Oh my!

Cavitation has of late begun to fancy himself a moovie critic. Now, there's nothing exactly wrong with that, other than it means you've pretty much given up on your own creativity, and I've been letting it slide given the "new Me, CherkyB," who is a Nice Guy™. Today, he graced us with his top ten moovies of all time. Now, I was all set to IM him about how he has odd taste in moovies for a married man, but it looks to me like AdSense has beaten me to the punch.

You can't argue with context-sensitive advertising:

Stop Judging Me!

First, it was the paper towel dispensers at my old site in Santa Clarabelle that got replaced with those "automatic sensor" electronic dispensers. Try as I might, I could not ever get a paper towel after that. But, I could wipe my hand on my pants as a workaround.

Now, my new site in Fort TomCollins has replaced all the soap dispensers with automatic sensor electronic dispensers. I can't get soap anymore, and wiping my hands on my pants doesn't help. I have to try all three of them multiple times until one eventually judges me to have sufficient humanity to be allowed a squirt of soap.

I'm tired of my humanity being judged every time I want to wash my hands.

On the plus side, the automatic flush urinals never fail to sense my humanity. You know what they say - Cold hands, warm...

Wow wow

I just took a swig of a drink that actually was so, um, unexpected that it made my teeth chatter. That's never happened before. It's two parts dark rum, one part triple sec, and one part lime juice. It's based on the recipe for a Jacqueline, but I got bored about 2/3 of the way through. So I skipped the powdered sugar and the shaking over cracked ice and just served it on the rocks.

I was lamenting to CJ today about how The Childrens bedtime schedule of late has prevented me from following rule #2 of blogging, "never blog sober," and this was affecting the quality of my posts. Heck I even had my first meta-post a couple days back, where all I did was post a link to a Google video of a TV show.

I've also been breaking rule #1, "always blog angry," for no good reason. I think I have plenty to be angry about in my life, but I can't seem to muster the anger. I've even gone soft on the Canadians, having taken to drinking Crown Royal and, of course, having purchased a French Canadian snowblower that sits in the garage completely unused and thus is a monument to wasted potential - a real metaphor for the majority of Canada.

So I look to my blogroll for inspiration. NavieA-B is usually great at getting me all wound up, what with all her complaints that no one comments on her artwork, and then her confrontationalism when someone does, but of course she's on vacation. The JohnnyB's political blog, filled with its unrepentant leftist nuttiness, can also be helpful, but he's also on vacation with his wife. Blog of the Week Rhonda's Blog is mostly heartfelt reflections on the little joys of life of late, which is hard to make hay out of without looking like an a-hole, and how many times can you make fun of someone for not having signed up for AdSense despite having more daily hits than the rest of us put together? Cavitation has pretty much stopped trying and has been phoning in his posts from a backlog of pre-written, completely uninspiring posts about his family and bad moovies, though we did learn today that he sometimes confuses his wife with Jenna Jameson, which is hard to do given they don't really look much like each other at all from what I can tell. Though I've never met either of them in person, so maybe they look like sisters in real life. CJ has given up blogging, only every now and then he falls off the wagon. And, of course, Ellie, after a promising start where she posted a risqué photo of herself followed quickly by a picture of her sitting under a noose, has also given up blogging, though not sporadically. So, not only do I have very little inspiration left, but none of my blogrollers are even any help. They don't even give me enough material to take little potshots at them just to stay in shape. I don't even have a cat to post funny pictures of on Fridays.

So I guess I'm on my own. It's like my honeymoon all over again, as they say.

Interestingly, despite both NavieA-B and The JohnnyB being on vacation, my daily pageviews haven't dropped off all that much. However, my advertising revenue is down about 70%. I thus conclude that there is a total of three people clicking on my ads, and two of them are on vacation. Oddly, substantially more people claim to me to be clicking on my ads. I know now they are a big pack of liars. Not surprising, given the kind of people who are naturally drawn to someone like me. I just have to add "liars" to the list of outcasts, malcontents, losers, and in-laws.

I really don't like abalone sushi. Really. Never had any other kind of abalone.

It is snowing. I want you all to pray that there is enough accumulation that I get to use my beloved snowblower tomorrow. Except most of you are a bunch of godless communists, except for Rhonda who apparently has a bible study group that has devolved into some kind of railing-against-the-patriarchy self-help coffee klatch, kinda like if Kathy Lee joined the cast of The View.

Hmmm...I guess I can bring myself to take potshots at reflections on the little joys of life after all. You should all make sure you run over to Rhonda's Blog to let her know how you think I'm an a-hole for saying that. And make sure you click on her ads while you're there. We're not blogging for for our health here, and the Blog of the Week title usually carries with is a Cherkylanche of advertising revenue.

And maybe NavieA-B, who being Israeli one might assume has some sort of religion other than godless communism. In fact, the Israelis are pioneers in the field of godful communism. I'm sure that will lead to their eventual ruin. In the word of Ronald Reagan, "Communism only works in Heaven, where they don't need it, and in Hell, where they already have it."

So, if by chance, you are reading this and are neither godless nor communist, please pray that we have 2-3" of snowfall accumulation overnight. That's at the high end of the forecast, so it will only take a very small miracle. Not even big enough to qualify towards sainthood.

I won't hold my breath.

On a Scale of One to Ten

Tonight during dinner, I axed The Mrs., "On a scale of one to ten with one being incredibly disappointing and ten being world-record disappointing, how would you rate your birthday?"

Her reply? "About an eight."

Then she followed it with, "I had a pretty good birthday." Hmmm...

At this point HannahC jumped in to emphasize how the ten end was the bad end, and blah blah blah. The Mrs. then said, "It wouldn't be on that scale."

Clearly, she doesn't listen to me when I yap. I get that a lot, so I'm used to it.

CJ told me a very funny story today on the way to lunch, but I'm not allowed to repeat it. Your loss. Then he asked me how old HannahC was, did some math, and challenged that The Mrs. turned 19 yesterday. Well, I would point out that I mentioned here that I was selected by her mother to be The Mrs.'s husband back when she was 12.

Plus, that's an official photo from the al Reuters wire service taken by a local stringer in the field. I have no reason to disbelieve its veracity.

So there.

Are We Disappointed Yet?

I think the first day of The Week of Disappointment went pretty well, actually. The Mrs. got to sleep in, then I made a big-giant breakfast, then I watched The Childrens while The Mrs. knitted, then I took The Childrens outside to play in the driveway.

The Mrs., meanwhile, got out her brand new fondue pot that she had been dying to try and made a fondue. It was passable, though I spent most of the meal chasing around The Childrens instead of eating.

We made The Mrs. a birthday cake. It was some recipe that called for cake mix, pudding mix, and sour cream. It was good. The Childrens helped mix the batter.

Here is The Mrs. trying to look happy despite all the disappointment.


And, of course, the birthday girl gets the first piece of cake.

Another Take on Recycling

So, you don't believe that global warming is man-made and due to excess carbon dioxide, and thus you don't follow my recycling advice? Well, here is another look at the joys of sorting garbage from the hard-hitting investigative team of Penn and Teller. They use a little colorful language in this, so maybe headphone are in order if you're sitting at work.

(Video player requires Flash Player.)

The Week of Disappointment

Tomorrow is the official start of The Week of Disappointment, which starts on The Mrs.'s birthday, continues through Valentine's Day, and then drags on for a minimum of 3 more days to round out the week, but will often continue for another week depending upon the degree of disappointment in my performance for birthday and Valentine's Day. The Mrs. is a difficult person to shop for. See, all the classic things that a man could buy for a woman, she eschews.

Jewelry? Won't wear it. She'll look at it, sigh, say, "thank you," half-heartedly, and then a week later won't even know where it is.

Candy? Nope. Actually gets angry if you buy her candy, as it shows you don't respect all her hard work to keep svelte.

Flowers? "Wonderful - a bouquet of wasteful death. Just what I want to put in the center of the table."

Soaps/lotions/Bath'n'Body Works stuff? As I mentioned before, The Mrs. has no fewer than 15 products lined up around her sink. This doesn't count the bunch more in the shower, in the closet, in all the drawers... These things are stacking up.

Lingerie? Hah!

Lately, she has even begun refusing the old standby of a day spa gift certificate. Mainly, I think, to just be difficult. She doesn't want the same thing every year, despite it being one of her favorite things in the world.

There is, honestly and truly, absolutely nothing The Mrs. needs or even wants. I spoil her so every day of the year that it is simply impossible to top that for a special occasion, much less for 2 special occasions a mere 3 days apart. Yes, she married quite well. Her mother was wise to select me to be The Mrs.'s husband way back when we were 12. Which is itself odd, as her mother is not so much known for the wisdom in the relationship department.

I'm thinking this Valentine's Day may be the year for giving liquor. After all, if you're bound and determined to be disappointed, what goes better with disappointment than liquor? And what woman isn't a lot more pleasant to be around when there's liquor?

At least I have the birthday well covered, as one of the Christmas presents was back-ordered and arrived in early January.

RalphieC

Last night, I was playing with The Childrens before I headed out to Fat Camp, and they decided that they wanted to play a game called the "The Spinning Torture of Terror," a name HannahC came up with. What this involves is getting the office chair out of the office, placing it in the center of the living room, tying yourself (or yourselves) to the chair so you don't fly out, and then having someone (like Me, CherkyB) spin the chair around as fast as he can.

This went on for a good 20 minutes. Then, suddenly, MaxieC says, "I want to get off." I disentangle him from the rope that binds him to the chair, and he promptly hoarks on the carpet. I pick him up and set him on the tile, where he finished.

The Mrs. comes in, looks at the puke, looks at me, and says, "You're a real piece of work."

So I had to clean up a whole bunch of puke when I was supposed to be going to Fat Camp. Thus, I was late. I'm always late, as The Childrens conspire to make me late. It's always something with them.

At fat camp, I learned that once you get a beer into him, The Hamburgler has a tendency to go on racist diatribes. I never knew this before, because usually he starts up about something moronic that pushes my buttons (usually something about his love for leftist surrender-monkey politics), and I begin to viciously attack him such that he eventually shuts the hell up.

But I'm not allowed to do that anymore. I offended the delicate sensibilities of a couple people a while back, and now I am required to be nice to The Hamburgler no matter how he may be acting. It's funny, cuz he's a pretty bright guy in general, and we get along fairly well absent the influence of John Barleycorn.

All I was allowed to do was to sit back and quote Rico (who didn't show, for whatever reason), "Don't be a racist man. It's not cool." Over and over. Then, eventually I had to plead with MoodyT to put a stop to the racist diatribes, since I wasn't allowed to. So MoodyT gave the overhead lamp a little push, and it started swinging back and forth, and The Hamburgler was mesmerized by it and forgot about everything.

Today was Hawaiian shirt day at work. This was to celebrate the end of the cold spell, as it got above freezing and the snow started melting a few days ago. I decided, completely against character, that I should wear a Hawaiian shirt today. I stepped out onto the front porch to go to work, and it was snowing.

I said to The Mrs., "It's snowing, and I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt."

"Do you want to change into something warmer?"

"No, it's Hawaiian shirt day at work."

"Oh! Do you want a lei and a beachcomber hat?"

So I went to work in the snow in a Hawaiian shirt, three silk flower leis, and a beachcomber hat. I looked and felt like an idiot. So, to the Employee Involvement Team I'd like to say "Mission Accomplished." I'd also like to note that the person who sent out all the emails and reminders for Hawaiian shirt day did herself wear nothing at all remotely Hawaiian.

I counted a total of 8 people in Hawaiian attire, though The Hamburgler assures me someone told him it was really at least 30.

I'm not sure I like this out of character stuff. I'm thinking next week maybe I'll start being myself again.

Do Your Part for Global Warming

Since it seems that many on my blogroll [here and here] have been addressing the preposterous global warming "issue" recently, I'm going to share with you my sheer genius. But don't just take my word for it. When I shared my vision with the Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, via private email, he deemed the approach "Brilliant!"

Though apparently not brilliant enough to warrant a quote on his exceptionally highly-trafficked site.

It's possible he was mocking me.

Or maybe he was just thirsty for a Guinness.

Hell, I'm thirsty for a Guinness, and I've got a Bloody Mary right here.

Oh wait. Now it's gone and I have a Yukon Jack.

Anyways, my approach to help reduce global warming:

Remember how, back in the day, the greenies were pushing for mandatory recycling. You remember why? Because nothing ever rots (or, in greenie-speak, biodegrades) in a landfill. Not enough air, not enough water. So, gods forbid you ever send a paper-product or any food waste to the landfill, as this destroys the environment.

Well, fast-forward to the present. Now, our biggest concern amongst those who don't have the intellectual acumen to study some useful field or trade after high school is the liberation of carbon from fossil fuels into the atmosphere. It's not the liberation of carbon, but the liberation of carbon specifically from fossil fuels.

Why is that bad? Well, because the liberation of carbon from fossil fuels, which represents less than 4% of annual global carbon-dioxide emissions, happens to be a primary source of "net positive" emissions (and more or less the only human-created net positive emission). See, the vast majority of carbon dioxide released each year into the atmosphere is from rotting organic material, but that material grew recently, and thus removed that carbon-dioxide recently as well. So its "net" effect is zero. Volcanoes release a hell of a lot as well, but since they are not human-caused, we can simply pretend they do not exist.

So, your greenies, who are by-and-large either simpletons or Marxists attempting to destroy Western society, say the only way to reduce our "carbon footprint" is to reduce consumption of fossil fuels.

I say, "Bah!"

We could, instead, figure out a way to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And what better method to do this than the ubiquitous landfill - a place so barren that no decay ever occurs. Take all your plant-product waste - paper, cardboard, vegetables, fruits - and bag it up into non-biodegradable plastic garbage bags. Then send it to the landfill to be returned to Mother Earth as an offset for the oil that has been removed.

Remember, it'll never rot. We learned that in mandatory recycling class. The non-biodegradable plastic bags will make "never" even longer (don't you love environmental "science"?) .

Your compost heap? Get rid of it, you anti-environmental global warming bastard. All that rotting releases carbon dioxide that needs to be returned to the ground. Bag that stuff up and landfill it, and buy 99 cent bags of cow sh!t at Home Depot to put on your garden.

Kitchen sink garbage disposal? Your water-treatment facility will put it in stink ponds with enzymes that will turn it into carbon dioxide. Bag up that waste and landfill it.

And the next time one of your idiot greenie "friends" starts in on you about global warming or not recycling, simply speak to them in the only language their simple minds can understand - sloganeering.

Today's garbage. Tomorrow's fossil fuels.

An Apology

I have had very few posts of late. This is mainly because I've had my folks in town for the past two weeks, and I haven't had a lot of time to blog. Plus, with NavieA-B and JohnnyB on vacation, my AdSense revenue dried up, so there's no real financial incentive to blog either.

But not to worry. The folks head home tomorrow, freeing up some blogging time, and I am angrier than ever. Yes, I have all kinds of newfound anger. Like how my master shower, which after $9000 of repairs still leaks as badly as ever, is now estimated to be just $3000 away from not leaking, only for real this time, not fake not leaking like last time. And, of course, how StinkyJ has counseled me how I took the wrong job, and now I need to abandon everything I am working on so that I can work on longer-range stuff on a different project that is of higher value to my career, though of very extremely substantially lower value to The Company overall (since that project will get canceled before it ever sees the light of day). And how it looks like it may never snow again. And how our sewing machine broke, and my mother told my wife we needed a Bernina.

On the bright side, however, I, CherkyB, have never been thinner (since I began keeping track rather recently) because I lost like 3 lbs when I had the flu. Also, I have had both my parents here for two weeks, and we've only had to take one of them on one trip to urgent care, which is substantially better than we did [here, too] when Fat Moother visited for 5 days.

Oddly, I came home today, and I seemed happy. The Mrs. noted that I seemed happy, and she couldn't understand why (given background of the aforementioned StinkyJ story). She asked me this,

"Are you truly happy, or is it just a facade?"

To which I replied,

"What am I supposed to do? Remain angry for an entire year? I was angry. Now I'm moving on with my life. And I had a pretty darn good day today."

I think Cavitation said it best when he said, "I've seen this turn so many good people into angry, vindictive little bastards."

I don't want to be an angry, vindictive little bastard.

I'm going to be a happy, vindictive big bastard.

About Friday Night

See, the real reason I took Thursday off to recover from my flu was that we had plans for Friday night. Plans that were a surprise for The Childrens and that I did not want to miss. HannahC had spent all day Friday trying to guess what the surprise was, but she did not figure it out. Oddly, she did not even figure it out as we were heading into the Budweiser Events Center in Loverlyland, despite the recorded message blaring continuously over the loudspeaker announcing the event as we went inside.

Nope, The Childrens didn't figure it out until we all sat down in our seats and they started to look around.

Here, MaxieC has figured it out:


And HannahC, sitting between GrammaC and The Mrs., seems to be on to something here. Those big giant trucks off in the background maybe tipped her off.


The show starts, and each of the Monster Trucks gets an introduction and drives out. Here, Public Disturbance makes his entrance. This was funny, cuz he ran right over the starting light tree and busted it into more pieces than it needed to be in order to work. For the whole night, they had to start all the races old-school style - by waving a green flag.


After the intro's, here are High Voltage, Public Disturbance, and Bigfoot all parked in a row.


Here are a bunch of action shots demonstrating about the same technique I use to clear the parking-lot speed bumps when it's my turn to drive to lunch.






I probably should have borrowed someone's DSLR camera, as the very slow shutter response on my Canon PowerShot A520 made it hard to really capture what I was trying to shoot. However, I don't know anyone who has a DSLR camera with a decent zoom lens.

This was a really short track. The Event Center is hockey-rink sized, so you're seeing almost the whole monster truck race track on that last photo. It was two hills. During "qualifying," when each truck runs each track solo once to establish position for the elimination rounds, they announce the times. Bigfoot did the best with a time in the 2.4 second range. Hot Stuff did the worst with a time somewhere in the 3.4 second range. So they were really short races.

They also had a lot of other racing that went on in between monster truck rounds. They had quad racing, dirt-bike racing, and "tough trucks". These guys all actually got to circle the track a bunch of times, so it was fun to watch. And they crashed sometimes, too, as an added bonus.

Unfortunately, 1.5 hours into the show when there was an intermission, The Mrs. declared that MaxieC needed to go home cuz he was too tired to continue on. I was skeptical, as he had been bouncing all around showing what I would consider the exact opposite symptom of tiredness, but I'm not in charge. So we packed up the whole fambly and headed home.

About an hour and a half later, MaxieC was just starting to wind down enough to consider going to sleep.

Oh, the Suffering

As is always the case around any major event that involves HannahC barfing, I ended up sick shortly thereafter. I spent most of Wednesday night curled up in a little ball shivering, and I took the day off from work today. I spent close to the entire day in bed, getting up only to eat brunch and dinner. The Mrs. gave me a book to read called, "Sex, Lies, and Online Dating," which kept my flu-numbed mind occupied all day. I'm not sure the last time I've read an entire book in one day. All 358 pages of it.

It kinda sucked.

I'm lying here in bed waiting for the Nyquil to kick in. I will leave you with this funny story:

Yesterday, I opened up my wallet to get out a punch card for the coffee shop at work, and I noticed for the first time a yellow sticky-note stuck in the wallet. I had put this note in there to remind me of something I thought was particularly hysterical at the time so that I could blog about it later, and it had been in there a full week without me ever noticing it.

See, I was having this phone conversation with Dude at work, and he said this to me:

"I look to you as the voice of reason in there."

Happy Birthday MaxieC

Little MaxieC is three today. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's for lunch, and a good time was had by all.

Except for HannahC.

She barfed.

Many Topics of Little Interest

It's a lot like the Cliffs Notes version of my blog in that respect.

First, I owe The Mrs. a big apology. I'm not going to give her one, but in case you're keeping score, you can tally one down on my tab. You can put it right there next to the one I owe BrainkyP for dumping the garbage can on his head a long while ago. Back last week, I may possibly have had a post where I ranted a bit about how The Mrs. made me come home from work to fix a garage door that was not broken. Well, this weekend while I was assembling my beloved snowblower, I was forced to move into the garage when the afternoon suddenly cooled off like 20 degrees, and I was spending more time with my hands in my pockets trying to warm them up than I was actually assembling the thing. The only free space in the garage is where The Mrs. parks the winivan, so I backed it out and set up shop there.

Well, this occasioned me having to open and close the garage door a number of times during the process, and the door malfunctioned nearly every time. Eventually, I got so fed up with it that I stopped the blower assembly and decided to take a closer look. I noted that the chain had an awful lot of slack in it. So much so that it was slacked down below the level of the rail. I checked the other identical-yet-always-working opener on the door next to it, and the chain was nowhere near as slack. So I tightened up the chain. I also sprayed some Schwinn bicycle chain lube on it (as it was the only lube I had readily available in the garage, and hell, it was a chain). It has worked flawlessly since then. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Now, speaking of that post about the garage door, it's possible I may also have mentioned something called "PMS Weekend". One of my many fans today approached me at work very excited because he "had a solution for you". His solution? "Knock her up."

This is why we call him Tinfoil. He really needs to wear that hat more, as the mind rays are getting to him again.

I must say, though, that despite all the whining from Fat Moother about how I'm too mean to The Mrs. on my blawg, the PMS Weekend post was a big money maker. Hell, I made almost $8 off it.

The Mrs. is riding Carl, the elliptical trainer, right now. Yesterday when she got on him, I got myself a Crown Royal and sat down on the futon behind Carl to watch. Apparently, riding Carl is not supposed to be a spectator sport.

That sounded a lot dirtier than I had intended it to.

Speaking of Carl, I was having a very brief coffee break with Cavitation today, and he was complaining, among other things, that I had not named my snowblower yet. He was very concerned because I seem to name everything, and he used Carl and Dave as examples. For the record, MaxieC named Carl, and I'm pretty sure The Mrs. named Dave. I don't normally name stuff. I didn't even name The Childrens. But anyways, this got me to thinking. Hmmm...

Something I have not yet shared about my snowblower is that when I got it, it had the address of the company that built it on the boxes. Not only is it from Canada, as we had learned before, but it's actually from Quebec. So now I'm thinking maybe I should name it after some famous hockey player.

But, of course, there aren't any famous hockey players.

So then I though some more. I said to myself, "Self, what would be a good name for a big 300 lbs. French-Canadian beast?"

Yeah. That's right. I named it The JohnnyB. [Insert your own "blowing" joke here.]

I'd also like to welcome back Rhonda from her Florida vacation. Rhonda's blog, Rhonda's Blog, is the latest re-recipient of the Blog of the Week Crown, as it's the only blog left on my blog roll that posts often enough to hold the title. Everyone go there and click on her ads.

Oh wait, she doesn't have any ads. Someone go show Rhonda how to put up ads, OK?

I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish JohnnyB and NavieA-B a happy vacation. I will sorely miss them, as they account for about half of my advertising revenue. I hope you kids get internet in your hotel!

And a big "Get Well" wish to Rico, who is home recovering either from the flu or from having his stomach pumped from alcohol poisoning, depending on if you get the "official" version that he tells his boss or the "alternative" version. Something about Jägermeister tasting too much like candy. You can leave your best wishes in the comments. He's a regular reader.

Finally, I'd like to thank BrainkyP for the biggest laugh I had all day. As you may recall, he was my boss back in Santa Clarabelle before they ran me out of town, so he had to provide my new manager and me with a transfer review. Oddly enough, he buried the gems down in the "improvement/developments" section where we come across this little snippet:

"Brian has a fantastic sense of humor [...]"

Now why, exactly, is that an area for improvement? Hmmm.

Oh wait, here it is:

"Brian once held an (admittedly funny) passdown meeting where the topic was “why do I hate management”."

And I'd do it again in an instant!

Though maybe, just maybe, I'd not do it with management sitting right there in the room.

Something Not to Do 8

Let's say, just for argument's sake, that your lovely wife has met you at the door in the morning to present her cheek for you to kiss goodbye before heading off to the old grind the way she does every morning.

Only this morning is a little different. This morning, you see that her mascara has smudged up onto her eyelids in an almost Johnny Depp/Pirates of the Caribbean way. And, for whatever reason - maybe because it's early, maybe because it's Monday morning, maybe because it hasn't snowed at all since you put together your beloved snowblower - you decide to make note of this in the first way that comes to mind.

"What happened to you?"

That would be Something Not to Do™.

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Beloved

Quite a blower.

My Beloved

[For those of you who are looking for real information about a Berco snow thrower, you're probably better off with my serious post on the subject.]

"I wonder what it could be?" you say to yourself. "If CherkyB is titling a post, 'My Beloved,' it must be some kind of misdirection. He would never refer to The Mrs. by that title. Nor to the darling HannahC. And probably not even MaxieC, despite that fact that he looks so remarkably like CherkyB did at that age that he would practically be referring to himself as his beloved. Hmmm..."

You ponders.

"Ahh...it must be about whiskey!"

Close, but I am not writing about my beloved whiskey today.

"Your bar, then?"

No. Though I am truly fond of my beloved bar.

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I've got it now. It's another post about your damned lawn tractor, isn't it?"

Close enough.

I got the most wonderful phone call on Friday morning. I was in the shower, so it went to voicemail, but when I got dressed and picked up my phone, there it was.

"Hi. This is Ray from Mac Equipment. You ordered a Berco blower for your tractor, and it's here."

Oh, joy of joys. As I like to say (purely for its humor value and not because it is certified true), it's like my honeymoon all over. Only happy.

Only one problem. My parents are visiting, and we had a full day planned of not-particularly-stressful childrens/grandparents stuff. I had even taken the day off from work. It all started out with a trip to the aquatic center, where MaxieC and HannahC were having their first private swimming lessons. They had both taken group classes back in San Schmose, but here for some reason the group classes were not working out schedule-wise. Being a much less densely populated area, you can't get classes for two different kids in two different age brackets at the same time here like you could back in the Schmose. Being good fathers/grandparents, we sat in the gallery and watched as The Mrs. entertained one child in the pool whilst the other was lessoned.

Excepting, of course, MaxieC refused to be lessoned. So HannahC got an especially long lesson.

Then, well, it was lunch time. So we hit Red Robin, and my mother had declared out of the blue the day before that this was one of her favorite places to eat as they had a great turkey burger.

Yuck.

I the the "5 Alarm Burger," which I suppose would be considered spicy if I were from some place whose culture is steeped in bland cuisine, like Canada, or it's neighbor to the south, Wisconsin. But I'm not.

Then, we were off to see "Charlotte's Web". It was pretty good. I cried my stupid eyes out when Charlotte died. Having childrens really makes you a lot more emotional.

All of this was done without ever leaving the confines of Loverlyland, which also happened to be the city in which my snow blower was anxiously awaiting my pickup. I was so close, I could smell it. Or maybe that was just Greeley.

By the time we got out of the moovie, it was too late to go pick up My Beloved. So I hit the sack for a fitful night's sleep all the while planning the pickup the next morning. I probably should have drunk myself to sleep, but I was drinking Crown Royal, and it's too expensive for that kind of excess. So I had to go to sleep the old fashioned way, by tossing and turning.

Saturday morning rolled around presently, and I played it cool. I didn't rush out of bed. I didn't head to the store before breakfast. In fact, both PopsC and The Mrs. seemed more excited about the trip than I. But, eventually, I packed up PopsC into the pickup, and away we went.

At the store, the shipment had come on a palette with numerous boxes Saran-wrapped together. They broke out a forklift to load it in the back, but it was a bit too high cuz I still have the camper shell on there for the winter. So we had to remove the top few boxes.

I saw one of the boxes was labeled "Counterweight Kit", and I pointed to that box and said to the dude, "That box weight 125lbs." He said, "Ha!" Then he picked it up. It was up about shoulder-height, as he had the forklift lined up for the pickup bed. After about 5 seconds he goes, "Argh! Help me!" So I help him set it in the back of the truck.

"I told you that thing weight 125 lbs." I had to rub it in. I'm like that. Oddly enough, when I got home and noticed there were 6 weights in stead of five, I wondered how it would be 125 lbs. checked the web. It's 150 lbs.

PopsC and I spent the rest of the day putting the thing together. Mostly, this was a one person job, so PopsC spent his time first assembling the pickup ramps I had bought at Lowe's to get this thing out (which were really ramp ends plus a couple 2x12's), and then breaking down the cardboard boxes and shipping palette as they got emptied.

The first step was to assemble something they call the subframe. This is a couple of think hunks of metal that sister to the frame rails to add additional strength. Very cool. The directions were pretty good, but the diagrams were too small to really read, so I spent a bunch of time figuring out exactly what I was supposed to do.

Here's a picture of the left subframe rail, which I did second, and thus was easier to do. It's that shiny black thing in the front, as opposed to the dusty black frame rail behind it.


The other side also has the lifting mechanism, of which that big arched piece of black metal is part. It transfers the motion from the level arm to the front lift bracket.


Underneath, you have to remove the mowing deck and then attach this blower power takeoff. This is held in with a couple big posts and two cotter pins, so it drops right out in the spring when it is time to put the mower back on.


Now we're all hooked up except for the rear counterweights and the tire chains. This is about 5 hours into the install. It doesn't seem like it should have taken that long, but it did. The parts packages contained all the parts for many different tractor models, so you always had boatloads more parts than you used for each step. This causes me to have to go back and recheck the directions every 30 seconds, cuz I really don't like finishing something and having about 50% of the parts still sitting there, unused. If I were to do it again on the same tractor, I could probably get to this point in 2 hours instead of five.


Now we're all done. The rear counterweight frame is attached and the weights are on. This was one of the hardest steps, as it turns out, as my tractor did not have all the holes needed in the rear frame to mount this. So I had to drill a couple of them, which meant I had to take off the rear wheels to get the drill in. Then, the stupid weight lockdown bar was a little teeny bit too short, and we screwed around with this for like a half-hour before deciding to just drill out the cotter pin holes a little bigger so that they'd clear the mounting brackets. That took all of 30 seconds and solved the problem. Wish we'd thought of that first.

In theory, the nice thing about these rear counterweights is that having them hang off the back like that gives you an effective 25% more weight than if you used wheel weights.


I took it for a spin, where I attacked a couple of the snow drifts next to the driveway. It did pretty well, though I managed to break one of the tire chains. I felt some resistance while I was just driving (dry pavement, blower not engaged), so I gave it a big load of gas. Hee hee. Took a few minutes to put the chain back together. I think it had stretched and got caught up on something. The chains are supposed to stretch a whole bunches when they are new. Tomorrow, I'll take some action shots. I didn't today cuz it was well after dark before the test drive. What I can say is that this thing really throws the snow far. I had to aim it downward to keep it under 20'.

The Mrs., Frontierswoman

On Monday, FreddyC was out in the back yard when he reportedly started barking and running around like crazy at the back fence. The Mrs. looked out to see what was up, and she saw a coyote running on the path along the irrigation ditch behind our house. So, she did what any red-blooded American Frontierswoman would do. She packed up the kids in the minivan and ran out to Jax to pick up a nice little lever action 30/30.

Oh no, wait. That's just what I wish she would have done. What she actually did was to call the president of the homeowners association.

It's a good thing we don't live on the frontier.

So Much to Say

Luckily, I have all the time in the world. As do you, apparently.

Sunday was a day of controversy. I would like to say, for the record, that in all controversial matter, I was right and The Mrs. was being unreasonable. However, I am sure she would disagree with that. See, this weekend was something we lovingly refer to as "PMS Weekend," and it involves a lot of accusations of transgressions leveled squarely at me. Most of these transgressions are imagined.

But, heavens, I am not allowed to mention that during PMS Weekend, or it is simply proof that I am a jerk.

Which I am. Though not for the reasons specified during PMS Weekend.

(Oh, The Mrs. corrects me - I am a lousy bastard. PMS Weekend often extends well into the week. Luckily I have a fully stocked bar, which is the only effective treatment for this condition. And by "this condition" I refer equally to PMS Weekend and being a lousy bastard, though the degree of improvement due to this treatment depends largely upon to whom the treatment is applied. I suggest a scattershot approach, where all involved parties are dosed heavily. The Mrs. suggests I go to hell.)

Anyways, to make a long story short, The Mrs. decided to make leftover spaghetti for breakfast on Sunday morning. We had spaghetti for dinner Saturday night, and there was enough for three out of the four of us to eat, though if I really really wanted spaghetti, I suppose The Mrs. could servitutde me and boil up some more noodles, though what a lousy bastard I'd be for even asking.

Needless to say, I opted to let The Mrs. and The Childrens eat the spaghetti, and I would fend for myself. I quietly opened up a cookbook, feigning that I was looking something up, which I really was not. This drove The Mrs. into a frenzy, as I wouldn't tell her what I was looking up, which was a sign of me being a lousy bastard, so I put that cookbook back and got out another.

I had long before decided that I was going to make myself some kind of breakfast hash made of whatever the heck I could find in the refrigerator. Here is what I found:

4 small potatoes, diced
6 pork breakfast sausages, maple flavor, cut into discs
4 strips of center-cut bacon, cut into bite-sized pieces
6 slices of salami, thinly sliced and chopped into small pieces
a bunch of sliced, pickled Jalapenos
1/2 of a yellow onion, diced
3 eggs
crushed garlic
crushed red pepper flakes
a little Mrs. Dash
shredded Mexican cheese

Fry it all up in about a 1/4 stick of butter.

Here's the basic dish before adding the eggs or cheese, which need to come after the other stuff is cooked.


Add the cheese:


Add the eggs:


Serve up a wonderfully fulfilling breakfast, complemented with a Diet Dr. Pepper, which I am told taste more like regular Dr. Pepper.


Damn, that was tasty.

Monday was a better day, as I got to be at work much of the day and thus did not have to interface with any hormones. At night, I managed to try out this recipe, and it was even more luscious than it sounds. I ran out of lime juice, though.

This morning, I learned that it also has an aggressive, though perhaps predictable, ability to inflict suffering the next morning. My head still hurts just thinking about it. I'll not be drinking any more of that any time soon.

Unless The Mrs. managed to score me some more lime juice when she went grocery shopping today. I know I put it on the list.

A funny thing happened today at work. I was sitting there after lunch, and the cellphone rang. It was The Mrs.

That, in itself, is not particularly funny, as The Mrs. accounts for roughly 98% of the cellphone calls I receive, and she accounts for an even higher percentage of the calls I receive while I'm at work. It's interesting how instant messaging technology has managed to almost completely supplant the telephone at The Company.

So, The Mrs. calls to report to me that the garage door does not work. She hit the emergency release to open it and get the minivan out, but she for some reason could not figure out how to close it again afterwards (which involves, like, pulling the door down instead of pushing it up). After trying to talk her down off the ledge, I said I'd come home and close the door, and she should just leave the door open and go where ever it was that she was going with The Childrens seeing as I had already probably paid top dollar for some kind of private lesson or something.

Well, that seemed to work. I finished up what I was working on, which involved instant-messaging a dude back in Santa Clara that I used to work with who was complaining about some unexpected yield loss on the last part I worked on, and the guy who took over my area after I left wasn't responding, and for some reason I still cared and was trying to help. Anyways, as I was finishing up, the cellphone rang again, and, rather predictably, it was The Mrs. again.

I figured she was calling to tell me that she got the door closed, and I didn't have to come home. But noooooo. She's calling to see if I've left yet, as HannahC is concerned about leaving her bike in the garage with the door open for 10 minutes.

This was wrong on so many levels. Let's see:

1. You could put the bike in the minivan, as it spends roughly 80% of the year there anyways and the only reason it is not there right now is that it has a flat tire.
2. You could put the bike in the house.
3. The bike cost $49.99 at Target when it was brand new, and HannahC has pretty much outgrown it already such that the plan is to buy her a brand new bike first thing in the spring.
4. My bike, also in the garage, cost $1000. I have a couple thousand dollars of tools in the garage. I have my precious lawn tractor in the garage. I have a refrigerator filled with beer in the garage. All these tings are more valuable to a thief than HannahC's bicycle, and in the ten minutes it takes me to get there, thieves won't have had time to steal all that and then have been forced to turn to the little 16" bicycle.
   
5. My god, woman, I am at work. Is there no filter on the inanities that trigger you to call me when I'm at work? I talked to you not five minutes ago, and nothing has changed since then. Do you think I decided not to come home to close the door during those five minutes? Do you think that HannahC's concern about her bike is going to make me come home faster? Do you think maybe, just maybe, when I'm at work I have to actually do work sometimes so that they continue to pay me so that you can continue to buy silly things like $3500 elliptical trainers, private swimming lessons for a 2-year-old, and fifteen (15!) different lotion/oil/goop substances to keep on the counter around your sink, plus two more in the shower, every one of which is a miracle (miracle!) substance until it is half-gone, and then immediately requires replacement with an altogether brand-new and untried miracle substance? While I'm at work, I don't need to hear that HannahC thinks I'm not dropping everything I'm doing to rush home fast enough. While I'm at work, I don't need to hear that you are planning to go to the park tomorrow. While I am at work, I don't need to hear that you are planning to go to the grocery store while the kids are at gymnastics class. This is a small set of examples of the things that do not require a call to me on my cellphone while I am at work. I'm hoping maybe a trend can be extrapolated.
   

But, anyways, if there is one thing that I have learned during the precisely 21 years and five days of my relationship with The Mrs. it's that there's no point in trying to talk sense to a woman. So I gave the only civil response I could muster.

"Oh, would you just go!"

Then I wrapped up what I was doing and went home. You know what was wrong with the garage door? Nothing. I popped the emergency release, and it went up and down manually. I hooked it back into the carriage and pushed the button. It went up. I pushed the button. It went down. Button again. Again with the up. Button again. Again with the down. There was not one single solitary thing wrong with the garage door that I could discern. So I called The Mrs.

She was too busy to talk to me, and told me this could wait until she got home. Duh.

There's also no use in pointing out double standards to a woman.

No duh.

It's going to snow

That's why it's so great that my Canadian snowblower hasn't arrived yet.

My Yukon Jack has, however. So it will have to suffice as a testament to Canadian engineering prowess for a while. I am enjoying a snakebite right now, though truth be told, I'm a little intrigued by this recipe, which sounds really tasty despite it's rather odd name.

Those wacky Canadians.

I'm kinda hungry right now, but I am resisting the urge to stuff myself full of Lays potato chips. Because of The Childrens being downstairs all the time, we have taken to storing junk food in the bar. Used to be I'd have to either haul my butt upstairs to get junk food or pop a bowl of popcorn in the air popper, both of which require a level of commitment to task that I can rarely muster when I'm sitting on my hindquarters on one of my fancy bar stools blogging about nothing.

But now it is so easy. I need to develop willpower. Or, rather, re-activate my long-dormant willpower.

Meanwhile, Carl sits there to my right. Mocking me.

As I mentioned yesterday, my parents are coming to town for a couple weeks, and I have the bar all stocked up. The irony here is that my mother drinks not a whit, and my father very little. And what he does drink tends not to be the top shelf stuff I buy. So, oddly, I just sat back a moment ago and said to myself, "Self, I wonder if you have anything that Pops will drink."

Maybe I can get him to drink the cognac. I don't like cognac, as it turns out. This despite having bought a positively darling bottle of Courvoisier VSOP. I love brandy, and Cognac is the godfather of brandies, so I am still surprised that I find it positively awful. I keep trying it every few days to see if maybe it will grow on me. It sits next to the scotch, its stablemate in unexpected dislike. I have, after all, five other kinds of whiskey, each of which I dearly enjoy in its own way on rather regular occasion. Yet no taste for scotch have I been able to develop in many years of trying despite trying every major brand.

I think, deep down inside, I am simply not pretentious enough for either scotch or cognac.

At least, that's what I like to tell myself.