivatives come in a close second.
  
  
• I saw over at Gwen's place a little thing where she tells 10 honest things and have decided to do one myself. Hence the title of this post. I'll probably do it when I get back from Ohio.
  
  
• I already mentioned that I spent Christmas Day at Rachel's house but I didn't tell you that I simultaneously got to meet her mother, step dad and niece visiting from Washington state and her boyfriend of 6 months.



• Impressions:



• Boyfriend adores Rachel and seems to treat her with appropriate reverence.
  
  
• Boyfriends young daughter, decked out in what I was told was sparkly princess outfit #3 of the day and sporting the dark circles and glassy stare that can only result from the exact combination of three things
  
  
• 1. Being under 6 years of age
  
  
• 2. Being awake and in constant motion since 4am and it is now 8pm.
  
  
• 3. It is Christmas and you still believe in Santa.
  
  
• She is the most well behaved and pleasantly demeanored youngster I have encountered in a very long time.

Hey look! I managed to give you bullets and numbers. Damn I'm good.

Oh, and by the way, that's me at the top there on Christmas day about a million years ago. I'm pulling the string on my new Drowsy doll. Click here to find out what happens next.

Does anybody remember the Drowsy doll? I adored this doll and carried it around with me until she nearly disintegrated.

She appeared a bit stoned and a more appropriate name may have been Whiney. When you pulled the string she said annoying bratty things like "I wanna drinka water!!" or "I wanna stay u-up!" How annoying is that?

Wishing You and Yours

and what the hell? Everyone else too!

Seriously. Thanks to all who read this blog and write blogs of your own who make me smile every day with your comments and amazing writing skills.

Winter Blows

This is the current view standing inside my front door. So grim that I didn't even have the balls to step out onto the porch or even open the storm door to take the picture. I should state for the record that the plow guy was just here not more than 20 minutes ago and the driveway has already disappeared again.

Shitfuckdamn. I hate winter.

The only thing worse than this view from inside my front door is standing there looking at it knowing that I have to go out to the supermarket. We are out of everything. Eggs, milk, orange juice, coffee creamer. The only fresh produce I have at the moment is 3 garlic bulbs and 2 Spanish onions so old they are sprouting green roots.

The only thing worse than this view and knowing that I have to go the supermarket in this mother fucking horrible weather is the thought of maneuvering a shopping cart across an icy, slushy parking lot.

You know what? We are too fat and over indulged in this house anyway. I mean these are tough times and so I need to learn to be more resourceful and make due with what I have instead of all this gross consumerism I've been willingly participating in for so long. Who needs coffee creamer when you have tea? Who needs fresh orange juice when you've got an old grape Kool-aid packet left over from 1992? Besides I just brushed my teeth, why would I want to eat onions?

I'm not leaving the house today and nothing can make me.

Oh darn, I left the baby on the bus.

Good Morning!

Am a allowed to be this chipper when it's so early that I haven't even had coffee yet?

I say yes.

It is Sunday after all, so cut me some slack bitches. I can't help it. I'm naturally perky damn it.

I've been tagged by the lovely Gwen over at Everything I Like Causes Cancer for Splotchy's story virus. How thrilling! I'm going to give it a whirl and hope to keep it moving by tagging Linka over at Stop Looking at My Screen... Nosy! I've never tagged Linka before so I don't know if she's game. Are you game Linka?

Directly below, italicized and slightly tiny, is what I assume is the nugget of Splotchy's original idea and then below that in blue is the story:

Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

- The story begins -
The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

I hunched down to see what it was, but as I did, the bus violently veered to left. I was thrown up against a heavyset Asian woman with blond hair. I pardoned myself, but she faced forward with no reply. Just then, a man wearing a jumpsuit of silver and gold stood up at the front of the bus. He was holding a megaphone and a box of graham crackers. He held the megaphone up to his face and began to speak... (Some Guy)

"Yukon Cornelius was the greatest prospector that ever lived!" Waving the box of graham crackers over his head, "And the silver and gold nuggets in this box were mined by him at the North Pole!" It was then I noticed the box under the seat was also filled with graham crackers. Not name-brand ones made by the tree-dwelling elves, but the generic kind that come in white boxes meagerly labeled in big black letters: GRAHAM CRACKERS. Probably made by a guy named Butch who masturbates at lunch and doesn't wash his hands.

"And I had a whole bunch more right here on this bus until one of you misfits stole it! Gimme back my silver and gold!"

As I contemplated the man's sanity the bus stopped at a red light, throwing the woman next to me into a fit of rage. Before I knew what was happening she had tossed me out of her way onto the floor and was lunging for the kook with the microphone. Her wig flew across the aisle as she jumped on the man's back and sunk her toothless gums into his shoulder. The two of them went down like a pine tree headed for a Boy Scout lot.

The driver, startled by the commotion, looked up into his overhead mirror, accidentally removing his foot from the brake, and the bus rolled into the busy intersection. (Gwen)

He jammed his foot on the brake as soon as he looked up and saw the traffic coming at his bus from all directions and although he escaped the horrors of causing a multi-car pile up he was only mildly relieved. The driver was far too pissed off with his rowdy passengers to even notice that he had narrowly missed plowing over a woman pushing a baby stroller filled with kittens across the street.

It was just as well because had he noticed he might have been very disappointed. The bus driver really hated kittens, but he had bigger matters at hand. He parked the bus and stormed his way back to Yukon Corneilius and the wig-less Asian lady who were currently engaged in what could only be described as a combination of Sumo wrestling and the Foxtrot. (The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch)

Memo to Myself: What's Up Chuck?

I send emails to myself throughout the day while I'm at work when I am suddenly struck upside the head with brilliant ideas that I believe (at that moment) would make brilliant blog posts. As I'm sure you can imagine based on the sparse nature of my blog lately, not many of these brilliant self-emailed ideas make the cut.

In fact most of them are pretty damn stupid and I delete them. For example, I sent an email to myself last week with "What's Up Chuck?" in the subject line. The body of the email said this:

a monthly (or somewhat regular) feature in which we discover the recent comings and goings, gossip tid-bits, etc. of beloved, tough-guy "actor", Chuck Norris

I put quotes around the word "actor" for my own amusement because of my intense dislike for his body of work. (Some of you may remember a post I wrote a while back in which I take a few liberties with his film titles.) Also I noticed just now that I used the word "we" for some reason. Probably because I'm an idiot.

Anyhoo... I tried to turn the email into a post, as suggested by me to myself, and Googled Chuck Norris to find out what kind of amazing and/or titillating high jinks the old man might have been up to lately that I could poke fun at. As it turns out in addition to having the cheesiest website I have encountered in quite awhile, he's a pretty fuckin' dull guy that really hasn't been up to much lately. In fact the most recent item on the page titled Upcoming Events happened 3 months ago.

Apparently he wrote a new book. I think the title might be Buy It Now!, but the website was such a yawn I was too bored to scroll down any further to find out for sure.

Here's what I'd like to think he's been up to lately:

Currently in production, Chuck Norris in the title role of:
Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific! The Paul Mitchell Story

Chuck Norris acts as mohel at Rosanne's grandson's bris. He karate chopped the foreskin clean off the baby.

My apologies to whoever this woman is in the photo with Chuck, but guess what baby?You bear a remarkable resemblance to Roseanne.

Nobody Needs This - Special Video Edition

Speed Fit - are you fucking kidding me?

Poo Flinging Narrowly Missed Due to NFL

Living without my computer is simply unimaginable, let's face facts. Living with it for 30 minutes at a time at which point it starts to whine, sputter and shut down, is simply undignified so yesterday I broke down and did what I had to do - I called Dell support.

I spoke with Vincent a nice young man in the Philippines, who walked me through a couple of exercises in futility. Things that I had already tried before on my own for free and things that unsurprisingly didn't work when I tried them all over again while on the phone with Vincent as my guide for $49. Remarkably cheaper than I would have guessed, but still.

My conversation with Vincent wasn't a total loss of my $49 because he was able to get me to be a little more brave and dig into the machine a little deeper than I had before on my own. I discovered just how piping hot things were becoming inside my sad old computer and came up with a temporary fix on my own that you see in the photo above, until the new parts arrive.

This handy little arrangement, unbecoming though it may be (my old window fan is dirty), allowed me to leave my computer running all yesterday afternoon and well into the evening hours. I dare the fucking thing to overheat now.

Other goings on this weekend:

I made BBQ pulled pork in the slow cooker, which MDH now refers to as "the all day torture device". He must have asked me 5 thousand times, "is it ready yet?, is it ready yet?"

Not to be left out when there's excitement MDH has been experiencing troubles of his own on his laptop, which when combined with the drama I have been having with our home computer has caused a complete meltdown of all civilized adult behavior in our household. If it weren't for televised sports diverting his attention I'm pretty sure we would have resorted to cave man grunts by noon and flinging poo before dinner. Thank you ESPNHD.

After some Internet research (that I'm able to do now thanks to the new temporary cooling system) I am pretty sure that the user profile on his laptop is corrupt and since his computer is owned by his company, it's really something that he will have to wait til Monday and have his IT department fix.

The man has no respect at all for my IT background especially when I give him answers he doesn't want to hear so he has decided to take matters into his own hands and try to fix it himself. This is the same man that tried to get rid of a virus last year by deleting his Internet viewing history. It would be funny if wasn't sooo not funny.

Quickly, quickly

Computer problems are so frustrating.

I've just recovered from the most annoying Trojan thingy that I accidentally downloaded about a month ago and now my power supply and fan seem to have gotten together behind my back and designed an elaborate plot to drive me completely insane.

Eventually I'm going to have to bust the machine open and replace them both, but until then the computer will run normally for an undetermined period of time, anywhere between half an hour and all the way up to 3 hours, and then as I live and breathe, mock my very character by suddenly making a shrill noise and then completely shutting down for no discernible reason.

It happened the other night when I was experimenting with new templates for my blog. Some of you may have seen the results of my experiment briefly. It was sort of cute. A black background with pink text and some flowery, swirly things. I was just playing around and then out of nowhere the fan on my computer started making this sound so loud, at once chugging and whining, I thought a helicopter might be trying to land in there. And then the power cut off. Snap.

Then it got very quiet.

The only sound was my blood boiling.

When I booted back up the pink flowery theme was still there and all my widgets were gone.

Anyhoo... I was so angry that I figured the best thing to do was just turn the fuckin' thing off and walk away. Just walk away, rather than yank it free from all of the cables and cords, drop kick it out to the driveway and run over it a couple of times with my car, as of course was my first impulse.

I'm back now. I put my old template back (as you may see) tonight. Perhaps it's a little bit boring, and maybe I'll change my template when I find the right one or figure out how to design my own. It's going to take me awhile to rebuild my widgits. I thought that I backed them up, but alas, no.

So I was thinking about my younger days, back in simpler times before indoor plumbing, electricity and cell phones. Back when the only video game was Pong, everyone thought high fructose corn syrup was delicious and good for you and Aids was a candy you could eat to lose weight (although it was spelled differently). I was thinking about a time when there were no computers and I had to type all of my term papers on a manual typewriter, and how excited I was to get an electric typewriter for graduation. Twenty-three skiddoo. Fancy me.

I've got to wrap this up quickly because my computer is starting to make that weird helicoper noise again so I know my time here on the blogs this evening is limited. Whatever. Are you still reading this? There's no real point to this post other than that my computer is taking a big shit and instead of ordering the parts, cracking it open and fixing it I'd apparently rather wax nostalgic about the typewriter I got for high school graduation instead of a car like all my friends.

My apologies for any typos and/or spelling errors.