Oh, the Horrors!

Completely Awesome Blog Post

2010-07-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

At work Friday during the meeting I had a great idea for a blog post. Something new, exciting and directly related to These Times We Live In. Sadly it happened during the Friday meeting, and I did not write it down immediately. Then a coworker I'll call "Don" started screaming about something crazy and I forgot all about it. Sorry about that.

Instead you get this update on the gutters - they are still under the weather (ha ha ha). Some dude is coming out tomorrow to give an estimate, but I'm leaning towards this woman named Joyce because she was nicer to me on the phone. I haven't heard back from Joyce yet; she was going to come by either yesterday or today. So I may get to meet Joyce in person.

In other coworker news, two of my coworkers have been dating in secret for months and months. They told me a month or so ago, and I hadn't caught on to them, mostly because I don't care what people do in their personal lives. All of my brainpower is tied up in other projects. They claim my not realizing they were a secret date couple is an indication that I have poor detective skills. I maintain that I wasn't applying my detective skills to them.

But I digress. As it turns out they are moving just down the street from me, which means that now I have more friends nearby, but no more time in the day. I often find myself trying to tell people that I would, in theory, like being friends. Sadly I can't fit it into my schedule. Work, the rigors of Dungeons and Dragons, hitting the range, playing guitar, tending to my 71st level wizard's auction house interests...all these things take time. I barely get any recreational reading done as it is, and then people want me to spend time with them?! What the hells, man? As the driving paragons of industry said of yore, "this dungeon ain't going to run itself, yo."

Truer words were never spoken.

Social Media and Stuff

2010-07-14T06:40:00.001-07:00

Hello readers! It's been a really long time since I discovered people were reading my blog, freaked out about it and quit writing. A lot has happened since then. I know I could easily see how long it's been since I've posted anything here, but rather than push a button and find out I'm just going to say it's been years and years. Not a whole hell of a lot has happened since then, but I'll lay it out anyway.

First off, I live in the same house, work the same job, and drive the same car. That pretty much covers everything most Americans are interested in so I thought I'd get it out of the way up front. Everything is fine, except that we have to have the gutters repaired, as it rained inside our house yesterday. Tracy rigged a temp fix. She is a badass, and that's why I married her. I'm not looking forward to paying a guy to do this, but I don't even know if I could make myself climb a ladder that high. My house is really, really tall. So there's that.

The main thing that happened in the intervening time is that I quit smoking. It's been over six months now, but I had to sequester myself away for those six months for the sake of society at large. As it turns out if you smoke for years and years and then just quit it can make you irritable. I'm irritable to begin with, so it made me damnably cranky. Still, no one was folded, spindled or mutilated so I'm calling this a success, with a downside. The downside is that, as a smoker, you likely wind up with a bunch of friends that are smokers. So after you quit you have to stay away from your smoking friends in order to avoid temptation. So that sucks, especially if you only have three nonsmoking friends and one of them is Steve.

Anyway, I'm back. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, go tell it on the mountain.

I'm a quitter!

2010-01-19T05:04:00.000-08:00

So, as you may know I cancelled my Facebook account last week. I was at work and having a bad day, and got one too many friend request, whiney post, whatever; I blew my top. "Up yours, Facebook!" And with that bold cry, I deleted my account. It was easy. It was also easy to reactivate. Deleting and reactivating your Facebook account is exactly like logging out then logging in again, with one extra "are you sure?" step thrown in.

Anyway, Facebook missed the hell out of me and welcomed me back with open arms and promises not to be such a butthole in the future.

The real reason, I suspect, that I quit Facebook is that I quit smoking. I count the official quit date as New Year's Day, as I had my last one on the Eve. That last one was the first in about four days; I had gotten sick and went on the lozenge. So I had my ceremonial last smoke New Year's Eve, more out of a sense of transition than actually wanting one. Then I woke up January 1 and went cold turkey.

Cole turkey meant, for me, no smoking, no more lozenges, pills, patches or gums. I'd tried all these things with some degree of failure in the past. There is a secret weapon. I did not have the secret weapon in the past. The secret weapon is actually wanting to quit.

So, 19 days in and I feel great. I still get cranky from time to time, but the mood swings are lessening, or I'm getting accustomed to them. My brother in law said that the last time he saw Tracy and I he thought we were super hopped up on caffeine; turns out we just have more energy. I do feel great.

New Post for the New Year

2010-01-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

I've been terribly neglectful of my blog. I'm afraid that a lot of the free time I used to spend here has been squandered on World of Warcraft and Facebook.

The day before yesterday I fell into a terrible mood. I was having a fine old time at work, came home and whammo; it hit me. Bad mood, dude; bad mood. It stuck around too, lingering overnight and hitching a ride to work with me the next morning.

That "next morning" was a Thursday, the day at work on which I often find myself with a goodly deal of down time, much of which is used to check Facebook. So there I am, checking my Facebook, noticing that I have a ton of friends whom I don't see on any regular basis and some of which I haven't actually seen in like fifteen years. This struck me as, well, gratuitous to say the least. I don't mean to be callous, but I don't care what these people are up to. Shane Tharp can espouse his love of Civil War Reenactment and call the President Barack Osama, but I don't have to listen to his stupidity or care about who got a little bunny rabbit over the holiday.

It's not that I just don't care; it's that hearing about all this actively makes me angry.

A while back I went through and arbitrarily deleted people I don't really know from my friend's list; this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Then I started getting the letters. Complaining, cajoling, wondering what happened to all the good times we never, ever shared. I relented; I re-friended a few of them. But the letters never stopped. The last one I got had this tinge of self-pity to it, and it put me over the line.

I'm done with Facebook. Account deleted. If you're reading this, sorry; I didn't "defriend" you specifically (and yes, I've already gotten emails/instant messages with "wtf" in them). I just can't take it anymore. I can't pretend I give a shit what cute thing your kitties are doing. I can't pretend to care about the vacation you went on with a bunch of people I've never met in my life. And I damn sure don't feel like reporting what I've been up to for the benefit of seventy people I never, ever talk to in real life.

As for my other eight friends; you all have my email, cell number and will see me on weekends whether you want to or not. So you eight are the ones that really suffer.

I remember Halloween.

2009-11-02T05:46:00.000-08:00

So for the second year in a row I've missed the annual Halloween bash, the biggest and best party of the year. Dang it. Last year we didn't have a babysitter, so I sent Tracy and stayed home with the D. This year neither of us went. What a drag. Apologies to everyone we missed. Hopefully someone will at least post pictures. Super apologies to Katie and Chris. It wasn't personal; we just couldn't get our shit together. And by "we" I mean "I". We did manage to pull it together for Delia's birthday, but just barely. We didn't think to call anyone, so it was just us and a few other childrens. Sorry if you missed it; I am a slacker asshole. You know it, I know it, the American People know it.

I've been having a lot of "can't get my shit together" days. My last few posts featured grandiose plans to post every day without fail. I think I made it a whole two days in a row. Fall came in with this "I'm just going to be winter, so screw you guys" kind of chip on its shoulder, so the Funk took the opportunity to use Fall's uppityness as a distraction to move in early. The house got messy and we got grumpy. It's actually what NIN's "Downward Spiral" album was about; it was a record about how Fall kicks our collective ass here at Strother House.

The blog posts I've so magnificently fallen behind on I blame on the good people who make Peavey guitar amplifiers. I broke down and bought a guitar amp to replace the one I sold at a yard sale a few years ago. The one I sold was more or less a piece of crap, but it had been my piece of crap for fifteen years and after I sold it I had to just admire other peoples pieces of crap, which is about as alluring as it sounds. So anyway I finally replaced it, this time with a decent two channel, multi-voicing TransTube amp. And so my normally scheduled blogging time gave way to Heavy Metal Guitar time, which is a shame on the blog front but otherwise completely and totally kick ass.

On a more positive note, we are planning on having Thanksgiving at our house this year. Tracy's mom made an announcement last week that Thanksgiving can go fornicate itself with an iron stick (I'm paraphrasing.) We're going to take up the gauntlet and have it here. Come one, come all, but you might want to bring a chair because we only have five. (See how I'm being positive and acting like there are more than like two people who will want to come?)

Crap

2009-10-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

I missed yesterday's entry. I meant to do it but instead succumbed to a nap, then Pizza Hut. I think it was Pizza Hut that really did me in. That's what I get for eating at a place described as a Hut.

Last night I went to Black Bear to help Malissa hang paintings for the Morgantown Arts Walk, which I believe is going down tonight. It's usually a pretty good time, and I encourage people to get out and look. I think we may go as a family unit tonight; I like for the D to see these events our town bothers to put on. It's nice to live in a town that appreciates culture almost as much as it seems to appreciate beer pong and those annoying mufflers that serve to make your car louder. It's also nice to get to drill holes into a wall that doesn't belong to me. If you ever find yourself drilling holes in the wall at Black Bear it's important to remember that the chairs by that bar in the front are much, much taller than the chairs you are probably used to standing on in your kitchen. Take it from me, you can't just step down off them.

Today I came to work with the intention of putting up another installment of Friday Meeting Notes, but they were thrown out yesterday. So instead of putting up the notes from the week before I'm putting up today's masterwork, which I sincerely hope serves to both entertain and enlighten. Bon appetit.

This still counts as Wednesday. Damn it.

2009-09-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

I set myself a goal; update ye olde blogge every day. It's technically Thursday right now, but since I just got home from work and haven't gone to bed yet it counts. Yes way, Ted; it totally counts.

Sometime between taking the D to school and her getting off the bus we lost a neighborhood tree today. I don't know what happened; it wasn't particularly windy or stormy, at least not enough for me to take notice. Maybe the high winds (50 or so mph gusts) damaged the tree earlier this week, but for whatever reason the stately maple tree at the corner of Overdale and Alma is gone. I personally choose to make up (and believe!) that it was downed by a drunken college student in an F150. Probably with a set of artificial truck testes dangling from the back bumper. Nice driving, dick.

I was a guest speaker!

2009-09-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at about 12:30 or so I was hit by a bolt of memory lightning; I had to speak to Delia's class at 2. Her teacher had sent home a form asking for volunteers, and D told me that they were having trouble getting people to show up, so I signed up for it. What the hells, it was only a fifteen minute commitment and I love public speaking

When I got to the class the teacher subtly emphasized that I would be saying how my job helped the community. So I start winging it, telling the kids that I'm a graphic artist who works in desktop publishing, advertising used cars...blah blah blah. They don't care. I know how an audience works, so I started telling them about Photoshop, which they also don't care about. Then I tell them that Photoshop was invented by Industrial Light and Magic, to work on special effects for Star Wars. It was like shooting lighting out of my eyes. They went, in about one second from "dude, we don't know what you're talking about" to "Holy crap; he MADE STAR WARS!" It was pretty awesome.

In other news, I'm still pissed at my cable company for taking away PBS, Cartoon Network and the History Channel. I know I only pay nine dollars or so a month for cable, but PBS? Really, Comcast, seriously? I live in the same town as the station. It wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't run commercials for months saying that Comcast customers didn't have to worry about the new conversion to digital cable. Yo, Comcast, you guys are liars. I do have to get a conversion box to watch my local PBS station. I don't want to spend $40 for one channel, but I'm going to. Gods know there isn't anything on SyFy.

As for you, SyFy...dudes, you aren't even trying. There is some show on right now with a few fifteen year old kids going to someplace called the Vortex. I think it's in New Jersey. They keep saying something about a munitions factory exploding there, and one lady who is very insistent that there are spirits there, "locked in time and space". I'm not sure what this show is, but it's terrible. It's like Ghost Hunters, if Ghost Hunters came from Fanjul's Factory Outlet. Holy crap, I'm sure if they let these turds on this show they'd let me and my jackass friends on. These kids on now should have worn brown trousers, if you catch my drift.

Hot Bliggity Blog

2009-09-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to post something daily now. My boss told me last week that the only way to get people to read your blog is to keep it freshly updated, presumably because a lot of people have an attention span utterly decimated by television. I don't have any problems believing this at all.

It's only 9AM on this dreary Monday, and I've accomplished things. Payed a few bills...freakin' bills. Bills are the bane of my existence. I made a resolution for 2009 to be more fiscally responsible, but it's tough going. Budgeting has never been a particularly strong point with me. I'm better at it than I am at, say, not drinking coffee until my hair stands on end, but that's not saying much. Most people don't have that problem either. Or do they?

The problem with daily updates is thinking of something to say. To newsworthy items happened over the weekend.

1. Flavored cigarettes are now banned in the US. I don't smoke flavored cigarettes. I've never been a goth kid, so I didn't need them to mask the scent of an abandoned bus station while listening to the Cure hoping my hairspray is helping me look depressed. I doubt if I've ever smoked more than one or two of these things all the way through. Once in high school we had a Renaissance Festival, and someone made an apple pie using a period recipe. It had a buttload of clove in it, to mask the taste of the rotten apples that would have been the main ingredient during the Renaissance. So that's what clove cigarettes always reminded me off; rotten apples. Grodacious. Totally grodacious.

2. My brother-in-law John's friend Dave was stabbed over the weekend. He's in the hospital but slated to recover, from what I've gleaned from Facebook. This is some grade A crazy shit. Friday night John was here, and was (I think) shocked to hear my friend Chris and I assure him that Morgantown has a large number of weekend fights on the streets. Then he goes home to this crap. They caught the guy who knifed him, which is good. It's hard to tell what they'll charge him with, but I can easily see how stabbing someone with a knife would land you with attempted murder. I think it should, but then again I'm sure once lawyers get involved there will be this and that extenuating circumstance, flim flammery, and outright lying. I hope the dude goes to prison, because if he doesn't John likely will.

Good luck, Dave. John, don't shoot anyone.

Psychic Tom is apparently no Psychic Tina

2009-09-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to a Dead People Party at my friend Angie's (codename: Angie Frangie) house. It was first presented to me as a Supernatural Party, which was kind of confusing costume-wise. The reason it was a Supernatural Party is because the ladies decided that if we all coughed up like fifteen bucks we could hire Psychic Tina to come and predict our futures for us. How it became a Dead People Party I'm not quite sure, but everyone with the inclination to dress up in a costume came as walking corpses (note; we were not zombies). I would post pictures, but I left our camera at Angie's.

So there we were, with our fake bullet holes and cut throats and slit wrists, hanging out on Angie's front porch when this older dude drives by looking for an address that was actually Angie's but which he must have written down incorrectly. He kept driving by slowly, looking at us as if we'd lied to him about house numbers before he finally figured out that we were by far the most likely group to have hired him. So he gets out of the car and we're all like, "whoa; where in hells is Psychic Tina?" And he's all like, "Yo babies, be cool; Psychic Tom is in the house taken care of business."

Actually he didn't talk that way at all. I exaggerate for color, a free service to you. What he really said was that he was just as good as Psychic Tina.

Now, a lot of the people there didn't seem to think Psychic Tom was all that psychic, but I liked him. I've read books on Gypsy fortunetelling tricks to pull on rubes, and maybe I am a rube, but I want to believe Psychic Tom, because I liked what he had to say. For the most part.

I liked that he said I was going to live a long-ass time. This was from the palm and one of the first things he said to me. Then he told me that I was under-employed and likely would be for about two years or so before moving on. He told me that 2010 and 2011 would be better years financially than we're accustomed to. So all in all it was a pretty sweet future being laid out.

I can't help but wonder why Psychic Tom, being psychic and all, didn't seem to know that I was a powerful sorcerer in my own right. He didn't even mention it, or turn pale, or tremble or anything. No reaction whatsoever. So while I want to believe Psychic Tom is going to be right about my future I'm just not sure I'm buying it.

No offense, Psychic Tom.

Blogger V. Wordpress

2009-09-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

In what I'm sure will turn into something akin to the epic battle of XTC V. Adam Ant (power-based pop V. new romantics) I've decided to do a side by side of Blogger and Wordpress. Blogger is easy and familiar; Wordpress is complicated but apparently lets you do a lot of neato things. So far results are pending.

I signed up for Wordpress yesterday at work while we were waiting for the final go-ahead to come through. All I did was register and make it look like I wanted, then it was time to go. I spend a good deal of time in the car on Fridays. Yesterday I spent it thinking of how to maintain two blogs simultaneously.

I came up with this plan to use the new one for an extended piece of fiction, a fake blog that I would gradually introduce a weird happening into, extrapolating on it until it got weirder and weirder without ever bothering to explain that it isn't true. But what to say? At first I thought about including a weird dwarf that would follow me around after a while, doing things like mugging people with orthopedic shoes in order to be incrementally taller. I had to scrap that as being insensitive (not just because I don't know any little people.) Then I thought it would be fun to recruit a cohort, someone to play the part of "The Creeper" in the story. All The Creeper would really need to do is let me take a few pictures every now and again, preferably while dressed all creepy and hiding in bushes. Maybe a short video of The Creeper being fled from in a car. No big deal. A Creeper email address (with only the picture of my volunteer Creeper attached to a fake name) also struck me as being a good way to gradually make his/her presence more immediate.

This was a very exciting idea yesterday while I was driving down to Clarksburg, but I don't know if it's really very feasible. You can't just go up to your friends and say, "hey, you're one creepy looking sonuvabitch, wanna be kinda almost semi famous?" So now that little project is on hold while I think it through a little more. Which means you're stuck with just this, my regular run-of-the-mill blog. If I go through with it I'll post a notice here. Addios.

Back into the proverbial swing of things

2009-09-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

So it's been a really long time since I last posted anything. I took some time off in the months leading up to super beach vacation (which was a hoot), but it took me until now to start posting again. Sorry about that. Hope your deprivation didn't cause scurvy or rickets.

I'm at work right now, so this is going to be short. I've been thinking for a long time about scanning my notes from our Friday meetings. Here's the first installment. Bon appetit.

Seriously; if you didn't take that "adult content" button seriously - move along. Nothing to see here.

2009-07-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

You were warned.

So way the hell earlier today (I'm talking around 5pm; it's now 2:02am, just for frame of reference) Tracy and I went out to dinner. I had a jumbo margarita, and this at a restaurant where Mexicans make 'em strong. Then there was this long sequence of being in a bookstore drinking coffee, then a craft store that rapidly degraded to sitting on a bench while Tracy talked her mom through a minor babysitting crises.

So far, so good.

We came home to R (a semi-permanent denizen), R (a fleeting denizen) and J (a one-nighter) already at our house. No problem. Had a beer, changed clothes, then hit the road.

(Side note; I stopped the narrative here, at 2:10am, to eat a boiled egg. It was delightful.)

Anyway, I went to my friend Willy's house. Willy is my fellow degenerate, the dude I turn to when I feel like it might be a good idea to go out drinking, possibly smuggle a beer out of the bar to drink in an alley, and definitely pee someplace that Roscoe P. Coletrain would disapprove of. We drank a beer, then walked down town to see what was going on. Our usual place of interest (one 123 Pleasant Street) appeared to be hosting some sort of hootnanny. A hootnanny with a cover charge, no less. Well, believe it Discerning Readers when I tell you that neither one of us were willing to part with five American dollars to see this hoedown in Motown. So up the street we went.

Willy and I have made a practice of stopping in at a place called the Boston Beanery, which was our next stop. This is a very regimented visit; we walk in, step up to the bar, do a shot, then get the hell out. I secretly hope we'll become semi-famous, the Two-Guys-Who-Hate-This-Stinking-Craphole-But-Want-a-Shot-of-Bourbon., though Willy tells me he's in there on a semi-regular basis, thus shattering this petty dream.

I digress.

We walk in, do our shot, then we're out of there. We walked up High Street, ending up at a place called Gibbie's. There is, in fact, an actual dude named Gibby. The last time I saw him he was by the pool table in his bar, biting a girl who was dancing on said table RIGHT ON THE ASS. Clearly this is a quality establishment. All the same, my friend Brian's band (The Love Me Knots; dig 'em) were playing, so that's where we sat, listening to Brian and watching some seriously one-sided boxing on what I took to be ESPN.

Even this grows stale after a while. Willy and I, however, are not to be discouraged. In another time and place we may have been pirates, or perhaps Viking raiders. We craved more; adventure, spectacle...something. So we did the only thing we could, took the only avenue left open to two such as ourselves on a night such as this.

We went to Buck's.

Now, Buck's is a very special place. It's the last bar on the Other Side of Town. It had been a long time since I'd been there; perhaps five years or so (the previous visit to that being some ten to fifteen years past). Buck's has not changed very much. We walked in, sat at the bar and listened to the jukebox, secretly wishing they'd turn it off and crank up the Def Leopard concert that was on the TV. Then Willy revealed a Revelation: Buck's has an upstairs.

Perhaps, like me, you are a bit curious as to what could be better than sitting in a bar constructed mainly of plywood, listening to U2 on the jukebox, wishing that in addition to pickles and pickled sausage that they had pickled eggs. It turns out that there are many things.

Most noticable are (1) upstairs there is karaoke and (2) upstairs are where the girls are. Don't get the wrong idea; these are not girls that I would want to meet. In fact, the most likely chance of me actually talking to one of these girls is if she walked drunkenly into the men's room while I was in there quite contentedly throwing up a bit of the bourbon I so injudiciously drank. These girls do have a few things going for 'em. They dance, AND they sing. Perhaps more amazing (in the interest of being fair, balanced, and not sexiest) there is also the spectacle of the Dancing Redneck Dude. In retrospect they are a package deal. You really need to see them both doing a bizarre line dance to MC Hammer to really get a feel for the place. Imagining neon, disco lights and a drunken blond girl with no shoes dancing with a backward-hat redneck dude....well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

I'm going to have to cut this short; it's late and I'm tired. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all. AND (as an addendum) Willy and I made further plans for our kick-ass band, including finally deciding on a name.

Ladies and Gentlemen; I give you Keziah Mason,

That is all. Return to your daily lives.

Mad! Mad I say!

2009-07-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

So I've kind of been haunted these last few weeks. Not in a badass blood-seeping-out-of-the-walls sort of way, or even the lame-o rattling chains sort of way.

There are people in my house.

I should preface this; this was partially my idea.

My cousin is going through a divorce and staying with us until he gets a job and an apartment. We grew up in the same house together, so it's nothing all that new to me, with a hitch-I'm an adult now. And it turns out that I'm more than a little set in my ways.

Take tonight, for instance. Usually when I get home a tad bit early I sit at my computer and write. There are two stories that I'm working on, one of which is pretty well outlined and well into the rough draft stage. Almost a finished rough draft.

It's not getting finished anytime soon.

When I came home tonight, my cousin was up and watching some Sci Fi Channel TV show. Not a big deal, but I'm on the back porch blogging on Tracy's laptop instead of finishing some work up. This is not good. Then there's the massive amount of alone time that I absolutely require if I'm to stay sane. This alone time has become like the rarest diamonds, something so precious that I can see why some people would be tempted to kill for it.

Now, again, this move in was partially my idea. I'm not mad, I'm just venting.

In other news, it's been a long ass time since I've posted anything here (what with the almost finished stories and the house guest and all). I'd like to say all kinds of awesome things have happened since last post, but aside from a long drive to Virginia and back and a few good hikes, not a whole hell of a lot has gone down. Fact is, I'm bored.

I've heard before that there is no reason for an intelligent person to be bored, but I'm bored all the same. Malaise, I think they call it. Not much has struck me as interesting lately. Maybe I'm getting depressed.

I heard on the horror radio show that I listen to every week (Rue Morgue Radio; www.rue-morgue.com. The dash is important; without it you get some kind of crazy porn) about this contest to win a book about Ray Harryhausen. The contest involves writing a letter detailing how his work has affected your life. I briefly considered making up this big lie about Cassiopeia from Clash of the Titans being my first (pretend) girlfriend from the time I was 13 until I was 28. I had a pretty good lie all cooked up, but then was too apathetic to bother to send an email. I probably would have won too; those radio hosts are some pervs. But I think the thing to take away from this is that I was too lazy to go through with the easiest of all hoaxes to perpetrate; the email scam. I'm never too lazy to mess with someone via email. I've spent days exchanging emails with those crazy Bank of Zimbabwe email scams. I make up little characters to be; like a homeless guy in the library or a crazy immigrant saving up money for a sex change. I keep them in a special folder labeled "Fun with Email Scams". Yet I was too lazy to try to talk a good enough game to score a free book. That can't be a good sign.

On both the up and down side, vacation looms. It's the upside because I get to get away from this town for a few days. I like Morgantown, but even pineapple upside down cake gets boring if you have it every day. It's the downside because the vacation fund isn't quite where we'd hoped it would be. At least the house is already rented for the week. Even if we don't get to stash away any more loot for vacation, I'm really looking forward to it. Seven days with only the handful of people I hang out with outside of work or D&D is going to be pretty rad. Delia won't be the only kid, so she shouldn't be bored. I personally don't care if I don't get any further from the house we all rented than the two blocks to the beach. And it's encouraging that every single one of us who boldly proclaimed that by now we'd be in the best shape of our lives while we were planning this trip last winter was completely full of shit; failing isn't all that bad if there's a whole group of you. In fact, get enough people to fail at any one thing and it becomes something different; not so much a failure as a flaw in the system, whatever that system may be.

Maybe since we all failed we could score some of that sweet bailout money they keep throwing at the auto industry.

I'm going to bed.

Jonestown

2009-05-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a cookout. It may be the biggest party we've ever had here at Edgehill house. I think at least a dozen people were here at one point. The nice thing about cookouts is that it keeps people more or less clustered outside. The bad thing is that people never eat as much as you think they will, so there's always a butt ton of food left over. I could feed a smallish army this morning if one happened by.

Another downside of the cookout is beer bottles. My friends all like to drink. None of them are alcoholics (that I know of), but when you get fifteen or so people together the old glass bottles start to pile up. Usually after a big party (say, the annual Halloween bash) it's like the Jonestown Massacre the next day. Dozens of glass bottles strewn about the compound, staying where ever they happened to fall after the Kool Aid did them in, waiting for health workers to pile them into ambulances. This is what I was thinking about this morning when I woke up. I was lying in bed kind of dreading coming down and having the easter egg hunt for Sam Adams and Miller Lite bottles.

To my delight, it wasn't that bad at all. This was not what you'd call a wild, out of control party. There are a lot of bottles, but they are for the most part conveniently where the recycling belongs. I didn't have to collect them from random bookshelves, bathrooms, or hidden inside random boxes, shoes or backpacks (not that that generally happens, but you get the idea).

Sometime today though it's going to be time to play "The Town Alcoholic Goes Recycling." This is always a hoot, having a VW full of empties that I pile into the recycling bin six at a time. It always makes me feel conspicuous, like people will be looking at me thinking, "Good Lord, that guy drank sixty beers last night!" I'm sure they aren't, but still.

Last night was also the second Sneakies show. The Sneakies are a newish band; this was only their second show. I saw them at McClafferty's a few weeks ago, but the sound there is terrible. Last night was a 123 night, so you could actually hear the band, which was both rocking and rolling. Now if only they would play on a Saturday so Tracy could go.

Epic

2009-05-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

When Delia was in kindergarten we started reading Harry Potter at bedtime. I don't always get to do bedtime. Work, grandma's house, late night movie nights; all of these have helped stretch a series of bedtime books out.

Seven books over three years.

Thursday night we finished book seven. It's kind of amazing to me to think that we've been reading this series for so long. The first five books were re-reads for me, so it was really exciting to get to book six, then the grand finale. I thought I would feel hollow or let down when we finished, as if we'd reached the end of a really long journey taken for the sake of the trip itself; that perhaps the destination would be a bit of a letdown after the fantabulous trip. Not so. Instead it felt more like a milestone. Tracy and Delia have been through a lot of books. Narnia, Percy Jackson...they seem to crank out the stories. But this is the first that Delia and I have finished. It's a pretty good feeling.

I think she wants to go through Narnia again with me, which will be nice. I've never read any of them.

Eh.

2009-04-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

Bah. I'm bored and restless.

I wanna live a life of danger.

2009-04-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

I wanna be a forest ranger.

This may, at first glance, seem like a stupid thing to just blurt out. I can't honestly say that this is a lifelong dream; I only got to liking being outside a year or so ago. It's been a pretty good year though.

I thought this big plan up while sitting in Valley worlds of Fun while the D was attending young Grace's birthday party. I was minding my own business, drinking a fairly good cup of ninety cent coffee, reading a book when it came to me. The book is A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson. It's about a guy deciding to walk the Appalachian Trail, all two thousand-odd miles of it.

It's a pretty good book.

Anyway, I was sitting there while Delia rode the crazy indoor carnival rides they have reading this book when I decided that the life of a forest ranger sounded pretty sweet. I'm quite frankly not at all sure that I want to be working at a computer until my hands and eyes shrivel up from staring at the box, typing. Being out and about sounds pretty good to me.

I looked into it today at work, and it seems to me that you can get a job with an Associates degree, which wouldn't be hard to obtain, assuming that past credits would still count. They laughed at me at work when I said I thought it was a pretty good idea, and to be fair I don't know what it pays, but still. Alluring, isn't it?

Catch Up

2009-04-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything. The main reason for this is that there is Something Wrong with my PC. It's all crazy, having elected to not recognize the internet for whatever reason. The day it acted up I called the internet provider help desk, who had me drive across town for a new modem, only later to have a different guy at the same phone number tell me he thought it was my router. So I tried messing with it, must have done Something Wrong, and now nothing.

For two days I tried everything I could think of to fix this. I can think of a lot of things too, having been working on cranky old PCs at work for almost five years now, becoming one of the fiercest network fighters in the state in the process. Still nothing.

In a huge fit of frustration, I decided to just replace it. Oddly, I've never (until a few days ago) actually purchased a computer (not counting Tracy's laptop, which is what I'm using now). So it's more accurate to say that I've never purchased a computer for myself. I went to Best Buy, looked around (with the key word being "cheap"), found one and took it to the checkout.

Card declined. What the hell?! I call up the credit card people and ask, calmly I thought, why my card was suspended.

"You don't use it," they tell me.

"Well, I tried to use it just now," I say.

"No problem; we'll reinstate it. You can use it tomorrow," the guy says.

Well, shit. There I am with the computer on the checkout stand, where it will apparently have to wait until the next day. I ended up leaving, with the sole intention of going to Target. Target, you see, has a Starbucks. In the middle of the day after frustration Starbucks is like a massive alcoholic on the lamb finding an open bar in Utah, if you know what I mean. I needed a drink, badly, and it had to have copious amounts of caffeine, 'cause nothing settles me down like massive doses of boiling hot caffeine.

On the way to the Starbucks Tracy looks over at me. "It's an omen," she says. "You should buy a Mac".

So, the next day at work (a Thursday, on which my coworker and I have large spans of free time waiting for the work flow to catch up to us) I log on to the Apple Store, and find it. The Grail? No, not the Grail. But almost.

So now I'm sitting here waiting for a tiny "tower" to come in the mail. I would have liked a new display, nice little clean Mac keyboard and mouse-all the neat stuff. But the Cheap Bone (connected to the Wallet Bone, for those of you who did not take anatomy) prevailed, and I just ordered the brain of a Mac, which I will graft on to my PC monitor and keyboard and such, making a Frankenstein Computer with a hideous body but smooth and deadly brain.

Now I just have to wait a few more days and I'm in business.

Like Porterfield says; Too Much Rock

2009-03-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

So last night Tracy went out with the other ladies for the first time in quite a while. I stayed home, read another installment of Potter to the D, then was left to my own devices for a while. Usually when I'm home alone (Tracy at work, Delia at school) I break out my guitar. (On a side note, I finally got around to putting new strings on, and it sounds ten times better. Thumbs down for Elixers, thumbs up to D'Addario Phospher Bronze ).

Anyway, Delia was asleep so I couldn't very well break out the acoustic. Instead I went up to the attic and came down with an electric guitar and a processor.

About a year or so ago my friend Mike at work just gave me a guitar processor. I hadn't really played around with it much, what with moving and all, but it is (as the Brazilians say) SuperRad. It has a headphone jack (which is how I can play with it while the D is in bed) and can emulate quite a variety of stuff. I had a hella good time last night going through various amp/effect combinations, some of which are decidedly on the weird side.

So now I'm up to two guitars I like playing. Next stop - figuring out how to hook a guitar processor to Tracy's Mac for the next greatest thing ever; Garage Band.

Argh. Damn. Double Argh.

2009-03-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

So in about an hour and twenty minutes I'm supposed to meet with Haley's friend Katie to go over the wedding ceremony we're having tomorrow. These people are fairly uncommunicative. I understand being shy, and I also understand that I've been tied up at work all week, but I'm starting to wonder if they're not trying to give me the slip. I got an email from the dude earlier this week, but none of my emails ever got answered and a phone call about ten minutes ago went to an answering machine. I guess if five rolls around and they're nowhere to be found (yay for rhyming!) then I'll drive out to Dorsey's Knob (where the wedding is going to go down). If they aren't there then I don't know what else to do.

Every time I do a wedding I come home and declare (often loudly, sometimes with some profanity sprinkled in) that I'm out of the wedding business. It always winds up the same. I tell people right off the bat that I'm a fake minister (legal, but that's as far as it goes with me), and I only really do this for the feeling that I'm pulling something over (somehow) on the System. Everyone I've ever married has been evasive on what the ceremony should be. I suppose they think that even a fake minister like me has a stash of ceremonies or a Black Standard Issue Book of Vows. A lot of the time this leads to a very uncomfortable Keith standing in front of a group of people just making the ceremony up as I go along.

I have learned to not hang around after the ceremony. There are too many questions if I do. I get "Exactly what church do you belong to?" a lot. More often I hear a stage whispered, "Where did they find this minister?" I've learned to dodge the Mother of the Bride at all costs.

I do hope that they haven't given me the slip, because I had to endure shopping today. Despite their early claims of a small ceremony there will be tuxes and gowns and a hundred people or so, so I didn't want to show up in old pants with pockets frayed from the clips of knives and combat boots. I bought three pairs of pants AND new shoes, all of which were on sale. I even tried to avoid buying what Tracy calls "old man shoes". I do like what I bought, but I'm going to feel like the System pulled a fast one on me this time if they've found someone else to do all this.

I'll let you know how it all turns out.

This Morning

2009-03-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

I get up this morning only to find (gasp! Horror!) that there isn't enough coffee. Crap. Not an auspicious start to the day. I made what I could, which was about two cups of very watery brew. Nonetheless, I muddled through.

After dropping the D off at school I went to the Giant Eagle, where two discoveries awaited me. First off, coffee was buy one get one. This may not sound like a big deal, but it always makes my day. Secondly I ran into one of my bosses, who told me that InDesign should be installed today before I get there. This is super mega awesome. We've been stolidly behind the times at work for a while technology-wise. I'm certainly not out looking for a new job in this economy, but it is nice to know that if I had to I won't have to look across the interview table and profess mastery of defunct programs. Always thinking, I am.

And now the bad news. Aside from the fire last night (not us; see Tracy's blog) I made a horrific discovery this morning. But first some background information.

We've been playing the same D&D campaign for something like two years now. (That's right. I'm 33 years old, have a wife and daughter and still spend every other weekend pretending to be a paranoid schizophrenic dwarf. Mock me if you must, but I know that you know deep in your heart that you're totally jealous of our awesome hobby.) So I have a folder of notes and such on this game.

Notes that the freakin' cat peed on.

That's right; Nerfa peed on Gunter's character sheet. Which means I'm going to go spend some time on the back porch making a new one, where the pee aroma will be less nasty. Damn cat.

First time this year!

2009-03-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I was sitting around playing my guitar, minding my own business, when Tracy texts me from work, wanting to know if I wanted to go on a hike with her.

We hadn't been hiking since last fall. Winter has been a long stretch of being stuck indoors not getting exercise, becoming listless and out of shape. As it turns out, once you get used to a certain amount of physical activity, not doing much of anything will take a toll on you, both mentally and physically.

We went to hike the Hemlock Trail for the first time. It said on the internet to plan on a 45 minute hike. We did it in just under 50 minutes, while taking time to climb into the creek (pronounced "CREAK" if you're me and "CRICK" if you're Tracy), take pictures, and generally loiter around a bit. It was awesome. It was nice to break out into a sweat again from something other than anxiety or too much hot sauce.

Going out yesterday got me thinking about going camping soon. Also driving around on the roads we were on (which is whatever road the King Family Tree Farm is on, I forget what it's called) made me think of Route 33, our favorite method of getting to Virginia where my cousin and his fam live. I want to get down there soon, as it's my turn to make the trek and I like it better when it's Ryan's turn, because then it's my turn to bitch about him not making the six hour drive (which is only a five hour drive for him, because I drive like an old man and stop at anything that looks even remotely neato.)

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I'm in a Hella good mood today. It's warm enough for the second day in a row to go running around without a sweater or jacket. Summer seems to be lurking just around the corner, ready to ambush and beat the shit out of the winter doldrums. While I don't normally advocate ambushes from behind clumps of Forsythia, I'm waiting for winter to get it's ass kicked with baited breath.

Weddings

2009-03-04T06:25:00.000-08:00

Something like ten years or so ago I became an ordained minister. I was ordained by the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California right from the comfort of my computer over the internet. Yes, I'm a minister. I was ordained specifically because my friend Malissa was getting married and I wanted to conduct the ceremony.

Now, to conduct a legal ceremony you have to have more than just a certificate that you printed out at your house. You have to get on the state's marriage registry, which requires getting a license from your local courthouse. At the time I lived in Clarksburg, which is the seat of Harrison County. So I marched downtown to the courthouse, asked around, and was eventually sent up to the county clerk's office.

The lady at the county clerk's office was a hoot. I remember walking in and telling her I wanted to perform a wedding but needed a license. She didn't even blink, just got out the forms and started asking me questions. It was all well and fine until we got the part about what church I belonged to. I told her, "The Universal Life Church."

"Uh huh," she says. "And where is that?"

"Modesto, California!" I said this with a big smile. She put down her pen, looked up...and just looked at me. I explained that I was ordained over the internet. This did not reassure her at all.

"Look, I'm not trying to declare my house a church for tax reasons. I just want to be able to marry my friends." This sounded weak when I said it. Then the big surprise. She shrugged, looked up, and said, "yeah, okay." I paid five dollars or so, and that was that. Legal.

I did the marriage, and all was well. Then a few years later I did another marriage for some friends of friends. Then there was the emergency biker wedding. Then another biker wedding.

The first emergency biker wedding was on a Saturday. My dad calls and asked if I could still do weddings. I told him that as far as I knew I sure could. Then he asked if I would marry his friends. That day. Their minister had double booked and was hours away. An hour later I was in a state park parking lot drinking a beer before the ceremony. The second biker wedding was at the dude's house. I can't remember either of their names, but they were both friends of my dad. I called the lady by the wrong name, then demanded that they stop tape so we could have a do over. Yeah; I'm a very professional minister.

A few months ago I heard on the news that Pennsylvania was no longer allowing Universal Life Church members to marry people. This made me worry. What if the marriages I performed weren't actually marriages and I had led people to possible tax repercussions? I meant to look into it, but then just kind of forgot.

Anyway, all this back story has a reason. This morning I'm sitting in the dining room playing my guitar when the phone rings, unknown number. I answer it to discover it's my friend Haley's new number; so far a delightful phone call. She tells me her friend wants her to marry her, but when she tried to get a license they wanted two letters from parishioners of her church. She's also a Universal Life Minister and was worried that if she just had two people write letters (I offered to write one) that she would either get in trouble or perform a marriage that would later be declared to not be a marriage at all. So she was wondering if I could still marry people.

I checked. According to the Secretary of State's office I am on the registry. This took a load off. According to the State of West Virginia the power to marry people that they so wisely vested in me is still in full effect.

I'm doing a wedding on the 22nd.

This can't be right.

2009-03-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

So we're kicking around the idea of going to the beach this summer. Awesome. I got up today and looked at the Yahoo page, and there's this thing about your ideal weight. So I think to myself, "Self, you could probably stand to get in better shape over the next six months." I bit. I clicked on the link, entered my height and frame size guesstimate...and it said I should weigh about 145 pounds.

Then I thought, "Holy shit, that can't be right." I look at the page closer and discover that Self magazine is responsible for this article. Ahh. It would be the "ideal" weight for a woman my height. This prompted a little more looking around.

I find some other site (I forget what it was) that had a chart for both men and women. I go to the men's chart, look up my height...son of a bitch. 146.5 pounds. What the hell? According to this, I'm almost 20 pounds overweight. I don't feel 20 pounds overweight, but then again I never felt tardy when I was late for a class.

Now, I know a lot of people are very passionate about this issue one way or the other. I can hear the "don't worry about it" and "don't beat yourself up" comments already. You can rest assured, I'm not too worried about it. But it does make me wonder. Is this twenty pounds what keeps me from having six pack abs? I've always assumed it was my predilection for sitting around as much as possible and my inability to consistently do sit-ups on a regular basis. That and the fact that I like soda.

I know soda is bad for me. It rots your teeth, fills you with empty calories and contains the demon High Fructose Corn Syrup, lord of the 57th layer of the Abyss. I saw a commercial one time where this cartoon woman was complaining that she and her cartoon husband both quit drinking soda and he lost 15lbs in a month while she only lost like 3. Does this mean if I just quit drinking soda from now until August I'll be at my "ideal weight"? Or will I still be the same me, but with a blood lust stemming from my lack of vital Coca Cola Classic? Would an ideal weight Keith be preferable to a Keith prowling the streets like a junkie looking to score a hit of Mountain Dew?

In similar news I read a few days ago about a "groundbreaking study" about weight loss. Turns out that rather than shunning carbs or eating nothing but constipation curing yogurt is not the answer. Some brilliant scientists have quite scientifically proven that the best way to lose weight is to eat sensibly and exercise more. Holy shit! Turns out I am gifted with psychic abilities, because I could have told them this when I was in high school I'm a good fifteen years ahead of modern science.

I've been putting some thought into this, almost a whole hour's worth. Here's my big plan. When it gets warm enough to go back to my regularly scheduled tearing ass through Cooper's Rock and other state parks I'll start exercising again. I'll stay with the chin up bar I put up when we moved in (yes, I actually use it. I'm hella strong). So, no changes in the exercise department. And I am going to make a conscious effort to cut out the soda. Unless I waste away to my absurdly low "ideal weight", in which case I'm going to start having Mountain Dew Cheesecake floats for breakfast every day.

Up yours, Self Magazine.

Early Spring Mental Breakdown

2009-02-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

So I've been stressed a lot lately. Oddly, a lot of this stress stems from actually having money. I'm not accustomed to it, and it's making me crazy trying to reconcile how it gets spent. A good chunk went into savings, which is good (yay for my smart and responsible wife!). Some of it went to bills, some of it to paying off the demon credit card. There's still some left, and we're trying to make that turn into a beach vacation.

Then we discover that the week that the bakery is closed (and which I already requested off) is the most expensive week of the year to go to the beach. Son of a bitch. Then, as an extra added bonus, I managed to damage my mother in law's truck, so there's some more money. Shit on toast! Add in that I haven't been sleeping very well or much, haven't been eating right and have gained a good fifteen pounds...well, I'm cracking.

I know I should sleep more (last night I went to bed at eight o'clock). I'm trying to sit here at work and take deep breaths like the therapist told me to, but the damn poster printer keeps printing out posters with weird arrays of symbols instead of the text I want it to print. It's an uphill battle. We're having people over tomorrow night, and I'm already stressed about that too, because the house isn't all that orderly right now and cleaning it seems absurdly harder than it actually will be.

I don't know why I let myself get as stressed out as I do. It just seems like a bunch of little things snowball into this horrendous tsunami of frustration. I have a coworker who is waging chemical warfare on me via her allergen-laden perfume...I think maybe that's what finally pushed me to the point of wanting to bang my head against the wall. Note: I have not actually banged my head against anything, but it's still disturbing to have the urge to.

So, here's my proactive plan to not have a terrible weekend. I'm going to clean the house. I may arrange for a babysitter if I can tomorrow, and then try to con my wife into going on a pre-vactaion committee meeting date. And ideally a post-vacation committee meeting date as well.

Anyway, to any of you who both read this and have to deal with me in daily life, sorry I've been so freaked out all week. I'm trying.

Behold!

2009-02-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

So I haven't been posting very often at all lately. It's not just laziness (not purely). I have a new huge time consumer here at Strother House.

I used to have an acoustic guitar, then got depressed and sold it at a yard sale for a ridiculously low price two summers ago. Don't EVER do that. If you have a guitar, keep it. You'll never get the money out of it that you'll need to replace it. This is experience talking.

Anyway, I'd been thinking about getting a new one since about two days after I sold the old one. I ordered one off the Internet (not this one), but my stupid bank likes to randomly deny charges and checks (that's a whole other story). Anyway, after finding out that they weren't going to send it to me I decided to check out the local guitar store.

I made my huge nerd checklist of models I liked and how much I could get it for at the absolute cheapest. The guitar store is actually about the same as the Internet. That was a nice surprise, but the cheap bone still balked.

Then I walked over to the used section. This was a steal, even once you add in the case I bought. STILL cheaper than the Internet.

Anyway, I'm all happy. And that's why I haven't posted anything. I did learn some Tenacious D songs, so there's that.

Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T05:27:00.000-08:00

I've always loved Friday the 13. The idea of an unlucky, even evil day appeals to me.

I've never had what you'd call "bad luck" on a Friday the 13th. Usually I celebrate this tiny personal holiday with a horror movie. Yesterday we were going to mount an expedition to go see the Friday the 13th remake, but I wound up hanging out in a bar all evening instead.

There was good luck yesterday. Good luck in the form of the tax return. I have to go take a shower and then make a secret mission run. To a store. Maybe two. Maybe I'll even break down and get a haircut. We'll see.

Wish me luck.

At least 50

2009-02-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

We're having a warm few days; it's like 50 outside right now. This is fantastic, as it's been between 0 and 20 for what seems like a month.

Last night I got out of the house and went running around for a while; today I'm puttering around cleaning. I hope to make it to the recycling center at some point today, because it's been a long time. That stuff pile up, you know. It does take a little bit of the shine off having only one or two bags of trash per week when you have to lay the seat down in your car to take all the plastic, cans and cardboard across town.

Not all my posts have to be comedy gold, you know. Enjoy the warm day.

Groundhog Day!

2009-02-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

OK, let's all get together and let a rodent conduct meteorological predictions, shall we? I can never remember if seeing the shadow means more winter or what. I know there are two groundhogs, but it's Phil's judgement that I trust.

But is it Phil? How long does a groundhog live? This may be a conspiracy, a hoax perpetrated upon the American people. The real magical weather predicting rodent may be dead. The whole town could be in on it. They may secretly just be consulting the Farmer's Almanac and manipulating the whole shadow spectacle. A shadow groundhog organization, if you will.

Anyway, here's hoping for early spring. Suck it, winter.

(Amazingly, nothing came up when I spell checked this. First time ever!)

I Write the Blogs that Make the Whole World Sing

2009-01-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

Ah, man. I went through a bit of Winter Madness, but I've likely already bitched about all that by now. I'm getting it out of my system.

For one thing, we got rid of the dog. He's adjusted quite well to my mother's house, where he is adored and not terrorized by Harley. I was sad he was gone for all of an hour...until it dawned on me that nothing was barking or trying to lick my face. Then a whole night went by without something jumping off the bed every hour, only to demand that you pick it back up or endure the skritching sounds of tiny paws on the edge of the mattress. Peace and quiet, welcome back.

I took a look at myself in the mirror today and discovered that I am a man in need of a haircut. I'm starting to look like my grandpa Leon, only with brown hair instead of white. He didn't go grey, his hair is as white as Elric's. I hope that happens to me, but my dad seems to be going silver...so I'll either look like a sorcerer or a supervillian...or just be bald. I did notice today while I was taking a shower that the shampoo Tracy buys for me (if left to my own devices I just use bar soap on my hair, 'cause I don't give a crap, but I digress) ...the shampoo Tracy buys for me says it's a "thickening formula". Nice. Look for a summer buzzcut. On a side note the last time I got a haircut in the summer I asked for a flat-top buzz cut, and the lady said I didn't have enough hair. Bitch.

It's almost the end of the month and we're still waiting on Tracy's W-2. Everyone keeps telling me this is going to be a banner year when it comes to tax returns, as we just bought a house last year. I feel like Ed McMahon (sorry if I misspelled that, Ed) sent me a letter saying he's gonna bring me one of those gigantic over sized checks but didn't tell me how much it would be made out for.

Yeah, I just ended a sentence with "for". Wanna take it outside?

Anyway, it's almost the end of the month..taxes...blah blah blah. The upshoot is that some back bills are gonna get brought back up to date, credit card debt will be wiped out (it isn't that much to begin with, but it irks me to be charged interest) AND (drumroll...) we're gonna get Tracy a computer. She's leaning toward the netbook variety, but it's up to her and laptop is definitely on the list. It is going to make me an Internet widower, but with a happy ghost wife, so it's cool.

Yesterday at a junk store I found a book about how Satan was seducing our youth. It was one of those awesome 80's Satanic Hysteria books, so naturally I stood there and read the section on Dungeons and Dragons before skipping to the back to look at what it said about all my favorite bands. I should have bought it, but my collection of doomsday pamphlets from various religious groups is scattered in random places throughout the house and getting out of hand. I ought to make a file for them, because I love those things. I pick them up every time I see them, no matter what, so I have many copies of the same ones. Modern ones aren't as good as the good old fashioned Chick Tracts; the Cadillacs of fringe Christianity fliers. I do like the "Coming Plagues" one though, which is the most frequent one I find at Aldi's. Apparently there's an Aldi's shopper who thinks God is giving people HIV for pissing Him off. Thus far no amount of half-assed detective work has helped me catch the Distributor (of the pamphlets, not the HIV) in the act.

Here's the topper on today's Crazy Cake. I call him "Bible Guy". He sits in the mall food court, seemingly every day, with a tremendous amount of gear. He has his giant Bible, boxes of crayons and markers, file folders, envelopes...his mall food court table is more organized than my office at work. He knows where his tape and White Out are, that's for damn sure. Anyway, this dude is hard at work every single day making what I suspect are religious pamphlets. I desperately want copies of his work, because I'm sure they're chock full of crazy. He's bound of have hundreds of them by now; he works nonstop...that guy works so fast he has to cut the sleeves off his T-shirts lest they slow him down. I don't want to just go up and talk to him though, because he is (1) gigantic, (2) obviously crazy as a shithose rat and (3) smells bad. One of these days I'm going to have to go to the mall by myself and wait him out. Eventually he'll have to go pee; he drinks shitloads of iced tea from the Chik-Fil-A. I'll bring a camera and take a few quick shots of his table when he goes. This makes it spying, not stealing. There isn't a commandment to the effect of "Thou Shalt Not Spy", so I think I'm on steady moral ground here. I may also leave a card requesting literature to be mailed to me, but that's iffy. Just in case though (talkin' to you, Tracy) if we get mail addressed to "Steinhammer Gurtz", it's totally for me.

Weathering the Winter

2009-01-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

Motivation is hard to come by when it's so cold that there is no temperature. My kitchen sink abuts an exterior wall, and dishwater won't even stay hot enough to do more than one batch at a time. The recycling is piling up. Yesterday when I went to work my bosses had a stack of boot and glove warmers on the conference table for everyone who had to go out into the wilds and distribute magazines.

It's freaking cold.

Winter is, as they say, a bitch. I've been looking at this computer devil box for an hour or so now, drinking coffee and waiting for a magical blast of sun and heat to rain down from upon high and motivate me to clean my kitchen, but so far nothing. My finger still hurts from when I lost my temper two weeks ago and pounded it emphatically on the table while I was telling people to please not antagonize me while I was dangling on the precipice of madness. I think maybe I broke it.

I'm trying to be optimistic...only, what, sixty or so days until Spring? I keep thinking maybe we'll get to go sleighriding or something soon. Anything other than pacing around the house like three caged tigers. Being housebound is getting to me, though. Last night I wanted to recruit my friend Willy and go out for a beer or something, but it was actually below zero before you took wind into account. I ended up watching Phantasm again instead.

I can tell it's starting to get to me. I saw a preview for some movie where some people carjack this couple's daughter, only to have the car break down near their house. They put the couple up in their guesthouse, the daughter comes home, they figure out what happens....and then are all, "what are we gonna do? There are dangerous criminals in our guest house!" Ordinarily I'd think, "oh no; those poor people!" Due to winter I instead think, "that's what you get for living out in seclusion like Sharon Tate."

Slacker

2009-01-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

I seem to have taken my sweet time getting back to the ol' blog here. Things have been all crazy go nuts in my head for the last ten days or so, which is not coincidentally the length of time I had to take the devil Prednisone. Today was the last one, but I'm not any saner yet. Maybe tomorrow.

When I take this crazy medicine I get what they call "flight of ideas". Sometimes it makes me forget what I jumped off the couch and ran upstairs for, but mainly it makes me think of the weirdest things. For instance, I dreamed about the building again.

There is an empty lot by Gene's here in Morgantown, and I have reoccurring dreams about a building on that lot. It's a long building, brick, three storeys. In my dream we live on the very top floor. It has interior brick walls and a staircase to the second level, where some other people live. It's the staircase to these other people's house that makes Dream Tracy hate it so much, that and the fact that in my dream I sold our house to buy it. It's worth buying, though; there are tunnels underneath it. Tunnels that connect all of downtown to my crazy dream building. They're weird, vaulted brick tunnels with people living in them, but the tunnel people never bother me when I'm walking around down there. I even know some of them, real people who only live in the tunnel in the dream. In real life they live in houses and apartments and such.

Dream building has a stereo built into the wall in the living room. It has a cassette deck, but no CD player. Delia and I like it there. There is a lake out in the back yard, and a shrine to the Virgin Mary. And we have a sun room. It's pretty awesome. I wish Dream Tracy liked it.

Two Hour Delay!

2009-01-12T04:54:00.001-08:00

So this morning I got up, brewed some coffee, then went and roused the D. I got her downstairs and eating breakfast only to find that we didn't have to be anywhere for a while. Two hour delay. I've got to start at least looking out the window before I wake this kid up before the sun rises.

I always hated the two hour delay when I was in school, especially junior and high school. I was a bus student, and often would be at the bus stop before the delay was even announced (I caught the bus at 6:30 AM. Score another one for school consolidation). Two hour delays meant two more hours to sit around drinking coffee, preparing a nervous kid for another nervous day.

I had a lot of anxiety in school. You may not know it to look at me now, but I was a nervous wreck for years and years. As I type this I can feel the current prescription of Prednisone coursing through my veins, giving me Hulk-like energy which I can hopefully harness to clean my house. When I was in school all my nervous energy went into the production of heartburn and a towering impatience. Compared to when I was 15 I'm practically a Zen monk today; I only rarely lean out a window to scream at other drivers, haven't followed anyone with ill intent...I haven't even spit on another car in ages and ages. I've mellowed.

Still, it's winter. Winter is tough on us here at Strother House. Not too long ago I saw asshole comedian Dennis Leary on TV saying something to the effect that Seasonal Affect Disorder is not real.

I will fight you, Leary. Oh yes, I will fight you.

The thing about winter (aside from the long stretches of darkness and bone crushing cold) is that we're housebound way more than we like to be. Incredibly, Tracy has turned me on to the outdoors. Usually it's just her that gnaws on the walls as the snow piles up, but I too am restless. I want to go running around in the woods. I want to go hiking, or camping...anything. I want exercise, more than just chin ups and crunches. Walking through the mall like someone is chasing me isn't doing it for me. I've put on a few pounds, I'm restless....winter sucks.

That's my disjointed bitching for the day. Blame the Prednisone. I do.

Dungeons and Dragons

2009-01-05T06:13:00.001-08:00

I'm 33 years old, married, have a child and spend every other Saturday night pretending for hours on end to be a schizophrenic dwarf with a nervous tic. Needless to say, I get mocked for this quite a bit.

Yes, Dungeons & Dragons, the devil's role playing game. I started playing this during the 80s, back when Sally Jessie would have D&D players on her show to expose the demonic influence of the game, when pamphlets like Dark Dungeons (a Chick Tract; you can still find this online and it's AWESOME) came out to clearly illustrate how pretending to be an elf only leads to madness and suicide. I was banned from a few houses as a kid because of D&D, but it was mainly houses full of squares where I didn't like hanging out anyway.

Most of the mocking in my adult life comes from coworkers, particularly on Thursday mornings when all of us are sleep deprived.

"Hey Keith, how's your neutral chaotic elf paladin?"

"Paladins have to be lawful good, you dumb bastard." I'm eloquent that way. "Elves couldn't even BE paladins back in the old days. That's a third edition rule change."

Then they laugh.

I don't defend my nerd hobby to people anymore. I in fact like to give my coworkers updates on my dwarf (who died four weeks ago but is back, thank you very much for caring) every other week. They don't like it, but it's the price they pay to bask in my extra-special greatness during their office hours.

Secretly I think they're just jealous that I have five people willing to hang out with me every other Saturday night.

Ahh

2008-12-28T10:13:00.001-08:00

So Christmas is finally over. Things went pretty well this year, all things considered. Now we find ourselves embroiled in something we're not as a unit at all accustomed to.

We're all home at the same time.

At our house we've always more or less divided time. We had the D some eight years ago, and our work schedules have fallen into a pattern. For the most part, I'm home in the mornings, everyone is home in the afternoon for a while, then Tracy has the night shift. With this have also come our little patterns. Like the way I generally do dishes when I'm the only one home during the day. I'm sure Tracy's schedule has been likewise affected.

Now we're all here, and it's odd. Balance is off. Holiday stress hasn't quite dissipated, we're stumbling over one another. And we still have the freaking dog, which quite frankly isn't helping anyone stay any saner.

I think what's happened is that I've taken most of the holiday stress, internalized it, put it into a time lock safe that couldn't be opened until, say, now.

On the up side, this year did have a few perks. We got to see our friends Marijke and Sean; it'd been literally years. So that was nice. Our camera died but Christmas lootage took care of that nicely. Tracy can start making movies again, which will be especially nice once the scourge of Winter has gasped it's last breath.

We're weathering winter speculating on this summer's camping plans. I may well be able to manage two entire weeks off within a month or so of each other, so we may get to go for several days at a stretch (I think our current camping record holds at three days). I can't wait. Getting out of town, to a place where no one can reach you by phone or email or IM, is fantastic.

Soon.

Day Before the Invasion

2008-12-23T07:11:00.000-08:00

'Tis the day before the night before....time to prepare the troops for battle. I'm oddly not sure what the Christmas plan actually is, other than trying to cram all the relatives into one Blitzkrieg of celebration. We're both working Christmas Eve morning, so we'll get there when we're damn good and ready.

Most of Christmas Eve is usually spent with my in-laws. This is not a problem. Despite growing up with every sitcom planting a subconscious imperative to dislike future mothers-in-law, I actually like Tracy's family. They are, as they said of yore, the bee's knees. Most of my brood went out of state, so we'll be seeing them when they get back. Then there's dad to consider, and my grandparents...we'd better get up and eat our Wheaties tomorrow morning.

A lot of people may think it's a drag that I have to go into my office on Christmas Eve, but my office is like a party on an average week. Christmas is super fun at work, possibly because only one of the five people who will be there is a Christian. All that tedious "Reason for the Season" jazz is instead replaced with my boss running around with a little bag of prizes, handing them out to whomever knows the answers to the bizarre Christmas Trivia game we play every year.

There is one hitch, however. Someone, and I'm not sure who, has supplied all of us with Christmas ties. Musical Christmas ties. Mine has a snowman on it. Never mind that the last time I wore a tie to work was my first day, when I didn't realize that standard office dress code at Fraley Publishing was a T-Shirt, preferably with something cheeky on it, and jeans. I remember the day I showed up in a shirt and tie a coworker was wearing a black T-shirt that read "Satan" in script letters very like the Coca-Cola logo. I don't think I've worn a tie to work since, barring a day when there was a funeral I had to go to after work or something to that effect.

And yet there is this tie.

I considered just wearing a black tie in protest. I have about twenty ties that I seldom wear, and it sort of irks me that on a day I'm expected to wear one I'm also expected to fall in line with that time-honored Christmas imperative, "don we now our gay apparel".

Maybe I'm just feeling bitchy today. The house isn't up to the Christmas standard...which means I should be cleaning instead of sitting here supplying you, tiny audience, with a reason of your own not to be doing whatever it is you should be doing. But since I have you - Merry Christmas. Here's hoping 2009 is footloose and fancy-free.

Cheers.

War Zone

2008-12-22T05:43:00.000-08:00

In a recent post on Edgehill House Tracy said something to the effect of my growing up in a war zone. Allow me to explain.

I grew up in the remnants of an ethnic neighborhood, one of probably many predominantly Italian neighborhoods in Clarksburg. I remember feeling like a minority, being predominantly German amongst all the proudly Italian kids and families. Like many working class neighborhoods in the 80s we had factory closings affecting many families. There wasn't a lot of middle ground - you were either rich or poor. Most of the people in my neighborhood fell into the "poor" category.

I was afraid the war zone comment (and I'm not blaming her; I'm sure I've said it myself more than a few times) would conjure up images of the modern war zone neighborhoods. We didn't have people shooting each other or stabbing someone over their shoes. What we had was more of a propaganda war, waged in grim determination by my grandmother.

The way I heard it as a kid, everyone was potentially out to get you. This was the eighties, the height of Satanic Cult hysteria. If someone offered you a ride, they were killers or kidnappers. If you went to the NVAC (North View Athletic Center, where we played our little league games) alone, you WOULD be found in the surrounding woods, dismembered in a black garbage bag. This was presented as fact.

Now, on the other hand, the following really happened, in no particular order.

Once, when I was fourteen or so, a man knocked on our door about midnight. I was the only one up, and had been warned never, ever to open the door for strangers. I turned on the porch light and looked out to see a guy covered in blood. Literally. He was bleeding from his mouth, nose and his freaking EYE.

I had to know. I opened the door. The guy was drunk (big surprise). He told me that so-and-so had jumped him and wanted to know if I would drive him to the dudes house. They guy who beat the hell out of him - that's who he wanted to go see. I told him I didn't have a license and offered to call him an ambulance. He said he'd be fine and staggered up the street. I watched him go, falling down a few times. I wound up calling 911, explaining that a bloody guy was wandering around, trying to get to the guy who had bloodied him. I thought he needed an ambulance, but the police were the ones who showed up and took him away.

The other example that springs to mind happened before bloody guy. I had stayed up all night drinking Mt. Dew, and decided about 9AM that I was hungry. I didn't know how to cook, maybe there were no groceries...for whatever reason, I decided to walk about four blocks to get a hot dog at the Dairy Mart.

As I walked home with my hot dogs an older kid was walking up the street; we met up right in front of my house.

"I'll fight you for a dollar."

What the hell. I didn't know what to say. I just looked at him, bag of hotdogs in hand.

"You want me to pay you a dollar to fight you?" I don't know why the hell I said it. I had been up all night, so I wasn't thinking straight.

"No, we'll fight, and the winner gets a dollar from the loser." I remember him being super calm when he said this. I didn't know this person, he wasn't mad at me or anything. I guess he just thought fighting was a good way to win a buck.

"No, thanks," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah man, I'm sure." I remember being glad that I was right in front of my house. I thought I was about to get mugged.

"OK," he says, and just walks away. Just like that.

Now, neither of these examples led in any way to my being abducted or murdered. They did, however, drive home the lessons my grandmother constantly drilled into us: people are out to get you. I've been combating this mindset for years. I don't carry a gun around. I broke myself of the compulsion to carry a tactical knife, butterfly knife, switchblades...I even broke my brass knuckle habit.

I still think about it all the time. Tracy says that it's unhealthy to have this mindset, and she's probably right. But my friend up the street was beat up twice in two months over the summer, and once at Dewey Street I caught a drunk guy peering through my back door....you can't be too careful.

So maybe I am a little paranoid. I try not to be, but I think some things are ingrained in your personality, put there by well meaning family as you grow up, little seeds that germinate into madness in your adult life. I try to look at people and not think, "if that guy were to grab my throat, I'd hit him with this beer bottle". I'm down to a flashlight and a kubotan as my only weapons. So I'd say I'm making some good progress.

But I still think my mother is right. Whenever this conversation comes up at family gatherings, she always has the same final insight.

"Sharon Tate didn't expect anyone to kill her, either."

Thanks mom!

The True Story of Tommy Holiday stealing my bike.

2008-12-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

I wish I could remember how old I was exactly when this happened. I know I was in grade school. It was the year that Ryan and I got new bicycles. Shiny new silver bicycles with red BMX pads that were supposed to keep your teeth from getting knocked out through the magic of an 8mm layer of foam, bikes with handbrakes - yes, handbrakes! - they were awesome. Our prides and joys. Before that we rode around on the old bicycles that were left over from another age but had survived in our garage like living, working, fossils.

We were only allowed to ride these bikes in our driveway and the driveway next door where Mrs. Turnis lived. Mrs. Turnis had a huge driveway but didn't drive due to advanced age. When you added these two driveways to the adjacent yards we had a pretty good area to ride around in.

Then, one day, my bike was gone. Ryan's bike was still there; we could tell which was which because we wrote our names on the inside of the rad BMX pads. Someone had come in the night, got into our garage, and stole nothing but my bicycle. I was crushed.

My grandfather, noting that there was another bike to be stolen, hatched a plan. He spent the next two weeks camped out in the garage with a forty ounce bottle of beer, a thermos of coffee, and a loaded semiautomatic 16 ga shotgun. Alas, the thief was happy with only stealing my bike, because my grandfather didn't shoot anyone over the following weeks.

As this happened when I was young enough that I wasn't allowed to roam very far (being allowed to walk the streets at all hours didn't come until years later), I had no idea that my bike was a scant two blocks away. This kid that lived in our neighborhood, Tommy Holiday, had it for days and I had no idea.

Then, one day while I was playing basketball or G.I. Joe or whatever the hell I was doing in the driveway an older kid from up the street came into my driveway. His name was Frankie. I knew Frankie because I knew his little brother Mike. If I was, say nine, when this happened then Frankie must have been more like fourteen. Normally fourteen year olds look at nine year olds as little more than vassals or prey, but Frankie was all right. A good egg, if you will.

Frankie walks up to me and says, "I know where your bike is. We're going to go get it."

Now, I was an intensely shy kid. I had panic attacks if I had to go up to the counter at McDonalds and ask for ketchup. I wanted that bike back, but was torn. My grandfather, who practically spent all summer every summer drinking beer in the garage overheard this conversation. He encouraged me to go with Frankie and retrieve my stolen property. He starts talking to Frankie, finds out where it is, then gives me some grandfatherly advice.

"You get your ass up there and don't come back without that bike." Thanks, grandpa.

I remember being very nervous about this whole thing. Other than my cousins I had never been in a fight before in my young life (though my cousins and I fought viciously and continually, it never occurred to me that these were skills that could come in handy with non-relatives). But then again I had a teenager - a teenager!! - with me. So off we went.

As we walked the two blocks to the Holiday house we encountered another neighborhood scallywag named Brian. Brian was in my class and had been since kindergarten. He was in his front yard with an old BB gun, the kind that looks like a Red Ryder without the forestock. I remember specifically that he was putting yellow dandelions in the muzzle and shooting them in a little three or four foot arc through the air, because the BB gun was so worn out that it wouldn't propel actual metal BBs anymore.

"What are you guys doing?" he asks.

Frankie says, "Tommy Holiday stole his bike, and we're gonna go make him give it back."

"I'm going with you," Brian announces. He shoots the dandelion out of his BB gun, brings it with us, and we're off.

Now I'm flabbergasted. Brian and I weren't really friends, as neither of us at the time were allowed to walk the two blocks to the other's house. All of a sudden it went from Frankie making me go take my bike back from this kid (he didn't make me, but that's how it felt at the time) to being in a freaking gang going into enemy territory to rumble with those greasy Jets. I remember feeling like I was going to throw up, but also feeling that my chances of getting my bike back were looking pretty good.

We make it to the Holiday house and, son of a bitch; there's my bicycle. The pads are all gone, but it was definitely it. A young boy can spot his bike like a young mother can spot her toddler on a playground, definitively and instantly. Tommy was busy taking the rear wheel off with a pipe wrench and a pair of pliers. I remember him looking up as we walked into his yard.

"That's my bike," I said. At the time this was a wildly bold thing for me to do. You have to understand that when I was a kid I took this asthma medicine twice a day. It made me so nervous I jumped if a cat purred when I didn't expect it. Except when I was mad, when it made me so nervous I flew into what they call red murderous rage. Saying this was an unfamiliar ground; it was a reasonable reaction to the situation. Maybe that's why I remember this so well; it was surreal in many ways, from having other kids actually helping me out, to being what passed outwardly for calm - it was alien territory for me.

"I found this bike," Tommy says. "Finders keepers."

"Bullshit. You stole that bike out of his garage. You're lucky his grandfather wasn't home when you did it. Try to steal it again and you're gonna get shot." Frankie was pretty eloquent when he wanted to be.

"Look..." Tommy begins.

This next part I will never forget as long as I live. Brian takes his BB gun that will only shoot flowers about three feet through the air, cocks it, points it at Tommy Holiday and says, "Put that wheel back on."

Holy shit! All of a sudden it's like being one of the Magnificent Seven! Tommy Holiday evidently didn't know that this BB gun was physically incapable of damaging anything but a flower, because that wheel went on fast. I remember Frankie and Brian and I sitting around talking while Tommy sweated through putting the wheel back on, then off we went. In retrospect I'm surprised the police didn't come see us about menacing people with BB guns, but then I don't remember calling the police when my bike was stolen either. I was too young to worry about police, but I did have my bike back.

Tommy Holiday moved away not long after this happened. Brain and I went to school together until we were seniors, but probably never said more than a hundred words to each other the whole time. Frankie I talked to for years and years afterward; he wound up working at the store half a block from my grandmother's house. He died in a motorcycle accident years later, seeing how fast he could take a sport bike up a 50mile per hour stretch of Rt 50. Brian I never think about, though I see him on Facebook once in a while. Frankie I'll never forget as long as I live.

Dig This

2008-12-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

My friend Willy was here Saturday night. Tracy had gone to get pizzas, Chris had to run back to his house to get a magazine he'd forgotten, and the other gamers were still somewhere on the long road between Arthurdale and my kitchen table. It was wicked cold outside and Willy had walked to my house so we decided to do a warm-up shot of whiskey.

We're standing in my kitchen and Willy turns to me and says, "Lucas and I made a tattoo gun."

I had to admit to being a little jealous. They made it out of a motor from Radio Shack, some aluminum tubing they'd milled down, either a pen or mechanical pencil (I forget which) and, of course, a guitar string.

According to Willy the test run consisted of a few lines that Lucas drew on his leg, to test depth and whether the lines would blow out or not. The test was quite satisfactory. The test run was done with India Ink, but some tattoo ink (which is an acrylic suspension, just so you know) is being ordered via the internet. Then the fiesta begins.

I have to admit that there is some draw to this. Calm down; I'm not going to do it - but I have to admit to wanting to a tiny bit. It appeals to me in the same way that a $20 music player appeals to me more than an iPod, or the way my cheapo cell phone appeals to me more than a touch screen Blackberry. Somewhere along the way, we've all come to believe that more expensive not only means better, but also means that we must have it. I know a lot of people (casually, that is) that won't have anything if they can't have the best. People who will spend more on gas than they make on a given day so they can have the necessary luxury of driving an Escalade.

It's their money. But it still makes me mad. The economy is going down the toilet, and all the pundits will have us believe that it's because people spent more on houses than they could possibly afford. Whether or not that's strictly true (it doesn't explain why the car companies are going broke, though their insistence on making huge gas guzzlers instead of small efficient cars does), it is a prevailing attitude.

I digress. The home made tattoo is more than just a cheap alternative. It's a lot like giving the finger. Tattoos used to be the finger to society at large, but every frat boy and sorority girl sports them now, so a lot of the social deviancy is gone. But it is still deviant to get said tattoo in your friends kitchen. It's the same part of me that looks forward in the future after the D is settled and happy to selling everything, buying an Airstream and just becoming a wandering gypsy.

Again, don't worry. I'm not going to do it.

Stupid blood borne pathogens.

Internet Survey Says!?

2008-12-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a survey, one of the deals that goes around on MySpace. You know what I'm talking about. The women's magazine-type surveys that people pass around on the MySpace bulletin board.

I gotta come clean - I love those things.

It's not so much the "getting to know your friends" vibe that attracts me to them. I know my friends. My friends are a bunch of smartasses. They're not alone. I too am a smartass. AND given that I like to lie, those things are just too good to pass up.

The best question on this survey (and the best question of any survey I've seen in quite a while) was, "Have you ever been Hornswaggled?" This, then, is the complete fabrication of the last time someone attempted to hornswaggle me.

I was in Utah, where I didn't want to be in the first place. Utah is not the state for me. They have to make special, lower alcohol content beer to sell in Utah. If you want anything worth drinking you have to drive clear to freaking Wyoming. Yet there I was nonetheless.

The reason I was lingering in Utah is because my car was missing, presumably stolen. I told the police it was stolen, but to be honest I just parked it somewhere that I thought no one would come across it for a very long time, walked through the seediest part of Salt Lake City (it was seedy because there was a news stand there that sold Cosmopolitan), then took a cab to the police station. They ask a hella lot of questions in a Utah police station, a disconcerting number of which concern whether or not you've accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior and, if not, why, but I persevered. Eventually they bought my story; I told them I was going to California to become an actor. If you're ever in a Utah police station, tell them exactly that. That you are going to California to become an actor. When you tell them that, they can't wait to get rid of you.

So anyway after I reported my car stolen I had to wait around a few days. It actually turned out to be about a month, because I wanted to wait out the insurance company for a check. I stayed in the seediest hotel I could find, which turned out to be a Howard Johnson.

Here's where the attempted Hornswaggle came in.

I decided one night, after finishing the last of the booze I'd smuggled into the state, to go out on the town. The HoJo was a good ways from anything that might be even a little fun, and I was running short on cash, so I decided to hitchhike. I don't advocate hitchhiking, but I was in Utah and wasn't an unmarried 16 year old girl, so I felt pretty safe.

Anyway, after a while this dude picked me up. I say "dude" instead of "guy" because of his jacket. His bedazzled denim jacket. The one jackass in the state with a bedazzled Confederate flag on the back of a Wrangler denim jacket - that's who stops to pick me up. Son of a bitch.

When you're hitchhiking you have to talk to whoever picks you up. If you don't they freak out, think you're a serial killer, and jump out of the car. So I start talking to this guy about my "stolen" car, waiting for the insurance check, and just wanting to get out on the town after being cooped up for a month.

"Well hell," he says. "I can sell ya a truck!"

Oh boy. The conventions of hitchhiking mandate that I have to hear him out. I bite.

"Oh yeah? What kind?" I thought this was a good, fairly noncommittal question.

"A Henweigh!" he replies.

Now, I didn't fall off the back of a Utah bible truck the day before this happened. I knew what this dude was up to. He wanted me to ask what a Henweigh was so he could yell, "About six pounds!" Nevermind that he should have said he would sell me a truck that had a Henweigh. (That's how the joke works. The mark is supposed to say, "What's a Henweigh?")

I decided right then, and I remember these words running through my head verbatim, "uh uh, baby". I countered.

"First thing's first-does it have a Five'cross?" I asked this with a completely straight face, a trick I learned from Bob Newhart.

"A five'cross?" He's still smiling, just wanting to get through this "five'cross" jazz I threw at him so he could deliver his punchline.

"That's right, baby. Five'cross yo lip!" POW. Old bedazzled jacket never saw it coming.

I didn't wait to see what he'd do. I jumped out of the truck, which was whizzing down the highway at a pretty good clip. I figured he'd be less apt to give me any static if he thought I was some sort of maniac. He kept right on driving.

And THAT, people, is what happens when someone tries to hornswaggle me.

Adult Content

2008-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

I myself made my blog an adult content blog. I did it just the other day because I noticed that every now and again, against my better judgement, I drop the old F bomb. In the interest of both protecting innocent young minds and not hiding my light under a bushel, I just came clean and admitted to the mark of the untalented - I work blue.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about for a while. I used to keep a very sporadic blog on MySpace, before I moved it here full time. MySpace used to be a lot more active than it is now. A lot of my friends have switched over to Facebook instead, but I still check the MySpace a lot. I've noticed it's missing something.

I used to have friend requests on MySpace every time I logged on. I put them into two rough categories: Boob Girls and Butt Girls. The Boob Girls are the ones who would have a picture of some girl in a bikini or some such, the Butt Girls were mainly pictures of butts. Sometimes butts in jeans, sometimes butts in underwear. Butts. (That last time I just wanted to say it again).

Both the Boob and Butt Girls were just robotic advertisements for porn sites. Most of the time if you just ignored them the profiles associated with the requests would disappear, as someone would flag them as spam. But I can't help wondering whether MySpace has gotten better at blocking spammers or if, for some reason, the Boob and Butt Girls have just collectively lost interest in me. I checked my MySpace before I logged onto this - no Boob or Butt Girls.

Alas, all I got was a crappy band inviting me to be friends. As pop music offends me far more than boobs or butts, I had to click no. So good bye Boob Girls, so long Butt Girls. I hardly knew ye.

Passive V. Overt

2008-12-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

I just spent way too much time reading passiveagressivenotes.com, a nice little website where people can post the notes that we all encounter in our daily lives. Most of them are either from room mate situations or workplaces.

I don't get notes here at home, at least not notes that annoy me. "Call me if you get home before I do and we'll go out to lunch" are the kind I get, so they don't qualify. I do get notes at work, but they don't count either, as they are usually either questions that I have answers to or replies to questions I had about something. So as I read the site I was trying to think back to past jobs where I may have gotten or left P-A notes.

Turns out I'm not the passive-aggressive type. I'm overtly aggressive. I used to work at a fast food place that specifically serves fried fish. We'll call it the Diarrhea Steamboat to avoid any annoying mention of corporations and such. Anyway, I fried stuff at work. The dude who worked the shift before me fried stuff as well, but he was a disgusting pig. He didn't mop the floor at all during his shift, which used to piss me off. Thinking back on it, I could have left little annoying notes like "It's your job to mop the floors too" or "Don't be too lazy to clean the damn floors." I didn't do that, though.

Instead I did this. I went up and said, "John, mop the fucking floor before you leave tomorrow."

John didn't like this, and muttered something about not being able to get to it when there was a rush. I countered with something to the effect of, "Dude, if you can't handle this job you're a liability to the human race and should go jump in front of a bus right now."

Bear in mind that I'm not some hulking giant. I'm all of 5'8" tall. John was much, much bigger than I am. He was bound to notice this. I expected it. I kind of wanted him to try to exploit this size differential, in fact.

John looked at me and said, "If you don't like mopping the floor, maybe you should quit."

I said, "If you don't mop this floor by the time I come in tomorrow, I'm going to drag you out into the parking lot by your throat." Then I left.

I came in the next day and lo, behold, the floor was mopped. Nice. John had left before I got there, I got my way; score one for being overtly aggressive.

Then, later that night, I found out that my manager had mopped it.

"What the hell, Sherry?" I was so pissed off. It wasn't just that the floor wasn't mopped every time, it was specifically that the jackass who worked there before me was too lazy to do it. She told me she didn't want me to drag John around by the neck, so she mopped it for him.

A few days later the general manager called a mandatory meeting. When we were all there she starting saying something about how someone, she didn't know who, was starting trouble about the floors and general mess.

I couldn't take it. I said, "Yes, you do."

"Pardon?" She was looking at me with eyes wide open, almost popping out.

"You know exactly who's pissed. I'm pissed. And you know why. It's because John is either too lazy, too stupid -or both- to handle a job frying things in a vat of hot fat."

No one said a word for about three minutes. I sat and waited them out.

John finally spoke up. "Sometimes it's too busy..."

"Bullshit." When I get mad I like to cut people off. "You're an asshole. Mop the floor or I swear to god I'm going to take that mop handle and beat you in the head with it."

I can not, to this day, believe they didn't fire me right there. My manager didn't even write me up or whatever it is they did in the way of discipline. The most that happened was that I never again was named employee of the month. I worked there for months after this happened. I wound up quitting after a year because they gave me a whole dime for a raise and I was tired of smelling like hot grease all the time.

The moral of this story is that, while you can indeed annoy someone with a prissy little sanctimonious note you're much better off (in my experience anyway) addressing the problem directly. So here are some tips on how to be overtly aggressive.

1. Bitch loudly, bitch often, but bitch to the right people. Specifically the people who are driving you to do all this bitching in the first place.

2. Don't be afraid of people who are way bigger than you are. Most people are so shocked at being yelled at that they instinctively cringe even if they are twice your size. Use common sense and don't go doing this to obvious psychopaths or ninjas, but bear in mind that normal people are not used to being confronted.

3. Bear in mind that the above events happened almost a decade ago, before we lived in a police state.

4. Don't be overtly aggressive in traffic. This is only for when the only person you endanger is yourself, not everyone on the road.

Enjoy, and remember that with Christmas also must come Krampus. While Santa rewards the good little boys and girls Krampus beats the bad ones with a wooden whip and shoves them in his wicker backpack, presumably to be devoured later.

I love Krampus.

Plan B(ooze)

2008-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

Still no Christmas decorating done. So far my main accomplishment today has been unloading the dishwasher and doing some laundry. And now the dubious accomplishment of another blog entry.

I stopped by the bakery today and got some bad news. My father-in-law is in the hospital. This makes me sad, not just for him but for everyone involved. This also makes the cultivation of a jovial attitude imperative, lest we have a repeat of the Christmas that saw us too lazy and malcontent to decorate the tree.

If all else fails this holiday season, there is still Plan B. While I think there is some pregnancy prevention drug by this same moniker, I'm talking the old fashioned Plan B. The Plan B that our wonderful West Virginian Scotch-Irish ancestors used to while away the long dreary Appalachian winter.

Booze.

This is not a politically correct endorsement, nor is it healthy or even particularly responsible. I do, however, want to come out right now in favor of tying one on this holiday season. As soon as this weekend, in fact. Maybe even sooner. I need a good, stiff drink.

Back in the Good Old Days, a good stiff drink was taken for granted. Tough day at work? Have a drink. Dinner not ready yet? Have a drink. Depressed as all hell? Screw it; have two.

Most of my friends are confirmed beer drinkers. There are one or two wine drinkers (talkin' to you, Ohio). Then there is the third party; my people, the boozers. The dudes who will sit around drinking glasses of whiskey with me, the chicks who say, "You, come with me. We're doing shots." I generally don't even ask what we're doing shots of.

It has come to my attention recently that, for $63 a bottle, you can buy absinthe at my local grocery store. Absinthe with wormwood in it. My naysayer friend Steve says it lacks a vital ingredient called "Thujone" (or something to that effect). I say it's 150 proof and lacking one ingredient is a shortfall we're not all that likely to notice.

Still, it's $63 a bottle. For some perspective, Black Label is like thirty four cents a can.

Anyway, it's been a while since the other boozers and I have had the leisure and inclination to go out and sin like we mean it. I've been feeling cooped up for a week or three now. It's time to round up the drunks.

Winter Fun

2008-12-02T08:32:00.001-08:00

In the interest of not being a whiny bitch all the time, here are some fun things to do in the winter. It's best to do these things where there are a lot of people. Since it's the shopping season and you're likely to be spending some time in a mall, let me help you while that time a way in a counterproductive, smart-assy manner.

1. This is perhaps the most important thing to remember when you go into a mall this Christmas season-park next to whatever restaurant in your mall that has a bar. Go in, walk up to the bar and order a double shot of whatever you like. Try to down it in the time it takes the bartender to get your change. When he or she comes back say, "Thanks, that's just like being back home." This will hopefully give you a chance to do the second best thing at a mall.

2. Lie to strangers for no reason. Going back to point one-if you're lucky, that bartender I was talking about will ask you where "back home" is. This is your big chance. Here's how I like to think this conversation will go for me.

Bartender: "Oh? Where's home"
Me: "Latvia."
Bartender: "Really? Latvia?"
Me: "Yeah, verily. I am from Latvia. No shit."
Skeptical Bartender: "You speak awfully good English for someone from Latvia."
Me: "Yeah, that's a pretty common misconception. Our education system is more advanced than even our dairy industry. We all speak perfect English there."
SB: "I don't believe you."
Me: "It's cool, baby. Smell you later."

Then you just leave. It's easy. They're at work, so they can't follow you.

3. Fun thing number three is righteous indignation. This is best at the "X Items or Less" checkout express lane. For example:

Me: "It says eight items."
Asshole Who Can't Count: flat stare at me.
Me: "You clearly have more than eight items."
AWCC: "Mind your own business."
Me: "Up yours, baby. It IS my business. "
AWCC: "Well, I never!"
Me: "Well, now you have!'

Man, that's the best. People almost never say, "well, I never!" Bound to happen someday though. I'm ready for it.

4. Fun thing number four is tearing ass through a crowded mall. When there are too many people in a mall, traffic grinds to the pace of the slowest slackard. When I walk through a mall I like to pretend someone is chasing me while I'm trying to be all cool about it and walk as fast as I can without actually running. This is extra bonus fun if, like me, you are covered in tattoos. Security guards love tattooed people hightailing it out of their little domains. Try to look guilty if you can.

5. Messin' with security is a fun game unto itself. There are lots of ways to do this, but I find the best is to just keep an eye on them. They're used to following people around and spying, but almost no one thinks to return the favor. Follow them around as long as you can. Taking notes while you do it will, if you're super lucky, get some attention. It's never happened, but I dream of one day having a security guard demand to see what I've been writing about him. Man, that would be sweet.

I have to run. I hope this helps someone besides me cheer up this winter. If none of this works I'll spend next post elaborating on Plan B(ooze).

Feliz Navidad!

Ugh

2008-12-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Winter can suck it. Every year about this time I start wincing every time the furnace kicks on, because to me it's the sound of money being tossed into a fire. I'm wearing three shirts, a hat, gloves and a scarf right now. I'm freezing, but I can't bring myself to crank up the heat any higher than it is now. Add in getting dark at five o'clock and everyone in the house but me (knock on wood) either actively being sick or getting over a cold and things start feeling pretty grim.

Intellectually I know that if I actually got up and accomplished something I might feel a little better, but it's taking all the energy I can muster to sit here and type this instead of just going back to sleep. This constant compulsion to hibernate is one of the main indicators I have that I'm getting depressed, that and weight loss. All other signs fly under the radar of my normal level of irritation, but this sleep thing just isn't me.

Monday Monday, so good to me

2008-12-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it's not quite ten AM and I've already had four cups of coffee and breakfast. Mondays in the summer are a lot keener than Mondays in the winter. For one thing the prospect of taking the recycling to the recycling center is a lot more attractive when its 75 degrees than it is when its 30 degrees and raining. Also in the summer monetary thoughts are more along the lines of "I think we can swing going camping again this weekend" as opposed to "what the hell are we going to do about Christmas".

I do sort of have a tentative plan for the day. If we can get the recycling done, then maybe hit the grocery store and still have time I hope to start getting ready for Christmas. When your house is in a state of untidiness its hard to get into the Christmas spirit. When the London Philharmonic is belting out the holiday tunes and the Christmas village is in the planning stages it becomes a lot easier to feel all cheery.

Part of the problem today is that I feel all like a pile of crap. Mentally, not physically, which is a nice change of pace in the not being sick department. It's hard not to get bummed out this time of year. There is a lot of family strife going on at my grandmother's house this year, and I'm trying not to let it affect me overly much, but it is tough going. It's way too early in the season to feel utterly defeated, so it's going to take some serious staving off. It may be time to start speaking loudly and carry a bigger stick. Then maybe I can fight off the main symptom I suffer when I start getting depressed, which is an almost unstoppable desire to just sleep all the time. Normally I'm a night owl who has very little trouble getting up and moving in the morning, provided there is coffee and a compelling reason. Delia kicking me in the head demanding I get up and make her some breakfast is usually all the urging I need.

Today, I'm sorry to say, my ass is a dragon. I could go back to bed right now and not wake up until it is time for me to go to work. Not only would this be easy, it's very appealing right now. I must resist, even if resistance is well neigh futile.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

2008-11-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

Well, tomorrow officially kicks off the Christmas season. It's time to pull the ghost lights off the porch and break out the multi color C9s! I love the big cheery Charlie Niners. They are my favorite Christmas lights, next to the neat bubbling tubes of colored liquid they used to put on trees when I was a kid. You can still buy those today, but they aren't the same. When I was a kid you could roast a marshmallow with one of those lights. Long third degree burns were a sign that Christmas was nearing.

Stupid safe LED technology.

I think we're going visiting today, but when we get back I hope to prep the living room a bit for Christmas Village. It's time for the town people to gather round and listen to Sister Sarah and her Band of Sinners in the tiny village, displaying their unflappable Christmas spirit despite living in a town that's often overrun by zombies and fishmen.

The fishman is a little hard to see.

It's amazing how these people keep a-wassalin' despite roving packs of Krenshar.

So, here's to you unflappable citizens of Christmastown. Neither poor economic climate nor rampaging monsters keep you from spreading goodwill and cheer in your little town. I hope you don't loose too many carolers to the cult of Dagon this year.

Merry Christmas!

The Red and Green Crush

2008-11-29T06:49:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is over and done with. It went pretty well this year, all things considered. Now we're facing the slide, kicking and screaming, into the Christmas season.

The main thing about Christmas that makes it one of the most stressful holidays ever is money. Christmas always coincides with days off for holidays, most notably Thanksgiving. My job is pretty awesome, but the rare holidays that I get off are of the unpaid variety. AND when an unpaid holiday falls on a Thursday (stupid Thanksgiving) there a disturbance in the economic force that is my paycheck.

I know I shouldn't stress about this. People like to say that Jesus wouldn't want us to commercialize his holiday all the time, but you may note that of the three original Christmas presents one of them was freaking GOLD. This, I believe, is what lead to the evolution of Christmas movies where the hapless dad turns to a wacky life of crime to finance the big day.

I had wanted a guitar for Christmas, but I'm revising my Christmas want list right here, right now.

1. Razor blades. I like Gillette Mach 3, which are pricey but way the hell cheaper than the fancy dancy four-blader they have out now.

2. The H.P. Lovecraft compendium that Barnes and Noble printed. It's a thirteen dollar hardback on the bargin shelf. Can't miss it.

3. Some string.

4. A rock, to wind the string around.

That's it. That's all I want for Christmas this year. I'm not going to say anything cheesey like world peace, though it would be nice if we could collectively get through this fiasco without anyone getting pissy with anyone else.

Facebook

2008-11-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

I logged in to Facebook this morning to find a friend invitation from someone I went to high school with. This is the second time this has happened, and I think I'm going to have to click the little deny button again. It's not that I have anything against these people; both of them were nice to me and nice people in general.

The thing is, on Facebook when someone sends you a friend request you can look at their list of friends. In both cases the list of friends seemed to be mainly comprised of people I went to high school with. I skipped out on my 10 year reunion (a number of years ago, in fact). I did it on purpose too. Other than geography throwing us together for a few years of public school I don't feel like I have a lot in common with these people. I only talked to a handful of people in high school to begin with and only talk to one person from the Dark Days here in the Present Era. And that's because I married her. That and she's pretty rad.

I remember one day in a college history class a feisty professor telling us to look around at the people in the room, proclaiming that these people were the pool from which we would draw the people that we'd be friends with until our dying days. She told us that the people we went to high school with would fade away into obscure memories and our college friends would last us until our golden years.

I didn't really make a lot of friends in college either. There are five or six, but not people who I met in classes. They were neighbors in crappy leaning-to-one-side-quite-noticeably apartment buildings, friends of friends, relatives of my future wife. The other people I met in college were just there, the people you talk to more out of proximity than inclination. Not that I have anything against most of them. Maybe I just don't connect with people very well, or at least very often. I did make one friend, but I haven't seen him in person for years.

Anyway, back to Facebook. I feel betrayed, like Facebook has ratted me out. My cover is blown; my vague ideas that I would be the one student from high school that no one would remember more than vaguely are shattered. Thanks, Facebook. Thanks a lot. Asshole.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like the Same Old Thanksgiving Blitz

2008-11-24T06:00:00.001-08:00

So, Dad got a divorce. This happened a while back; I can't remember if it was after Thanksgiving last year or the year before, though I tend to think it was last year. My parents divorced a long time ago, so for the last 20-something years I've been one of those people that has at least two of every major holiday. Two Thanksgiving dinners, two Christmasses. Then, oh about eleven years ago, I got married. Bang! THREE holidays. Mom's house, Dad's house, T's parents.

It's exhausting.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining that there are so many people who want to see us on the Holidays. It's nice to be in demand, even if it's just a couple of days a year. But the divorce did lead me to trick myself. I thought to myself, "OK, back down to two holidays. Two is do-able."

Friday Dad and Maria (his girlfriend, who is a lovely woman who talks and smiles and does everything else that a nice, normal person does) came to dinner at our house. I asked what his Thanksgiving plans were, thinking he'd say something about ordering a pizza and watching football. To my surprise (I almost said "Horror" instead of "surprise", but really that would be a vast exaggeration) he drops the bomb.

"We're having a ham and a turkey. Are you going to come by?" Dad asks.

Hell's Bells and cockleshells. I say yes.

So, now we are at two dinners, minimum. My Aunt Donna will be at my mom's place. I don't know what's going down there on Thursday, but I imagine that we'll be expected to put in an appearance. I didn't have the mental fortitude to find out for sure. This was a mistake, because now it's looming on the horizon like a tropical storm. Hurricane Third Dinner.

The only real problem with a three-dinner run is that you have to seriously pace yourself. At dinner numero uno, you have one plate piled low. This is vital to the mission if you don't want to end up in the hospital tent with army doctors hovering over you at the end of the night, shaking their heads and muttering how you are the worst case of exploding stomach that they've ever seen. Even if you do manage to pull this tricky balancing act off, you endure a dinner of "you-barely-eat-anythings" and "that's-why-you're-so-skinnys". This usually takes place at the first house. At Dinner Two, the Plan dictates that you eat a bit of the food left out for people to graze on. If you're lucky, which means getting there after everyone has already eaten. If you get there on time, it's another uncomfortable round of "is-that-all-you're-going-t0-eats". Dinner three is too much for most humans. I generally fold and just have a cup of coffee, enduring the dirty looks of whoever spent all day in the kitchen.

I'm ready for it. I can take it.

Snow Day!

2008-11-18T06:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I walked out of my office into a Winter Wonderland. It was a twenty mile an hour drive back home on the fifty five road, snow everywhere. You couldn't even see. There is always a noticeable disparity in the weather between home and work. I only work something like seven miles from my house, but that seven miles includes an elevation change. So if we have one inch here, there are generally three or four there. Things got a little less out of hand as I got closer to my house, but there was still snow. Impressive snow, at that.

I came home and joked around with Tracy that if it kept up like it was we wouldn't be having school tomorrow. I even checked the Snowbird report. (Side Note; Snowbird is a penguin mascot at a TV station in the town I grew up in. I loathe the Snowbird, but he is a reliable source.) Then I went to bed and set an alarm.

I get automated phone calls from the county school system to keep me posted. So my phone rings at 5:30 to tell me there is a two hour delay. I reset the alarm and go back to sleep. Forty five minutes later it rings again; no school. I try to go back to sleep. My daughter wakes up and it's all over. The dream of sleeping in is officially DOA. I give up, get up and start in on my morning coffee.

There isn't enough snow to go out and play in, but it's beautiful outside. Last year we didn't have any snow until just before Christmas. We have a tradition of going out to a tree farm (King's Family Tree Farm), and we don't go until we have snow. So the D wanted to go get a tree today and start decorating for Christmas. I had to invoke the "not before Thanksgiving" rule.

So here we are, our first day off due to inclement weather. It's freezing outside, so we can't really go out and run around. Later when Tracy gets home we'll huddle into the car and go to the bank and grocery store. My car is a VW, so it has a heater that can cook a ham. It seems like a good day to cook soup.

Damn It!

2008-11-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

W. Virginia Town Shrugs at Poorest Health Ranking

Huntington, W.Va., home to highest percentage of obese; also tops in diabetes, loss of teeth

By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. November 16, 2008 (AP)

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=6265228

Man, it's like we're not even trying.

The Big Funeral

2008-11-10T05:46:00.000-08:00

Saturday I missed a phone call from my dad. That evening I happened to notice that I had a voice message. I checked it while we were planning out what the pizza order for Dungeons & Dragons night would be. Dad is always straight to the point when he leaves a message.

"Hey, your great grandmother died. The funeral is tomorrow at two. Call me back."

Well, crap. I called back and left him a message, then reflected on what a crappy great grandson I was. My parents divorced when I was five or so, and after about the age of 13 I just sort of fell out of contact with most of dad's side of the family. So my great grandmother had never met my wife, let alone my daughter. Being the terrible person I am, it didn't bother me overly much. I don't mean to sound callous, but what's done is done and wailing in lamentation does little in the way of positive action.

I decided to go to the funeral. This was going to be awkward. My great grandmother had fifteen children, most of which are still alive and kicking. They all had children, most of those children in turn procreated...so there would be something like five hundred people who may or may not know or care what a terrible grandson I am.

We get in the car and drive to the funeral. I had to call dad three times on the way because he gives terrible directions. Sorry dad, but "it's in Salem" and "it'll be on your left" aren't very specific. Pulling into the parking lot some older guy comes to my window and starts asking how I'm related. Sadly enough I can't name many of my relatives, but I damn sure know the answer to this. After a while I get, "Eh, I don't know any of 'em. I'm just a neighbor".

We walk in and spot dad sitting with his girlfriend Maria. Joe, dad's friend, is behind him. They're in the section reserved for family, which I am, so we go plant ourselves in chairs. Now, I've been to funerals with dad before. Neither of us has ever seen the other inside a church, but funerals are old hat. With typical reverence dad leans over and tells me he's hungry.

We sit there a little while, trying to figure out who's who. I play a little game I invented at the last funeral dad and I both attended. It's called, "Let's Find the Guy Who Looks Most Like Johnny Cash". I believe my uncle Mike took the trophy.

At one point I lean over and whisper to dad, "Hey, if there is anyone from out of state that doesn't know us and asks who we are, we should tell them you're Popeye and I'm Popeye, Jr."

Dad consents.

Finally the minister guy (these are Methodists we're dealing with, by the way) gets up. Apparently he's also a relative, though I believe he married in. There was no singing, though there was music over the PA. I believe I detected some Conway Twitty, but I could be way off-base there.

The funeral ends. We all get up and file past my great grandmother, who I do indeed remember. Then we start re-meeting relatives. Aunt Candy knows us right off the bat. Uncle Kenny knows who I am by sight, as I look exactly like my dad and his father before him. My grandparents, of course, know all of us. I only got a few skunkeyes, but did get a lot of "I haven't seen you since you were a little kid" remarks. Most of them were very kindly. As usual at funerals, I begin to sort of enjoy myself. Again with the not wanting to sound callous, funerals don't bother me overly much. I've never been happy that someone is dead, but if you're in a casket your problems are over. I much prefer to celebrate that this person was alive to begin with and think that since you're in a room with a bunch of people who all know each other but seldom gather you might as well make the best of it.

We get in the car and drive to the cemetery. Salem, WV isn't that big a place to begin with, but we drive for something like forty-five minutes on roads that get progressively more remote. We make a 315 degree turn up the hill to the cemetery proper. Had it been snowing a Sherman tank wouldn't have made it up this road.

We were there for all of five minutes. Another prayer and we're off.

Dad and I are the first ones out. The trip that took forty five minutes in a funeral procession takes closer to twenty when dad is in the lead car. We are the first ones at Van Horn school. Van Horn School is where we were told everyone would meet for the post-funeral food gathering. Van Horn School is not where this was all going down. It was going down next door. We find it after milling about for a while, trying to open doors that are ajar but chained shut from the inside.

The food part of a funeral is, of course, the best part. People begin to realize that they're all alive and start enjoying it. I'm glad my wife and daughter are there, glad that we're at the same table with dad and, oddly, glad that some of the people did remember me. A few people may have wondered what prompted me to come visit my grandmother after she died instead of before, though no one said anything to that effect and I may well just be imagining it. Jerry was giving me a flat, hard stare, but he gives everyone he meets a flat, hard stare. We hang out a little while, eat dinner, talk mainly to the relatives that we're most familiar with. All in all it was a positive experience. My daughter wrote an essay about it in the back seat on the way home, dad and Maria agreed to come to dinner at our house two weeks from now. Things went so well that I'm going to try to make it to the family reunion this year, for the first time since 1988.

End Times

2008-11-07T08:43:00.000-08:00

First off, I'm glad the election is finally over. I was a nervous wreck for the last few days leading up to it. Being a Democrat is kinda like being a Vikings fan; your team goes almost all the way before something goes awry.

I apologize to anyone I was mean to over those few days, except for that girl in the green car. I'm not sorry about that at all.

Anyway, I'm glad things turned out the way they did. I'm hopeful that we will see some meaningful change. I'm not expecting magical koalas to crap a rainbow in the economy overnight. I don't expect that anytime between now and, say, Christmas my situation will improve any. I do expect things to get better in the next four years, but I think people have to come to terms with a few things before that can happen.

First off, the tax increase. Those of you making over $200,000 to $250,000 a year will pay more taxes. I'm sure you're pissed about this. I've heard a lot about how this is unfair. Consider these few points: The extra burden may mean you have to make a few sacrifices. Things like having to maybe not buy a new car every year. Perhaps only going on one vacation. Maybe even eating out less. These sacrifices will help out those making less than you do.

Screw them, you say?

If you own a business, you cannot have this attitude. Consumer spending is drastically low in our me me me economy over the last 18 months or so. Helping out people who are currently unable to buy anything in your stores may well keep your store from folding. Or from having to lay off a few people, cut back hours-you know, taking steps that keep people from having the money they need if they are to frequent your business and keep you afloat.

Harken back to the days of WWII, the Big One. We had a culture of sacrifice in this country. People rationed food and gas for the common good. Now we have a culture that moans about how much gas costs to fill a gigantic, fuel inefficent SINGLE PERSON vehicle. I see it all the time, one dude driving around in his H3, one lady driving around in an Expedition. These very people may be lamenting that a tax increase will prevent them from hopping in their tanks and driving five blocks to Starbucks every morning to spend five dollars on a fancy lad coffee.

Is this what we've come to?

For a little perspective, let's take a look at a family that will benefit from a new tax plan. At the price of your massively unfair new tax bracket these people will now have money to squander. They will go wild with it. Maybe they'll be able to go to the grocery store without worrying wether or not the money they spend on food will prevent them from other wild luxuries, like electricity. Or taking a child to a doctor or dentist. Maybe they'll even be able to go to your precious businesses and spend the money you need them to spend to keep your doors open.

The generation that fought WWII would puke at the current attitudes in this country. No one wants to even think of the greater good if it means they can't live a Blackberry, BMW, Starbucks lifestyle. Our auto industry is in the shape it's in because people just had to have bigger and shinier SUVs to drive five blocks in. People bought more house than they could possibly afford not because they needed the space, but because they felt they deserved it. The level of gluttony and self-indulgence is staggering.

No one is going to make things better without the support of the poeple in America today. We've got to get away from this Hollywood, record industry, selfish, stupid culture we've been slowly buying into. Personal responsibility must make a comeback in a big way if we're going to have even a chance at getting out of this morass. Being an American doesn't have to mean having the biggest, shiniest, best. It can mean being the best. If you're not willing to help out in any way to help ensure that everyone in the country has what they need to survive, if you're so incredibly wrapped up in a sense of entitlement that owning a Lexus is more important than ensuring that families aren't sitting in cold houses with no food, what good are you to your country?

It Might Be Time to Grow Up, America

2008-11-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow is the big election. "The most important election of your lifetime" is what they're calling it. A lot of people are going to be disappointed Wednesday morning. This is a given in any election, but this year I'm kind of worried about it.

No matter who wins, the winner will be president. There has been a lot of talk this election cycle about "real Americans". As far as I can tell this is mainly a Republican tactic (and don't get up in arms, I do realize propaganda comes from all sides), but it deeply worries me. Should Obama become president I'm concerned that these self-described "real Americans" will take a "your president-not my president" stance. Everyone is so up in arms this year, passions are running high. It's nice to see so many people engaged in the political process, but I think we need to think back to our time as children on playgrounds-you can't always get your way. Deciding that a president isn't worthy of the office is one thing as a personal view, but we can't let things get out of hand here. Someone is going to be president and, as my daughter says, "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit".

I haven't felt very well represented for the last eight years. I'm of the opinion that President Bush was a terrible choice in '00 and was flabbergasted when he was reelected in '04. I've bitched, moaned, mocked; you name it. What I didn't do was decided that if I couldn't have the president I wanted that I don't have to follow any of the rules. I continued to pay taxes, obey the speed limit, vote...I continued to be an American.

This year I'm hearing a lot of disturbing talk to the tune that if Obama is elected there will be riots, looting in the streets, even civil war. One guy got so worked up about it that he was actually yelling at me at work. "Not everyone wants to be socialist!" He was red-faced, angry, almost out of control. I wasn't even arguing with him. Hell, I didn't even bring it up. I realize not everyone wants Obama to win. This is why we have elections in the first place.

I didn't want Bush to win, I wanted Al Gore and then Ralphie-Boy Nader in the last two elections, respectively. Both times my guy lost. "Hell," I thought. "What the Hell?!"

Then next election I went out and voted again.

I realize I'm rambling here; it's morning and I'm only on my second cup of coffee. So let me boil it down. I'm talking to you, "real Americans". Talking about armed insurrection against the government if your guy doesn't win isn't just childish and unrealistic (they have helicopters and satellites and tanks, you know). It's treasonous, poisonous, cowardly talk. Have faith in our system and our ideals as a people. There will be another election in four years. If you can't work within the system that long, if you can't have faith in your own government to meet the challenges of the modern world, then why are you here? How are you a "real American" if you can't accept the system that we've used for over 200 years? "Real Americans" don't undermine their government when they don't get their way. In fact we have words for people who attempt to undermine their governments. One is "rebel". We fought a big civil war with rebels once, creating a rift in our country that people still, to some degree, suffer from today. The other word we hear quite a bit on the news. It's "insurgent", synonymous with "armed enemy combatant."

I hope Obama wins tomorrow. More importantly though I hope our citizenry can wake up on November 3rd and act like a people who can be trusted with democracy. The alternative is a mob that destroys things when they don't get what they want. I like to think we as a people are above that.

Guess we'll find out.

HA HA Halloween

2008-10-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

So, Halloween party time. Life being what it is, we've slacked hard this year. Not just me personally, not just the dubious denizens of Edgehill House, but the whole lot of us.

Some background; we have a Halloween party every year, have been for over a decade. Sometimes it turns into a huge bash with a lot of people we don't even know wandering around asking random people if they have any drugs, sometimes it's just the usual suspects (our group of friends that stays up late drinking beer on my back porch, bothering the hell out of my Morman neighbors who, quite frankly, put up with quite a bit of noise). This is looking like a Usual Suspects sort of gathering.

It's crunch time. It's looking like all party preparation will take place on Halloween proper, the night before the party. This is not a tragedy. In fact, it's par for the course. This we can do. The pickle is costumes. Money is tight (thank you very much, gas-station-toilet economy), so we can't just go out and buy some fancy getups. Not that we're the types to do that anyway. This situation reminds me a lot of being in college and not doing a project that was assigned months earlier. It's time to get creative, from the Latin "crea" ("cheap") and "ative" ("the special sort of genius that can only be inspired by waiting until the last possible minute because you are essentially a stressed-out slacker." Latin is very expressive.)

Last night one of my friends (this year's party host) and I were talking about our level of slack-assiness. We did what all good citizens do when things go awry; we found a scapegoat. Sorta. Current Wisdom is blaming our lack of initiative on not getting into a properly Halloweenie state of mind on our failure to go check out anything Haunted.

Last year we got to go to Moundsville State Prison. They do this big haunted house there every year. The attractions and such aren't scary, though those things never are. (Helpful Hint; when going to a haunted anything you can boost the fun by imagining that one of the sets will turn out to be real because no one thinks to do background checks on these things and one of the carny types they hired is actually America's Next Top Psychokiller). The building itself is terrifying though. And none of us will ever forget the visceral horror of stopping on the way to eat at a restaurant that was half KFC and half something else, maybe Burger King. That place was like the Amityville horror, complete with hordes of flies buzzing around and a weird kid walking up to our table and sticking his nose in my Mountain Dew.

I digress.

Anyway, we didn't do anything fun. No haunted prisons, mental hospitals...not even a haunted hayride. I didn't even make it into the good Halloween store (the Illusive Skull; dig it) because my daughter wanted to go with me, up until the point that we opened the door and she got a load of what's going down in there.

This is not the time to give up. Like a flagging McCain, we're sticking to it. Grimly marching down the skull-paved road, hellbent that we will be rocking this town inside out on All Saint's Day, we persevere.

This is Halloween. La la la.

Finally, and about time too.

2008-10-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a hella long time since I've posted anything. I'll come clean - I couldn't remember what my password or username were. I made my first post after the bakery my wife worked in closed down due to gross incompetence. I was mad, vented, and forgot all about it.

I do like the idea of having a blog, so I thought I'd try yet again to log in. Then I got the bright idea to click the send me an email button and lo! behold! There it was. So now I'm back. And since I wasn't really planning an entry, I'm going to tell you about a conversation I had at work Monday night.

I work with one guy we'll call Commander Crazy. The Commander is a very conservative Republican, one of those mysterious types who still likes President Bush. So it's understandable why he's so upset at the current state of affairs in the polls. I don't know why I try to talk to him about these things. He invariably starts yelling, no matter how conciliatory a tone I take. Monday he started telling me crazier things than usual, to whit: 1. Barak Obama is actually Karl Marx. 2. If elected, Barak Obama will spark a civil war, this time between the formerly rich and the undeserving poor that Obama gave all the money to. 3. If we know what's good for us, we'll all buy and bury automatic weapons in our yards.

I didn't know what to say to this guy. He went on and on about how some people in this country don't want socialism. I think he's missing the main point. Not everyone wanted a conservative president, nor did everyone want the religious right to have so much sway in government in the last few decades either.

This is why we have elections.

Whichever person you'd like to become president, whatever policies you want to see or avoid seeing - you have a chance to vote. This armed insurrection talk is crazy. Things didn't go all Mad Max when conservatives held sway. I was alive during Jimmy Carter's administration, and I don't remember rioting in the streets. Voting is sort of a great power, and with it comes the inevitable and cliche great responsibility; if your candidate loses, suck it up. You get another chance every four years. Part of being an American is knowing that your team won't win every single time. Part of being an adult is learning to cope with losing.

And, while I'm at it a few parting shots:

Barak Obama is not Karl Marx.

Democrats do not, in fact, drink blood for sustenance. That's just a personal habit, not one due to political affiliation.

If your candidate loses and you immediately think of starting or participating in a second American civil war, then you might want to seek some therapy, strong mood elevators, or at the very least a Coke and a smile. Bitches.

Oh, the Horrors!

2007-07-31T08:05:00.001-07:00

Just yesterday I watched the death of a three year relationship. I was sitting in my car, watching through the window as the two people yelled at each other in the Final Confrontation. Normally pasty jowls blazed bright crimson as they flapped in the wind, pudgy fingers waving in consternation contrasting nicely with an olive skinned sculpture of restraint, quivering with the urge to reach out and smite the spokesperson for inadequacy and generally nincompoopery. I say spokesperson because the other person involved stayed in his car and let his wife do all the talking for him. Which is the perfect illustration of why something that ran along nicely for years utterly failed under his reign. If I were the kind of person to call someone else a pussy, this would be the A-1 winner every time. Anyway, back to the dissolution. It was pretty good. Afterward I wanted to follow them around for a little while, but T dissuaded me and we went out and had some Chinese food instead.

I wisely didn't talk to these people, because my child was in my backseat and I didn't have anything to say that wouldn't exacerbate the situation anyway. Still, it will just be all the sweeter when, someday, I have the chance to sit behind the Quivering Jowl and her husband (we'll call him the Listless Chin) in a movie theatre and ruin the whole night for them. I can see it now, their drive home.

QJ: Why didn't you do something?
LC: Why didn't I do something? Why didn't you do something? You know I can't talk unless you take your hand and wear me like a puppet!
QJ: I just can't believe you let someone "wet willie" you and didn't say anything...

NOTE: A wet willie is when you lick your finger and then stick it into someones ear.

Anyway, it's all over and done with now. I'm thankful that these people are no longer a factor in our lives. Well, most of our lives; I'll still be interested in their continued epic failures. Maybe I'll see them under a bridge soon, pints of Ben & Jerry's clutched in their thick fat fingers instead of bottles of Magnum.

It's the little things in life that make me happy.