eff me running

busy weekend this weekend. I went to RH homecoming Friday night for a few hours, had a Tweetie at Chuck's, went back to the house for the Housing Corp. meetings, which, like usual, lasted way too long. However, I'm no longer Treasurer, so that's good! well, i'm still doing the job until i can get the new guy transitioned, but hopefully that will all be done by the end of the year. I have to get the checking account changed over and address changes to the insurance company and nationals. I'll do the taxes this year, or rather take them to the tax guy to get done, since they have to be done by 15 January, and they're for the last FY, which ended the end of August. It's a relief though!

I came home around 11 that night after the bonfire and a cool impromptu "ceremony" where all the actives and alums from LCA gathered together to thank Peanut for everything he's done for the house with the remodel/upgrade/landscaping the last 2 summers. A lot of alums were involved with money and sweat equity, but this guy was the driving force behind getting something done. A guy from the class of '63, who's been on HC for 18 years said this is the most alumni involvement he's seen since they built the house in '76.

Yesterday morning, we got up early to drive to a famiry reunion in Brookville, IN. that was a good time. IAC slept the whole ride there, but we didn't want to push our luck, so I had reserved a room at a closeby hotel for last night. We get there...no reservation. I open my email on my trusty blackberry and just as i'm getting ready to rattle of the conf. #...i notice the res. was for friday night, eff me! in my haste to get a room reserved, i screwed up and got the wrong night. Since there was a Red's series in the 'Nasty this weekend, we got stuck with paying for 2 nights. I'm going to call the manager tomorrow and hope they'll at least knock a few bucks off the bill since I DID stay last night. if not...that's a $75 lesson i won't easily forget!

we got up around 8:30 this morning to head home, got to Nashville and stopped to feed IAC. My aunt called and they were in Columbus. That was all the farther they made it last night when they ran over something on the highway that went into their tire and flattened it. Enterprise rented them 2 rooms, since they had 2 adults, 4 teens and 2 babies with them. They wouldn't bring them a new car, but said they'd pay for a Taxi to take my aunt to the Indy airport to get another one. They opted for the hotel room and patched tire this morning. They got to the Walmart tire and lube and the tire size is an "odd size", so they didn't have any tires to fit. Enterprise told them to drive it on the donut, which freaked my aunt out and that's why she called me. We told her we'd wait in Nashville for them to get there. We went downtown to the shops, bought a pumpkin cookie, some caramel corn, some beef popcorn (for the dog), some beef jerky and looked in some various shops. It was rolling on about 45 minutes since I'd talked to them, so I called to see where they were. they were on the west side of Nashville. When I asked why they didn't call, she said she thought I was in Bloomington, oops! We motored to the car and headed out of town, where they were waiting for us about 5 miles away. Grandma got in the car with us, since we live in the same town, and the others live about 40 minutes south. We followed them to our splitting point, where they knew plenty of people along the way home in case anything happened. I took the fam home to eat again, then my grandma, then came back home...

ah the domestic life, so exciting!

That Guy

Was talking to some Ducks about "that guy". If you've ever worked any sort of service industry, you know what I'm talking about. Well, I worked at the local Dairy Queen, and there were quite a few "that guy's". Here are a few examples:

two cheeseburgers plain guy - this guy didn't come in daily, but he came in quite often and always got the same order, hence the nickname. he was moderately geeky, and is still around town, driving the same mid-80's El Camino.

X-Large Blizzard guy - This guy would always order an XL Blizzard, which wasn't on the menu and always confused new cashiers. an XL Blizzard is in a 320z large drink cup...a lot of ice cream and candy. this guy ended up working at DQ for a while later in my career.

Jesus Freak - This guy was a biker looking dude, covered in tattoos, who was always in DQ reading the bible and handing out religious pamphlets. He seemed like a pretty good guy and would tell stories about his life before finding God, which was pretty crazy. I found out from a buddy who spent some time in the local pokey that this guy was in at the same time for beating a woman, who apparently bit down during some foreplay. This guy also got a job at DQ for a while, and eventually showed us his true colors. Either he was working a scam angle with the religion, or simply reverted back to his old ways, but he started ripping off the owner, cussing all the time and generally being a pain in the ass so he got canned and ended up leaving town.

Fish lady - This lady would always order a fish sandwich, pay with a $5 and then come back later claiming to have paid with a $20. we were told to keep her fiver on top of the cash register until she left.

There were a few others that weren't regulars, or at least weren't regularly there causing a ruckus that are worth a mention asswheel:

stoned kids that tried to order food through driveup after we were closed. when told we were closed, they said, "fuck you sign!" and burned rubber out of there

a lady with a goatee nicer than mine

a deaf guy who came through driveup...really confused the cashier when she tried to take his order through the loudspeaker.

a lady scraped the side of her brand new Trans Am on a concrete/steel pylon

the occasional pervert (oddly enough, usually women) who would come through with her shirt open or skirt pulled up, always a favorite.

two coworkers had sex in the bathroom one tim.

also, one time i found a photo negative on the floor when cleaning. it was a naked chick. the manager ended up keeping that one.

The crazies you meet in the middle of the desert

ok, I had to go to beautiful Yuma, AZ this week. I don't think I could put this any better than one of the guys at work did..."it was hotter than three rats in a wool sock screwing." I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds hot (temperature-wise, not sexually). Anyway, we were out in the middle of the desert doing some testing and things weren't going well, so we called it quits a few days early, and I just got home a few minutes ago, instead of this coming Sunday, which is what the original plan was. So, we had to have a teleconference with the customer that was paying the bill, and we couldn't hear him over the AC in the trailer, so we had to turn that off, and it was a 3-hour telecon. It was a little toasty and smelled a little gamey by the time we were done. On the plus side, I got about 20 hours of OT this week, and saw some mule deer on the way to the test range. At least I didn't do what one of the other engineers did a few weeks ago and hit a horse. The same guy also got bitten by a baby rattlesnake, yikes!

I left the test range yesterday afternoon to head to Phoenix (pronounced Puh-hoe-nix). to fly out at 6am this morning. I was about an hour up the road, and getting a bit tired and thirsty. There had been a few signs for a place called Stone Cabin. I figured if it was worthy to put on a roadside mileage sign, there might be something there...there wasn't. It was a "This 'n' That" Shop that was closed, so I motored on. The next town I came to was Quartzsite. I stopped at a gas station and got an energy drink and a candybar, as I was dead on my feet and nearly fell asleep a few times on the long straight stretch of road between Yuma and Quartzsite. As I was heading from the station to I-10, I went past this place that looked like a big junkpile and had signs that they had all kinds of crap for sale. I saw a few old motorcycles out of the corner of my eye, so I turned around to go back and look, as it was only about 2pm, and I didn't have anything to do the rest of the day except return my rental car and check in to the hotel. I knew I'd be too tired to go to the casino anyway.

So I go back and look at the bikes, nothing special, a couple old jap bikes from the 70's, and in a trailer in the back, a shload of m-cycle parts from all makes and models, nothing I had to have, and nothing I could take with or cared to ship home. I walked over to the "main building" which was a camper with tarps attached too it and junk piled everywhere. I looked through the rest of his crap, and there was some interesting stuff, nearly bare copper and gold ore he had taken from some abandoned mine, some polished rocks, some junky "antiques", toys, probably some good stuff, but nothing I cared much about. I noticed the faint smell of old piss, like if you pissed on some clothes and left them in the corner or something, not good. Then, I see the guy, nothing you wouldn't expect from a joint like this, looked like most possibly deranged junk dealers. I said hi, and he told me if I wanted ANYTHING, just ask, and that he had a bunch of stuff that wasn't out, like emeralds, gold, silver, etc. This is valuable stuff and he's just sitting under a tarp. He said it was in the "house". I took that to mean the camper. I made an aside comment along the lines of, "yeah, don't have enough security out here to keep that kind of stuff out."

this is when things got interesting. He said something about having no security with Bush and his cronies in office, and then walked over to the "counter". I was like, yeah dude, i know what you mean. He grabs this manilla folder full of papers and starts going through it, and says, "yesterday was my four year anniversary". I'm like...ok, and he says, "9/11/03, four terrorists walked into my business."

me: ...
crazy guy: yeah, the chief of police, the fire chief, the mayor and [some other guy i don't remember]
me: ok...

The crazy guy shows me this paper from a fire inspection and starts pointing out everything illegal about it, how they were unannounced, didn't show proper credentials, spelled stuff wrong, etc. a lot of the stuff is meant for buildings, like escape routes, sewer, smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and electrical code. i'm like, ok, this guy might have a legit gripe, but they probably want this junk pile gone, so whatever. THEN, he starts talking about how corrupt everyone is in this town of 3300 people. they're putting people out of business so they can build stuff and line their own pockets. the lady next door wanted to buy his place but he wasn't selling, and that's when the shit hit the fan for him, and after 4 years of fighting it, nobody wants to help him (ACLU, etc) and in 10 days they're coming to shut him down. also, the cops are corrupt. they were doing drug raids and he got word he was next, but he didn't have any drugs. since he didn't have drugs, he knew the cops would plant them, so he started a rumor that they were going to plant drugs on him to get him in trouble. when the fire marshal came, he wanted fire exits opened in the piles of junk in case anything happened to the camper, so this guy started a rumor that the town was going to burn down his camper so they could shut him down. they didn't want him to die, that way there wouldn't be an investigation, so that's why they wanted fire exits. then, he pulls out the mother of his conspiracy theories, this rich guy conspired to kill the mayor, faked the mayors death, paid off a judge and is now mayor...wtf?

i finally talked my way out of the situation, gotta hit the road, etc. and left. before i left he told me to be careful because all cops are corrupt, and he's just lucky he hasn't been hassled by one that has been corrupt enough to plant guns or drugs on him...yikes.

after that, i drove through the desert for another hour and a half to phoenix, checked into the hotel, returned my rental car and ate here for dinner. I got some BBQ sampler platter, which was pretty good. I thought it was odd that all of the employees had alice cooper style eye makeup on, but whatever. they had a lot of cool rock and sports memorabilia, and i got a shot glass for my dad, since he's a big Alice fan. unfortunately, i didn't get to meet the man himself.

went back to the hotel and went to sleep early, had to get up at 4am to get to the airport. I asked for a 4am wakeup call, and woke up on my own at 4:18...lucky. got to the airport later than planned, and since it was southwest, thought i was going to get screwed into a middle seat. luckily, it wasn't a full flight, and i got an aisle seat.

I thought I was done with the blogworthiness of this trip, but a guy at the Indy airport left me with this gem:

A woman came up to the bag claim, and was trying to get this kid to grab her bag. He asks, "which one are you looking for?" Color her and myself confused.

She was like, "that bag right there, it's mine."
guy: which flight did you come in on?
her: phoenix
guy: oh yeah, those bags are coming out right now.
her: yeah, that was my bag.
guy: oh ok, well, it'll come back around. i've worked here three years and that's one of the things i've learned.

wow

Lord I was born a ramblin' man

going on travel tomorrow, 3rd trip since Ian was born. It's the longest trip taboot, will be gone 8 days, in sunny Yuma, AZ. Hopefully, I run into Nick Papagiorgio at the casino. Also, hopefully I make about $10k at the casino. I'd guess each is just as likely as the other.

Sweatpants Nazi v2.0

I went to college with a whole cast of characters. This blog is about a guy that wore sweatpants every day, even to career fair. At some point, early freshman year, he was dubbed, "The Sweatpants Nazi". A few years after college, he ended up working in the same department as me, in a different group. He hasn't been wearing his signature sweatpants though.

Luckily, it seems, he passed the torch on to a coworker. This guy also went to RH. This guy is also a character. This guy also wears sweatpants, every day. He's taken it up a notch though, and wears wrestling shoes with his sweatpants. Apparently, he's ready to grapple at a moments notice. A coworker happened to be in the bathroom at the same time a few weeks ago, and the guy was pissing 5 year old style, with his sweatpants pulled down completely off of his ass. Thankfully, his shirt tail hung down to cover his ass.

This should take some of you back

if you lived in the LCA house from 99-02 anyway...

Here's the background. This chick had dated a couple of guys in the house and hung out there all the time. One night, she decided to park at our house and go to a party down the street. As I'm sure you can tell, hijinx ensued.

Nina

moving

moving into a new house when you have a baby is teh suck. it's hard to get stuff done. it's also hard to get stuff done when you're blogging, but i digress...

anyway, Stacey hasn't been able to get much done during the week because she has to take care of him. When we're both home, it seems he always gets hungry or in a crappy mood when we're getting something accomplished. needless to say, we don't have everything unpacked yet, but we're getting there. i wouldn't trade Ian for the world anyway.

He's sleeping now, time to go get some crap done!