Friday, September 28, 2007

CherkyB, The Sufferer

I had one of my little overnight junkets out to Santa Clarabelle Wednesday night/Thursday to attend a review of something being put on by my old group. The one that ran me out of town on a rail, but now that I'm no longer in their employ, suddenly decides to value my opinion a lot more.

Tinfoil was also along on the trip, so I took him on the nickel tour of San Schmose, what with me being formerly a local and all. Meaning we hit my favorite sushi place for dinner and the the bowling alley karaoke bar for some after-dinner refreshments. Dood and WoodyWoody swung by to hang with us, too.

So, I got back home at like 1:30AM Thursday night, and then got up to go to work this morning at the usual time given as I was double-booked in my 9am timeslot. The Childrens hadn't seen me since Wednesday morning, so they pretended to be happy to see me in the morning.

When I started to leave for work, HannahC told me I couldn't go.
Me, CherkyB: "I have to go."

HannahC: "Why do you have to go?"

Me, CherkyB: "So I can make money so that we can live in this house and have food to eat and buy stuff."

HannahC: "Humph!"

Me, CherkyB: "See, that's what men do. They work themselves until they die so that women and children can sit home all day in comfort and complain about them."

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

CherkyB, Father of the Year

Last night, I managed to get HannahC all ready for bed, and tucked away into the bed in the guest room (she likes to sleep there cuz FreddyC will often jump up on the bed and sleep there, too, whereas he can't make it up into her loft bed in her bedroom). I turned off the light, walked out of the room, and she yelled, "It's dark!"

I walked back in and said, "Duh. It's night time, and the lights are turned off. It's dark every night. Now go to sleep."

She said, "Oh. OK."

Then I walked out of the room again, and she yelled, "Tell me a story!"

I walked back in, sat on the bed, and said, "I don't know any short stories."

"Tell me about the boy who cried wolf."

"Ugh. That story takes forever. How about I go look on these bookshelves outside the room and read you something short I find there?"

"OK."

Turn on the light, start rooting through the bookshelves. These are mostly reference books and biographies and such. All very long. But down on the bottom shelf, I find a pile of some periodical literature. I grab the top thing on the stack, nod approvingly, and lie down on the bed to read her a story.

"This story is called, 'The Santa Claus Caper', by David Sipos. I guess it's a Christmas story."

I had to change a few of the words, and define a lot of stuff for her, but she really enjoyed the story and went right to sleep afterwards. You can find the story online here. It's really quite touching.

Monday, September 24, 2007

You'll be happy to know

I've now almost completely lost my voice. It was very quiet today, as I was unable to yell at The Childrens nor at anyone at work. I tried to express myself in a Clint Eastwood hoarse snarl, but that works a hell of a lot better when backed up by a big-ass .44 magnum.

And I don't have anything bigger than .40 S&W.

Plus the people I have to yell at are mostly in Smashachusetts, so it's really hard to go all Dirty Harry over the phone. They just keep saying, "What? Can you speak up? It's hard to understand you."

My internet connection seems to be a bit weak tonight. That happens on and off.

I'm averaging about six hits a day to my snowblower review now. Fall is really upon us. I googled it, and I noticed that the blurb it was displaying (which was most of the first sentence of the post) didn't say a damned thing. So I added a new sentence up front to better summarize the post. Those of you reading on RSS feeds will see that the article will appear as new, but that's the only change. Feel free to mark it as read.

The tadpoles arrived today. So now we have two tadpole pets. All the butterflies emerged last week and were set free, so I guess we're still down one pet.

Though we have a second grasshopper now. I'm not sure if that counts. HannahC has declared that the crickets are not pets, as she raises them as feeder livestock. I think the grasshoppers are special given that she named one of them.

If they have a name, they're a pet.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

CherkyB, The Moms

Today I am The Moms. Normally I get to be Himself, but today I have to be The Moms. See, The Mrs. has not been improving much in her battle with the deadly virus, whereas I am almost fully recovered despite having been infected more than a day later.

So today I am sequestered in the basement with The Childrens whilst The Mrs. spends the day in bed. This is a very difficult life, being The Moms, as it is so remarkably boring. I have made two meals and gone shopping once (to Big 5 Sporting Goods after one of our air hockey paddles broke as I was playing HannahC - we got new paddles and also a fish filleting board with a big clamp on it). Those were the highlights of the day.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can sneak into the garage to sharpen my lawnmower blades. I like to do that whenever I'm bored.

I haven't mowed the lawn yet this weekend, and there is only about 4.5 hours of light left. I can take one child on the mower, but someone needs to watch the other. I'm very worried because the rules state that my lawn cannot be over 2" tall, and right now it is precisely 2.5", so I expect a call from the HOA president any minute.

OK, that last part isn't true. We're watching Over the Hedge, and it happened in that. But it is supposed to rain nearly every day for the rest of the week, so if I don't mow today, I won't be able to this week.

Shoot - I also need to go clean the hot tub filters. Better do that now.

Later.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Everybody is sick

In this case, I mean it in the literal sense. I'll reuse the headline when Hillary becomes the next president.

It started with MaxieC about last Sunday. Then The Mrs. got sick Monday. I got hit on Tuesday, and HannahC hung on until Thursday night. Luckily, the first day isn't so bad, so she was still able to compete in her first gymnastics "lollipop" meet Friday evening.

She came in first in the vault and second on the floor. I think she was roughly second on the beam, but only mid-pack on the uneven bars. They don't keep score at lollipop meets, so I don't know who won overall.

We all have bad colds. Remarkably tenacious, bad colds. Just-when-you-think-you're-better, you're-worse colds.

I think I'm a lot better today than yesterday. Mostly, I spent the day flat on my back on the sofa in the basement. The Childrens and The Mrs. were with me on and off, watching TV and fighting.

I managed to mortar in the 17 feet of stones from the edging project. Both MaxieC and HannahC helped, but thankfully not at the same time. I'll bash my mower deck into them tomorrow to see how they hold up.

The Mrs. seems to be getting worse. She normally prides herself on me being the sickly one, so this is unusual. She refuses to take the mega-doses of Vitamin C that I am taking. It turns out mega-doses of Vitamin C make certain things burn at certain times, which is not at all pleasant.

We're heading to bed early.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Something Not to Do 12

Let's say, purely hypothetically, that you are standing in the kitchen in the morning and happen to glance over at a stack of checks, and on top, there is a check from your parents as a gift for your anniversary. 

Then you think to yourself, "Self, that was nice of them to send us a gift. We didn't send them anything this year. I'm The Bad Son." But, you know, you've been The Bad Son on and off all your life and, luckily, with two brothers there is always some competition for that spot such that no one has to spend too terribly long with the title. 

But then you get to thinking. "Hmmmm... Yesterday was the 20th, which you remember because you had to update a web page and put the date on it right before you left from work. That means today is the 21st. Ohhhh shiiiiittt." 

And then maybe you get a panicked look on your face for a second until you contemplate how you already talked to your loving wife this morning, and she didn't say happy anniversary. So you charge upstairs to where she is in the shower and yell, "Happy Anniversary!" To which she replies, "Yeah, I was just thinking that." 

Later, she tells you she was waiting for you to say it first since it's so important to you to be the one who remembers first. You know that's a filthy lie. She is trying to catch you forgetting and doesn't want to admit it. But you let it slide. When you get home that evening, maybe something like this transpires:
The Mrs.: "We got a 'happy anniversary' call from your parents while we were out."
Me, CherkyB: "Oh. That's nice."
The Mrs.: "They sang a happy anniversary song. It's the one that goes, 'When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore.' Yeah, 'That's Amore', that's what the song is called."
Now, your finely tuned marriage instincts may tell you otherwise, but take it from me. The proper response to this is not:
Me, CherkyB: "That's Amore? That's a really strange song to think to sing to us."
That, dear readers, would be something not to do. ™ [ previous ] [ next ]

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Time to spruce up the resume

Every now and then, something strikes you in a way that just opens your eyes. It's usually not something big and obvious, but it's something small and subtle. Something one person might not even be given pause by, but to you it is revelation.

Today, I had one of those experiences when I got to work and re-animated my laptop compooter. Something startling caught my eye. Something that made me say to myself, "Self, this is very possibly a sign from god that it is time to move on."

See, I was able to live through the dancing weirdos everyone thought were funky 70's spacemen. I was able to keep going even after the dancing weirdos were replaced by an even more bizarre mascot - an apparent group of ancient British war reenactors who, after having their will to survive gradually sapped out of them by a never-ending, creeping bureaucracy of one-world-government types, decided, "Oh hell - let's stop being war reenactors and form a mime troupe. I bet we'd get more tail."

I was even OK when some fancy-pants marketing firm was paid millions of dollars to develop and copyright something called, I kid you not, the bong. Actually, I kinda liked that it was called "the bong", though it grates on my nerves to hear it now.

But this morning was the last straw. I opened up my laptop, and there it was as plain as day. An obvious sign of marketing apocalypse. Yes, folks, for a time there this morning, all advertising space on Me, CherkyB had been purchased by The Company. A double-wide ad across the top, and a fancy graphic ad on the right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Some Pictures

Manly Lesbian has been hinting about wanting to see some more pictures, as my writing tends to be a bit wordy and my audience is easily befuddled by lengthy prose. I always forget that blogs are read mainly by people for whom television is too complicated...

Here are a couple deck pictures. The is the western view. You can see the fancy platform-rocker loveseat with matching table in The Grotto under the pergola. For what that stuff cost, you could buy three copies of The JohnnyB's car. I left the stair lights on in the photo, but they're hard to see on account of this big ball of fire that's in the sky this morning, though it thinks I don't know it's there because it's hiding behind clouds.

That lamp hanging on the wall near the hot tub is the one I fixed in this post.


The Childrens decided that The Grotto was just the bestest damn place in the world to make mud sculptures.


Here's the eastern view:


A shot of the side to show how the builders put redwood cladding all across it to keep the doggies out and to make it look much more attractive. There's an access hatch in there towards the left so I can get to all the electrical junction boxes.


This here is a picture of the concrete rock underlayment project I discussed here. (You guys do follow the weather blog, too, right?)

Monday, September 17, 2007

Pets and more pets

I'm losing track.

Let's see. There's the doggie, FreddyC. And the rat, JackieO. After, that it starts to get fuzzy.

We have three black swallowtail chrysalises named Katie, Alex, and Alex.

And we have a new tent caterpillar named Joseph.

And a new grasshopper named Wilbur, though he was at first named William.

And there are the roughly 50 crickets that don't have names.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the frog eggs that go in the frog habitat that HannahC got from GrammaC on GrammaC's birthday. Those of you with grandchildren will understand that.

As the baby crickets grew, we realized that the little 2.5 gal fish tank in which the crickets were kept was getting overcrowded. So I spent some time on Craigslist this weekend locating a cheap, used, 10 gallon setup. Fish tanks are plentiful on the used market, as people pretty quickly realize that fish really, really, really suck as pets, but not until after they've bought a whole setup.

I think grasshopper suck more as pets than do fish, though, as their propensity to jump about 6 feet the instant you open up the lid to feed them makes routine maintenance very challenging.

Wilbur got merged in with the crickets in the 10 gallon tank so he wouldn't be lonely. He spends most of his time upside down on the lid, waiting for his chance.

There's going to be another OJ Simpson trial. Doesn't that kick ass?

Friday, September 14, 2007

The Greatest Show on Earth

We went to the circus tonight. It was fun. Fort TomCollins has a much smaller auditorium than does San Schmose, as Fort TomCollins has only a Central Hockey League team compared to the NHL team of San Schmose.

It also may be because San Schmose has a higher population in any one of it suburbs than we have in the entire county. But I think it's the hockey team.

Anyways, the place was only big enough for a one ring circus, not the three ring we got in San Schmose. But we were able to buy seventh row center seats this morning for today's evening show. HannahC loved it. MaxieC, unfortunately, was not quite himself today. He had barfed earlier in the day, and he was feeling OK at the beginning of the show but faded fast during it.

There was no barfing or shabooing at the show, though. So in the respect, it was a success.

I had nachos and a locally-brewed Bud. The Childrens had cotton candy.

I got to deal with our newly outsourced-to-Costa Rica technical support today. It was an order of magnitude better than outsourced-to-India technical support I've had in the past. And the guy actually fixed the problem, too. We've got a lot of stuff going on in Costa Rica in The Company now, and I've been overall pretty impressed with them. Where in the hell does Costa Rica get decent engineers, though? It's not a place I ever would have expected to be a technical haven.

Of course, neither is Fort TomCollins.

Today, I was in a meeting where we were getting some stuff presented to us by one of the groups that designs a component of our product, and the news was not what we wanted to hear, and this ended up triggering a 20-minute argument between two guys in the room, all while the speakerphone was on mute and the meetings (which was run out of Smassachusetts) proceeded along not knowing that this was going on in Fort TomCollins. I kept wondering if I should step in and moderate, but both these guys have been under a huge amount of pressure lately, and it looked mostly like they were just venting. Eventually, though, I had to stop them cuz I needed to ask a question of the guy who was now presenting (who I think was actually in Arizona). It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement of my opinion that what he was presenting was sheer craziness. But I phrased it as a question to try to make it less confrontational.

I know, that probably surprises you. But in general, it's a good rule not to piss off people who control how much attention the factory actually pays to making your part.

I'm thinking of putting the cap back on the pickup this weekend. I like to get it on there before the rainy/snowy season. I hope it snows a lot this year, just like last year. It didn't fall down from the garage ceiling despite me suspending the winch from screw-in eye bolts that came with little tags on them that said, "not for overhead lifting." I had done a much more complicated attachment at the previous house, but everyone assured me this would be fine. And it has been. It was a lot easier as it did not involve opening up holes in the ceiling to attach Simpson strong-tie straps (rated at 1500 lbs) to the sides of the the joist.

I should go to bed.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

iDon't Care

Last week, a whole bunches of people from work went out during lunch and bought iPhones. The old ones with not very much memory that are on clearance for something like $299. [Correction - I have learned that the vast majority of them bought the $399 8GB models, not the clearance ones. Suckers.] Now, as far as I can tell, there is basically no use for an iPhone other than to make phone calls or browse the web really, really slowly using EDGE. Now, a few of the people at work seem to think there is something very cool about having an iPhone, and they are constantly trying to get you to ooo and ahhh about their lemming-like purchase. I assume this is because once they got it home, they realized, "Hey, I just paid $299, plus I signed up for a $60/mo cell contract that I am locked into for 2 years, and I can't even use an MP3 as a ringtone! I must either be the coolest dude out there, or just a big dumb fuck."

And they (wrongly) assume the former.

So anyways, I was chatting with The Hamburgler, and somehow he started waving around his iPhone as he always does now in a desperate attempt for validation. He was telling me all the great things you could do with it which included, "MoodyT got this great light-saber sound effect program, so as you wave it around, it makes light saber sounds," "You can watch entire movies on it," and "You can watch YouTube videos on it!"

I said, "See, but I don't actually care about any of those things."

"But they're so cool!"

"But I don't care. None of those things are something I want to do on my cellphone for $300 and and extra $30/mo. It'd be more useful to me if it were a flask."

Then, of course, I got riffing on that.

"It could have a little straw that popped up and it could ring at you whenever it was time for a little nip. You could enter your height and weight, and it could estimate how much you needed and dispense just the right amount. You could build in a breathalyzer so it could track your BAC and refine its metering to match your personal physiology. It could use the GPS location to look up the local driving laws of wherever you are on its precious wireless web, and it could let you know if you were OK to drive or not. It could ask you if you wanted to drive, and adjust your target BAC based on that. Or you could enter in a BAC target, and it could dose you perfectly to get you there quickly and keep you right there.

"Yeah. The iFlask. Now that'd be something interesting."

Or, I guess, you could download an application that used the internal accelerometer to make light-saber sounds.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Duh or No Duh 3

In reference to the comment thread here, an actual conversation from this morning:
Me, CherkyB: "My job blows."

Me, CherkyB: [patting The Mrs. on the cheek] "But I take solace in the fact that when I get home, my wife doesn't."

The Mrs.: "No. You see, you're supposed to think 'blow job'. 'Fuse job', 'fuses blow', then I say, 'combine the two,' and you're supposed to think 'blow job', but I say it backwards, 'job blows', and that's what makes it funny."

Me, CherkyB: [blink]

Me CherkyB: "I'm insulted you thought you had to explain that to me."

No Duh.™

Oh well. Maybe with a spoon full of sugar...

[ previous ] [ next ]

Monday, September 10, 2007

A Confession

Step one of any of your popular multi-step programs is to admit you have a problem. It's been building for a long time now, but I have been putting it completely out of my mind. Yet, this morning, as I nursed my coffee (I un-gave-up coffee on Friday, by the way), driving gingerly so as to not light up the full aural force of the Flowmaster 50 on my way to work, which, don't get me wrong, is a great sounding muffler, just maybe not so much early Monday morning after such a great weekend, I was struck with the undeniable truth.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out. I think maybe all those years in Kalifornia working long hours trying to get the career going. Then immediately along came The Childrens. I didn't really have time to ponder. I just tried to get through each day without the grim face of death showing in my rear view mirror.

Just as things started to settle in, the move to Ft. TomCollins popped up suddenly. A remarkable tumult that has been. A new house. New everything - tractor, snow blower, air hockey, deck, Carl, oh and did I mention the wonderful bar with the new bar stools?

Ah, the bar. My whole life I've wanted a house with a bar. I had a little bar of sorts at the San Schmose house, but the previous owner had removed the actual bar part, leaving just the little counter under the stairs with its sad, lonely sink. Nothing like the bar I have now. Yeah, and maybe I went a little crazy - did I mention I now have nine different kinds of whiskey? Nine. What man really needs nine different whiskeys? (Though, honestly, I only drink 8 of them. The Scotch is just for guests.) I only have three kinds of rum. Everything else is one flavor - take it or leave it. And the whole "never blog sober thing" - a rule I am ironically breaking with this post - that hasn't helped the matter any.

But anyways, now after a year in the new job, in the new city, in the new house, I've been giving it some thought. I think about it a lot - on weekends on the way to Target, on the way to my doctor's appointment, nearly every day on the way to work, most days on the way home. It's just a lot more front-and-center now than it ever was back in Kalifornia.

So, anyways, step one. I'm going to come right out and say it publicly in this forum. A forum where I can always feel accepted, despite my faults. A forum of friends and family and people I don't even know but think of as friends anyways. And, a forum where I stand to make a buck or two off selling advertising space on my step one.

Are we allowed to turn step one into a commercial venture? Or does that void the whole thing? Well, anyways, I'll have to google that and get back to you. [Update: You'll all be happy to know that I made nothing off my step one. I made already two bucks off the latest installment of Duh or No Duh, though. It just goes to show that there's no accounting for taste. Not with this crowd, at least.]

So, here it is. This morning, I remember the precise moment when it happened. When I finally admitted to myself something I had been denying for a long time. Something I was afraid would make me a lot less manly - but the time for misplaced machismo is passed. It was precisely when I was making the right turn from Kechter onto Ziegler. I can't keep up the facade anymore.

I really like traffic circles.

I should be in bed

But instead I am up writing a perl script to extract fuse default values so I can compare them against the microarchitectual spec and flag anything that either mismatches or doesn't make sense.

They give the fuse job to the person they hate the most.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Marry Poppins

The Childrens are watching Mary Poppins. They just sang the song that goes,
Just a spoonful of sugar
Makes the medicine go down.
The medicine go down.
The medicine go down.
Just a spoonful of sugar
Makes the medicine go down
In the most
Delightful way.
And I was struck with the thought...

I wonder if that works on your [blank]?

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Today, I am Angry

Not "was". "Am".

I wish it were past tense, but it isn't. And being angry is not at all good for my blood pressure. I am trying to settle in with a nice bottle of chianti, which went well with our eggplant Parmesan dinner. Homegrown eggplant. Even that, however, is not helping much.

I had a whole bunch of work stuff written here, but I decided to delete it as it was too easily deciphered. Let me just say this: as of today, I am pissed off enough that [redacted]. Never before has my ire risen to this level. I do not suffer incompetence well, and this has gone on long enough. It's worse than when I had to work with The JohnnyB.

I had to look up "ire" to make sure I was using it correctly there. I was. Being a sooper-genius is a lonely life.

I was almost calmed down by the time dinner was over. Then I looked through the mail and noticed that I had a letter from my mortgage company. My insurance company had kindly sent them a note saying they had cancelled my policy, and the mortgage company was kindly inquiring as to whether I still had insurance or whether they should provide me with some at an exorbitant cost to me. This ticked me off again.

See, the insurance company had for some reason gotten it into their heads that they should bill my mortgage company for the premium rather than billing me. I don't know why this is, as I paid them for the initial year. But, at any rate, they sent a bill off to the mortgage company, who apparently looked at it a bit and decided to toss it in the garbage. Then, my insurance company was kind enough to cancel my policy at the end of the year term for non-payment of the renewal fee, send a note off to the mortgage company that the policy was canceled, then give me a courtesy call to say that the payment was overdue, then send a bill to me. Of course, they called on a Friday, and The Mrs. did not call me up to let me know when she got the message, but instead waited until I got home at 6:30pm after every insurance company in America is closed and said, "Oh, by the way, there's a message for you from the insurance agent."

Naturally, this was the night before HannahC's birthday bash, an event I didn't want to head into with no insurance. So I spent about an hour Saturday morning trying to figure out what the 24-hour help line number was for my insurance company. It's State Farm, which you'd think would be an easy number to find. But noooooooo. State Farm only has 24-hour service from select agents. Call your agent, and his voicemail may connect you. If it doesn't, you're SOL - you're agent isn't participating in the 24-hour service program.

Now, my agent's voicemail said, "Our office is closed, but don't worry. State Farm is available to assist you 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. If you'd like to leave a message for the office staff, please press 1. If you'd like to make a claim, please press 2. If you'd like a quote on auto insurance, please press 3. For everything else, please call our office during normal business hours Monday through Friday from 9 to 5."

Now exactly how in the hell is this 24-hour support?

After surfing the web trying to find a better way, I eventually settled on pressing 2 for claims. The claims people are pretty on-the-ball at an insurance company. It connected me to a phone tree that included "make a payment" and "speak to a representative" in addition to "make a claim". I chose "speak to a representative" cuz I figured I needed to get my policy uncanceled, which I thought was more complicated than "make a payment". I was wrong. The guy pulled up my file and said, "Yup - we billed your mortgage company. Yup - they didn't pay, so we sent a Notice of Cancellation. Oh, it looks like we sent you a bill directly yesterday, too." "Is there any way I can pay now and get it reinstated today?" "Yes, but I have to transfer you to our payment department."

So I paid and got a confirmation number in time for HannahC's party, at which no injuries occurred, but you never know. But, sadly, my bank may not know this. The insurance company sent me a Notice of Reinstatement, but they sent it the same day my bank sent me the query. It possible they have the info already, but I'll fax it in anyways tomorrow, and then call them to confirm.

It's not really a huge deal, but it's enough to set me off again on a Bad Day.

Two of our three pet caterpillars are beginning to spin their chrysalises today. I don't think I mentioned the pet caterpillars before. All three are black swallowtails. All were discovered on the pond parsley we have in the koi pond over the weekend. One (HannahC's) is named Katie and two (MaxieC's) are named Alex. The Alex's replace a tent caterpillar, named Alex, we found the day before along with Katie but had to let go because he wouldn't eat. MaxieC went ballistic over that, and luckily The Mrs. was able to find a couple more black swallowtail caterpillars the next day. They've been chowing down on carrot greens from the garden and getting big and fat since the weekend.

The whole house fan is great on nights like tonight where it isn't insanely hot out. I am starting to fell like it was worth the money, unlike in July when it didn't get colder outside than inside until 11pm.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

CherkyB continues to live

Many of you have been asking about the results of my recent physical, and for some of you it's because you actually care, whereas the rest of you have merely a morbid curiosity or are worried who will take care of your daughter if I'm dead, or some such. So, let me quote my inimitable doctor: "There are things that we can do that will delay your heart attack and stroke."

His point, however, was that if you live long enough, you'll die from either a heart attack or stroke. Not that I'm headed for one any time soon.

I always thought if you lived long enough, you'd die from prostate cancer. If you're not a woman, that is.

So, now that I've had my first physical in 22 years, I can reflect on why it is that I haven't had one in so long. Let me count the ways.
  1. I really do not enjoy having someone lean on my liver while I take a deep breath.
  2. See number 1, only substitute "spleen" for liver.
  3. "You drink alcohol?" "Uh-yup." "Like 1-2 drinks a day." "Yeah. Around that on average, maybe." "How about 0-2 drinks a day? Are there ever days when you don't drink?" "Fuck you."
  4. "See, now your testicles start out up inside you around here, and right about the time you're born they travel down these tubes, and if the tubes don't seal up afterwards, that's why you get a hernia. The tube is right here." "Owwww!" "Sorry. Now bear down like you're going to move your bowels, only don't." "Uh, owwww."
  5. "Now, normally we wait until you're 40 to do this, but you're close enough to 40." "I just turned 39 a couple weeks ago!" "Close enough. Elbows on the table, please."
In the end, he didn't find anything wrong with me that I didn't already know about. Thus I would overall deem the physical a success. They're gonna call me with my blood test results this week. I passed the pee test already, and he gave me an EKG that was normal. I have not yet submitted my poop sample cuz the envelope requires extra postage.