I Walk in the Garden of K-Mart and Bite the Apple...

Well, it's the end of a four day weekend... they always go by so fast. It was a nice chance to relax and do some fun stuff. We got a chance to see some good movies too... most notably, Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix (who plays Cash) and Reese Witherspoon (who plays June Carter Cash). I'll preface this mini-review with this statement: I never was a big Johnny Cash fan, and knew little about him before seeing this film. I was still intrigued to see it... and I am really, really glad I did. I think it's safe to say that it sparked enough of an interest in me now that I am becoming a fan of his music. The film encapsulates Cash's early career, and takes the audience through his journey of success, addiction, family and love life. It's very entertaining, and the two and a half hours of it fly by. I almost wish it had been longer.

As far as the film goes, my prediction (and an obvious one) is that we will see Oscar nominations for this film for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Soundtrack. Both Phoenix and Witherspoon pull off amazing performances, and sing their own music. And they're good. Really, really good. Go see this film... don't make excuses.

The only bad thing about this movie was that some retarded girl threw up in the theater, and we were treated to a nice strong stench of puke until the ushers came and doused it with some powder and spray. We all got free soda coupons afterwards though...

We also watched Garden State, which I bought on DVD on Friday. It was written and directed by Zach Braff, who is best known for his role as the main character, J.D., in the NBC hit series Scrubs. It is a quirky and humorous film, with an intriguing storyline to boot. Without going into too much depth, it's the story of a guy who goes back home for his mother's funeral... and faces his past and himself, with the help of a girl (Natalie Portman). They both pull off very likeable performances, and really pull you into the film.

We also went to K-Mart on Saturday morning for the "K Days" Hot Wheels collector's event. My wife actually WANTED to go... so we trekked out there in the morning, and got to be a part of it. It works like this: they get a bunch of new cases (at this location, 88) of Hot Wheels... containing new cars, including 6 exclusive repaints available only at this even. The rare, sought-after treasure hunt cars ("T-Hunts") are mixed in, at a ratio of about 1 in 7 cases, or about 15% of the store stock (I have read reports though in some areas that they got 100+ cases, and not a single T-Hunt.) Everyone in attendance gets a raffle ticket, then they draw numbers, 4 at a time. Those 4 people go up to the table, each get a sealed case, and then get 5 minutes to open the cases and pick out 5 cars. The rest of the case goes to the side, which no one else can go through until the very end when they dump them into bins. Once everyone has gone, and if there are still cases, they do another round. We did two full rounds, plus part of a third. My wife got drawn twice, and I got drawn three times. On the first pick of the first round, my wife got called up, and due to some coaching beforehand (no one is allowed to "help" the people opening the cases), she did very good - and got a T-Hunt! (Our only one of the day).

We ended up spending 4 hours at K-Mart on Saturday (we got there an hour early, and the drawing took forever...), but we both had fun. I was happy that she was interested in experiencing the event with me (it was my first time at one of these things), and she had fun doing it too. Aside of spending 4 hours in a K-Mart, it was pretty fun.

We also did our Christmas shopping for each other... and bought each other our gifts. However, we aren't exchanging them until Christmas. Dammit. It especially sucks, because we both know what our gift is...

I got my wife an XM radio unit for her car (and it hooks into an optional home boombox)... and the other part of her gift was a remote car starter (which she did actually get already, as it was installed on Saturday).

As for me... well, I know I had wanted an iPod Nano... as they are really neat and small and cool. Then I saw one of the new iPods when one of the guys I used to work with got one... and I instantly fell in love. I didn't know if I could pull off getting one for Christmas... but I did! So now, sitting in my wife's closet, is my new black 60Gb iPod... and I want it right this instant. This is going to be the longest month EVER.

...I already installed iTunes, and have been organizing my music for readiness to load.

...and that includes a lot of Johnny Cash songs.

Wax off...

Actor Pat Morita, best known for his roles of Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid and the second Arnold in Happy Days, has passed away at age 73 of natural causes.

Rest in peace, Mr. Miyagi.

I can't think of a witty title for this post...

Alas, this past weekend, the snow all melted... leaving piles of wet leaf humps littered around our house. Still unable to clean them up, it doesn't appear that I'll be getting rid of them this holiday weekend... as round two is supposedly on its way tomorrow. We're supposed to get 1-3" of snow, and as I mentioned in my last post, means we should expect about a foot. Woo hoo.

I did notice a ton of houses in my neighborhood put up a lot of Christmas decorations this past weekend too... although some had put them up while taking down their Halloween paraphernalia. We have a general rule in our house: not until AFTER Thanksgiving... which means we will become festive this coming weekend.

Had an eventful couple of days since my last post. On Sunday, I woke up.. and had apparently decided to do some major cleaning while I slept. My wife reminded me of this shortly after I got up. It seems the toy collection has been taking up quite a bit of room in my half of the attic space, and has left the Lab in quite a clutter (not helped by the moving of stuff around since the flood). I had been meaning to do some organizing for a while anyhow. It seems my collection has simply grown to capacity. So... nine hours later, I have gone through all my storage boxes, and set aside a quite significant pile of figures to sell. So in the weeks to come, I'll be doing some ebaying... while making some revenue and much-needed space in the process.

My wife and I celebrated our second anniversary on Monday. Two years. It seems like much longer, but I don't mean that in a bad way at all. It just seems we've gone through a lot these past couple years, with turmoil in employment to minor home catastrophes... and your normal marriage issues. I don't have any complaints, and wouldn't change a thing.

I found it a bit humorous though in perspective... last year, for our first anniversary, we dressed up and went to a really fancy restaurant, and spent more money on a single meal than we've ever spent on a meal before in our lives. This year, we wore jeans, and had steaks in a restaurant with peanut shells on the floor.

It's not to say we don't care... we were both very happy with the choice. We were comfortable, as we are with each other. Comfort is a good thing... and sometimes, just being comfortable with the one you love is all that matters.

To further illustrate that point, I'll share with you a bit of our conversation of the evening...

I had made mention that adding the word "ass" in front of other words makes them much more funny. For instance, earlier in the day I had come up with the word "asscaptain" to describe a fellow motorist on my way home, who had decided that going twenty miles an hour below the speed limit was perfectly acceptable behavior. I shared this word with my wife, as well as some others that I had come up with that day... including "asspilot," and "assbandit" (an old favorite). She then came up with a great one: "assfritters."

We then made "assfritters" a running joke of the evening, and I even dared her to ask the waitress to bring us a steaming plate of assfritters (which she declined to do.) On the way home we came up with a bunch more, randomly selecting words we saw on buildings and sign to add to our humor-inducing prefix.

Some others we came up with: assvacuum (which does invoke quite disturbing imagery), assburger, assgremlin (another new favorite of mine), and asscanal (which can be used in several very literal manners as well.)

God... I love her.


PS - I know you're doing it now too. Feel free to post your creative asswords!

Sulking in a Winter Blunderland...

Whoever invented snow sucks.

Why is it that when you follow a weather report in Michigan, when they forecast rain... it never freaking rains? However, when they forecast snow - in this instance, "maybe an inch of snow" - it snows WAY the hell more than they predict (in this instance, about 6+ inches).

I've lived in Michigan my entire life, and I still can't figure that shit out. Having grown up on the east side of the state, winters were hit or miss... and when it snowed, you got snow for a day, and then it stopped. It STOPPED. At least for a couple days in between.

In West Michigan, however (where I have lived for about six and a half years now), we get this thing called "lake effect snow." This was a new concept to me when I first moved here... and what it means is this: It snows, then it snows, and then it snows and blows, and intermittenly, it snows like freaking hell. It is a phenomena, or in meteorologist terms - an "event" - when cold air, passing for long distances over the relatively warm waters of Lake Michigan, picks up moisture and heat and is then forced to drop the moisture in the form of snow upon reaching the downwind shore - and in the strong cold air flow behind the storm's cold front, the cold front passage will often be followed by a 24 to 36-hour period of blustery northerly or westerly winds, falling temperatures and persistent flurries of fluffy snow, accompanied by falling and blowing snow and reduced visibility intermixed with brief periods of partly cloudy skies and some blowing snow. When lake-effect snow squalls are well developed, there may be less than 12 hours between the last of them and the more widespread snowfall of the next cyclonic storm system. What does this really mean? It means I can do a Google search and plagarize a bunch of crap I can find describing it.

As a sidenote... wouldn't you expect someone with the title of meteorologist to work at NASA or something? They should be called weatherologists.

Another "event" I have experienced here in West Michigan, that I had never heard of before in my entire life until living here: Thundersnow. This also occurs close to very large lakes (we have a couple here in Michigan) and it has something to do with convection, and ions and negative and positive charges and a bunch of other crap I slept through in college science classes. What it boils down to is this... thunder, lightning, and really, really heavy snow. It happened a couple times last year, and I have to admit... it's a bit astounding. It's the kind of weather you expect to experience right before zombies start sprouting up in the garden.

And so now I have, in my yard, a pretty decent accumulation of snow. Underneath this snow, if you were to dig into it, you will find an equally pretty decent accumulation of leaves, having just fallen off the trees in the past two weeks since Halloween, that I have been too lazy or busy to rake up.

It continues to snow - and according to the weather geniuses - will continue to do so every day for the next week (even though they can barely determine what will happen eight hours from now, apparently they can see seven days into the future now.)

At least I don't have to rake those damn leaves this weekend...

Icky yucky blah blah blah...

Just read the weather reports... snow is in the forecast for tomorrow, the day after, the day after that, and the day after that....

Living in Michigan my whole life, you'd think I'd like winter by now... but I dread it every year. We had an unusually hot summer this past year, and it stayed warm well into the Fall... I guess it was bound to happen. Usually, we get two seasons around here... Winter and August.

I'm the new guy!

The new job is finally getting into swing... I finished up with my orientation this afternoon, and got a chance to sit at my computer today. I guess when they hired me, they were already at maximum seating capacity, so my area is a converted station, previously used for scanning documents, etc. It's not a cubicle per se, and my desk area actually sits higher than the other cubes, so I have this "I can see all of you" kind of seating arrangement. It feels more like "Hey- there's the new guy on display!"

Our whole department is undergoing a cubicle rearrangement in a few weeks, where I will be provided my own normal cube. And an Aeron chair... sweet.

I saw a T-shirt once that said "You can have my Aeron when you pry it from my cold, dead ass." True, true words...

I'm liking things so far, even though I haven't really done any actual work yet... but I have been given an overview of what's in store for me, and it sounds pretty cool.

Did I mention I'm gonna get an Aeron chair?

My brain hurts...

I go out drinking maybe a handful of times a year... and of those times I consume one or two beers at the most.

Well... yesterday was my last day as a contractor (or "leased employee" if you want to go by the Corporate USA, bureaucratic term they use). No, my contract wasn't up, and no, I wasn't mysteriously escorted out of the building, never to return (as I've seen happen)... I left on my own accord. I was offered a "real," full-time, salaried position at another company last week, and I start on Monday.

Needless to say, my last day proved to be a wonderful excuse for us all to go to the bar and eat, drink, and be merry. Well, a couple people did eat... we all drank... and by the end of the night, if you called me Mary, I probably wouldn't even have noticed.

I had a blast, and I'm really glad so many people came out. It put something into focus last night, too. While I am excited about my new job, I have felt a little bummed about leaving these past two weeks. I had a hard time figuring out why I wasn't more excited to leave... it is, after all, a great opportunity, doing more of what I am trained to. It crystallized last night, as I looked around the table. I am going to miss the people... the friends I have made over this past half a year.

While the company may have its shortcomings (as every large corporation is bound to have), the people with whom I've worked with are just plain awesome. I am going to miss my friends there, I am going to miss the environment they created... but scarecrow, I am going to miss you the most of all...

I know, I'll make more friends at my new job, but I don't want to forget the friends I made there... as inevitably has happened at other jobs in the past. You guys are cool as fucking hell! (that one's for Lori, who just discovered last night that yes, I do swear a lot... especially when I am consuming alcohol.)

Mushy crap aside, I had a blast last night... and drank about... hmm... ok, I have no idea. But I know there was a JagerBomb in there somewhere...

It is always interesting going to an event with co-workers where alcohol is flowing. Those are the times you TRULY learn things about who you work, or in my case, workED with. And yes, I had some very deep and interesting conversations, some of which remain a little blurry today, but nonetheless...

I woke up at around 5AM this morning to the sound of my brain trying to escape from my skull. Three Advil and a tall glass of water later, I went back to bed, and eventually fell back asleep. My head feels ok now, but my lungs aren't too happy with the fifteen or so clove cigarettes I smoked over the course of eight hours at the bar (yeah, I left right around midnight.) I hope everyone made it home safely?

Oh man... now I have to drive across the state this afternoon to Fenton to bid farewell to my buddy Howie, who is moving to Pittsburgh this week. His going away party is at... a bar.

This is going to be interesting...

Secret ingredients...

Due to rising oil prices, Kraft has announced that they will be raising the price of Oreos by 4%. This worries me... and not just because I like Oreos (which I do... because they're yummy.)

Is oil a secret ingredient?? Is that why they're really dark brown and stain your teeth? More importantly - should I be crushing these things up and shoving them in my gas tank??

Come to think of it, that would be pretty cool... a car that ran on cookies. Plus, the environment would be less polluted, as gas fumes would be replaced with the smell of freshly baked treats. Personally, I know that's a smell I'd rather inhale over normal exhaust any day (except for Mondays, where I don't really care much about anything.)

Also, I saw that Jones Soda has released its 2005 Holiday Pack... a limited holiday novelty assortment, containing unique blends of soda. On the menu this year are Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing, Brussel Sprout, Cranberry and Pumpkin Pie. I can't help but wonder how exactly they are concocting such flavors as gravy covered bird in a soda form... unless they have some sort of magical contraption they purchased from Willy Wonka? If that's the case, I would have expected at least one of the bottles to be Snozzberry.

I saw this assortment pack at Target today for $10... I was tempted to give them a try, but I figured if I was going to throw away ten bucks, I could come up with something a little more entertaining that wouldn't cause me to throw up halfway through. Like a Michael Moore DVD. No wait, scratch that...

To spare my own taste buds, but to satisfy my curiosity, I happened across a taste test of the Jones Soda Holiday Pack. Very entertaining, and much as I suspected. I think my favorite response was from one of the testers who said this of the Brussel Sprouts flavored soda: "The name says it all. If you add the words "mixed with shit.""

I'll take their word for it. I'm off now... I need to go start on a design for my "Keebler Kamaro."

Just a little bit special...

With all the flooding and cleaning and such, I was distracted from what I had initially intended to post about last Sunday... and that would be the absolutely hilarious and entertaining show my wife and I went to Saturday night.

Granted, it was in Ann Arbor... and I think I've expressed my opinions of that city here in the past... but it was for a good cause - to see one of our favorite comedians (or singing comedian if you prefer) - Stephen Lynch.

It was my wife's second time seeing him, the first being earlier this year, when he toured with the late, and great, Mitch Hedberg. It was my first seeing him live, although I've seen his Comedy Central special, and two of his CDs are live performances (plus he has a DVD of a live show)... but they just don't compare. It was absolutely hysterical... and oh, so very, very wrong.

Listening to Lynch's music is a guilty pleasure... you laugh your ass off, and feel ashamed for laughing at the same time. Some of the topics of his songs include: "special" people, having one testicle, taxi drivers, gerbils in orifices, nazi girlfriends, Jesus's brother - Craig Christ, Satan (who is gay), a French homeless guy, killing kittens and Dungeons & Dragons. His lyrics are ironic, satiric, and extremely well written... and he has one hell of a singing voice. He's even going to be on Broadway soon... playing the lead character in the musical based off the movie The Wedding Singer (he plays the lead role of Robbie Hart... Adam Sandler's character in the movie). And he's from Michigan... so check him out and support your homies - if you have an open mind and are not easily offended. You'll be glad that you did...