White Lightning Axiom: Redux

I'm lazy today ... quite the slug. I've been on support phone duty since last Thursday (Wednesday, actually - but that's a different story) and although the few calls I've gotten were resolved quite quickly - I'm still feeling the 'halo effect' of stress and angst. To ease my rattled nerves and frayed sense of well being, I went out with 20 of my fellow co-workers on Friday night after TSD practice and ... played poker till late in the night. Not your common Poker night mind you. We all chipped in 30 or so bucks to buy in and only one person smoked. So, no cigars, no scotch (beer though) and no darkened room with icy stares and slackened faces. What can you expect from a bunch of software geeks!? Indeed, we had a good night and I ended up drinking far more than the 30$ I gave to the pot. Of course, that did not stop me from out-bluffing my opponents on multiple occasions (purging 3 of them) till somone sneaked out a 4 of a kind when I had 2 kings up and three fives down. So be it.

Saturday was the day of the babysitter. The Mrs, Tyrants and I went over to a family friend's house who's wife was in the hospital for a series of operations to remove cancer tumors (and her esophagus) to watch over their twin 2 year olds. They were extraordinarily calm compared to our parcels of precocious paradigm poppers. We hauled along a chow-wagon of prepared food as well that I spent a good deal of time prepping. Needless to say, their fridge is packed but Beef Stroganoff will most likely only be eaten by guests, care takers and the children. She is on a soft-food diet and he is allergic to some of the ingredients. For some reason, the Saintly Mrs and I were exhausted at the end of the day.

Then, Sunday, the day of rest and worship. Heh ... being the purveyor of wickedness, there was no rest for me. Sunday School went well. We played 'statue' and talked about Minnesota. The little ones were fascinated about the idea that a snow drift could cover an entire house and that it could snow for more than 5 days in a row. We talked about change and hope and why we should look forward to change as much as we look forward to spring because it bring life anew. Etc, etc, etc. As a bonus, we talked about setting up little green-houses. I had the Mrs pick up 8 one liter bottles of lemonade which I will empty and we will put some green bean seeds in there since spring is coming. Hopefully, the seeds will germinate. I have the soil and such, I just need to drink EIGHT LITERS OF FLUID before next Sunday. They call me Saint MDMH ... patron saint of public toilets and leaky bladders.

Other notes: I chopped wood and restocked the brackets in the manor. The Mrs was home on Friday and will be home all day Monday ... so there goes all the firewood! Fortunately, I managed to get all this done before it started to rain and really get messy in the Back-50. For some damn reason, there was a NIN song in my head the whole time, PISSING ME OFF. Why I remembered this particular song at that time and could not purge it for over an hour makes me think that the Tyrants were developing psionic powers and were testing them out. I'll have to monitor this more closely. My neck now hurts on OTHER side so I'm fairly certain this is some sort of Scanners manifestation with the twins. At least I hope I get to be Michael Ironside. Cool name.

Technorati Tags:Poker | Injury | Karate | Children | Wood | Weekend | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Injury, Karate, Poker, Weekend, Wood

Okey-dokey ... let's get this party started! First off, I would like to initiate you all into this round of blogging where I am once again, getting ready for a tour of duty on the support phone. Bleh. But enough of my 'whining' about having to do actual work; on a more trivial subject I would like to wish you all a happy Ground Hog's day and an additional 6 weeks of winter. Damn Global Warming, causing it to be all cold and stuff. Just to add insult to injury, there was an ice storm this morning. Oh goody. Rats, there I go again with all them negative vibes. I'll have to use a set of bombastic proclamations regarding how wonderful things are for me right now. So, let's talk about the arse whoopin' I got this weekend at the TSD test. The Tyrants did wonderfully. Ghengis Jake had some problems with his staff form due to close quarters. He, as a 5 year old boy, had some issues with being distracted by all the cameras and had to repeat the form alone in front of the evaluation board. No biggie for him though, he is enthusiastically ambivalent and oblivious to his audience. That is a good thing though, it makes it a simple task for me to catch him misbehaving. He believes me to be a prognosticator of deity like qualities as I seem to always catch him when he exhibits his favorite misbehaviors. Alexis had her usual board-anxiety ... Master Smith walked her though it and she did fine. Then there was me. You see, the Tyrants were tested at 1000 so we were up at 0700 to let the dogs out and complete the usual morning activities. I had a difficult time getting to sleep the night before so the morning was a rough event. My examination started at 1145. I did not eat either so I was fairly depleted of all raw blood sugar by the time we started. After I finished my 1000 push-ups, I was drained. Very much so. That did not preclude me from doing the palm-strike board-break with 2 board where I I managed to bruise my finger-tips and the heel of my palm because I failed to retract my digits properly. Serves me right. But with all that, it was a rather successful event. No dehabilitating injuries, little blood drawn and my fellow testers were too exhausted to help me celebrate my 40th birthday (on the 3rd) by presenting my with punches to my arm. That will be saved till tonight, I am certain.

Sunday was not well received. The Wunderbar Mrs presented me with a gift on my day of reckoning, she took care of the fire, tyrants and hounds for me so I could sleep in for an extra 90 minutes. Much needed, if I do say so myself. Then, I had to get going. Sunday School would not wait, and neither would the weekly visit to Dunkin Donuts. I paged thorough the various fan letters and birthday cards from my adoring subjects ... fielded calls from the press and the TSD Black-Belt Brigade regarding my thoughts on making it through my first 4 decades without mortal injuries ... and received an early valentines day card from Rachel at Sunday School. Not too shabby. Here is the odd part of it all though: I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, bringing in firewood, taking naps and tending to various chores about the Manor. This is how Sunday should be spent EVERY week, but I will note that I fail to see how this could become a regular event. First off, even if I were a neophyte of the greenest shade, could I ever want to be this sore every week. My arms were like rubber bands weighed down by 100lb barbells so the firewood restocking took twice the normal time. Even grilling my standard 4 steaks for the week was a laborious endeavor! I'm not anticipating my next test in 3 months.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Chores | Karate | Children | Birthday

Labels: Birthday, Children, Chores, Fatigue, Karate, Meat, Tang So Doo, Weekend, Wood

Yeah, normally would include some inappropriate image but I have lost use of the pc I typically abuse at work. Many, MANY interesting things have occured since I last took the time to update you all. I'm not going into detail but here are some higlights:

1) NYC with the tyrants to see Minister Brother In Law get 'installed'.
2)Work PC Bites the dust ... train wreck in slow motion.
3) Chop wood ... a lot.
4) Clean up dog dip, see #3 for reference on volume/quantity questions.
5) Do Laundry - again, #3
6) Defrost deep freeze cryo unit,found Mastidon prototype in back.
7) Get busted up in TSD, prepping for test on the 2nd.
8) Attend a birthday party for 6yr old. Visceral nightmare.
9) KOC 3rd Degree function.
10) Fretting over not getting to blog to you wonderful folk.

I'm a fairly predictable fellow, eh? One cute (?) story of late: I was picking up Jake (Genghis) the other day and one of the little boys in his class ran up to me and started blathering to me about something. From what I could discern before one of the intimidated teachers ran over and shuttled him away was that Jake had fed him a knuckle sandwich and gave him a fat lip. So, being the inquisitive type, I broached the subject with Jake and got a confirmation of the incident. Indeed, Jake had given him a hay-maker and when queried for an impetus, he noted that the target was 'annoying him'. Ok, it's nice to know that he is now capable of defending himself and this could have been a case of 'just come-uppance', but I had to let him know that it is not generally a good thing to try to resolve issues like this with fisticuffs. You know, the more flies with honey than vinegar approach. Now, who wants more flies about is beyond me (see: UN), but whatever. (non-pc off note: go Jake!) One of the mothers passed us in the hall and started to laugh making a comment about having to do that every week. Yikes! I've enrolled my children into a training camp for future thugs. I'm just waiting for them to shake me down for their first 10% of the cut.

Technorati Tags:Karate | Children | KOC | Wood | Chores | NYC

Labels: Children, Chores, Family, Karate, KOC, NYC, Tang So Doo, Wood

I have a few things to whine about from the past few days. Some that I can do nothing about, and some that I have a direct impact on. Of course, I will not deal with them other than complaining mostly due to my superior ability to whine. And speaking of whining ... last night at the pool, we were treated to the constant screaming of a toddler being water-boarded. Well, not really. There was the swim instructor, a single child, and the father constantly pushing the horrified boy into the pool to induce him to try to learn to swim. I'm not sure, but I think that the child was not ready to be put in that situation. I'm almost certain that the father was told that he would have to get involved with the child's upbringing and give mom a break. Not so good though. 45 minutes straight - wailing at volume setting 11. Egads.

Speaking of wet, the traffic has been rather disappointing due to the slick conditions. Rain is the culprit here, not snow or ice. There is enough salt laid down that if we did get anything resembling winter weather, we should not have a problem. So much salt. So expensive. None the less, there have been at least two major accidents over as many days on the limited stretch of road I travel. What is with these people!? Nuts with cars I tell ya ... Almond Joy on a roll. I was going to complain that the wood I recently chopped was too wet to burn. Ya know, I should have known better. Now I'm going to have to take all of it out of the brackets and put it outside. And then replace it with the seasoned wood. Gha ... I can be such a noob sometimes. Oh, and on a tagent, the word of the year as determined by Merriam-Webster is "w00t" .... sigh. Thusly, another step in the decline of western culture.

Work has been a real bear over the last few days. First thing when I got in on Tuesday, I was associated with an issue that I had not clue about ... because the name of the responsible party who was SUPPOSED to get the email had the same first name. So, due to a typo (Brazil anyone? Buttle ... Tuttle), I was appointed as the owner. Then, around noon, I return to my sensory deprivation/isolation chamber to find an ominous sticky pad note. I call the number and POW! I get tagged with an Internal Affairs type task. Select 100 (really!) different bugs found in the system, find out who is responsible, why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Nothing says 'I hate you' to a developer like picking at the open sore of poorly tested or written code. This is going to make me a pariah in the group fairly quickly if I do not handle this delicately. A lot of the upper management are focusing on the effort as well (Hammer for review, reason for small bonus). Do I need to tell you that I did not sleep well last night? Oh, and my back still hurts.

Technorati Tags:Work | Swimming | Wood | Children | Back Pain | Parenting | Sleep

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities Work, Children, Parenting, Sleep, Swimming, Wood

Well, I'm going to be quite busy over the next few weeks, so please don't shoot me if I miss commenting on my regular blog reads or skip a few posts ... like I did yesterday. I was a bit laid up you see. I thought it would be a FANTASTIC idea on Sunday afternoon to chop up all that wood that I, as a mendicant lumberjack, pulled out of Gus's yard the previous weekend. So, chop-chop-chop I go and rip-tear-shred go the muscles in my back. The next morning, I could barely get out of bed to shut off the alarm clock. I had to slither out like some sort of spineless slink and whimpered the entire time. I let the Sympathetic Mrs know that I would not be moving that morning and slept from 0730 till 1730 straight! I really needed that, since I have been going into a 'spoon deficit' situation for weeks now. But enough of my surly simpering, what did happen this weekend?

Friday night was a hoot. Alexis decided to rat out her brother to a Mom in the pool changing room. She let this stranger know that Jacob was a player and had a lot of girl friends. Interesting in so much that she is not the type of girl to talk to strangers. I think it was the opportunity to take a swipe at her sibling that compelled her. I need to pay more attention to that since it seems she is developing the 'mean little girl' attribute a bit earlier than expected. Not as noticable as Jake's 'spastic little boy' act, and certainly not as cute. Rapprochement is forthcoming.

Saturday was mostly a wash. The weather was nice, which was a a nice turn of events since we were going to spend two hours driving up to Parsippany and another two on the way back. My artifice in finding a route that was only 65 miles instead of 115 was not as fortuitous as initially thought. The 'short' route took just as long and consumed as much gasoline as the longer, less direct route. In fact, we were treated to a Trademark Jersey traffic construct called the 'CIRCLE' as well as various jug-handles and convoluted left vs right exit ramps. On the upside, there were no traffic accidents (although, the police were as omnipresent as the traffic devices) and the return trip to the Manor was uneventful as it could have been. I was concerned in the first steps of the trip back when we headed down an access road that went from rough to unpaved and then finally to weed-grown. I was having visions of a chain-saw wielding mad-man, but then realized I was in North Jersey and I was the closest being to that description. Soon enough, the Observant Mrs spotted the signs for the on-ramp and we were under-way. On the downside, the children were rather impossible from the moment we arrived till the moment we strapped them into their restraining seats. Not enough exercise, most likely.

Sunday: well, I've already told you the results of that expedition in faulty perspicacity (heh, even I had to look that word up). To start the day, we had Sunday School of course. A new girl, Sam, came in to assist with what ended up being a VERY BUSY morning. As a matter of course, Jake made sure to assault her with hugs at every available opportunity. Shortly after class, I zipped off to the Local Low Price Gas Station (and car wash; they always ask but I'm afraid the POS Super Saturn would melt) to transfer Alexis to the Family Tank V2.0. This is so the Mrs and Alexis can go to the Nutcracker ballet at the Bryn Athen Playhouse. Jake, who found out about this was reasonably upset. Next time, according to him, Alexis would go see a movie with me and he would go to the Ballet with the Mrs. He was the only one comfortable with that arrangement. He can barely sit still through the movie and would only do so after I acquiesced to giving him a full sized package of twizzlers and a promise of McDonalds afterwards. We saw 'Bee Movie'. Horrible. Honestly, just bad. He seemed to enjoy it, but I think it was the twizzlers.

Technorati Tags:Back Pain | Banalities | Sunday School | Fatigue | Injury | Lumberjack | Mundane | Sunday School | Slacker | Sleep | Traffic | Turnpike | Weekend Wood

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities, Fatigue, Injury, Lumberjack, Mundane, Slacker, Sleep, Sunday School, Traffic, Turnpike, Weekend, Wood

I had started this Sunday Night ... but alas, the anti-soporific allure of the Television captured my attention and I ended up watching 'Tin Man' on the SciFi channel till the wee hours of the morning. These vicissitudes in my sleep patterns are doing me no good, I know. Sometimes I just want to watch a show without a squeaky clean animation character. Speaking of characters, the dodgeball/swim night went well on Friday ... followed closely the next morning of me hauling my sorry sagging rear out of bed at the absurd hour of 0745. The tyrants were rampaging though the house and this always invoked the 'WHINE' factor in the hounds. They understand if they simper long and loud, I'll eventually let them out to do their stuff on the back-50. Then, it's off to administer the death penalty to another innocent evergreen. I went to a small farm that I spotted on my commute to work that was selling live trees for $30 a pop. Free-range, yup. So I met a man by the name of Emmo who apparently had a son that went to Cornell! Funny. Even funnier was the damned ATM at the Wawa that I usually stop off at was out of order so I had to find a different working one. Cost me about 15 minutes. After I gingerly transported the 50 foot pine strapped to the top of the SuperSaturn POS with spit, duct tape and gumption, I cored it out and hauled it to the Grand Cathedral in the Manor with a bit of help from the Mrs. As you know, I have some slight balance issues and have learned to NOT TRUST my internal ear. Just because things feel like they are tipping to the left or right, that means nothing to gravity. I have to judge my 'uprightness' by checking my surroundings. Makes swimming a real bear. In any event, the Mrs gave her 'Seal of Approval' and the strings of lights were added. Ornamentation would come later at the deft hands (and myopic minds) of the Tyrants.

That afternoon, the whole clan spent time outdoors raking up leaves in the front expanse. The Mrs would rake to the curb, I would run the mower over the area to suck up the remaining leaves and detritus. Rake, mow, blow, suck ... ummm, yeah. We cleared out the front fairly well leaving mountains of leaves which were promptly blown back into the grass and garden beds. Damn. We had to do it though since we were expecting nasty weather the next day. With continuing unpleasantness through the rest of the winter. Indeed, it snowed that night and made a terrible mess. While we were at it, I had the Tyrants take the truck load of aging pumpkins from the front porch to the Agricultural Sector and SMASH THEM! HULK SMASH PUMPKINS!!! Heh ... time and place for everything, you know. They were starting to get a bit soft so it was time to dispose of them. I'm certain I'll get a lot of 'volunteers' next spring after I till them under. After the Mrs and I finished up with the leaves (the Tyrants abandoned us for the comfort of the wood-burning stove), I ran across the street to help our neighbor, Gus, with a couple of 25 foot tall trees that he needed to take down. Yep, just could not get enough lumberjacking in so I started in on the arboreal work in the local area. It took little time but the chain on the semi-commercial saw started to dull before we got to the hard part ... cutting the stump flush with the soil. Leaning over with a roaring chain-saw ... yep, I'm destined to be sore the next day. To cap off the day, I made some Bohemian Goulash and load of Beef Stroganoff for the week's meals. The Mrs made chicken wings (ACK!). The cavalcade of leftovers is never long lived. I'm not sure what I would do without the double-blessing of ground beef and pasta.

Sunny Sunday ... not so much. Snow, sleet and just general nastiness. This impacted the attendance at Sunday School too. Only 4 little smiling faces showed up ... all talking about how they were going to build snowmen and make snow angels in the slop that laid about the ground like a sodden quilt. Of course, we had to stop at Dunkin Donuts afterwards, and share the plunder with the Mrs back at the manor. The Tyrants decorated the tree and put nearly all their ornaments within the first 3 feet from the floor. Looks good to them I suppose. We rearranged some of them and filled in all the empty spots. I spent the rest of the day bumbling about with laundry, feeding the wood burning stove and puttering about in the garage. I did manage to get the automatic garage door openers rewired so I did not have to use the remote to open the durned thangs. Good to get something accomplished. Oh, and I finally put up the wall Spackle over the patches in the closet wall. Now for the paint and the new shelves ... I can finally put my clothing in the same room I sleep in!

Technorati Tags:Snow | Weekend | Lawn | Christmas | Children

Labels: Banalities, Children, Church, Home Improvements, Lawn, Lumberjack, Mundane, Rain, Snow, Weather, Winter, Wood

Wow ... I've got a bit of catching up to do. Sunday was conducted as follows: Church, stack all the wood chopped previously, roast marshmallows, throw rocks into ravine with Tyrants and watch as Mammoth hounds ran down and pulled them back up the 50 foot crumbling cliff side (the became covered in mud in doing so), sent Alexis to bed early since she developed a 'headache' at dinner (most likely sleep deprivation) and whined a lot about my back pain. Oh, and we decorated the tree. Wimpy post, but I'm feeling lazy.

Technorati Tags:Christmas | Dogs | Wood | Children | Weekend

Labels: Children, Christmas, Dogs, Weekend, Wood

What a busy weekend and I'm only half way through this liquid joy. In the wee hours of the morning, I found myself watching Die Hard III (Damn, it's really starting to get silly but I do love the scene where John McClane rams a police cruiser into a toll booth so it will launch into the air and obliterate a helicopter. Any mortal would not survive throwing themselves from the cruiser, much less walk away. Indeed, the survivor in the aircraft is even more ridiculous. The appearance of Kevin Smith as a computer hacker was classic. And then there was Maggie Q. Rwawrrr! Then, I followed it up with a classic; The Dirty Dozen. Here is something that I found odd when reflecting on that bit of cinematic gold: Hollywood took the worst of the military and glamorized them 'back in the day'. Today, we take the best military men in the world (IMHO) and sully them. Of course, the war theme movies we are subjected to today are being snubbed on a colossally enormous level. Sure, they might get an award or two, but they are making ZERO money. Oh well, you reap what you sew. But enough soap-box pouting for me.

The next morning, I stumbled out into the 23 F morning air and damn near froze my nose hairs off when I took a deep breath. I proceeded to hock up lumps of frozen sputum and go to work splitting the wood from the trees we took down. Gramps and I managed to finish it all up before noon. I would have posted a picture but the absurd scale would be lost in this format. Once the pile grows over 6 foot high, it just gets hard to relate without context. This took till about 1100 it never got above 40 outside. When I tramped inside and shook the cold from my bones, I saw my son sitting at the kitchen table and he was out of his Jammies (Done with his blogging). I decided to ask him about his morning so far, it went something like this:

Me: Sooo, Jake. Did you get a bath?
Jake: No.
Me: So, you stink like a barn?
Jake: No! I took a shower.
Me: Ahhh, a shower, so you're Man's man!
Jake: Sometimes, a man needs to shower.

That's my little man.

Later in the afternoon, we went out to get a Christmas tree for the Tyrants to decorate on Sunday. As we do every year now, we got get the tree at Southview from the old Finn, Hemmo and his Mrs Patty. They are related to a man I used to work for many moons ago when I was still youthful and not quite so jaded. He talks much like many of my fellow rural Minnesotans ... makes me feel like I'm back there. Such a seasonal treat. Loves his work; crafting Christmas. Afterwards, we ran off to the library for the millionth time this week and loaded up with another bazillion DVDs. Most of them look like they were run over with a lavastone sand-paper equipped floor buffer. I cannot imagine how someone could treat public property such, so we ended up paging over the unreadable sectors. Mostly it was a problem with the newer publications ... the educational ones. I almost suspect sabotage. From there, I dropped off the Tyrants and the Mrs at Barnes&Nobles Booksellers while I make an epicurean pilgrimage to the Wine Equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria called Northside. Did I mention that they have one of the most complete displays of single malt scotch? Hmmm? hint, HINT! I picked up a couple cases of local vintages that I cannot get elsewhere and a few bottles of imported vino ... before the price gets absurd due to exchange rates. It's already out of control so it may be a few years before things are more rational and I can afford a good Bordeaux or a Spanish Rioja. Nevermind Australian Merlot or Shiraz. Sigh.

Technorati Tags:Shower | Lumberjack | Wood | Children | DVD | Weekend | Wine

Labels: Children, DVD, Lumberjack, Shower, Weekend, Wine, Wood