Miasmatic Review

Interrogate me!

Has there every been anything you wanted to know about me? A question you’ve wanted to ask that you just never found the proper medium to do so. Maybe you’ve been too shy to ask. Is there something you just want to ask to see how I would answer? If any of those apply to you, I have exactly what you need.

For reasons I’m not sure even I can comprehend, I signed up for the interviews at Basil’s Blog. He has decided that my time is rapidly approaching, and he is going to be in need of questions. If you have any, you can send them to Basil at basil dot interviews AT gmail.com Subject: Questions for Contagion of Miasmatic review. Or you could just click the link. The deadline is 04/02/2006, that gives you plenty of time to think of something to ask. Ask me what ever you'd like, I'll be more then happy to lie to you.

Or if you want to see how few questions I get, don’t send anything. Then you can see what kind of loser I really am!

Candy lovers please help.

There is a very pressing issue I need your assistance. There is actually a degree of importance and urgency to this.

Plain Chocolate

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

Chocolate and Caramel

Which is better?

I will explain later when my issue is resolved.

Interviews

This morning I had my interview for the supervisory position. It was easy enough, I’ve been in management long enough to know what kind of answers they wanted for the questions asked. My entire interview lasted about 50 minutes. Mainly because I always go into great detail when answering questions.

It also is because I turned on the ol’ Contagion charm. Most of you haven’t seen this rumored trait in me. In fact most of you probably think this something I’m making up. Those that have seen it in action know exactly what I’m describing. It’s about 25% humor, 25% positive attitude and 40% friendliness and 10% subtle flirting (unless I’m dealing with males and then I substitute with positive attitude). Over the years I’ve relied on that charm to get three jobs, two promotions, a wife and countless other things.

Only four people, including myself, put in for the position. For three of them it would be a big promotion, and one of the others is a friend of mine. She wants this position bad, very bad. This would be a big promotion and raise for her. The last couple of times she put in for a supervisory position she was passed over, as was I. What I’m wondering is what will happen if I actually get it and she is passed over again. It’s nothing but a change in duties for me, where for her it is an important promotion.

That train of thought is all for naught. They pretty much told me at the end of the interview that I’m not going to get the position. Since it’s not a promotion for me, it’s a lateral transfer and they don’t like doing lateral transfers. They would rather promote someone. Either way I should know for sure by the end of next week.

In the dog house.

Hmmm, it seems I’ve upset my wife with yesterdays adventures. I wonder how much forgiveness is going to cost me this time. I’m thinking the standard gift of jewelry is not going to appease this time.

Guns, Guinness and the Gang.

Yesterday Graumagus, our blogless buddy Jay and I went to a local gun show. Each of us was looking for something different and we were hoping to find those items there. Unfortunately for us, this show was rather less than impressive. Everywhere we turned there were AR-15’s (Civilian model of the M-16), .22 long rifles and Glocks. There were some other items mixed in, but they where rare. None of us left with what we went looking for.

Two of the local politicians running in the primary for governor had booths there trying to make a push. After reading their literature, I don’t know which one is going to be less incompetent. A couple of booths where selling crappy knives and swords. It was hard for me to not openly laugh at those merchants. When I say crappy knives and swords, I mean really cheap blades that probably won’t hold an edge and would break if ever actually used. Not too long ago I was a sword dealer, I know what these items are made out of and what the dealer prices are. There was also the occasional booth that was selling parts, accessories, cleaning supplies and tools.

I ended up spending less then $20.00 bucks there. $5.00 to get in, $5.00 worth of raffle tickets with one of the prizes being an AR-15 (of course). $4.00 for cleaning brushes and $3.50 for an ammo can. My blogless buddy Jay purchased a little .38 special Derringer. He had been talking about getting one for years. One of the booths had two brand new ones for $120.00. Of course he was kind of hesitant to purchase it. Thankfully Grau and I where there to help convince him that it was the right thing to do.

As Grau stated, “It’s like have the angel and devil on each shoulder, except it’s the devil and a demon. One is telling you to buy it, the other is telling you to buy it AND get an AR-15.” After much hemming and hawing, Jay finally bit the bullet and bought the little gun. Since we are in Illinois he can pick it up sometime later this week. We have a 72 hour waiting period to purchase a handgun and 24 hours for a rifle. That kind of makes the point of gun shows in Illinois pointless. If you do see a gun you want to purchase you have to go pick it up from the dealer. Some of these dealers traveled some distance to come to this show.

The show was so small; we walked through the entire place 5 times in an hour and half. Grau had to take off, and ditched Jay and I. After Jay was finished filling out the paperwork for the derringer we left and decided to get something to eat. Hooters was the destination of choice. Jay doesn’t drink, but I do. Hot wings and Guinness on tap sounded good. Of course once we sat down and I started pulling on those 25oz mugs, life got a lot more fun. Although drinking two on an empty stomach may not have been a good idea. Because I’m a prick, I called up Grau to rub in that we were drinking Guinness at Hooters. He ended up ditching the spawn once his wife came home to join me in depleting the supply of Guinness in Rockford.

Jay had to take off, so Grau and I headed to a little bar that is three blocks from my house. I had never been in there before, and decided it was time. Nice atmosphere, decently priced drafts and it was filled with like minded individuals. I’m probably going to be hitting that bar more often now, especially since I can walk there and back.

False accusations.

Oh, don't forget to sign my map if you haven't already. If you have, thanks.

I wasn't going to respond to a certain individuals whiney complaining that you all like me more then him. (We all know that's not true, I just don't call you drunks!) But he did accuse me of exiling poor Tammi off the African coast. Just for the record I would never exile anyone anywhere*. Tammi’s self imposed trip off the coast of Africa was due to her desperate need to get away from the cold weather here in Northern Illinois.

Now you all know the truth, Not only is Mr. Whiney rude but the only time you can get an honest word out of him is when he's sober. Considering he's only sober between 7 AM and 9 AM there's not a lot of truth to be had there! Now don't get me wrong, I like T1G. He's a good drinking buddy and tells great stories (mostly BS). But seriously, who believes I have the power to exile anyone?

Thus please: Sign My Map

*Unless, of course, they really pissed me off. Even then I’m more likely to have them decapitated and have their heads mounted on pikes in front of my house as warnings to others.

Yarr! Eat my cereal mattey!

What the hell! All right I know there has been many cross-promotional things. Almost a year ago I made fun of the Star Wars/Darth Vader Cheez-Its promotion. Now I find this:

Captain Jack Sparrow has his own cereal.

The box describes the cereal to be “Naturally sweetened chocolate pearl shaped cereal with pirate shaped marshmallows”. Pirate shaped marshmallows, what is a pirate shaped marshmallow? Cutlass, cannon, pistols, pirate ship, a plank? Looking at the picture it’s too hard to tell. But enough, lets get to the meat and potatoes of this post. My anticipated vision for the commercial.

(Opening on the deck of the Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow saunters up to the camera)

Jack, “Being stranded on a deserted island takes a lot out of a pirate. The solitude, the loneliness, drinking the secret stash of rum can wear a person down. Then there is the threat of mutiny, the British fleet and of course the walking dead. A pirate needs their strength to handle these situations.

(In walks Will Turner holding a box of cereal)

Will, “That’s why we eat Kellogg’s Pirates of the Caribbean cereal. It provides us with everything we need to be the scourge of the seas. With Pirate shaped marshmallows and little black pearl shaped cereal bits it’s fortified with vitamins and minerals that makes a body strong.

Jack, “It tastes great and is part of a complete breakfast!”

(Camera pans out to show Elizabeth Swann hopefully wearing something tight and revealing tied up on the end of the plank)

Elizabeth, “If you don’t eat it, they’ll make you walk the plank!”

(Jack and Will look at each other and nod. Fade to picture of the box sitting behind a bowl of cereal, a glass of milk, a plate with toast, and a glass of juice. In the background you see Elizabeth pushed off the plank and there is a big splash)

A guitar I wouldn't shred.

I’ve never had any interest in playing the guitar, let alone taking the time to learn how. Many of my friends and readers do play the guitar and I thought they might be interested in these.

Doug Rowell Carved Guitars

Even I wouldn’t mind owning one of these, just for the artistic value. The guy that made these guitars has some serious wood working talent.

Sweet, it's hot!

Have you ever wanted to try to play Russian roulette, but the whole death thing kept you away? Well I’ve found the answer for you, Chocolate Russian Roulette.

Chocolate Russian Roulette.

”Seated in individual compartments, twelve chocolate bullets lay waiting to be bitten into. Although eleven of the sweet little slugs contain delicious praline centres, one conceals a seriously red hot chilli that's guaranteed to blow your head off - metaphorically, at least.”

I’m tempted to purchase one of these just to try it. Since I’m not a chocolate fan, I can love it or leave it. (Ladies put down the torches and pitch forks!) I think I would rather just eat the peppers.

Perfect Angel

Last weekend I had a chance to meet the incredibly entertaining Oddybobo. Today I read long list of places she’s been kicked out of. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing the two are the same person. Then again, people do mature as they get older and lose their wild ways.

I would take some time to share stories with all of you, but I was the perfect child growing up. Not once did I get in trouble. Never did I get into a fight. I was never suspended from school, kicked off the bus or even sent to detention. My parents could trust me alone and not worry about anything bad happening. My only run-ins with the law, other then traffic violations, happened while I was in college and I was a victim of circumstances.

Well, there was that one thing when I was younger. I’ve never admitted this before, but I feel now is the time to share. When I was 12 I once drank milk directly from the carton. There, I admitted it. I’m so ashamed of myself. You can see why I never told anyone.

I’m sorry, I have to go call my parents and admit to what I did. Hopefully they will forgive me.

Bet they didn't see that coming.

The next salvo in the Contagion work saga took place yesterday. At 3:00 PM the other office asst. manager (Whom I now report to as they are “combining” offices. Yea, this sucks.) comes over and asks me if I had received the new flows for customer surveys. I told her I hadn’t heard anything about it. She tells me she’ll have it forwarded to me and if I have any questions to ask her. She told me that I would be responsible for tracking them. Great, I needed more on my plate.

I leave work at 3:30 PM, so when the e-mail came I just glanced at it and figured I could set up the tracking it today when I had more time. By the time I actually received the e-mail it was about 3:15 PM. Over night I had forgotten about this new project until about 8:30 this morning. When I pulled open my email and started reading the new guidelines, I could feel my blood start to boil.

The first thing I noticed is that this “new” flow went into effect last week, everyone knew about it but me for a week now. Next I noticed that I’m not supposed to just track them, but I’m supposed to also review them. If there is a complaint on one, I am supposed to ensure that someone works it and responds to the member. Since this effects every inventory manager in corporation, I wasn’t as upset over that. The fact that they held it for a week before telling me pisses me off.

Those damn things spent a week building up and they all had to be out today. Every single one of them had to be touched, reviewed and assigned today. There were 304 of these things to be exact. Most of my day was spent sorting through these things and assigning them to people to work. Meanwhile my counterpart from the other office has been doing it for a week now, so hers was a daily manageable 40.

Now don’t you go worrying, I did just fine. What they underestimate is my ability to deal with high-pressure situations and short deadlines. At 2:15 I finished the last one. Setting a divisional record, I cleared 304 surveys. I can’t wait until Monday. In my mind I can picture the smug looks on their faces when they ask me if or why (because you know they won’t check first) all the surveys weren’t done. Then I can smack them down with the hammer of Greatness that is me! The best part was that I took 40 minutes to donate blood and I still got them all done. Not only where they done, but they where done properly.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go build up a mass of troops and kill me some French! Slaughtering the villagers makes me happy

He just can't like it.

When I cook, I have two distinct styles. The first is where I make everything from scratch. Maybe I’ll cheat and buy bread, but I tend to start with the basics and make everything I need. This style tends to produce the best tasting and most satisfying meals. The problem is that it is very time consuming, I’m talking 3+ hours of preparation each meal. On special occasions I’ve been known to cook for 7 hours.

The other way I cook is the quick and easy method. The food is edible, and usually only takes about 5-15 minutes prep time, with maybe an additional 30 minutes cooking time. During the week, this is the type of cooking I’m known to do. Sometimes we are pressed for time and we cheat even further and get boxed meals. Yes, you can all gasp in horror now. This is rare, and for good reasons. The meals usually taste like crap and have no nutritional value.

Tonight was planned a box meal, Tuna Helper Tuna Melt to be exact. Clone was watching on as I prepared the meal. At first he was fascinated at the mixing of water, milk, butter and noodles. Asking questions and making observations, it was fun father and son time. When I added the powdered sauce, a look of horror crossed his face. He asked me, “What’s that, dada?”

I responded, “That’s the cheese sauce, buddy.”

Clone, “Dada, I can’t like it.”

Contagion, “You can’t like it?”

Clone, “No, I can’t like that.”

That went back and forth for a while. Then I added the tuna to the pot.

Clone, “What that?”

Contagion, “Tuna, it’s a fish.”

Clone, “Dada, I can’t like it.”

Contagion, “You’ve had tuna before, you liked it. Why don’t you like it this time?”

Clone, “It sucks.”

I kid you not, my son told me for the first time something sucks. After I finished laughing, I wrapped my burnt fingers. His response made me laugh so hard I accidentally touched the stove surface. I don’t know who taught him that, or where he picked it up, but it was rather amusing.

UPDATE: When I put a bowl full of the Tuna Helper in front of him, he started screaming, "I CAN'T WANT IT! I CAN'T WANT IT!" It's not, I don't want it... it just that he can't want it. There is nothing in the world that could make him want it I guess.

At least it wasn't blue.

The other day on my way home from work I saw the largest hair I’ve seen in a long time. This lady had permed platinum blonde hair that was fitted to her head like a helmet. The sides extended at least an inch past the Front of her head! From the side you couldn’t even see the tip of her nose!

To make matters worse, this lady was wearing a fluffy pink coat. Along the wrists it was fur lined, and the fur matched the color of her head. At first I thought maybe I was looking at some kind of strange poodle. After assuring myself that dogs have not taught themselves how to drive, I then thought maybe it was a Sasquatch. A really effeminate, short, albino Sasquatch that’s into the rave scene, but I don’t think they would come that close to downtown. Thus it had to be a woman.

I know what your thinking, no it was not a hat. It was either real hair or a good (as in realistic, not good looking) wig. I couldn’t get close enough to touch it, she was in the vehicle next to me. Trust me, if we had been standing in a line together, my hand would have floated out to touch her hair. There was no tell-tale sign of it being a hat. This lady went out of her way to make her hair look like a big fuzzy helmet.

The saddest part is that she thinks she looks good! She paid someone to make her look like that and is proud of it. I’m guessing that she was in her 40’s, but she may have been as young as 35. Due to the size and shape of her helmet hair, I was never able to get a good look at her face. But I could tell that it was wrinkled and overly tanned. Maybe she’s trying to hold onto her youth, I don’t know. What I do know is that her hair was distracting.

While I couldn’t help but to stare at it, I missed that the speed limit had changed. This caused me to almost get a speeding ticket. Fortunately she did notice and when she slowed down, so did I. But only because I was staring at her hair.

This is just stupid.

Bloodspite, what can anyone say about that bastard guy. Besides photoshopping innocent peoples heads onto other's bodies he seems to like to tag people with memes.

I just met the guy last weekend, he could have cut me some slack. So here we go:

1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?

Color. Too many of the Black and White movies just don’t entertain me.

2: What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?

Math. To my math friendly friends I must apologize, it just bores me.

3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music?

CDs, I don’t even own an MP3 player. I like the ease in which I can find songs I like.

4: You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going ... ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?

Not a chance in hell. How could I leave my truck family?

5: Seriously, what do you consider the world's most pressing issue now?

The serious lack of decent politicians. I haven’t seen a politician that impresses me since I was in grade school. (Does it really take much to impress a grade schooler politically?)

6: How would you rectify the world's most pressing issue?

Make myself supreme ruler for life, do away with the government as it is and high-level positions with people I trust and/or like.

7: You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?

Nothing, I like my life. Although maybe I wouldn’t have drank that extra beer that one night back in college… but that’s a different story.

8: You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?

Ohhh, this is such a loaded question. I’m thinking I’d talk Bonnie Prince Charlie into sacking London.

9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole' Opry --Which do you choose?

I think I’d rather have a date with a power drill and my nasal cavity. Since that’s not a choice I’m going to say Grand Ol’ Opry. I’m not a fan of country music, but they might serve beer there!

10: What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you'd like to solve?

What ever happened to DB Cooper.

11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?

Tough one, there are so many I like, but I’d have to go with Thomas Paine, that’s just Common Sense. As for what I'd serve, umm. I don't know, what ever the wife makes.

12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky -- what's the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?

I plead the fifth. Family, friends and people from work read this blog.

I tag no-one, just because this was probably one of the least entertaining meme's I've been tagged with.

She giveth and she taketh.

Yesterday Ktreva requested one thing from me, “Can I please have a half an hour to write a post about this weekend.” She knew that if I started playing my new game, the computer would be locked up for the rest of the night unless she said something before I started. Upon arriving at home I dared not start playing. There is a tendency of mine to get absorbed into the game and loose track of my surroundings.

Since I had to watch Clone, this would not be good. I could just see it now; I’m playing Age of Empires 3, absorbed by my marching ranks of musketeers, falconets and mortars against the French. Meanwhile Clone is trying to find out what happens when he sticks a fork in the light socket. I’m pulled away from the game in anger when he blows a fuse right as my attack was at its peak. After fixing the fuse, I go back to playing while my poor son is lying in the middle of the living room twitching.

As soon as Ktreva walked in the house, I had her dinner ready and told her the computer was all hers. She sat down and instead of posting, she started reading blogs! Okay, she was eating while she did it, so I didn’t count that time. However, 2 hours later she was still on there! I kept telling her that it was a moral imperative that she turns the computer over to me. The French were overrunning my forts along the frontier and I needed to defend them!

But did she listen to me? NOOOOooooooo! She had to sit there and continue on and on about how she wanted to see what you all wrote and still had to make her post! Did she ever consider the women that were being slaughtered, or at least rendered homeless? How about taking the time to think about how this is going to effect trade with the natives and the havoc it’s bringing upon my colonies? She didn’t even think about the poor innocent children that were being orphaned by her greedy need to deny me the computer! SHE DIDN’T THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!

She gave me the game! Yet she won’t let me play it. Tell me, good contaminants, is this fair to me? To toy with my mental and emotional wellbeing? She asked for a half-an hour, I made sure she had it. I think it’s only fair that she turned over the computer as soon as those thirty minutes were up!

General Contagion Returns

There may be a slight decrease in my commenting and posting over the next couple of months. Ktreva decided that I needed to have Age of Empires 3, so she bought it for me. I love strategy games, absolutely love them. There is nothing better then massing up armies to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women. Many an innocent villager has fallen to my desire to conquer in similar games. Some of them even have a life-like scream as the citizens die.

The best thing about Age of Empires 3 is that it revolves around the exploration and colonization of the Americas. A lot of the units appear to be ones from the French and Indian war era. In case you don’t remember, that is the time period I re-enact. Of course there is little to no historical accuracy in the game, but it’s still interesting. I love the sound of musket lines firing into enemies and artillery barrages hitting the houses. They did a good job with the sound effects. The musket fire actually sounds like musket fire, albeit at a distance. It’s nowhere near as loud as actual musket fire.

Monday I loaded up the game and was just going to play with it a little to see what it was like. Ktreva asked to use the computer later so she could make a post and I told her as soon as my skirmish game was over she could. The next thing I know she is saying goodnight. She decided to go to bed early and wasn’t going to wait the 10 minutes for the game to be over (I was pummeling the heck out of the Portuguese, the game was almost finished.) Since it was only a little after 8:00 I decided I could get another quick skirmish game in. When I looked at the clock next it was almost 11:00 PM! Damn, I have to work in the morning!

When I finally fell asleep I spent the night dreaming of raising armies and crushing other Empires. There where dreams of tactics, battle plans, troop movements and ratios. Do I want to go as heavy on the Dragoons or get more musketeers? Is it worth it to have as many falconets as I did? Would six mortars be that much more useful than five? (They are expensive and take up a lot of resources) Oh, that gives me an idea!

You’ll have to excuse me; I need to go destroy some Spaniards.
.

My weekend.

This last weekend Ktreva and I went to Lafayette Indiana for a Blogmeet. We didn’t bring the boys with as we decided we needed a weekend with out them. The trip started out well enough. We were making great time. I had told Machelle and Oddybobo that we would arrive between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM. We were going to cut it close, but we’d be on time. Not shortly after we arrived in our Room Oddy called me and says she’s in the hotel. Originally she had said she wouldn’t get there until 7:00 PM. When I asked her how she got there so early, she said she drove really fast from Indianapolis. How fast she was going is beyond me, but it must have been fast enough to bend the space-time continuum. Then it dawned on me, people in Indiana live in a different time zone. They are an hour ahead of us; I was actually late!

Machelle, Oddy, Ktreva and I went to a restaurant next to the hotel to eat, drink and talk. Laughing Wolf showed up to join in the fun. Having never met Machelle or Oddy before, it was nice. Oddy made us jealous describing the palatial house on 476,857 acres of land. While Machelle kept trying to convince Ktreva that one should not buy a foreign car, to which Ktreva stubbornly refused to listen. LW kept teasing me about the fine Scotch Collection of his. Meanwhile, I sat back and just listened to everyone else talk. Machelle and Oddy were just too intimidating for me to break out of my shell.

After dinner we headed to LW’s. Tammi, T1G, Bloodspite and Bloodspouse where supposed to arrive around 9:00PM. LW wanted to make sure he was there for them when they arrived. He invited all of us back to his house. He gave us a crudely drawn map with directions on how to get there. Everyone decided to go, and Machelle offered to drive. We all piled into her vehicle, I had the directions and off we went. Okay, at this point let me warn all of you about a couple of things. Machelle’s maiden name had to be Duke. I swear she is the love child of Bo Duke and Danica Patrick.

We were able to follow the crudely drawn map relatively easily enough until we got to the end. There we were, looking around and none of us had an address. CRAP! Well fortunately I had programmed LW’s phone number into my cell phone. I call him up and say, “Yep, we’re lost!” He asks were we are, and I tell him that we are at the intersection of Oak and Harvard. He tells us that he doesn’t know where that is and to go back to the main highway. The highway is about a block behind us. Machelle’s trying to get us turned around when LW says, “I’m going to go stand on my front porch”. I’m looking out the window of the vehicle and I see a front porch light come on and LW walk out. The intersection we were at was right in front of his house! No joking people, I have three witnesses that will testify to this. The man doesn’t know where he lives!

We received a tour of the lair while waiting for the others. LW has a very nice house, and a very impressive collection of alcohol, which for some reason everyone kept running interference between it and I. Now remember, the others were to arrive around 9. They finally decided to show up around 11:30 local time. Part of it was they also forgot about that stupid time zone thing, the other part was that apparently T1G and Bloodspite had to stop every hour to work out the details of a new photoshop project they are working on.

Saturday it was a balmy 5 degrees when we left the hotel, and the high was around 17 degrees. There was a good wind too; I’d say the wind chill was probably around 2 degrees. The average high for Lafayette for this time of year is 19 degrees. It was cold!

We were all supposed to meet at the Tippecanoe battlefield at 11:00 AM. When Ktreva and I arrived, Machelle and Oddy were waiting. Shortly after Wes and his wife showed up. We started to worry that we were at the wrong place, so I called LW. Nope, they are running late. Apparently the boys got into a heated discussion on their next photoshop project and couldn’t proceed until it was done and Tammi was having trouble getting on her winter survival gear. The rest of us got to stand around for 45 minutes in the cold waiting for them.

The Battleground was neat; Ktreva and I even went through the museum. The museum had some interesting items in it. Even though it was about 55 years after the period we portray, a lot of the items they had where ones we use in our re-enacting. Fashion and technology didn’t change as fast back then. Harvey and TNT caught up with us there as well. TNT apologized for running late, they forgot about the time change as well. Harvey also spent extra time grooming his beard this morning. He wanted to make sure it was just perfect!

After that we headed to the Wolf Park. LW gave us a guided tour of all the wolves and the park. It was interesting to learn about them and to see how they interacted. The wolves didn’t seem to mind the cold unlike the majority of the bloggers. The bloggers, especially those of the farer gender, seemed to be rather painfully cold. I’ll give Tammi credit, she didn’t complain. Then again she looked like an over stuffed tick with all the layers she had on.

Some of the wolves where very curious about us and would come right up to the fence. They wanted to see what kind of hairless idiots would come out on that cold of a day just to look at them. Either that or they where wondering what kind of tasty treat we were. It was really neat to see how they interacted with each other and to hear stories about each wolf. Part of me wished I had the boys with so they could see all of the wolves. I’ll have to head back that way with the boys when it is warmer. Trust me, if you’re in the area it’s worth stopping by to see. At night we saw the Howl Night program. Most of the information that was presented sounded familiar. It was the same information that LW told us while we took the tour earlier. Just for the record, this is not a bad thing. It just impressed me a lot more about LW’s knowledge of the wolves and his work at the park.

After Howl Night we went to the Lafayette Brewing Company. I consumed many of their different beers. Quick review. Oatmeal Stout: Decent, I’ve had much better. Scottish Ale/Pipers Pride: One of the better Scottish Ales I’ve had. Prophet’s Rock Pale Ale: Horrible taste that sticks with you for hours. Doppelbock: Excellent beer, too bad they only sell it in the half-pint.

A lot of time was spent getting to know the various bloggers. I would have liked to talk to Bloodspite more, but he’s even shier then I am. Through out the evening he would just sit there and not say a word. Thankfully T1G and Machelle kept the conversations going. At one point Tammi and Bloodspite got into an argument. I don’t know what started it, but it was so heated that no sounds came out of their mouths. It looked like two beavers fighting trying to gnaw on each other.

Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for, my view of the bloggers: (In the order I encountered them)

Ktreva: I’m married to her. Been there, done that.

Machelle: Intelligent woman that likes to dominate a conversation. She still holds a grudge that I bought a Chevy instead of a Ford. She does heart my meat stick.

Oddybobo: What can I say about a woman that can’t keep her hands off of me? Every time I turned around she was touching me. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing! She even brought me some crack strips. However, she did forget to bring a bottle of Scotch for me. My favorite Scotch too!

Laughing Wolf: If this man gives you directions anywhere, get a second opinion. C’mon he didn’t even know the intersection in front of his house! He also has good taste in Scotch.

T1G: He’s fun to talk to, if you can get a word in edgeways. Saturday night he kept trying to hug me, which really creeped me out. He really needs to learn to hold is alcohol. That and he has some Jebus complex. He has the manners of a 2 year old if you feed him something he doesn’t like.

Tammi: This girl will hug you for any reason. She meets you; she needs a hug. You talk to her; she needs a hug. She successfully put on a coat; she needs a hug. It’s cold out; she needs a hug.

Bloodspite: This boy is just too damn shy for his own good. I thought I was shy; I have nothing on him. I think he said two sentences all weekend. One of them was, “No thank you, I don’t like beer.” The other was, “That’s it, I’m photoshopping your head onto the body of a geriatric pr0n star.”

Bloodspouse: Very nice and sweet. She needs to keep better control over Bloodspite. She also needs to stop letting him get away with stuff and not expecting him to buy her jewelry. She’s going to get his butt kicked by other married men.

Wes: I’ve known him for years. Hell he lives two houses away from me. Every time I turned around he kept trying to pick up round objects and play it like a drum. The boy has issues.

Spouse o’ Wes: I’ve known her for years as well, obviously. She’s way too well behaved for this group.

TNT: Discovered she wants to go camping, unfortunately her husband has a fear of nature. She made a deal with me that she’d let him go out drinking with us one night if I drag him along camping with her one weekend. Forcible kidnapping, consuming alcohol, hearing Harvey scream like a girl… Yea, it’s a deal.

Harvey: Good guy, will take a lot of abuse, but if you question his blogging authority he gets damn huffy. I’ve never seen a grown man cross his arms and pout before this weekend.

I think that’s everyone, if I missed someone I’m sorry, you just weren’t memorable! Kidding, I just have a bad memory. If you missed it, you suck! Next time try getting a life and being a bit more sociable. Everyone seemed to have a great time, I just wish it would have lasted longer, oh and maybe that the temps where a little warmer for those that don’t like the cold.

Sign my Map!

Some of you have signed up already, others of you haven't. I'm sure it's just because you, like me, are procrastinating. Well, get off your but, go over and sign it! It doesn't take long, hell even I can do it!

...And freedom for all.

Being an American Citizen, we all have rights that given to us by the Constitution of the United States. A lot of people take this freedom, this right, this privilege for granted. That is until something happens where it is taken away. Then they will scream about the loss of their first amendment rights.

Blackfive has a post regarding a University of Illinois editor being suspended. The student published the Danish cartoons that caused such uproar over the last couple of weeks. Many have voiced their opinions that what was done to this editor is wrong. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I think that the majority of my readers would agree that this is wrong. The student, Acton Gordon, is being punished for exercising his first amendment rights. I have strong issues with that.

Now, lets turn the table. Barb at Righty in a Lefty State has a post regarding the University of Washington student Senator Jill Edwards. For those of you that haven’t heard about this, it is where the Ms. Edwards made a statement along the lines

”…Whether it is appropriate to honor a person who killed other people. (I) don’t believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce.”

This has angered many people, and I think she was wrong is saying such things. But then in Barb’s post she states that Ms. Edwards is going to be forced to make an apology. She has the following excerpt from the mandate:

WHEREAS Student Senator Jill Edwards offended all members of the United States Marine Corps, past or present, dead or alive; especially those who were, are, or will be students at the University of Washington with her comment that she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce." This commented brought shame and dishonor to not only the UW Student Senate, but also the University as a whole, all its members who have served in the Marine Corps and all Marines past and present.

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE ASSOCIATED STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON:

THAT

Student Senator Jill Edwards will submit, in writing, a signed apology letter seeking forgiveness to all students, staff, and alumni who are now or ever have served in the United States Marine Corps. In said letter it will contain a formal apology and a recognition that her very rights and freedoms are guaranteed by such members of the armed services, to include the Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard, past or present, living or dead. Additionally, said letter will be printed in all its form and substance in that day's edition of the UW Daily newspaper as well as being recited on the UW Radio station. To realize her mistake, she must acquaint herself with the history of the person she is so keen to dismiss, by reading Col. Boyington's book, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. All of these requirements are mandatory, under pain of losing her seat on the Student Senate.

History of Legislation
02/15/2006: Submitted for consideration

The problem I have with this is not that Ms. Edwards is being asked to issue an apology. That’s fine, if someone actually managed to offend me I’d demand an apology too. Where I have an issue is that Ms. Edwards is going to lose her student elected seat on the student senate if she doesn’t. Apparently I’m one of the few people that see this as wrong. I’m not seeing too many of the blogs I read shouting out how this is wrong, even the ones saying that what is happening to Mr. Gorton is wrong aren’t touching this? Are the blogs I read that bigoted? Are they not saying something because they don’t feel this is wrong, or are they not saying something because they didn’t catch that part? Maybe I’ve been wrong and they aren’t as freedom minded as I had thought, only comments they agree with are allowed protection under freedom of speech. Personally, I’m hoping it’s just and over site.

Sure I may not like her statements, I may feel what she said was completely wrong. Ms. Edwards may not appreciate the fine men and women that served and fought to give and protect her freedom of speech, but she is still entitled to it. In this case if she feels strongly about her statement and decides not to apologize, she will be punished. Now in Barb’s comments she states:

I haven't followed the U of I story, and don't know anything about the circumstances there. However - I think that the resolution made by Ms. Edwards' fellow senators and peers, if approved as-is (highly unlikely) or even in a toned down form (still unlikely) is valid. They are a self-governing group, and should be permitted to censure their own - you and I have no right to interfere with whatever process they choose.

If she is forced to apologize, I believe that she will learn something - or she is lost already. If the senate backs down and nothing really happens - she will have learned that negative feedback is just fluff she can ignore. At worst (from her perspective) she will be forced to be more introspective in her manner of discourse, at best it will all quietly go away.

Don’t get me wrong; I like Barb and her blog. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what she is saying there, but by her statement I’m under the impression that as long as it’s a self-governing group in the United States, they can do what ever they want. Well the U of I is self-governing, wait most corporations are self-governing. Hell, the mainstream media is self-governing. I guess it’s okay what happened to Mr. Gorton. Hey, for that fact any newspaper should be able to censor any story they want. States, cities and municipalities should be able to censor their senators, aldermen, council members maybe even their citizens. No, I don’t think so.

I think that the UW is just as wrong for threatening to take Ms. Edwards student elected seat away from her if she doesn’t follow their demands as much as it was wrong for the U of I to suspend Mr. Gordon. Wrong is wrong people; a violation of rights cannot be taken as a shade of gray just because you don’t agree with the message.

Here I go again.

With all the raging at work about how bad I am, it inspired me. They all seem to think I suck at my job. It seems that the current promotions have been based on incompetence and desperation to get someone out of a position. They even made a crack about this today in a meeting about an employee that is incompetent. I believe the exact quote was, “Well I guess we know who the next promotion goes to.”

Based on this, I put in for a promotion. Well, it’s not really a promotion; it’s a lateral transfer. I’m putting in for a supervisory position. Yes, people will actually directly report to me if I get it. There will be no raise or even a tangible benefit to this. Why would I put in for it then? Because right now my current position is in a dead-end track, there are only 2 more positions I can promote to in it. Those positions open up rarely. The last time was 5 years ago, and the people in them don’t appear to be going anyplace soon.

If I spend some time as a supervisor it opens up a lot more opportunities for me. I’m all about the opportunities. Anything that makes me more marketable is a good thing. Sure, maybe it’s wrong for me to work hard to make a better life for my family and myself. (At least that seems to be the message the government is sending me.) I’m still going to do it. Maybe this will be the move that leads to my total world domination.

There is a very good chance I won’t get the position, not because I’m not qualified, but because they don’t like doing lateral transfers. They would rather promote someone into a position then transfer someone. It’s rare that they actually do a lateral. There’s also the fact that I’m not the most well liked person on the management staff, maybe that’s because I have a penis. Yes, you read that right.

The total management staff in our office is around 85% female. They are a very tight group and tend not like adding y-chromosomes to their numbers. Now, to be fair the office itself is about 75% female, so it could be the ratio of applicants to positions. Then again I know of 3 male management position individuals that were fired or demoted for trumped up harassment charges. I know personally two of them and the remaing one the other management admit it was BS.

Either way I guess I’ll wait and see what happens. We just have to see what is mightier, sucking or the penis

I'll take my experience over their ego.

It just never ends. Tuesday in our morning state of the office meeting, we were discussing same day responses to inquiries and the obstacles we have in meeting our goals for them. Out of the blue, the manager I now report to (from the other office) states she wants me to start running the reports and giving feed back to my minions that don’t have below a 92% same day responses. This request comes at least once a year from someone who thinks they are the first person to come up with this brilliant plan. I’ve been doing this job for four years and not once have I ever thought of doing that! < /sarcasm>.

In fact a couple of years ago, I was damn near being a Nazi about it. That is when I discovered that it’s not possible to find out the exact percentage of the individual CSR. Sure, corporate gives us reports saying what each individuals percentage is, but it’s wrong. They know it, and any Inventory Manager worth a damn knows it. Meanwhile my counterpart is smiling and nodding like it’s a great idea. To burst the bubble, I spoke out.

“It’s not possible. The reports are inaccurate. They may show someone had an 80% closure rate, but it’s not their fault. They transferred the inquiry to someone else and they finished it. The person that originally took the call doesn’t get credit for the closure, even though it’s closed. I tried this a couple of years ago and all I succeeded in doing was dragging the morale through the mud. The employees end up getting upset that we are chastising them for doing something that they didn’t do, and rightfully so.”

Well that wasn’t good enough; nope they still wanted to do it anyways. Of course, the wonderful support from peers really helped me, that’s right; they cowered in their chairs not saying a word. This went back and forth for a good 15 minutes. Then I made this statement, “Look, I’ve done this before. It doesn’t work. All we succeed in doing is pissing off the employees. This has no benefit to anything. I can’t get the data you want and I am not about to stir up trouble and make a bigger headache for me just to prove I’m right. I’ve been using this software for 4 years, if you don’t want to learn from my experience then do it yourselves.” For the record, most of the people in the room had only been dealing with this system for about 8 months, and even my peers that have been working on it as long as I have acknowledge that I am the guru of what the software can and can’t do.

At the meeting, they decided to discuss this more at a later time. Wednesday’s morning meeting arrives and there I sat. Sure enough in walks the other office manager all smiles with a stack of papers under her arm. As soon as the meeting starts, she says that her and my counterpart found a report that shows what each person's same day responses are. I kept my face schooled as she spoke about this great find. Just so you know, this report has been on the system for 6 years, they damn well should have known about it before yesterday.

She passes the stack around and wants everyone to take one. Soon enough all of the supervisors are Ooohing and ahhhing like the yes men they are. With a slightly smug look, the manager looks at me and says, “What do you think?” I grin big. Unknowing to her, she just played into plan perfectly. I figured they where going to try to blindside me, so I came prepared. Standing up I personally hand to each individual in the room a packet that includes an example of the same report. Next I proceeded on this little spiel, “I didn’t figure you would believe what I said yesterday so I took the liberty of gathering some examples of how this report is flawed. Since I didn’t want to spend much time on this, I figured two examples would be sufficient, if you would like more just come see me after the meeting. Here we have production on two of our employees. Employee A shows at a 100% same day response, employee B shows at a 90% same day response rate. Based on what you where saying yesterday you would want me to provide feed back to Employee B, while praising employee B, correct?”

They all acknowledged that was correct.

“Here is the problem. Even though the report shows that employee B had a 100% same day response rate, she never takes a phone call. She is one of my off the phone employees. Thus, she is closing other people’s inquiries. In fact if you look at employee A, two of her inquiries that she didn’t get counted for was closed by employee B. If you turn to page three you will see a separate report, this is a list of all the inquiries employee A started yesterday. You will notice that 2 of them where closed by employee B. They are the highlighted ones for your convenience. Now the other 3 of Employee A’s non-closures are sitting in our Technician queues.”

“Employee A did nothing wrong, all of her pends where proper. Yet you want me to give her feedback and tell her to do better? I think not. I think we as management need to give feedback to the people that are supposed to work these items and aren’t. To me, part of being a leader is knowing not only when to address and issue, but with whom.”

When I finished I think any one of them would rather have been hunting buddies with VP Cheney, than sitting in that room with me. They conceded my point and dropped it like a bag full of rotting mayo and horseradish. It’ll be interesting to see what happens today.

It's not as creepy as it sounds.

It seems everyone is doing the Frappr maps by Google. Since I’m nothing more then a glorified sheople in the blogosphere, I figured I should have one to. Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with stalking, it’s just part of my morbidly unhealthy addiction to information.

If you would be so kind as to humor me and sign my map, I would appreciate it.

It’s all for fun, and maybe for vacation planning in the future. Since I like to travel all over hell and back, it would be nice to know if there are any bloggers, I might be able to visit on my journeys.

Update: I did something wrong orriginally and had to correct it. If you signed once, I would appreciate if you could resign the new map. Thanks, and sorry for the inconvienance.

I need to pay more attention.

They are rearranging where everyone sits in my office. The move is happening over the weekend, thus everyone is packing this week. That includes me. I’ve sat in this same desk for over 3 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a lot of crap. This was my cubicle away from sanity. Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite an impressive collection of condiment packages. Soy sauce, mustard, ketchup, horseradish sauce, barbeque sauce, sweet and sour sauce, and salad dressing have filled up about half of one of my desk drawers. I had forgotten that these existed. I just kept throwing the packets in there and never pulled any out.

Today is one of my minions last day in our department; she was promoted to a new position in a different department. Since this is her last day with us, they decided to throw her a potluck. I brought in my legendary chicken enchilada casserole (yes, I cook.) as my dish to pass. It was gone by 9:00 AM; it’s that good. Someone brought in a lunchmeat and cheese tray to make sandwiches. I love a good sandwich, so I made myself roast beef and cheddar sandwich on pumpernickel. Upon taking a bite out of it at my desk, I knew it needed something. No one had brought in any condiments for the sandwiches.

Well, no problem, I just finished cleaning out my desk drawer that had the condiment packages in it, I knew where to find what I needed. Digging through the box I put them in, I pulled out some salad dressing (aka generic mayo) and horseradish. While I was doctoring up my sandwich one of my minions was asking me questions. Then we had a minor emergency on the floor I had to go put out. Forward 20 minutes later, I return to my desk to finish what I was originally doing.

While I was working, I picked up the sandwich and took a bite out of it. It didn’t take but a split second for me to realize something has gone horribly wrong with my sandwich. To say it tasted bad would be quite delicate, this tasted like licking the bottom of a road kill skunk. My gag reflex was kicking into overdrive. Before I hurled, I spit the sandwich out into the trash. Thankfully, I’m still hooked on Listerine Pocketpaks. Three of those strips took the taste out of my mouth.

Carefully I peeled back the bread on the sandwich to take a peek. There, between the lettuce and the meat, was some kind of opaque, green-yellow colored substance with the consistence of baby snot. Sick baby snot! It didn’t take much for me to figure out what the hell that was. Apparently, those condiment packages only last so long, I was looking at the congealing mixture of horseradish and generic mayo gone bad.

The two different rancid substances mixed together had created some kind of chemical reaction. Noticeable distortions in the air were visible around it. The stench was god-awful and it cause my stomach to contract so violently I was sure I was about to spew forth the entire contents of not only my stomach, but also my entire bowel. I am not kidding when I tell you that I think I created life. A life that did NOT want to exist and it new who its creator is.

It might have been my gagging or some psychotropic side effect, but I swear the stuff started to pulsate and move. Grabbing the sandwich, I carried it to a trashcan at an empty desk and threw it away. There was no way in hell that sandwich was staying anywhere near me. I figured let someone else enjoy my stinky creation.

Then I threw away all the condiment packages. I don’t want to risk making the same mistake twice.

My Valentine gift.

Well, well, well, I actually had some fun handing out flowers. Now, before you all go thinking, “Hey, Contagion has a soft side.” Let me set you straight, there is no soft spot here.

It all started at 11:00 this morning. The employees could go into the break room and for a $1.00 buy a carnation for someone else. Then some poor sap would deliver the flower to the recipient. Yes, that poor sap was I. Come to find out; this whole thing was a fundraiser for some charity. AKA, my company was bilking the employees for free advertising. You don’t believe me? Let me explain it to you.

When companies, especially large companies like what I work for, do fund raisers for charities it is so they can get their names in the papers. When that charity goes to various places they can list the XYZ Company as a benefactor. Since most of these companies either match their employees’ donation dollar for dollar or set a flat fee, they end up paying in most cases not more then 50% of the donation. Basically the employees foot the bill to spread the company name. Trust me, I’ve sat in on the committees for these drives.

Anyway, I’m way off topic here. Sorry about that, just a little side rant. At first delivering these flowers was annoying. I didn’t know who 90% of the employees where nor where they sat, so it took me forever to deliver them at first. But after the first 30 minutes it started picking up, and I actually started enjoying myself.

I work with mainly females, I believe it’s about 90-95% female environment. When I would start to walk down the rows the females would look on in hope and anticipation. Their faces read, “Mr. Contagion, please stop here. Give me a flower. Confirm that people like me, give me some hope that I’m not an unwanted loser.” Then as I passed them by, as was more likely to happen, the look of rejection was priceless.

Their sagging heads and slumped posture just screamed out, “Nobody loves me, I have no friends. There isn’t even anyone that likes me enough to pretend.” Upon noticing this the first time, I started watching for it. Sure enough every row, every isle, every flower I delivered there was at least one person that would get the look of rejection! There were a handful of women that did the same thing every time I passed. Each time getting more and more dejected, at one point I thought one of them would implode from the stress.

Then to make things even better, whoever planned this did a horrible job. They only bought 400 flowers to sell. We have almost 700 people in our office. Some people where buying flowers by the dozen and giving them to one person. One girl I probably delivered close to 20 flowers to in the course of an hour. We had completely sold out by 11:45 AM and the sale was supposed to go on until 2:00 PM.

People who waited to buy flowers never got a chance. Some of those rejected individuals may actually have had a chance of getting a flower if there were enough to go around. When I noticed that we were starting to run out, I quickly bought a flower for Ktreva (Remember we work together) and delivered it to her. She didn’t need that unloved feeling. As a bonus it denied someone else a flower!

All in all it was actually fun. I may even do it again next year.

Stupid forced love.

About now all of my loyal contaminants, and some of you passer bys are probably thinking, “Where the hell is Contagion’s Valentines day post?” Well you know what, just like Birthdays, father’s day and sweetest day; I don’t celebrate Valentine's Day. It’s a manufactured BS holiday that is designed to make card companies, jewelers, florists and candy makers rich.

To be honest, I find this holiday pretty damn insulting. I don’t need some St. of frou-frou love telling me that I have to do something special for my wife. Isn’t that something I should do on my own and on a regular basis, not just once a year? Sure, some of you are going to smart off, well you do it on a regular basis AND on Valentines Day. Well Bullocks on you! If I’m forced to shell out money to buy a gift for someone, why the hell should I do it all the other days? You’ve already mugged me for a gift; I hope you enjoy it! If I give them of my own free will, then I’m more likely to do it again of my own free will. And not just when I did something stupid to get myself in trouble.

Plus, if the gift is obligatory, is it really heart felt? Think about it, did you buy your special someone a gift just because you wanted to or because it was Valentines Day. Some of you are probably lying to yourself and saying both. I call BS! Yes, I do! If Valentines Day was next month you wouldn’t have gotten a gift for your loved one this week. You would have waited until next month to do it. Admit it, it’s okay.

Today at work, I’ve been “volunteered” to hand out flowers at work. Yea, that’s right. Mr. Love and cheer here gets flower distribution duty for all the minions. This is part of someone’s plan to “soften” my image with the employees. They even wanted me to dress up as cupid. CUPID PEOPLE! Can you imagine me walking around work in nothing but a giant diaper holding a bow and arrows with heart shaped heads? (You’re welcome for that mental image!) Needless to say, I put my foot down and said, “I’ll wear a red shirt and tie, that’s as far as I’ll go.” True to my word, I’m wearing a red shirt… Blood red.

My ever so cheery smile will be walking up to people, dropping flowers on their desk. I’ve even written a little poem to recite when I deliver the flowers. “On this Valentine’s day, someone bought a flower for you. It’s not from me, because I don’t have a heart like others do.” Then I’m going to smile one of those forced smiles that looks like I’ve gone insane.

Valentines Day, Bahumbug!

Yes, I did get Ktreva a gift, I’m not that stupid.

Comments, denied!

Tonight I have stumbled across quite a conundrum. I’ve tried commenting on various MuNu sites and everything I type is of “questionable” content. Then I tried commenting on this blog, nope! Questionable content! At first I thought it was just me, maybe somehow I was banned from posting. Searching the various site I discovered no recent comments.

I went to Munuviana to see if there was anything out there on this issue. There was a post on the English Language being banned. Being curious I tried to comment in Spanish and German. Nope, they didn’t work either. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sure it’ll be fixed. If it’s just me, and you miss my comments, I’m sorry! I tried!

Update: It appears to be working now. Thanksy Pixie Misa!

Making meat sticks.

Over the weekend I ended up making two batches of jerky. The first was just your regular style of jerky, which turned out decently. I’ve had better, but it’s not bad. For the second batch, it was time to change things up a little. I decided to make pepperoni sticks. I figured it couldn’t be that much different from making regular jerky. For once I was right.

The hardest part was controlling the gun. After loading the jerky gun with the cured ground meat, I started making the sticks. I had a strong grip on the shaft as I squeezed the handle. All of a sudden, the meat was squirting everywhere. Apparently, I pulled harder then I thought. After wiping down the tray, I reloaded the gun for another round. The second time is the charm, right?

This time I was very gentle, and was able to lay long lines of the meat. After 20 minutes, I had all the trays fully loaded with the soon to be dried pepperoni snacks. Just like the last time it took about 6 hours for the soon to be snacks to finish. Again, I had to pat down the meat to get the excess grease off. This was using the leanest ground beef I could find, I’d hate to see what it would be like with a fattier meat.

After the drying process, I put the pepperoni snacks on paper towels to dry for a couple of hours. Again, I wanted to remove the excess grease from the sticks. When they where finished “drying” I decided to sample one to see how it was. To be honest with you, these turned out pretty damn good. They actually taste like pepperoni flavored snack sticks. (This is not the same as actual pepperoni.) Since I made these after the “contagious” period, I let my wife and boys try some.

Clone, who is an avid pepperoni fan, couldn’t get enough of them. If I had left the bag where he could reach them, he would have eaten all of them by himself. When Ktreva slipped one of my meat sticks into her mouth, the look of surprise on her face told me all I needed to know. The moaning and MMmmmmMMMmmming told me she liked it. She kept trying to gobble up my meat the entire weekend.

I will have to say that my first experiments with making jerky and jerky like products have resulted in a success. Now I need to start pricing meat so that I can find the best deal for low-fat meats to make jerky.

I thinking of making a second batch to take with to the Wolf park. For the us, not the wolves.

It's "tired"

Little kids are great fun. They entertain and amuse the adults around them. Okay, when they aren’t driving them nuts they are entertaining and amusing. When they are in that magical age where they are just learning to speak, they can be the greatest. Sure, there is a level of annoyance over the communication barrier. They say something and you have no clue what message they are trying to convey.

It starts out as English, “Dada, I want to…” but then it goes horribly wrong, some mixed up language that only the child understands. “…bregaft marka mook.” At which point the adult tries to translate. “You want to breakfast to make a poop?” The child will repeat itself, “Dada, I want to bregaft marka mook!” “You want to bring markers to mom?” Of course, this goes on for hours with no success. The child just gets frustrated and sentences come out of your mouth you never thought you would say.

On the flip side there is the child trying to imitate what you said and getting it all wrong. Such as an incident that happened to me recently when I was playing with Clone. While I was sitting on the couch, he would come running up to me. I would grab him and toss him in the air over my head. This went on for a while until my arms started to get tired. He wanted to continue to play, but I had enough. I told him no more, it was time to play something else. Clone, being the even inquisitive almost 3 year old asks, “Why?” (I really was hoping this stage wouldn’t hit for another year or so.) My response was that I was tired.

I believe my exact words were, “Because Daddy is tired.” He looks at me a second and responds with, “Dada, you’re not tarded.” Of course, I’m happy my son doesn’t think I’m retarded, but I tried correcting him. “No, tired; not tarded.” To which he responded, “Tarded!” Now, for those of you that haven’t had the pleasure of trying, you cannot change a 2 year olds mind when it’s made up. It doesn’t matter what I actually said, he is convinced the word coming out of my mouth is “tarded” not “tired”.

I will admit; there is something nice about having someone confirm that you are not retarded. Even if you know they don’t mean it

Eye am still here.

All right, I didn’t write anything about my eye yesterday, mainly because I was being lazy, and didn’t feel like posting anything. That means you all get a two for one today!

The pain is still there, it is subsiding some. There is still the sensation that my eye is being gouged out, but at least it’s not as strong today. Well either that or I’m getting accustomed to the sensation. Today I am developing a minor headache on the right side of my head, yes, it’s that generalized. It starts from behind my eye all the way to the side of my head, just about my right ear.

At this point, we have ruled out shingles. There is no noticeable rash, pox of discoloration of the face. If it were shingles, it definitely would have manifested by now. Since we’ve ruled that out, it means it’s one of the more mundane medical afflictions.

I have a follow up appointment with the ophthalmologist on Wednesday. I appreciate all of the advice and concerns about my eye. I’m going to try to answer everyone’s questions.

I’ve already seen an ophthalmologist on the first day. My GP works in a large office and the have one on site that examined me, that is how we know there is nothing wrong with the eye itself, it’s the surrounding tissue. There are no scratches, foreign substances or chemicals in my eye. Well, other then what the doctors have put there. The actual eyeball itself is perfectly normal. There is a loss of sensation on my eyelids and face around the eye, which however may be due to the already existing pain.

Bunnies need Braaaaiiiinnns!

We all know how much I love zombies, but what you might not realize is that I have a true love and appreciation of zombie documentaries movies. Then I stumbled upon this.

Night of the Living Dead in 30 seconds
(and re-enacted by bunnies)

It’s worth a quick chuckle.

Assistance is on the way.

We’ve all seen it, a parent trying to connect with their child. In the day and age we are in now, this gets more difficult. As technology takes over and builds a rift between parent and child it makes it harder for the parent to break through. Parents are trying to break into their kid’s world in order to understand or communicate with them. Maybe they started sending e-mails and messages to them via the computer, but the child rejects it because they don’t understand. Well those parents now have help.

The first and only English-to-12-year-old-AOLer translator!

That’s right, you can turn anything you type into a misspelled horror that any professional educator would have a heart attack reading. If you would like to see how this works, just check out the extended entry. I translated this post using it just so you can see how it works.

WE’V3 AL SEN IT A PAERNT TRYNG 2 CONACT WIT THEYRE CHILD1!!1!11! IN TEH DAY AND AEG WA R IN NOW THIS GATS MOR3 DIFICULT111!!1 WTF LOL AS TECHNOLOGY TAEKS OV3R AND BUILDS A RIFT BTWEN PAERNT AND CHILD IT MAEKS IT HARDER FOR TEH PAERNT 2 BREAK THROUGH1!1!11!1 WTF LOL PAERNTS R TRYNG 2 BRAAK IN2 THERE KID’S WORLD IN ORD3R 2 UNDERSTAND OR COMUNICAET WIT THEM!!!11 LOL MAYB THEY STARTED SANDNG E-MALES AND MASAEGS 2 THAM VIA TEH COMPUTER BUT DA CHILD REJ3CTS IT B/C THAY DON’T UNDARSTAND1!!!1111 LOL WAL THOSE PAERNTS NOW HAEV H3LP!1!1!1!

OMG WTF TEH FIRST AND ONLY ANGLISH-2-12-YEAR-OLD-AOL3R TRANSLA2R
TAHT’S!1!!

OMG WTF LOL RIGHT U CAN TURN ANYTHNG U TYP3 IN2 A MISP3L3D HOROR TAHT ANY PROF3SIONAL 3DUCA2R WUD HAEV A HEART ATAK READNG!1!!1!!1 OMG WTF IF U WUD LIEK 2 SE HOW THIS WORKS JUST CHEK OUT DA AXT3NDED 3NTRY11!!!1! I TRANSLAETD THIS POST USNG IT

I want to go to THIS range.

One of my blogless buddies sent me this video clip. It’s labeled Southern Family Reunion, however I’m not thinking that description is at all fitting. Especially since they show an Asian guy having fun too. I don’t know what this really is; I just wish I were invited to play along.

I wonder if this is what The Conservative UAW Guy had in mind when he was translating what “I’m going to the range” meant.

Jerkin' meat

Ye ol’ dehydrator has been loaded with meat products and is drying. It’s been approximately three hours since I started. I’ve wiped the excess grease off of the meat a couple of times now. The directions say to do so, since I’ve never made my own jerky before, I thought I better just do it unquestioningly.

I’ve checked the dryness of the meat a couple of times now. It’s still pretty pliable and “moist”. Like moister then Slim Jim beef jerky. Which is way too moist for my liking. Looking at it, I figure I have another hour or two left before it’s done. I’m afraid if it goes too long I’ll make roofing shingles.

Now, a friend of mine’s mother makes her own jerky. It’s some real good stuff. A couple of months ago she over dehydrated it and it was crispy. Yes, crispy. It was like biting into a thick meat potato chip. Now, the taste wasn’t bad, actually it tasted pretty dang good. It was just interesting to eat meat that crunched.

After this batch, I’ve got some pepperoni flavored curing right now. I’ll keep you updated as things progress through out the day.

UPDATE 17:52: Okay, the meat has been drying for almost 6 hours now. It is still way too moist. I will continue drying.

UPDATE 20:08: About 20 minutes ago I pulled off the trays, it is done. It took about 8 hours to get the texture that I like. I'm trying again tomorrow with a second batch. Some things I've learned from this first experiment. When checking the dryness I need to check every tray. Apparently the trays to the bottom dry faster then the ones on top. Drying meat is greasy, I actually did wipe down the excess grease but dang! I have enough rendered fat here to make historically accurate soap! As for the taste, not bad. I think it needs more garlic, either that or diced jalepanos.

What are we teaching our kids?

Since I’ve been home, I’ve been spending sometime with the boys. During the day Boopie is at school, however Clone is home with me. He’s pretty easily entertained; we’ve colored, put together puzzles, and watched some movies and TV. Sometimes, he just wants to watch some of his shows on his own, other times he wants me to watch with him.

Yesterday he wanted to watch on his own, so I came in here to do some blogging. In the background I hear Jimmy Neutron on the TV. Okay, this is a fairly decent cartoon for kids, not as good as the stuff I had growing up, but better then a lot of the crap they have on TV today. As I was reading away on a blog, part of the episode catches my ear. Apparently Jimmy has invented some kind of candy that everyone loves and is instantly addicted to. Jimmy made crack candy, people.

Then I hear Jimmy say something along the lines of, “With their over whelming desire for my candy, I can bend peoples wills to fulfill my every need.” People, Jimmy Neutron, boy genius, is a crack dealer! Well, maybe crystal meth, but still he’s a drug-dealing bastard! They showed kids, and some adults, doing his every command so they could get a fix. Instantly, I had a lot of respect for Jimmy. The kid really is a boy genius! He created a candy that is addictive and only side effect is that it tastes good, thus it’s not truly a drug. Then Jimmy, boy dumb arse, grows a conscience and decides to not may anymore because people were getting out of control. If Jimmy truly were a genius he would have started charging money for the crackandy and hired bodyguards to protect him.

Then this morning I made a startling observation. Now, I don’t watch a lot of cartoons, I pretty much hate the damn things. Clone loves them, so they are on all the time. In fact right now he is watching Dora, international drug smuggler. Hey, maybe she works for Jimmy? His favorite cartoon is Spongebob Squarepants. This has to be one of the most idiotic cartoons I’ve seen. Ever since he first started watching Spongebob, one of the voices always sounded familiar and struck a cord of fear in me.

Now everybody and their mother knows that Patrick is voiced by Dauber from Coach. The voice I’m talking about is for Mr. Krabs. This morning, I’m sitting here typing up my eye post when I hear Mr. Krabs speak. Like a thousand bolts of lightening striking me at the same time, I instantly recognized the voice. Krabs says, “There’s only one.” The phrase was close enough, because what I heard was the Kurgan from Highlander say, “There can be only one!” Some of you may know the Kurgan better as Drill Sgt. Zim. Either way, this is the guy we have talking to our kids daily. Suddenly I have more respect for Spongebob Squarepants. I wouldn't want to work for Drill Sgt. Kurgan.

Mr. Krabs is the Kurgan! Great, we have an immortal crab running around selling crabby patties on the bottom of the ocean to all the animals down there. Hey, wait. All the sea creatures love crabby patties, they have to have them and plankton is trying to steal the formula… Mr. Kurgan is a drug dealer like Jimmy!

Eye can do it!

I know that all of you are itching to hear about the status of my eye. So, lets get today’s update out of the way.

The pain hasn’t increased any; it’s about the same as yesterday. There has been a shift in it, now it feels as if someone is pushing their finger in my eye along the corner next to the nose. It’s an uncomfortable pressure, and is rather quite distracting.

The swelling and puffiness is about the same. Nothing of any real consequence to cause any noticeable difference. My eye doesn’t want to stay open, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with the swelling or if it’s because it is more comfortable when it is closed.

I am still producing some mighty eye boogers. Just before I started typing this, I wiped one away that was crunchy and gooey at the same time. The coloring is still yellowish; I think that is a good sign.

There is no discoloration or sign of pox again this morning. Since I’m going on five days of this, I think I’m going to rock the boat and declare I do NOT have shingles. I’m pretty sure that by now it should have started manifesting itself. What ever I have must be something else. Which can be good or bad.

I was going to post some pretty nasty pictures of what shingles of the face/eye looks like, but I decided not to. Some of you might be curious, but I think the rest would prefer not to see it.

Feeding the boy.

For the first time tonight, Clone ate a hamburger. It’s not that we’ve never given him one before. It’s just that he usually picks them apart, eating the cheese, licking off the ketchup and mayo. What is left is a soggy slobber covered bun and matching meat patty.

Tonight he didn’t pick apart the burger. He ate the whole thing the way it was supposed to be eaten. Well, except he would dip it into the ketchup that was for his French fries. Maybe things are changing in the way he eats. We could only be so lucky.

It's Jerky time!

Okay, I have all this free time for the next four days and I thought what the hell am I going to do with it. Then I remembered; my loving wife gave me a food dehydrator and the stuff to make Jerky. Right about now some of you are probably thinking, or screaming: “Contagion, you have some kind of funky eye infection. Do you really think you should be playing with food?”

My answer to you is; grow up and get a pair! No, you do have a valid point. Since I’ve never made jerky before I have no clue what I’m doing. I figured I would start small. A one-pound batch and take it from there. After “cooking” down, that will only make about 1/3 pound of dried meat snacks. That’s just enough for me. There will be no sharing of the first batch.

I started off washing my face thoroughly. Never have I cooked using my face, but I thought “Hey! The crunchy bits my eye is producing might add flavoring.” Actually, I did that because it needed to be done, then after that I washed my hands. Then I used hand sanitizer, and then I washed my hands again. Sure I might not be sharing it, but lets not be dirty about it.

After a scrubbing that would make Adrian Monk proud, I started mixing the seasoning and curing mix. Okay this is easy enough. Again, this is my first time making jerky so I’m going with the ultra cheap method of using ground beef. I know it’s not the same, but if I screw up, at least I’m only out a couple of bucks, even if it is the ultra-lean variety.

I spent 10 minutes in the kitchen kneading the meat, seasonings, and cure mix together. Of course right in the middle of it, who comes to my door? The damn Com-Ed (electric company) man wanting to read my meter, that’s who. Washing my hands, I show him to the meter. After he leaves I go back through the scrubbing ritual and start kneading the meat. After I finished, I went back to mixing the meat, seasoning and cure mix together. I’m kidding… I washed my hands again before I started mixing.

Now I have to let the mix sit and cure for 4 to 24 hours. I’m thinking I’m going to let it cure until tomorrow. Since it’s late in the day, and it’s going to take about 6 hours to dry, I don’t want to be up half the night waiting on it.

Aye Booger.

I have just enough time to give you an update on the ol’ eye. I’m supposed to keep track of these things, per the doctor, and I thought, hey I can use my blog to do that!

First let me note that the pain/discomfort has increased. It mildly hurts when I blink now, and if I keep my eye closed it just is downright painful. This has caused for an interesting twitching sensation in my right eye, which by the way annoys me. When I get annoyed, my eye twitches. It’s a vicious cycle, so now I need to calm down to get the twitching to stop. The twitching is very uncomfortable.

There is still only a slight swelling/puffiness to the eye. Which is good, because I’d rather it not look like my wife was beating me. What would I tell the guys at the range? “No really Jimmy John, I have an eye infection. My old lady did not haul off an’ backslap me because I came home 2 hours late smelling of whisky and strippers.”

Other then a slight blurring, my vision seems to be fine. This is a good thing as that means that the eyeball itself is A-ok. If it gets worse, then what ever it is may have spread to my eyeball and that would be bad.

At this time there is a slight discoloration to the skin under the eye. Is it the pox? I don’t know yet. Only time will tell. There is no itching. The only drainage I’m getting is a slight watering of the eyes. There is no puss. However, this morning when I woke up the eye booger that I had was massive and has reformed twice.

Since Machelle brought it up, I will address the issue of my going to the Blogmeet next weekend. If I have something contagious I will NOT be going. Ktreva may go by herself, but I won’t be coming with. I’m sure none of you want this and I don’t know if the wolves would be susceptible to it, but I’m sure Laughing Wolf doesn’t want to find out. Before someone smarts off, I know, you're all praying for something contagious!

A pox I tell you!

I just got home from the doctor. He tells me that my eyeball itself is okay. However, the facial nerves that control the eyelid appear to be infected. He’s not exactly sure what it is, but one of his theories is that I have… Are you ready? Do you really want to know? Maybe I shouldn’t say. Ah, what the heck.

He thinks I may have Shingles. It’s a variation of the Chickenpox virus. Either that or I have some infection that is focusing on that area. Either way I’m not too thrilled with it. I’m supposed to watch it for the next week and if it spreads, I develop some kind of rash or if it persists, I’m to call him back.

The funny thing is that he came to that conclusion AFTER turning my eye orange checking to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Luckily the color should fade in 2-3 hours. Personally, I think it would be kind of cool to walk around with one eye normal and the conjunctiva of the other eye orange.

My wife beats me!

Last night as I was preparing for sleep, I kept a close watch on the wife. My eye is hurting more, and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t beating me. Anyone that has met us knows that no one is going to believe she beat me unless I started it. Thus, if I file spousal abuse charges against here, I’d probably end up in jail.

As I laid there in the dark, fearing the beating I was about to receive, a sense of déjà vu came over me. This is not the first time I’ve laid in this bed in fear of being beaten by my wife. She actually did beat me once, it happened way back when…

(Insert wavy flashback lines)

…we were not yet married. I was working for the State, 11 PM to 7 AM, my days off rotated and at the time of the incident they where Thursday and Friday. Ktreva worked Monday through Friday 7 AM to 3:30 PM. In order to keep my sleep schedule from screwing up too much, I would stay up late on my days off, not going to bed before 4:00 AM. When my sleep schedule was screwed up, it made my first day back to work very difficult.

One night after watching some really bad movie on late night television, I went upstairs and crawled into bed. Leaning over, I kissed my lovely wife on the top of her head. She sits up in bed and in perfect form punches me in the eye! The woman I love and am going to marry punched me as hard as she could for kissing her! Fortunately, she is not the strongest woman in the world as it didn’t hurt, but it more then shocked me a little.

With out a word, she lies back down and falls asleep. Not wanting to anger her anymore, I just laid there thinking, “What the hell was that for?” When morning came and I finally rose from my slumber, Ktreva had already left for work. That day I went over to a friend’s house to help him with some stuff. His wife looks at me and asks, “What happened to your eye?” I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror that morning, but my wife had given me a black eye!

When I finally went home, Ktreva was in the office on the computer. She saw me enter the house. With a big smile, she got up to give me a hug and a kiss. I on the other hand pointed a finger at her and yelled, “YOU STAY TEN FEET AWAY FROM ME!” She wanted to know why she had to stay away. I wanted to know why she felt the need to punch me. I regale her with the tale of her dotting me in the eye, and what does she do? My “loving” and “caring” wife is laughing her arse off. She doesn’t remember doing it. At least that is what she claims. To this day, she still claims not to remember, let alone know why she punched me.

Now, to be honest, I was somewhat proud she used perfect form.

Aye, my eye!

As you may know, I hate doctors. Yet, I’m thinking I might need to make an appointment to see one. This morning I woke up with my right eye kind of sore. It felt like I had a black eye. I figured I slept funny on it, nothing to worry about. As the day has progressed it has gotten worse. It now hurts when I blink. Not a painful hurt, more like an annoying hurt. I guess that’s called sore.

I just went into the bathroom to take a look at it, and sure enough it’s starting to get puffy and swollen. There’s no bruising, but I don’t bruise easily. Normally I would just blow it off and not think twice about it, but after reading Tammi’s story here, I’m thinking a three-day vacation might be nice.

Then again I may go to the doctor and just discover that I’m a battered spouse. I always thought Ktreva beat me in my sleep!

Trackers.

On my way home from tonight I got to thinking about some friends of mine from college. One of them owned a white Geo Tracker. We used to make fun of him something fierce because of it. Yet every time we wanted to go someplace he would be the one to drive us. Hey, he had a car after all. Beggars can’t be choosers. As I was thinking of my friend and his Tracker, just kind of chuckling to myself I notice there happens to be a Tracker in the lane next to me. I didn’t think anything about it, coincidences happen.

As I continued to drive home I saw yet another Tracker, this time pink. I haven’t seen two Trackers on the road on the same day in ages, or at least not that I’ve noticed. It was strange, but I figured they got my attention because I had been thinking of my friends Tracker.

After picking up the boys I continued my journey home and thought nothing of it. That is until I came to a stoplight. Right in front of me was a black Geo Tracker, Then a white one pulled up along side me, and a red one stopped right behind me. All of them where the convertible models 2-door model, not the even more rare 4-door hard top variety. Okay, I’ll admit I was a little weirded out by the whole thing. I mean, here I am being swarmed by Geo Trackers!

Then a thought crossed my mind. Something so off the wall I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, which made Boopie look at me like I was insane. In fact just thinking of it now makes me laugh.

Imagine if you will a group of guys all going out and buying trackers. Painting each of them in a different color or putting different logos on them. Then they add those exhaust systems that you see idiots put on 4 banger cars like Neons, Civics, Accords, etc that make them sound like sewing machines on crystal meth. After customizing their Geo Trackers, these guys hit the road like a pack of bikers.

Imagine them swarming around cars as they go down the road. Pulling into gas stations in a pack, parking in a line at the local bar or even pulling into one of the few remaining drive-in restaurants to get something to eat. That’s kind of funny, but now imagine people like say Me, T1G, Graumagus, Eric, Blackfive, Johnny-Oh and Dr. Phat Tony doing that. C’mon, admit it; the mental picture of that made you smile! I'd bet T1G wants the pink Tracker!

Memories of the Past.

When I was growing up, my parents used to take the family to a local campground, The Oaks in Clinton, WI. My grandparents had a permanent sight and we’d pull in with the old 1977 Mobile Traveler RV my parents owned. Sometimes I’d just go to the campground with my grandparents and spend the weekend there. When I was older, I’d go alone and tent camp.

This was not like most of the campgrounds you see today. No, there was no running water at the sites, no electricity and no pavement. A main shelter house had plumbing and electric. Unless you had a site near the Shelter House (as it was called) you had to use the out houses that where all over. These where the old-fashioned outhouses, a big hole in the ground covered by a wooden box you’d go in to do your business. If they filled up, they would just fill it in, dig a new hole and move the box. Later on, about the time I was High School, they started running electric to the various sites, and when I was in college, they ran water. However, you still had to use the out houses or the Shelter House to go to the bathroom. They never ran plumbing to each site.

There was no concession stand or video games originally. Nope, if you didn’t have anything you had to run into town. You amused yourself the old-fashioned way, hiking, swimming, and fishing. It was probably around 1983 when the first pop machine arrived. This was a big deal. Kids would bug their parents for money to buy a pop out of the machine. Even if the parents had the exact same pop in a cooler, all the kids wanted it out of the machine; it just tasted better. When I was in High School they brought out video games, other vending machines and in college, they built a small office convenience store.

The campground had a small man made lake, which was fed by two small creeks. By the shelter house, they had a beach for swimming and a raft for diving off. When I say raft, think of The Raft from Creepshow 2, it looked just like that. The lake was filled with bullheads, bluegill and some bass. Occasionally someone would pull a carp out of there. The other aquatic creature they had where snapping turtles. As a kid, I loved catching snapping turtles. I probably caught a good couple dozen over the years. My grandmother would clean and cook them up for my friends and me.

I’d spend hours in the woods making forts, or exploring. I’d play in the creeks, damming them up so the water would back up making a small pond. That’s how I caught my first snapping turtle. As I got older, I would take my younger cousins out with me and show them all the things I had found, like the hollow tree you could hide in and the secret place that had the wild black berry bushes.

I would always invite friends to come with when I went. While my parents would sleep in the RV, we would be in a tent. Sometimes even on our own site. My parents finally bought a permanent spot and replaced the RV with a good-sized camper. My friends and I would spend entire weekends up there horsing around, fishing, drinking (in the later years) and building fires that would rival the sun.

The first crush I ever had was for a girl whose parents camped there. I still remember watching her swimming and marveling at the female form in a bikini. My first sexual experience was also at this campground; unfortunately, it didn’t involve my crush. It wasn’t anything scandalous, just your normal pre-teen kid stuff.

Over the years we camped there, it went through six different owners. For two of the owners my grandparents managed the campground on the weekends. About 4 years ago, the campground closed. The last owner had some big plan in mind. The rumor was that he was going to turn it into a KOA style campground to help cater to the Casino that was supposed to come to Beloit, Wisconsin. I don’t know if that is true or not, because that casino never came. I helped my parents clean up their site, take apart all the decking they had built and remove the shed. That last day still lingers clear in my memory.

Some of you may be wondering why I’m telling you this. Over the weekend, I heard from my blogless buddy Jay that what remained of the campground had been tore down. Some developer had bought the property. When he told me that, a flood of memories came back to me. My entire childhood and part of my adulthood was intertwined with that campground. I even took Ktreva and Boopie camping there. Clone wasn’t born by the time they closed it or he would have gone too.

Part of me always hoped someone would buy it and reopen it. I guess that is never going to happen. For some reason I feel much older today.

All dogs go to heaven?

I wasn’t going to post this, but I figure by now there is not much more psychological damage I could do to my readers. The people that I’ve told this to react in different ways. What story is it? It’s the end result of the dog dilemma.

If you are an animal lover, especially dogs, you may not want to read any further. In fact, just skip this post and never, ever, ever click on a link to it. If you want to see how badly something simple can go wrong, the post is in the extended entry

Over the weekend, I went to my Minion’s house to do the deed. I decided that I was going to use the .357, as I know how it shoots, and I haven’t had a chance to fire the .30-30 yet. People suggested many different techniques, including the use of a hammer. I didn’t know if I had it in me to beat the dog to death with a hammer, so I opted for the handgun. Plus I really didn’t want to get that close it.

Just to remind all of you, this was a full sized Bull Mastiff. Not as big as the English Mastiff, but this was one large dog. I really didn’t want to get up close and personal with it.

I arrive at the house and they led out back to the kennel area. Most of the kennels are empty; apparently, they are failing at their business. They take me to Rocky’s cage. At first, I thought it was empty; nope he’s lying in the far corner. My minion tells me that he’s barely moved for the last couple of weekends. She tried calling him, but he wouldn’t come over. He’d look at her and then lay back down.

Looking at the lay out of this kennel, the only way for me to get to the dog was to walk into the cage. Now this is a huge kennel, it’s an indoor/outdoor kennel and Rocky’s cage is in the corner of two buildings. The outside area is about 60 ft wide and 80 ft long.

My minion says she can’t watch and is already in tears. She and her husband go in the house leaving me outside with Rocky and four other dogs. Taking a deep breath, I load my revolver. As I’m loading, I’m noticing that I grabbed the hollow point rounds. Steadying myself I walk into the cage and start heading towards Rocky. Then all hell broke loose!

I’m about ten feet across the cage when Rocky jumps up and starts running toward me barking. All I see is the snarling mouth of beast that was more dog then man…. Well because it’s a dog, I guess there was no man to it… Did I mention he was one huge dog? Well this mouth looks like it could take my head off with I kid you not two inch long teeth is charging at me.

Now, I could lie and say that I remained calm and collected. No, that was not me. My fight or flight response kicked in and with a scream, yes I screamed (You would too with a lion dog charging you!), I bring the revolver up and I start firing. That’s right firing, as in multiple shots. This giant elephant/dog was easy enough to hit at the distance I was shooting. And I’ll be honest, the first shot probably would have killed him, by the third shot, I’m pretty sure there was no chance he was going to live, but I used all seven. That’s right, I admit it I emptied all seven chambers into the thing.

The whole thing rather reminded me of a scene in Dances with Wolves. In the scene I’m referring to a buffalo is charging down on an Indian boy. Lt. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) shoots the buffalo and the body crashes to the ground sliding to a stop just in front of the boy. Well my last shot went into Rocky about two feet in front of me. Yea, that’s right the Tyrannosaurus dog was still in forward motion for the first six shots.

There was supposed to be only one shot. After hearing seven rapid shots, my minion and her husband come running out of the house. As soon as my minion sees the pile of ground Rocky lying in the cage, she breaks out into tears. Her husband asks me what happened. I tell him that their “sick and barely moving dog” attacked me. The husband then tells me that Rocky has had a dislike of strangers. THANKS FOR TELLING ME NOW! He explained he thought Rocky was too sick to do anything that’s why he didn’t say anything. Well guess who was wrong?

The husband goes to calm my minion down and I head back into the cage. I hit 5 out of 7 times, Rocky’s head looked like, well it looked like someone shot it at point blank with a .357 magnum. I helped bury the carcass. Part of me wanted to ask if I could keep the skin to make a hat out of for re-enacting, but I thought better of it. Too many holes, I never would have been able to repair them.

Afterwards I left and went about my day. The only thing I can say about this incident is, “That’s what I get for trying to do something nice, and help someone out.”

Oh, and to those of you that warned me, “Don’t look it in the eye it’ll make it worse.” Well, I looked ol’ Rocky in the eye as came charging down upon me. I still had no qualms about introducing Rocky to god.

Now in two weeks I'm going to the Wolf Park. If Carson Daily and Earl are correct, I'm in for one hell of a Karmic beyotch slap.

Bad calls.

Yesterday was spent watching the Super Bowl. I didn’t have a horse in the race so I didn’t really care, but I just love football. Since October I had been predicting that the Seahawks where going to make it to the big game, but I didn’t think they would win. I had predicted Indy to make it and take the prize. When the Steelers knocked out Indy, I thought it was a fluke and that Seattle would win. Well We all know how wrong I was on that one! Its okay, the Steelers didn’t win by 25 points so I have a crisp new $10.00 in my wallet.

I’m just going to start by saying I’m very disappointed in the officiating during the game. Every Steelers fan I’ve talked to thought it was okay and every Seahawk fan I’ve talked to thought it was poor. Fan’s of other teams are torn, but more of the ones I’ve talked to agree with me that there where some pretty bad calls made or in some cases, not made during the game.

Some of the bigger calls I saw made that I disagree with are:

1) Ben’s touchdown. I’m sorry but that ball did not break the plain until after he was down. However, they may claim there was not enough evidence to overturn the call. I think they are wrong.

2) The complete lack of offside calls against the Steelers. C’mon these guys where not only blatantly jumping the gun on a lot of plays, but in at least three, they had people lined up in the neutral zone. (Some will say that the Steelers had the cadence down. Except the ball hadn’t been snapped when they where crossing the line.)

3) We have yet another case of delay of game not being called, apparently in the playoffs you have an extra 2 seconds too snap the ball. On one the Time Out was called AFTER the clock was to 0.

4) Holding calls inconsistently called. On the Seattle comeback drive, they called holding against Seattle, which barely met the textbook definition of holding. Yet on other plays, there where holds that are more blatant being done and not called, including on a certain 75 yard run.

Before I go into the next play I question, I want to remind all of my readers that the little read and yellow lines on the field are not OFFICIAL. They are added by the networks to assist the viewers on the play. I’ve seen games where the lines have been off up to 3 yards, heck even the announcers will tell you they can be off by as much as 3 yards. On one of Ben’s passes, I’m not so sure he wasn’t past the line of scrimmage. I only caught the side angle of the play once (when it first happened) and it sure looked like he was past it. I never saw any of the replays from the same angle that included the sideline markers. I’m not saying this is a call that should be made; I’d just like to have seen that from a different angle so there was no doubt in my mind.

I can already hear some of you asking, “Are you trying to imply the ref’s and officials where against the Seahawks? What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?” No, I’m not saying that at all. I did however watch the game with someone that did and was convinced of it. All through out the game he kept saying it was a conspiracy in the NFL to keep the NFC from winning. The Colts/Steelers game was even used as an example. His belief is that the NFL wanted the Colts in the Super Bowl, but since the Steelers beat the colts by overcoming the NFL’s interference, the NFL decided to back the Steelers. He didn’t find it amusing when I made a tinfoil beanie for him to wear. But that was probably because it had chili-cheese dip on it when I put it on his head. (It was made from the foil covering they used to cover the dip with.) What I’m implying is that there were some bad calls made, and in every game, there is.

At least one penalty could be called on every play in a game. The Officials are humans, they make mistakes, I can forgive mistakes. I just want them to be consistent. If they are going to call ticky-tack holding calls, call them on both teams. If you’re going to ignore offside calls, then maybe they should ignore false starts as well. After all the controversy around bad calls made during the post season this year, I would have thought the NFL would have done everything to ensure that the biggest game of the year was called properly.

I actually thought it was a good game. I don’t like high scoring games. A great defensive game is more fun to watch in my opinion. The commercials bored me, there where only a couple that I thought where amusing and/or interesting. During halftime, I almost went into a rage. I was pissed that the NFL brought in the living dead to perform. Then someone told me that the Stone’s hadn’t died yet and it calmed me down. One of my friends I was watching the game with was in the band and he made this statement: “If this was my band and we sounded like the way the Stone’s are right now, people would tell us we suck.” He was right, they sounded horrible and I was less then whelmed by the power of the performance.

One last game of the season, the Pro-Bowl. Now I need to find a Pro-Bowl party to attend

SUPER BOWL!

It’s Super Bowl Sunday! You know what that means don’t you? Yep… I’m going to be winning some money!

For the first time in 6 years I’ve been invited to multiple Super Bowl parties. (I must be getting tame in my old age.) Of course I said yes to the first one and then declined all the rest. The thing that gets me is that I want to go to all of them for different reasons. Some I know will have better food; others will have better alcohol (One is serving 18 year old Scotch!), and others may have better conversation.

Either way I know I’m going to have fun! It should be a great game; I thinking it will be close. When I get back I’ll share with you the tragic story of how the dog dilemma went.

Go Seattle!

They always get the girls!

Since Valentines Day is coming, I thought I would help everyone out. Do you have someone special in your life? Are they a Law and Order fan? Are you having a problem finding the perfect Valentine for them? As the self proclaimed Doctor of Romance. I have the answer for you.

Check out this fine collection of SVU (Special Valentines Unit) Valentines Day cards.

Top ten!

Many people speculate whom the top ten best football teams of all time have been. Well some Bear fan went and put together a list. (Only a Bear fan would pick the 85 Bears as the best team of all time.) Are you curious to know if your team made it?

The thing that gets me with lists like this is that it’s all based on a person’s opinion. A person’s opening can be easily swayed by a liking or disliking of a team, player, and/or owner. I put about as much stock into lists like this as I do of the dream I have that Adriana Lima is going to come to my house and have a three-way with me and my wife coming true.

Fear of Girls

There are dorks, there are geeks and there are nerds. If you combine the three of them together, you get these two guys.

Fear of Girls

This is absolutely hilarious, especially if you’ve ever played any kind of role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons. It is long, 11 minutes, 12 seconds. Well worth the wait.

It's the rules.

I have never had to do this before, but I guess it is time. I do not like deleting comments, unless they are spam. The only time I have altered a comment was when it was so full of vulgarities that it would have made a sailor blush. (I just changed some vowels so that work filters would not stop my site from being too vulgar).

However if you are going to leave an inflammatory or political comments on my blog, you WILL leave a valid e-mail address. You can put spaces in it or add something to it so that it will stop spam filters. IE Contagion_1@NOSPAMyahoo.com. That way I can respond to you both in my comments and by e-mail to let you know.

Why am I stating this now? I just had someone leave a very long, political comment on my Home Rule posts. However, this person made many accusations and asked questions. They did not however leave an e-mail address for which I can respond to them, nor others that may support or oppose our positions. Most of my readers that come for Home Rule information do not leave comments; they use E-mails.

I wish this commenter had left an e-mail address; I really wanted to ask him more questions

A bit o' the bubbly.

After hearing my mother tell the tale of Clone and the Soap to us yesterday, Ktreva reminded me of a story that happened years ago right after we where married. Ever since I moved out of my parent’s house, I always did dishes by hand. It wasn’t until Ktreva and I started dating did I get my first dishwasher. Every time she came over, she would wash my dishes, it was great!

When we bought our current house, it came with a dishwasher, so now I had two. Unfortunately, my original dishwasher decided to break down and no longer do dishes, it was now going to be my job. Fine, so I learned how to operate the new dishwasher and away we went. Everything was fine for the first couple of months. Then something happened that had never been a problem in the past.

After putting a load of dishes in the dishwasher, I reached under the sink for detergent. Pulling out the bottle, I could see that it was empty. What, no dishwasher soap? What the hell?!?! I was lost, what was I going to do. Then I spotted the answer. There, next to the sink is Dawn dish soap, with grease cutter! AHA! That’ll work!

After filling the detergent container in the machine, I close the door and start the machine. I mean, if it washes dishes in the sink, it’ll work in the dishwasher right? It did work really well. The problem is that it worked too well.

I leave the kitchen proud of myself and sit down to watch some TV. Half an hour later Ktreva goes walking into the kitchen and screams, “OH MY GOD! WHAT DID YOU DO?”

Thinking that Boopie had done something wrong, I jumped up and ran to the kitchen. Once I stepped in, I was greeted by Ktreva standing there, arms crossed and knee deep in bubbles. The kitchen was filling with bubbles coming out of the dishwasher. “What did you do?” she asked. “Ran the dishwasher,” I responded.

Ktreva, “How much detergent did you use?”

Contagion, “About the same as normal, maybe a little more since it was a different brand.”

Ktreva, “A different brand, I didn’t buy a different brand.”

Contagion, “We were out of the regular kind, so I used the dawn.”

Ktreva, “YOU USED SINK SOAP IN THE DISHWASHER?”

Contagion, “uh, yeah.”

Ktreva, “You can’t use sink soap in a dishwasher!”

Contagion, “Why not?”

Ktreva points around the kitchen.

Contagion, “Oh, yeah. Got it.”

We went about cleaning it up. We pushed a lot of the bubbles out the back door. We used a ShopVac and mops. When we were done, the floor was the cleanest it had ever been since we moved in. The dishes where also very clean when the dishwasher was finished. (The old model didn’t have a shut off, you had to let it finish).

That was a valuable lesson learned that day.

Dilemma

I have a dilemma that I’m going to ask my contaminants to assist me in. I’ve contemplated on this for the last 24 hours, and I just can’t make up my mind. My head tells me one thing and this shriveled up lump in my chest tells me another. I’m hoping one of you will be able to help me make an informed decision.

Yesterday a minion of mine stopped me while I was walking through the department. She says to me, “Mr. Contagion, can I ask you a question?”

Contagion: (rolls eyes) “If you must.”

Minion: “I’ve heard you own some guns, is that true.”

Contagion: (Waiting for the anti-gun rant) “Yes, I own a couple.”

Minion: “Do you think you could do me a favor?”

Contagion: (Being apprehensive) “If you ask me to kill your husband I’m going to be very upset.”

Minion: “NO, no. Not that. We live out in the country on an old farm. We rent the land out to other farmers to actually farm. We kept some of the land so we could some animals. Unfortunately, one of them has become sick and is in a lot of pain. We can barely make ends meet right now since my husband was laid off, and the vet bill for the visit cleared out our savings.”

Contagion: (Hopeful) “Please tell me it’s a Llama.”

Minion: “ Llama? No, why? It’s a bull mastiff.”

Contagion: “Never mind, it’s a long story. Okay, so what do you want from me?”

Minion: “We can’t afford to pay to have him put down. Rocky, the dog, is one of our favorites and we are awfully attached to him. We don’t own a gun and even if we did, I don’t think we could bring ourselves to shooting him.”

Contagion: (Seeing where this is going) “Okay….”

Minion: “Since I know you don’t have any problems with killing animals. I was wondering if you would mind coming out and shooting Rocky for us?”

Contagion: “Yea, I need to think on that one. It’s not like I’m just picking off Bambi’s mother at 200 yards. This is actually somewhat humanitarian. It’s not something I normally do, just shooting an animal to put it out of its misery. It’s up close and personal.”

Minion: “I understand.”

I went back to my desk and pondered on this situation. After I got home and the excitement of the baby, I sat and pondered on it. As I tried to sleep last night, I continued to ponder on it. All morning, while bathing, getting dressed, making breakfast, driving to work, sitting through meetings and passing out work, I’ve been thinking of this. I’m just not sure what to do.

What do you think?

.357 magnum or .30-30 rifle?

Hey there tootsie roll, time to watch the Super Bowl!

This weekend is the Super Bowl. There are a lot of excited people out there, including myself. My team came nowhere close to even making the playoffs, let alone the big game. Being an NFC fan (Plus Holmgren, Rhodes and Hasselbeck where with the Packers), I’m pulling for the Seahawks to win, and I honestly think they can do it. Yet, for some reason, everyone else I know seems to be pulling for the Steelers and thinking they are going to win. Where are the Seattle fans? Am I the only person that thinks Seattle is going to win?

This brings me to my second issue. I have a minion at work that is a Steelers fan, huge Steelers fan. He claims that the Steelers are going to put the smack down on Seattle. He was so convinced of this he wanted to put a wager on it. You all know I’m not a gambling man; no good comes from gambling. Yet, this one time I bit. Why? He gave me 25 points. Yes, twenty-five points! That means that if the Steelers win 35-10, we tie, if it’s 34-10 I win.

So if there are any other Steeler fans out there that want to offer the same conditions, contact me.

Happy Thoughts.

This is not something I normally do, but I’m going to do it anyway. As many of you may know from my blog Daughter Virtue’s post, we have a pregnant friend that is with child. You may remember her as Chastity.

She was due on the 25th, and last night around 6:30 PM they induced her. I just received word that she still has not delivered the child, and there are complications. If you could find the time just to think some happy thoughts for her, I’d appreciate it. She’s a good kid and just needs a little help right now.

UPDATE: I just received word from Virtue, Mom and baby are doing fine. Child was taken by C-section, its a girl. 20 inches long, 6 lbs 14 oz. Name: I forgot.

Planning.

Let the annual draining of funds for recreation begin! Last night in the mail, I finally received my tourist packets to plan our vacation. Every year we take a vacation. What we do depends on the kids and funds. We try to do something that everyone in the family will enjoy, and there is the mandatory educational aspect. IE, we have to do something that is educational in some way or another.

This year I’m really excited! For the first time since Ktreva and I have been together, we are taking a vacation that does not involve either visiting a relative or having a relative travel with us. Most of our vacations involve my mother-in-law. Ktreva is excited because this is the first year that we are going somewhere neither of us has been before. Usually we go somewhere I’ve already been that she hasn’t.

I don’t have all the details down, but right now, we know we are going to stop in Bowling Green, KY to see the Corvette Manufacturing plant and museum. I’ve been a huge Corvette fan for years and I’ve always wanted to stop by here. After that we are heading to Lynchburg, TN so that we can take a tour of the holy land Jack Daniel’s Distillery. Yes, I know it’s a dry county. I’ve always wanted to go there, plus I want to do some research on distilling for re-enacting. While in Tennessee, we’ll probably visit some of the Davy Crocket sites before heading to Shiloh. Shiloh has been a place I’ve wanted to visit for years. It’s the site of the first major engagement in the Civil War. Sure, it seems like this vacation is planned around me, well she got to plan the last one!

I just received the material last night so I’m not sure exactly what else we’re doing yet. At this time, I’m just excited over the fact I finally get to see three sites I’ve wanted, and haven’t had the chance to

Not so funny anymore.

By now you all know that I have a tiny, little mean streak with my sense of humor. Sometimes I like to play pranks that could be considered unfriendly. I.e. the mouse and monitor incidents. Today over a Tammi’s World, I read her post about people being cruel thinking it’s funny. Personally, I think these people are going way too far. That is saying a lot coming from me. After reading Tammi’s heartfelt post I started feeling a bit of an arse myself, because it hit close to home.

At work, all my peers are doing this “Biggest Loser” competition. They are all trying to see who can lose the most weight over the next three months. All of them are female, and not a one of them is by any shape or form fat or even what I would consider overweight. If one of them is overweight, it can’t be by more then a few pounds.

They started this at the beginning of January. It’s been a month and they are all comparing to see where they where at and what methods they are using. Now insert the big arse factor. It’s been a month with no chocolate for them, and they are all chocolate fanatics. What do I do? Yes, I bought a couple of bags of candy, Reese’s peanut butter cups and Hershey kisses. I put it in a tin that I use to distribute candy and left it on the edge of my desk. It’s not uncommon for me to put candy out for people, I do it when my inventory looks good or when the minions do something exceptional. This time it was different.

My desk is right by the two most used conference rooms in the building. With all the meetings we have, my peers have to walk past my desk at least 3 times a day. They also have to come over when they want something from me or another peer that sits in the next cubicle. If they want to see the manager, they walk right past me. After a month of depriving themselves of chocolate, the pull is too great for them. They have been snagging pieces every time they walk by. I’ve gone through all of my candy.

I was going to buy more to keep it up, but I’m not thinking it’s so funny anymore.

I'll vouch for these two as well.

Ah, what the hell! I guess the Voucher police aren’t going to come and yank my still pending BE Clan status from me. Thus, I will go ahead and vouch for Basil of Basil’s blog. He’s were I go when I’m looking to find a new blog to read or to see what others are blogging about.

The other is Shadoglare of Refractional Darkness. We’ve decided that we are forcibly adopting him into the Clan since he has the balls openly to state he doesn’t want to be.

Beautiful Girls.

It’s the beginning of the month, so we all know what that means, Mortar Maiden Time!

This month we have yet another lovely Scottish Lass, Rosslyn MacKinnon. Go see Ms. February and see if you can meet her standards!

Biochemical weapons.

I am a Corn Nuts fanatic. They have to be one of my all time favorite snack foods. Normally I just pick up a bag of ranch flavored Corn Nuts and enjoy. For reasons unknown to me, I’ve decided to try other flavors. This is pretty unusual.

It’s not that I fear change; I just don’t like it. I get comfortable and then something changes and I have to get that comfort factor back again. Food is not one of the things I do a lot of changing. Heck, I’ve had Salami/Roast beef and Provolone cheese wraps dipped in horseradish sauce every Monday through Friday for the last 2 years. My lunch is usually summer sausage, hot pepper cheese and horseradish sauce. My normal snack foods are Ranch Corn Nuts, Popcorn, Peanuts, Doritos (Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch) or Lays chips in a cheese sauce. Rarely do I stray, it happens but not often.

I had the regular… eh, they’re somewhat bland. Barbeque, not bad, I could handle eating these again. Nacho Cheese, Okay when I opened the bag of these the smell was strong enough to have people two cubicles away ask me what I was eating. The taste however was bland. Then today I saw a flavor I had never had before, Salsa Jalisco. I’m not even sure what that is, but I thought why not. Let’s try them. Worst snack food idea I’ve ever had! Hell the chocolate covered grasshoppers I had five years ago where better and more appetizing than these things are!

First, upon opening the bag the smell was over powering. Secondly, the flavor was that of moldy salsa. (Trust me; I’m familiar with the taste of mold). And not good salsa, but the crappy salsa that someone makes thinking it’s hot but really, it could pass as ketchup with onion flavors. You know the stuff, you’re grandmother may have even made it. I know mine did once! Third, the after taste has stuck with me and it’s been over 3 hours since I ate them. Finally, and the most disturbing part is that they make my breath smell so bad that I’m gagging myself. The Ranch make my breath bad, these make it toxic.

If I burp and the odor wafts back to my nose, my eyes start to water and I begin to twitch. I had to go teach one of my minions how to do something. While I was at their desk, I took a swig of pop. Shortly there after I had a small little burp, not audible… but it still stunk. My minion grabbed her face and gagged. After regaining the ability to talk, she asked, “What the hell did you eat? It smells like a vegetable garden went to compost in your mouth!” I would have taken another breath strip, but I didn’t have anymore. (I finished off my final five before heading to her desk.) I just told her that it’s an incentive for her to catch on quickly. The faster she learns the sooner I’ll go. I’ve never had anyone catch on that fast before.

…GACK…

Sorry, just burped. I swear I felt my nose hairs curl on that one. What you don’t see is that I stood up and walked away from my desk for five minutes. Meanwhile one of my peers quickly ran away with in seconds of my leaving.

Take this as a public service announcement. DO NOT EAT THE SALSA JALISCO CORN NUTS! You and everyone around you will regret it!

I’m going to go brush my teeth again.

To brighten a gloomy day.

This was sent to me by a blogless friend. (No Harvey, he refuses to start a blog. I just don't have your powers of manipulation.) I felt I needed to share with all of you.

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of the days conferencing.

Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the barkeep, "In 'Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a bladdy Fosters, mate."

Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next, "In the States, we brew the finest beers of the world, and I make the king of them all, give me a Bud."

Hans steps up next: "In Germany ve invented das beer, ferdamt.?? Give me in Becks, da ist der real King of beers, danke."

Paddy, CEO of Guinness, steps forward, "Barman, would ya give me a diet coke with ice and lemon. Tanks." The others stare at him in stunned silence, amazement written all over their faces. Eventually Bruce asks: "Are you not going to have a Guinness, Pat?"

Paddy replies "Well, if you fookin' pansies aren't drinkin', then neither am I!"