River of Unconsciousness

9:46pm: Easter Snow
There arent too many people around to read this anymore, but I will post anyway, 'cause I am like that.  The wife and I came back from a fun Easter visit to Ann Arbor ready to get to work on painting the ol' office, unfortunately the weather had other plans in store for us.  Both the downstairs neighbors and us were in Michigan and apparently there is no news service that provides timely weather updates for people that are not paying attention.  There was 15 inches of snow in the driveway.  No plowing service, one shitty shovel.  One very shitty shovel. (Very)  So get to shoveling right away, that seems like the best course of action at the time.  Random neighborhood guy shows up asks for 7 bucks to shovel the driveway.  He is clearly mentally challenged, but I figure he cant hurt, right?  I send the wife inside to get her phone call on for plow trucks, she finds a guy that can show up in twenty minutes.  My random neighborhood guy finds a plow truck down the street.  I give him the money that I promised, and he heads for the hills.  Plow guy shows up, begins plowing with a reckless abandon that makes me nervous.  He stops only to answer his cell phone.  Apparently the ladies like a guy with a big plow.  Or maybe they like getting plowed.  I am not sure which is the more appropriate entendre.  Some clean-up shoveling and I am here typing, slightly poorer and slightly sore.  Now to eat some waffles with a fabulous blueberry sauce. Yum.

6:13pm: Let me know if you have heard this before:
Maybe more later.
I am not sure if I like the direction that this is going.  It seems scary.  Also, I am not going spell check this bad boy.

10:35am: Sign on front page of CNN.com
I just saw a sign that someone is holding on the front page of CNN.com
The sign read:
Jesus said: Marriage = One Man + One Woman Matt 19:4-6

What a joke. Matthew 19:4-6 reads as following:
4Jesus answered, "Don't you know that in the beginning the Creator made a man and a woman? 5That's why a man leaves his father and mother and gets married. He becomes like one person with his wife. 6Then they are no longer two people, but one. And no one should separate a couple that God has joined together."

I read the first phrase and it made me wonder: "What was the question?"
So I looked that up:
Matthew 19:1-6
1When Jesus finished teaching, he left Galilee and went to the part of Judea that is east of the Jordan River. 2Large crowds followed him, and he healed their sick people.
3Some Pharisees wanted to test Jesus. They came up to him and asked, "Is it right for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?"
4Jesus answered, "Don't you know that in the beginning the Creator made a man and a woman? 5That's why a man leaves his father and mother and gets married. He becomes like one person with his wife. 6Then they are no longer two people, but one. And no one should separate a couple that God has joined together."

JESUS WASNT TALKING ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE, HE WAS TALKING ABOUT DIVORCE YOU HATEFUL PIECES OF SHIT. QUIT PICKING AND CHOOSING JESUS' WORDS TO FIT YOUR HEINOUS INTENTIONS.

2:32pm: Concentrating at work
I have been having a really hard time concentrating at work recently. It feels like the 2nd grade all over again where I simply couldnt pay attention in school.
Arrrgh

Z

9:41am: Its a boy!
So the baby finally arrived yesterday at around eleven pm. They finally induced labor. I guess even after giving her the drug for that the baby still took like four hours to make the trip. Anyhow, congratulations to them on their new arrival.

4:35pm: You see Ziles has this sister...
And this sister is way pregnant. I have heard that she may be making with the delivering this evening. Maybe. I will update if 1) I hear more and 2) I remember to update.
1 is very likely
2 is less likely

UPDATE: 10:49PM
Looks like it will be tomorrow. Maybe really early tomorrow. She is just resting at the hospital now. I guess this family takes a while to finally drop. Clearly the baby has signalled its pending arrival, but is currently awaiting orders to enter the drop zone.

UPDATE: 10:06AM 2006/3/23
No real news yet. She is still there. Ziles is planning on waiting for news of baby before she heads down there. They only allow two 'extra' people in the room during delivery. That appears to now be the husband and the soon to be grandmother, so there isnt any point in ziles heading over there until she can go in and see everyone. The soon to be father is a videographer. I wonder if they are planning on 'shooting' the birth. I kinda doubt it. They are more sane than that.

6:14pm: Hopefully tonight
I hope to get some trip pictures posted this evening when I get home. Looking at the photos today it sort of looks like ziles and I have a mild case of the parkinsons. There are a lot of really blurry pictures. I will try to keep the posting of blurry ones to a minimum.
Later,
Zak

2:42pm: Ah the refreshing calm of vacation
Just got back from visiting my nephews. Thats right, California, baby. I have never been that far west before. Ziles should get some pictures posted one of these days. Stories galore baby. Maybe I will relate some of them here. Maybe you will have to see me to hear them in all of the story-tastic glory. You ever had an authentic San Fransisco experience? Betty and I have a friend. I will call him Pantz here. He doesnt have a blog or anything, but I dont want any of you Zak-stalkers to look him up. He did his best to take us somewhere that would be a Monday night Frisco-style experience.

I have the definite impression that he likes the kink, or more correctly, his girlfriend likes the kink. He seemed somewhat embarassed by any hint that he was anything other than totally normal. Me thinketh he might have handled a few sausages since starting dating this girl. She is really fun by the way.

DD out.

Todays hair: Spikey with a chance of softening out.

8:32pm: The Shawshank Redemption
I really like this movie. I am watching it again on SpikeTV. I its a nice modern twist on "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas. Which is one of my favorite books. It is directly derived from a Stephen King short story, but realistically the plot is from TCoMC. Thats no jibe at Steve King, his derivation is first class, and the details are just great.

5:42pm: Some poop humor...
On my way in to work today I thought of a funny phrase that I havent heard elsewhere:

Trouser Gnome

You may think this is just another penis joke, but it is not. A trouser gnome is when you have to poop really bad and you cant, but you are losing the fight and you let a little bit sneak out. Now I have never been very flexible, so I dont know if the following is actually true, but in my imagination when one is losing the fight the bit that sneaks out is somewhat conical, like a gnomes hat. It looks like a gnome coming up out of the ground with his little hat on. Of course this all happens upside down with gravity on the gnomes side of the fight. This has been refered to as a "turtle head" on some occasions, but I think a turtle head is more fitting if it can be pulled back in, rather than a trouser gnome, where as he sneaks out it gets harder to hold him in his little hole.

Thats enough potty humor for now.

Zak

2:20am: First post of the New Year
HAAAPPPPPPPYYYYYYY NEW YEEEEAAAAAARRRRR!!!!!!
Thats how its said in Cleavtown apparently, perhaps just by me.
Post your new years resolutions here.

2 Resolutions for me:
1. Get to work earlier. I am not really being fair to my coworkers who work in the morning by arriving so late. They sometimes need my help, and if I can be there earlier, I can help them.

2. Be better to my Bethers. Sometimes I dont help out as much as I could. She really is a wonderful gal, and I should probably help more with the cleaning and the cooking. She also works a full time job and doesnt need an apparent invalid sitting on the couch all the frickin' time.

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

1:57pm: The Joys of the City.....
So the street lights along my drive from work to home were out again last night. Combine the lack of light with the mottled, broken surfaces that we call roads and what do you get? Thats right! A 3.5 inch long bolt from someones suspension piercing my tire tread. And to make things even more joyous, the bolt was so large in diameter that it destroyed the steel belts in the tire at the puncture location. No quicky plug for my tire, instead a whole new tire is required. I never get plugable tire punctures, instead I mostly just end up buying new tires. And to top of this little sundae that I call terrible tuesday, the lugnuts are rounded off and I am unable to get them off with the tire iron, requiring that I drive on the leaky ass tire with the bolt sticking out of it the 0.75 mile to the tire store. I got there in time to see the last of the air leaking out of the tire.
Note to self: Terrorists might not be bad people, perhaps they are just responsible for maintaining a car in a city. On second thought they are probably just assholes.

2:26pm: Update
A couple of things:
1. A kid from my high school graduating class was on TV the other night in a nationally broadcast sitcom. Kind of weird. I recognized him but it was so strange that I couldnt believe it was him until I looked it up online. WEIRD! Next up: One of the girls from my high school on the interweb, NEKKID!!!

2. I found out what I am getting for Xmas already. I talked the little lady into getting it for me early, now that I know what it is. There was some drama the other night when I attempted to coerce her to going eith me to get it from one of the local stores. After walking in the door and getting back to the correct section the power went out. We saw one of the gizmos attached to the wall but with no power, there was no sales to be made. Then we went across the street to another store that actually had one, but the people were unhelpful and the demo on the floor looked like it was a little worse for wear. So we went to get some dinner and see if the power was back on. No luck. So we decide to head across town to another store that should have them. We arrive about 10 minutes after the doors closed but 50 minutes before the interweb said that they closed. Take a guess as to which was right. So we went home. I do like driving around with my lady, but the whole thing was pretty frustrating. Also it looks to take about an hour to do the circle around the east side of Cleveland.

3. It turns out to be quite easy to ride a bike with skis on. At least its easy in my mind.

5:04pm: The quick and the dirty...
Things recently:
1. Spent a week away from home, work travels to South Bend, IN and Parsipanny, NJ
2. Attended Notre Dame vs US Naval Acadamy Football game, incredible seats. Seriously, amazing.
3. Aimless at work. There are things to do, but I dont really want to do them.
4. "Weeds" on Showtime. That is some funny stuff. I am not into drugs myself, but some of the jokes are really funny.
5. Two monitors at work now. I like being able to separate work into two screens, especially is one desktop is a linux screen.
6. I am not a very good writer. I like reading and discussing, but writing technical things isnt really my thing. And yet my name is on several well received academic papers because I did a great deal of the research that went into them. But my contribution to the actual writing of the paper is very small.

mmmmmm chipotle
No spell check for you!
Zak

3:15pm: Sometimes I wonder....
So today is the sort of day that can really throw a person off of their game if they arent so apathetic that their game is pretty spongy. But alas, my game, it is very spongy.
The rundown:
1. Got up a little late today
2. Boss is in town, but leaves today for AZ
3. Annoying coworker in other division gets a kick out of being an ass
4. Yada yada yada
5. Now I am drunk (3:15pm)

1:14pm: Silliness
Leave a comment for this entry, and....

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.

Then put this in your journal!

5:26pm: Okay
So I did care, why dont you sue me?

5:22pm: That last one is a doozy
So that post has some sort of error in it. It is repeating the images to the right, where is shouldn't. I would fix it, but I dont care that much.

5:18pm: I thought this was an interesting poll.
You are a
Social Liberal
(68% permissive)
and an...

Economic Moderate
(56% permissive)

You are best described as a:
Democrat

6:47pm: I got tagged
I am not going to include playing tag in my top ten, it is not even close.

In no particular order:
1. Puppies
2. Fajita Burritos/Tacos w/Carnitas
3. Soft Beds
4. Computer Gizmos
5. Thinking about how to get my feet out of where I am sitting if I was wearing skis
6. Lazy Saturdays
7. Busy Saturdays
8. Sandwiches
9. Airplanes
10. Ziles

6:43pm: Update
A big congratulations to E and S, they recently got married after a brief 18 month engagement. I am really happy for them. The wedding was fun and I got to see some of the friends from college that moved to the far recesses of the USA.

In a change of fortune, I have been extremely successful in getting to drinking establishments in the last week, but unable to accomplish much at work. There could be a relationship there. Meh, it all averages out.

Its allergy season, all of those about to sneeze we salute you. Dont forget to stock up on 2$ dollar a day allergy medicine. I have a 14$ a week Claritin-D habit. And a 21$ a week chipotle habit. I suppose I am low cost addict. I had a sweet idea for an interesting project: creating 3d models of food. Real food. I want to buy two of whatever I eat and then freeze one of them into a block of blue ice and then slice very thin layers from the block and take a digital picture of the cut surface. Then some modeling software later, and bango, I have a 3d representation of last weeks food. It wont ever happen, but it combines two of my top ten favorite things. Eating and being a dork. :-) I went to Body Worlds II last weekend with the ziles and I got the idea from some of the slices that we saw there.

I am listening to the soundtrack to the movie "Ray", that was purchased for me by the wife.

I am feeling pretty good. I guess having one's head up one's ass CAN result in a feeling of contentment, rather than the normal confusion.

Again, congratulations to E and S, everyone is really happy for you.
Zak

11:56pm: Boom, flash, blink.......
............
I have always liked the effect that a long string of periods gives to the end of a sentence. It always makes me think of schlock horror movie music, like "Dum dum da dum" or something.

So we just got back from the fireworks in Lakewood, Ohio. Fantastic. At first we were sitting in a section that carried a warning sign that read "The Fire Marshal May evacuate this area before the fireworks begin." It seemed like an empty threat when we arrived at 800pm. About 950 the cops came through and cleared the area out. Apparently it has been a few years since the last time they cleared it. The fireworks were awesome. I dont think I have seen a better show ever. Loud and large and close. 35 minutes long. It is a fairly good setup for fireworks. A large municipal park with enough trees to make the hours from 8 to 10 not completely miserable, yet the trees were far enough apart that the view of the sky was only obstructed in small places.
More later,
Maybe,
Zak

6:38pm: Mmmm Fondue.....
So the skirt and I went to "The Melting Pot" last night. It was very nice. We split a bottle of wine which gave m'lady a hangover the next day, but I enjoyed it AND I felt good the next day, so woo hoo for me. So if you are unfamiliar with fondue, basically they provide uncooked morsels which are then dipped into a pot full of a hot sauce that either coats the morsel or cooks it depending on what you are dipping and what sauce you are dipping it into. I recognise that my description is quite poor, so I will give an example. The 'appetizer' was cheese fondue. There were several variants of cheese available and we picked a wisconsin blend that was quite delicious. The server brought out a 'double boiler' style pot. That is a pot full of hot water with another metal bowl seated in the rim of the pot, but the bottom of the bowl is submerged in the hot water. The server then put a small quantity of wine and let it heat up. Then she added a small quantity of cheese and let it melt. She then allowed the cheese to melt while stirring and added the remainder of the cheese and some blue cheese and some green onion. Then the cheese blend is allowed to melt and bread chunks held on skewers are dipped into the cheese and consumed. Salads are server to allow the stomach to fill and reduce the quantity of entree that is consumed. The the entree is brought out. The hot sauce we picked was hot oil with some flavoring. Dipping morsels were shrimp, beef, duck, chicken and pork. Two minutes submerged in the hot oil and bam! dinner. A variety of really good cold dipping sauces were provided for the cooked morsels. Next course was dessert. Dessert fondue is traditionally chocolate. Lots of chocolate melted in a pot for dipping. In our case blended with some crunchy peanut butter. The we dipped an assortment of things into the chocolate. Some of the choices were strawberries, cheesecake, pound cake and pineapples chunks. Needless to say I am gaining weight with prodigious speed.

4:01pm: I am enjoying the MP3 abilities of my new cellphone. Listening to music while reading 'news' gets me all agitated. I recognise my agitation because I start giving a shit about people and places that I frankly shouldn't care about. I start feeling sorry for actors and celebrities. I guess the problem is that hipocracy is both rampant and satisfying. Its hard to get anything done when people use emotion as a placeholder for logic or reason. But at the same time logic and reason can't combat faith and belief. I find some things admirable about faith. It is possible to get people to do anything if you dont need proof or even a logical set of steps as to how something happened. I get the feeling that sometimes people with limited imaginations decide that somethings are too complicated or difficult to understand and therefore trying is a waste of time. There is a set of basic assumptions that must be accepted for faith to work. I guess long argument short, faith is the sedative of the masses. Its what prevents large groups of thinking, reasoning human beings from tearing themselves apart. I wont ask that you believe or even agree with me.

Deep, but thats what you get when you leave me alone with my MP3s and a computer that is about 90% busy doing something else.

6:34pm: One problem with cellphones....
Most cellphones arent waterproof. I found this out this past saturday when mine went through the washer AND dryer. For now I will be using Beths old cellphone. I can receive calls at the same number, but I dont have access to the phonebook stored on the SIMM card. I dont remember anyones cellphone numbers, so dont expect any calls. Not that you did before.

In a bit of good news, I will be receiving a new cellphone at no cost to me. Expect me to be showing it off like a stripper with new tits.