27 October 2006

Does this make my roomie Bert?

You Are Ernie

Playful and childlike, you are everyone's favorite friend - even if your goofy antics get annoying at times.

You are usually feeling: Amused - you are very easily entertained

You are famous for: Always making people smile. From your silly songs to your wild pranks, you keep things fun.

How you live your life: With ease. Life is only difficult when your friends won't play with you!


thanks to Sharon for this informative quiz...

I said WHAT?!?!?!

I have obviously eaten too much BBQ lately ... and I obviously spend too much time thinking I'm a pirate. Why? Because I just uttered the following phrase out loud: "Cap'n me pulled pork is escaping."

*headdesk*

25 October 2006

Kids These Days

*crotchety old man voice*

What's wrong with kids these days? I'll tell you... when I was a kid and I had to get a flu shot, you went and you were already crying. Why? Because when you got there the nurse pulled out a syringe the size of a small coke bottle with a needle about the size of a straw. They injected so much of the stuff in your arm it looked like you had a marble buried under your skin. You’d probably be bleeding for hours. If they managed to kill off all of the virus, you only had to deal with an arm that wouldn’t work for a week, if they didn’t get it all killed off (a much more likely scenario), you basically had a low grade flu to protect you from getting one... AND an arm that wouldn’t work for a week.

Not getting a shot wasn’t a choice. My grandparents were alive during the last pandemic when people died all over the place, they told the horror stories to my parents, and anything you could do to possibly prevent that was going to happen.

Today I went and got a flu shot. I barely noticed the needle going in, and I HATE needles. About 3 seconds of feeling cold/pressure/pain, and it was over. No waiting around the doctors office to see if I would go into respiratory failure. I got right up and left. I know I got a shot, but this is probably as sore as I’ll get and dancing will be no problem on Friday.

When we got flu shots, we suffered... and we were happy... although I don’t know why we were happy.

make sure you check out the “sure-to-be-left” comment from mistyjojangles.

24 October 2006

Scary?

I came back to work today after my seven days off, and of course, something had to change... I had a new computer on my desk. This one has a built in camera, with effects. Okay, so my email didn't work right away, but I got a cool new toy!
four of me
the scariest halloween posting ever!

18 October 2006

My theme song!


I ain't much to look at, but boy can I dance!

thanks to jittercliff for this video...

17 October 2006

Another dream... more analysis?

Time to post another dream, who knew? In case you missed the last one, here it is, make sure you check out the cutting edge dream analysis from "anonymous", left in good humor, I'm sure. Oh, by the way "anonymous", you spelled kinetic incorrectly.



Here goes the dream. I was a cadet at a military academy. My girlfriend in my dream (I never actually saw her) was the daughter of a general, who was visiting the academy. I was waiting in a rec room to go golfing with the bigwig father in law to be with some buddies of mine. We were playing pool, when all of a sudden there was some sort of shift in my head, and instead of playing pool, I was cleaning up the aftermath of an attack by a terrorist, which killed my father-in-law to be. After a few minutes, the scene switched again, this time the academy was older, I was in the future somehow, and the terrorist attack never happened. Another switch, aliens were attacking. Again, hanging out with buddies in what appeared to be the early 20th century. All the time, the people, and my location stayed the same, what changed was the when and physical surroundings of the location i.e. buildings, streets, trees...

Finally another switch, only this one was a lot more serious. The time appeared to be in the 1950s, and I was being tried for some sort of crime, the penalty for which was death by hanging. My buddies were running the trial, which was mostly fluff, and it was being overseen by my girlfriends father. I began to formulate a theory, that the (now evil) father in law to be didn't like me, and he somehow arranged all this to get me out of the way so his daughter could marry someone else. The trial went on... blah blah we'll give him a fair trial and then we'll hang him blah blah. They got me up on the gallows, but before the rope could be secured, the scene shifted again, and I was walking in a park with my buddies.

More scene shifts in rapid succession, future, past, current, all with something different happening. A parade in one, more parks, a bombardement from space, a naval battle in the river the academy bordered. At some point during my rapid travels I got some sort of device telling me what was really going on, and I didn't even need to pull some glowing red thing out of my nose like Quaid.

It wasn't my (no longer evil) father in law. It turns out that one of my future selfs had made a discovery of a small moon tightly orbiting one of the large moons around Jupiter. My analysis showed that the small moon had somehow been blasted into two chunks. It was some sort of secret that people wanted to kill me for.

Of course before I could find out who or why, I woke up. I hate that. Like most of my dreams, the details were fabulous. Leaves on the trees. The skin on the aliens. The trim on the cars. The way the uniforms on the cadets looked different every time the time frame switched. I love my dreams.



My analysis leads me to conclude this dream may be my subconscious crossing the boundaries of temporal and spacial propriety. I should seek some professional couseling from the Traveler before I find myself in a pickle shaped static warp bubble.

Hey "anonymous", as far as being in your league, I'm not. Posting anonymously with questionable concepts, overanalysis, and poor spelling is little league. Let us know when you can move up to play with us big people.

15 October 2006

Double Happy Birthday, part II

Okay, this is my fourth try at writing some copy for this post, and it's just not working, so lets just say this:
  1. Happy Birthday Mae!
  2. Happy Birthday Bex!
  3. Cool Idea with the Jack & Jill on Friday at JNO.
  4. My apologies to anyone who thought I was obnoxious at the party.
Now, on to some pictures.

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birthday girl #1 ... Mae.

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birthday girl #2 ... Bex.

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birthday girl #3 ... Justsmilechild. Wait, that makes it a triple happy birthday.

They had an open Jack & Jill at JNO Friday. I thought I did well, and I got Terri for a partner, but I didn't place.

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the judges must not have been looking...

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Your winners:
1st Place: Mo & Andy
2nd Place: Corinn & Steve
3rd Place: Sarah & Chris

Afterwards, Mae & Bex had a birthday party at Mae and Spanky's. The Halloween themed decorations were fabulous.

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Beers & boys, a typical combination.

Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_04.JPG
Some people, however, go for the caffeine, not the alcohol.

Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_03.JPG
Does this look familiar to anyone?

Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_05.JPG
Dang, that's some cute hair...

Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_14.JPG Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_15.JPG
A couple of scary pictures, loren1350 just a little too close, and the disembodied, creepy hand that grabbed Suzie!

100_1384 Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_18.JPG
Really Spanky & Mae only need about a 200 square foot house for partying, people only gather in two spots, they crowd into the kitchen or at the bottom of the stairs. I can't sit still that long.

thanks to jittercliff for several photos...

Mae_&_Bex_bday_2006_09.JPG
Rock On!

13 October 2006

Double Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Mae & Bex!

11 October 2006

Dreaming about who and what???

Attention: Amateur Dream Analysists

Last Thursday, Sunday, and Monday I had dreams about one of the jitterbugs. Okay, that's kind of odd considering I don't often dream about people I don't know. More weirder, the jitterbug in question was UPtowngirl8809. Now don't misunderstand me, I like the uptown girl, she funny, a good dancer, cool hair, and seems to have it together upstairs, however, she is not in my circle of friends, in fact, other than dancing conversations, we haven't had the opportunity to get to know one another yet.

All of sudden she is in dreams on three of five consecutive nights.

Odder yet, check out this dream content: on Thursday she is teaching me how to grocery shop (huh?). On Sunday she is teaching me how to dance (okay, plausible). On Monday she is teaching me how to ride a skateboard (not gonna happen).

What are these dreams all about?

So wrong, just so so so wrong

Encountered recently while doing a crossword puzzle:

Clue: Biblical Mount
Answer: ASS

It's got more levels wrong with it than I can contemplate.

10 October 2006

Change of season, change of, um, something that doesn’t rhyme with season

It happens every year at this time. After a summer of playing, I ‘go back to school’. Mostly this is just readjusting my life from a summer of having fun and being just minimally responsible. I’m back to taking care of my belongings and myself. All of a sudden my kitchen has been clean for a whole month, little projects in the round-tuit bin are getting pulled out and done, I am cooking at home, getting enough sleep, and I am in church every week.

Sometime around Memorial Day, my brain switches into teenager mode, and only comes out of it when I have to go to work. After Labor Day my inner adult begins to take back over and I settle back down. September tends to be a little rough for me, and this was no exception, I was crabby for a good part of the beginning of the month.

The problems with September and settling down were multiplied this year by my mother and step-father parting ways. The news is almost three weeks old now, and I’m not as upset as I was. I am very fond of my step-father, Hal, and of course I love my mom. My brain says there is no reason why I can’t keep in touch with both of them, and I will certainly try to do so. However, something below the surface of my swampy sub-conscious got churned up and got to the surface almost long enough to be identified.

Hey! I really like that metaphor for my thought patterns. I am visualizing my brain as a tree filled swamp, mostly full of life and greenery, but here in this one area there is a big clearing, all the trees are dead, there is no fauna to be seen, and some dread creature (thoughts) lurks below the murky surface waters. I see me standing at the edge of the clearing looking and wondering if I am strong enough to wrestle with this one. Am I? I am fairly sure I understand what issue lives in this area. Without dragging up details of my childhood, it has to do with a time during my early teens when my parents were separated. This seems to be the path I am taking, I guess if I am going to continue, I need to go through it, or find a way around it.



In other news. I somehow have deleted all of my Cowtown pictures off of both my work and home computers. Good thing I have them all online.

My volunteer tomatoes have produced fruit just in time for the first freeze. I guess I’ll be covering them tomorrow night.

09 October 2006

A Weekend

My weekend began around 11:30 on Friday when I noticed Mae called me. I listened to my voice mail, which was of the "where were you?" variety. I had signed up to do a dancing demonstration at Boyd Elementary School in Omaha at 10:00. Josie had set it up, it is where she teaches. I quickly checked my calendar, and there it was... on Monday. I had also signed up for the 2:00 session too.

I picked Mae up around 1:30 and we headed up there. I have done demos before, but this one was on a stage. It was myself, Dan, Nate, Kristen, Christi, Mae, and of course Josie. It was a very nice demo, it was well planned and thought out, and kept the kids attention, good job Josie & Nate. We did about five minutes dancing on stage, Charleston, Balboa, and Lindy. Then Nate talked briefly about the history of swing music. A few minutes of video clips, and one more dance with the kids. I don't remember ever being that well behaved.

After the demo, Mae and I headed out shopping. We went to the Target at Crossroads, which turned out to be quite small. I got a pair of jeans, a shirt, and some new 'dance' shoes, well they will be dance shoes once I put the leather on the bottom of them. I ran into a girl from jitterbugs whom I have danced with at the Target, but embarrassingly I didn't know her name, she obviously didn't know mine or Merinda's and so introductions were not made. She was buying shoes to dance in that night.

The dance was fun, it was our sixth year celebration. We had the 'Steal-a-Jam', Andrew's birthday, and Band of the Night played. What was NOT fun was about 1130 I had a killer migraine make an appearance, and by the time I drove home, I was one hurting unit. I took a couple of everything in the house and slept like a rock.

Saturday afternoon I went grocery shopping, and bought a hooded sweatshirt. Very exciting. I caught some of my SIU Saluki's football game on TV in the afternoon.

Saturday night was boys night out. Football on the big screen, beer in hand, and playing poker. I did pretty well in the tournement. I was chip leader fairly late, and then didn't play so well. The Huskers looked like the team I expected them to be, finally playing a sixty minute ballgame.

Sunday I went to church for the first time in a while. It felt so good to be there. I didn't sing so well, but I didn't suffer so much about it... but the people around me probably did. Father Denny led of the sermon with "...both Nebraska and Notre Dame won yesterday, so we should all be in a good mood." He's not normally so funny.

In the afternoon, I took Viv golfing for her first time. She did very well, much much better than I expected. Normally-first timers get very frustrated with just trying to hit the ball, she did just fine. We played at Milt's par 3 course. I was reasonably happy with the was I played. I shot a 31, she had a 51. Afterwards we went to the Varsity in Bellevue for pizza. Neither of us had been there before, it turned out to be a very nice place.

Sunday night Reportwriter came over and we watched football. The Chargers wore their powder blue uniforms, I wore my new light blue hoodie, guess who I was rooting for. Speaking of rooting and football, my pro team, the Bears, and my college team, the SIU Salukis, are now a combined 10-0, outscoring their opponents 374-107. Ain't football grand.

05 October 2006

Yard Work is Hard Work

I have a tree that drops stupid sticks like LL Cool J drops dope rhymes. Not limbs, or branches, but sticks, one to four feet long, not as big around as your pinky. By my figuring, in my 5 1/2 years living here, that tree has dropped more sticks than it actually has mass, so somehow, it magically produces them.

squirrel heaven
...the culpruit...

I decided I would try to pick up these offending sticks, instead of running them over with the lawn mower (which I suspect isn't that effective). So Monday when I got home from work, I went out in the back yard and for :45 I picked up sticks in one corner of the yard, broke them into foot long segments or so, and put them in the yard waste can. I filled up my smaller yard waste container about 75% full, and that was it for the night. The next day I was right back at it, this time I filled the larger container about 80% full in about 1:15. I then cut the lawn.

Sheesh did I do anything? I spent :20 more minutes picking up sticks in just the far back corner of the yard... and said "'golly gee darn' it!" or something really similar. That just about sucked... okay, it did suck.

free kindling
lunch time for teething termites

I'll be cutting the front lawn today, then right back at it, this time with a rake in hand. Oh, and of course, Tuesday after clearing out all those sticks, wind storm. Wednesday morning was a wind storm.

02 October 2006

Physical Humor


I laughed SO hard, I think I hurt my nose.

Feeling Squirrelly

Okay, I really liked this one, if for no other reason than for pure giggle power.

My real name = Sergeant Furrycheeks
Onionboy = Fluffy Dangleberry

Post your new name in the comments, thanks to Jannaverse for the link.