We're about ready to take off...

Hey all...

I realize it's been a long time since I blogged, but I really do plan to do better for the next while.

We're about ready to move. For those of you who don't already know, S.A. and I have both accepted jobs in Raeford, NC. Our stuff is actually on it's way there as we speak. We take off Tuesday morning and will be in our new house on Wednesday night.

Though we're bummed that we're moving so far from our families (900 miles, give or take.) we both really believe that this is the best thing for us. It enables S.A. to start teaching and, since we're both working for schools, we'll (hopefully) be able to come back to Michigan for summers.

I'm really thinking of the move as a reset button for our lives. And after years of drama, money troubles, job issues, school, etc... I'm ready for it.


We'll be starting a flickr group so no-one will miss out on any pictures of the Samster growing up. And I promise I'll do better with this blog. (I did find it amazing that people checked in over 200 times since my last post. To those of you who kept checking in, hoping against hope that there'd be a new posting, I have but one thing to say - Google Reader.)

Anyway, I just wanted to take a second to say thanks to everyone who's been supportive of us through this whole process.

Special Thanks to-
Both our families for being a huge help through the moving process.

Matt, Kev, and Casey for helping move that damn piano again.

All my peeps at Stepping Stones for pretending to miss me when I left and for taking such great care of my boyo.

And to everybody else that I'm forgetting to mention because I'm too worked up now.

We love you all.

Laterz

Beating her to the punch.

S.A. and I have pretty divergent taste in movies. To be exact, we have a good friend who serves as each of our "date' when one of us wants to see a movies in which the other has no interest. However, there are lots of movie genres where our taste overlaps. Romantic comedies, as a general rules, tend to fit that category.

On Saturday, S.A. and I went on a belated Valentine's date to see Music and Lyrics. I have no doubt that she'll be posting a movie review in her blog at some point in the near future as she felt rather strongly about the film. But I thought I'd try to beat her to it, just to get my two cents in.

IMDB currently has the user ratings in the mid-6's for Music and Lyrics. We try to check out IMDB before seeing a movie. We find that those user ratings correspond more closely with how we feel than the movie reviews you read in the newspaper.

I felt that was just about right. S.A. felt it was about 5.5 too high.

Let me start by saying a couple things. If someone tells you it's predictable, they're right. If they tell you and both Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore play the same character that they play in every other movie they're in, I can't argue. If they tell you the supposedly "hit" music is less than spectacular, they're spot-on. The thing is, in my ever-so-humble opinion, it doesn't matter.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I should make sure you all understand one thing. I would happily pay to watch Hugh Grant balance his checkbook. And though I think Drew Barrymore is pretty much talentless, watching her movies, for me, is a little like watching a 5-foot-tall glasses-wearing geek trying to play high-school basketball. I'm not saying he's any good, but I kind of root for him anyway.

The movie IS predictable. Very. It's not gonna win any awards. But I'm okay with that. I LIKE happy endings. I don't like movies with anti-heroes. I don't want to have to sort though symbolism. I respect more complex, nuanced romantic comedies like Lost in Translation. But I don't ENJOY them. So knowing that the two main characters would end up together and would write a hit song in the end before the movie had actually started was good by me. (And if you're now howling that I've slipped spoilers ::GASP:: into my movie review, shut up. If you're honestly interested in seeing this movie but don't already inherently know this stuff, you're an idiot, so I don't want to hear it.)

And as for the music... S.A. complained that the songs in the movie could never be hits because the faux-80s songs were cheesy and insipid. She felt that the supposedly modern songs would never succeed because they were tuneless and slightly insulting. I'm left to assume that she does not, in fact, own a radio. The 80s-style stuff sounded A LOT like a great deal of 80's music. The modern stuff was HORRIBLE. And it sounded EXACTLY like 90% of the crap you hear on the radio today. The "hit" song that Hugh & Drew supposedly wrote was insipid and cutesy and if it was recorded by a couple of the fine folks on American Idol, I guarantee it was be a huge hit. I apologize to anyone who's offended by this, but the vast majority of the music-listening public know absolutely nothing about music. They're not looking for Motzart. (Which is good, because they're not gonna find it anywhere.) And that's okay, too. I am pretty well musically-trained. And I downloaded the soundtrack last night, anyway.

Anyway, when it's all finished, Music and Lyrics is probably not going to make you think. But if you let it, it'll probably make you smile. Unless you're my wife. And she liked XXX, so i don't really care what she thinks.

Laterz.

Instructions

SA and I cleaned out and organized our filing cabinet yesterday. She has to help me with this stuff because, given my druthers, I keep EVERYTHING. Among all the flotsam and jetsam, we found a number of product manuals, just in case you can't remember how to use something you've owned for 5 years. Being as I was kind of looking over her shoulder, I had a difficult time figuring out what some of the manuals were actually for, and why I had kept them. Chief among those questions was, apparently, an instruction manual for a can-opener.

Though it turned out that I had misread the cover, all I could think was, "Good grief. Even I must think I'm an idiot."

Congrats to me!

Thanks to everybody who's tuned in this month to the blog. I've officially had my most hits ever this month.

Sorry...

Hey gang. Sorry about the week with no entries. Life's busy and the blog just kind of faded into the background.

Life has mainly been focused on surviving Thanksgiving. We went down to Sam's Aunt Rachel and Uncle Jeff's house for dinner in G.R. on Thursday. Then we attended S.A.'s cousin Amy's wedding on Friday in Port Huron. Then SA and I went shopping in Detroit and Birch Run on Saturday.

Sam and I just vegged on Sunday.


Dinner was, as always, enjoyable. Jeff got a new Wii as an early Christmas present and we spent a good amount of time trying out all the different games on Thursday evening.

The wedding was nice. (Also, SHORT - which definitely lends itself to a good wedding ceremony, as far as I'm concerned.) A half-dozen of us sat in a corner chatting (and imbibing copious quantities of beer) for most of the evening before Jeff (H.), Jeff (or Joe, if you prefer), Dave, Holly, Amy's friend Amanda, and I went to the hotel bar to watch a one-man-80's-band perform (HORRIBLE). Then Amanda, the Jeff's, and I took off to Jack's Tavern until closing time, playing table-top shuffleboard and the like. I can't remember the last time I closed down a bar. Probably college. Anyway, good times.

Sam's ear infection is much better, but his first 2 teeth are coming in, so he's a bit pissy right now.

And I think that's about it. Thank God. I can't imagine anybody really cares about any of this, but I figured I'd better write something or I'd lose my loyal readership. :)

I promise next entry will be more interesting. Probably.

Laterz

Life is Good

I can think of nothing nicer than rocking my 7-month-old son (who's recovering from yet another ear infection) to sleep.

Those of you who don't have children, you cannot even fathom what you're missing.

God, I'm lucky to be home to do this stuff. Sunday rocks.

Satisfying Lunch Breaks...

Every day, I try to leave my office for the better part of an hour in order to regain a small piece of my sanity. Today, I met SA and Sam at the pediatrician's office (he has ANOTHER ear infection) so I could take Sam back to daycare while SA went to her Dr's appointment across town.
When we got to daycare, the ladies were just starting to feed all Sam's pals so it was a little bit lively in there and many very short people were vying for whatever attention they could get. I stayed for 20 minutes or so to help out. Okay, who am I kidding? I stayed because playing with babies (Mine, yours, anybody's...) makes me happy.
So Thank You to Ms. Cortney, Ms. Sherrie, and Ms. Jan for letting me stick around. I definitely felt much better when I left than I did when I got there.
Also, when I got back to my office, the receptionist has somehow acquired real, honest-to-God, 4-inch-high-bang-creation mall hair. It was great. I asked her if she'd like me to run out for scrunchies or jelly shoes to complete her ensemble.
I figure I don't need to regain sanity anymore because my co-workers are obviously joining me in my insanity.

LIfe notes

My son (the Little Red Crustacean, if you read S.A's blog,) is a very unique little guy. Even though WebMD says it's highly unlikely, he has managed to contract strep throat. Since you're not suppose to get Strep until you're at least 3, I'm choosing to take this as further evidence that he's very advanced, rather than yet another indication that he's awfully sickness-prone.

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Sometimes I HATE my job. I just spent 15 minutes figuring out, via the phone, that one of my co-workers printer wouldn't work because it wasn't plugged in correctly. Even though we theoretically checked it 3 times. How do these people remember to breathe.

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Though most of us are not financial geniuses, if someone were to mention a "credit-debit" to you, would you not think they were a moron? Or at least have no f-ing clue what they were talking about? What about a "Britannical Garden"? I assume that must be where they grow the encyclopedia...

BitTorrent

I love BitTorrent. I just thought I should mention that. I'm going to assume that, if you're reading my blog, you're already familiar with BitTorrent. For anybody who doesn't already know, it's a peer-to-peer file sharing program that allows you to download stuff from many different people at once. It basically makes sharing huge files much more feasible than it would otherwise be. For instance, you can download pretty much any episode of your favorite TV show if you missed it last week. (I know this because I had to download Studio 60 a few weeks ago. Slick.)

I know that many of you techies out there are yelling "It promotes Piracy!" and you're right, however, sometimes it's the only way to accomplish a goal.

Case-in-point- I had a client contact me asking if my company could teach her to use Adobe PageMaker 7.0. I have an instructor who's fluent in PageMaker, so he'd be able to teach her. The problem is that we don't have PageMaker in my classroom anymore and you can't buy it anymore, because Adobe quit producing it a couple years ago. Which is where BitTorrent comes in.

Using Azureus, (my BitTorrent client of choice) I was able to download someone else copy of PageMaker in a little less than an hour and use it to teach this person how to use it. And then I can throw it out we're done, because I don't need a copy of PageMaker.

Also, when it asked me to register the program when I installed it, I put in all my boss's contact information, so if Adobe wants to sue somebody for pirating their program, they'll know who to look at.

Just takin' a survey...

2 things-

1. Remember that next Tuesday is voting day. For those of you who are too lazy to wait in a big 'ol line in order to vote, go get an absentee ballot, pronto. I went over at lunch (telling the nice ladies there that I'd be out of town on Tuesday) and they not only gave me my absentee ballot, but they let me fill it out right then so I have already voted in next Tuesday's elections. So now you have even fewer excuses to not vote. Go do it. NOW.

2. One of my favorite parts of writing this blog is tracking who's reading it. My tracker lets me see a quite a bit of information about my readers, but it does not give me names. I'm able to figure out who most folks are by their location. I've thought about putting in a guest book, but it seems kind of cheesy and I only start to pay attention when somebody's been in a few times. I have one question.

Who is reading my blog in Carson City, Nevada? I know that you connect to the web via the Official State of Nevada Web Site. I just looked at the site and there's a picture of Governor Kenny C. Guinn and this man is obviously a Republican, so now I'm concerned. Am I on some sort of watch list just becuase I'm pretty sure our moron-in-chief has a difficult time remembering how to tie his shoes? I have to know! So leave a comment. Please. I HATE not knowing stuff...

Deep thoughts

Andrew Andrew says in his "about me" section on his blog that he's "trying to find my path through life." It occurs to me that I don't really want a path through life as much a a path in it. Preferably one that doubles back on itself.
I don't like to think that I'm moving through life. The idea that I'm (in all probability) more than a quarter of the way through it is depressing. I'm in no hurry to be done. I still don't know what the f*** I'm doing.

Working from home.

Yesterday, I decided to leave work at 9:30am because I wasn't feeling well. I figured it was okay because I only had a couple of telephone trainings to conduct and I figured I could do them from home as well as I could from the office. In other words, I figured I'd spend an hour or 2 on the phone and then relax all afternoon.

Oh, the best laid plans of Mice and.... whatever.

I was training from 10am to 4pm and then did a bit more in the evening (though not much, because my trainee thought I sounded too sick, so she told me to go to bed. Sarah laughed quite hard about that.)

So much for my nice relaxing day.

Today's been better, however. I scheduled a few trainings, but the morning was a quickie and I passed off my afternoon job to another trainer, which has given me enough time to shuffle a few papers around on my desk and read the Freep online.

I also took S.A. out to lunch because I was concerned that she was going to kill everyone at her office if I didn't. And to repay me, she has referred to me in her blog today as her manservant. It's good to know where you stand, I guess.

Laterz

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Sorry, Gang.

I just wanted to let y'all know that I am not, in fact, dead.

I know I've been shitty about updating this thing but life has been slightly insane lately.

A brief rundown of reasons for not writing-

1. I've been promoted to Director of my division at work. This may not seem like a hardship, but it's been rough. I was hired as a part-time tech trainer about 6 months ago. I was then promoted to office manager, but they didn't hire a new tech trainer so I was doing 2 jobs. Now I've been promoted to Director but we still haven't hired anyone new so I'm now doing 3 jobs and I'm going rapidly insane.

2. We're pregnant and we just found out it's a boy. Again, this is in no way a hardship, but it's taking a great deal of my mental faculties to deal with all the associated stuff on a day-to-day basis.

3. I'm a lazy bastard.

Anyway, I PROMISE I'll try to do better from now on. And on that note...

I HATE WINTER!!!!!!!

I cannot state this strongly enough. I know, you're saying, "Why the **** do you live in Michigan, then, dumbass???"

But I agreed to move back to MI (where I grew up) from Miami (where I went to college) when I got engaged. S.A. is also from Michigan and she stated, quite emphatically, that she was NOT going to live and have children in Miami. So we moved. However, days like the past couple
give me serious doubts about the wisdom of that decision.

I assume that, if you're a regular reader of S.A.'s blog, you've read a nice romantic view of the beauty of Northern Michigan under a layer of new-fallen snow. (I assume, because I haven't had time to read her blog lately.) I, on the other hand, will give you a more realistic view of things.

S.A. and I went to leave for work yesterday morning and found that, due to the 15" of snow we'd received overnight, there was absolutely no way we were going to be able to get our cars out of the driveway. I called my uncle, who lives a couple blocks away, and asked him if he could drive S.A. to work so she wouldn't be too late. He happily did so. And I went about trying to shove my driveway so I could leave.

All my life, I assumed that a paved driveway would be easier to keep clean during the winter. This is, of course, because I grew up with a long gravel driveway. The grass is always greener and all that jazz. I may have been correct. However, I did not take into account, when we moved into our house, that a paved driveway that goes dramatically uphill as it leads to the road is swiftly converted to an ice rink, from which no 2-wheel-drive car can escape, unless you are extremely diligent about plowing and salting. I'm not diligent.

More to the point, I didn't own a snow blower and the driveway is rather long, so shoveling over a foot of snow from it before work in the morning is a difficult proposition. However, as there did not seem to be any other option, I went to it.

I shoveled for about 20 minutes before I heard the sound of a tractor starting in my neighbor’s barn. I turned around and out he came, riding his John Deere. He buzzed up and down the driveway (Okay, maybe rumbled is a better term.) and signaled to me that the driveway was clear and I could now leave.

In reality, the only CLEAR part of the driveway was the layer of ice covering the pavement. I barely touch the gas and my wheels began to spin. Needless to say, I was still going nowhere. Obviously feeling pity for me, he backed his tractor up to my rear bumper, pushing the rear blade right up against my car are proceeded to push me up my driveway. Had I any pride at all, it might have been somewhat embarrassing.

By the afternoon, I had arranged to purchase a new snow blower. Unfortunately, snow blowers do not fit in the trunk of a '98 Nissan Sentra, so I also had to find someone with a vehicle to help me bring my new beast home. Since I was having significant difficulty finding anyone available before 5pm, when the store closed, I decided to attempt to use my uncle's 2-wheel-drive pickup. All of you who have tried to drive a 2-wheel-drive up a steep, extremely icy hill say it with me now.

Bloody moron.

I succeeded in fishtailing the truck ridiculously close to the front door of my house and only stopped when I realized that 6 more inches and I going to be parked in our entryway. I then called my dad and begged him to stop what he was doing and help me pick up my snow blower and move the truck back where it belonged. Thankfully, he complied.

I finished blowing the driveway at about 8pm. But not until I'd gotten another of our cars stuck and un-stuck.

I HATE winter.

Laterz

FUMMMMMBBBBBLLLLLE!!!!!

It turns out there's a reason that regulation NFL footballs aren't grown in gardens.

Our friend Tim came over to play poker a few months ago. He brought us a melon. We didn't really know what kind of melon it was and Tim didn't say, but we gratefully accepted it, because Tim's our only friend who does those things and we try to set a good example for the rest of the kids who play poker with us.

The melon, however, was very dark green with orange spots on it. S.A. and I guessed it was probably something similar to a cantaloupe or a muskmelon, must it really was just a guess. Because neither of us likes any kind of melon except for watermelon, we decided we would hold on to it until we had a chance to give it to my mom, who loves melon of every sort.

So it sat on our counter for a couple months.

Somewhat amazingly, it didn't start to visibly rot in all that time. However, this weekend, when I woke up at 4:30am on Sunday with an urge to do some major house-cleaning (It's a sickness that runs in my family. Don't ask.), I decided that I would run it out to the field behind our house and drop it out there. I figured some hungry deer might eat it.

Now, for those of you who don't know me well, I'm a sort of high-energy guy. I don't normally walk places, and when I have work to do, I try to turn it into some sort of game or contest with myself in order to make the time pass more quickly and make the task more enjoyable.

Since I also had a spaghetti squash that needed to be tossed, I carried both items onto my back porch, wearing my slippers and pjs. It's about 50 yards from my back porch to the beginning of the field/swamp that's out behind the house. Tossing the squash up in the air and catching it, I decided that I could easily toss it from the porch into the field, thereby creating a fun game for myself (How far can I throw a squash?) and also removing the necessity to actually go out into by back yard in the 50mph+ wind gusts that wracked Northern Michigan on Sunday. However, having a very good knowledge of sports medicine and physiology, I knew that throwing it overhand without warming up first would probably result in some sort of injury and may even necessitate of the removal of an arm. (I'm REALLY out of shape.) Therefore, I threw it discus-style.

The throw was a success, landing 10 yards or so into the long grass, but I realized that, considering how much heavier the melon was, I might very well be unsuccessful in throwing it all the way out there. I also have some experience with what happens with melons dropped from a considerable height, so I knew I really didn't want this thing exploding all over my back yard. I've been trying to clean the yard up for winter and I knew that an exploding melon can create quite a mess.

So I decided I was gonna have to carry it out there.

My drive for fun still soundly in place, I decided to tuck the melon under my arm, running-back-style, and dodge imaginary defenders on my way through the back yard.

The first couple defenders missed me as I executed a perfect spin move around a wooden bench. I sped by another defender running straight down the field and then realized I had only one defender left to beat. With a huge gust of wind blowing me to the left, I went left, planted my slippered foot, and threw my shoulders back to the right. My upper body shot to the right...

And my feet flew out of my slippers and went left.

I went down hard, protecting the melon with both arms in front of me, as any good halfback would. It turns out there's a good reason that they don't run football practice with melons.

Considering that me primary for carrying the melon through the yard in the first place was to avoid a mess, I really had to consider my plan a failure. Landing on what turns out to be a very nice watermelon (D'oh!) resulted in my having watermelon goop all over my pj pants and t-shirt as well as in my mouth, ears, and hair. It also led to my being concerned that I may have cracked a rib on the doggone melon, as it hurt quite a bit to take a breath.

It turns out that I'm fine. No harm done. Well, excluding the melon.

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1 other short note.

S.A. and I were chatting about being pregnant last night. I make a comment about "by boys" getting the job done.

She replied that it would have been nice if they'd gotten it done a bit more quickly, so we hadn't stressed for YEARS.

I replied that she should have expected that. There are MY sperm, after all, and I never do anything the first few times she asks me.

She should have given them a damn list.

I'm guessing she could have thought of a good place to put it.

Laterz.

Blog suggestion

I'm sitting her killing time and so I have just looked at technorati.com for ideas about other folks blogs that I might enjoy reading. Being a gigantic geek, I searcedh for Star Wars themed blogs. They gave me TONS of options when I used Vader and Chewbacca as search terms. Wonder of wonders, I actually found a good, funny, well-written blog. So, since I personally find that decent blogs are almost impossible to come by, here's a plug for it. Check it out.

Helldorado

How can you tell if a fish is drooling?

I'm sick.

I have a cold. And, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I don't often get sick, and therefore am not very good at it. I'm honestly a great big weenie. I moan and whine and am generally miserable. Also, I don't think very well. I assume that this is due to snot building up in the synapses in my brain.

Last night I walked to the dresser to grab my pill bottle and take take my night-time meds. Due to my compromised mental state, I accidentally picked up the fish food and, without noticing, unscrewed the cap and poured it into my hand, just as I would a pill. Thankfully, before I threw a handful of "mega marine" into my mouth, I realized what i had and carefully put it back into the cannister.

I related this story to S.A., who was standing nearby, as a humorous display of my sickness. She stated that it'd nbo big deal as it was just ocean veggies.

I replied that though it might not be life-threatening, it would be very disgusting, as it's made of ground up fish.

She was incredulous. "It is??"

I proceeded to read off the ingredients. Ground Salmon, halibut, sardines, etc.

She looked at me with an extremely perplexed look on her face.

"How come they don't get 'Mad Fish Disease'?" she asked.

Her delivery was deadpan enough that I thought she was serious. I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants.

I love my wife.

Laterz.

Ho Hum...

Random thoughts that will undoubtedly interest no-one but myself.

1. "My" secretary has 1 eye. Actually, she has 2 eyes, but only one works. They're removing the other one the day before Thanksgiving. For some reason, I can't help but feel like my life has been leading up to this.

2. I have a regular reader in California. I mean, I have folks check in from all over the country, but most of them don't show up very often. My regular readers are generally my friends in real life who have spread out all over the country. They read me because, well, they have to. Whoever reads this blog in California actually seems to care because his/her IP shows up quite often. It's a little strange.

3. While I was in college, I worked for 2 professional athletic teams. I worked in the Sports Information office at the college for 4 years. I coached 2 sports at 4 schools.

Since I graduated, more than 5 years ago, with a degree in Sport Management, my only sports employment was 1 season of JV softball at a local high school. However, in those 5 years I've worked as a video store manager, a secretary, and a computer instructor.

So that's $80,000+ well-spent tuition dollars.

4. I belong to a golf league during the summer and a bowling league the rest of the year.

I am (at least at times) a pretty decent golfer. Additionally, I don't pay for my league membership because I do some work for the golf course.

I'm a truly shitty bowler. And I pay $13 a week to bowl. That comes out to over $400 for the season.

I do not enjoy my golf league.

I LOVE my bowling league.

I don't get it, either.

We are Turtles! Hear us roar!

I recently wrote about my bowling team. We are know far and wide as not being... well... not good. Generally speaking, we suck. However, I also said that we were improving.

I was right.

Last night the Tropic Cove Albino Turtles (so named in honor of a $250 turtle Kevin purchased this weekend at a trade show in Chicago,) won. Handily. We won all seven points. We should be the T.C. Pin Piranhas. My dad, who in this case was obviously chanelling his alter-ego Tomas, was on fire. He rolled a 490 series and basically carried us to a resounding victory.

The only down point to the evening came on what should have been a highlight for me. Starting in high school, the vast majority of the games I've bowled have been with my buddy Nate. We always made sure, however, to make sure that we had at least a couple of gals with us when we bowled. The reason for this is that we've had a long-standing rule that if either of us ever managed to roll a "turkey" (3 strikes in a row) the ladies would "flash" us. I think it almost goes without saying that the gals were never in any real danger. Over the past 10 years, both he and I had 2 consecutive strikes many, many times. However, given the pressure that we always heaped on each other when we got to that point, neither of us has ever been even close to that elusive third consective strike. It got to the point where some of our more regular bowling companions would torment us with comments about the high quality of their undergarments, because they knew it was the only way we were ever going to know anything about them.

Last night I rolled a 97 in the first game and a 120 in the second game. Both below my average, but not as far below as I'd like. The last game I spared the 9th frame and had a 122 going into the 10th. I proceeded to throw a strike. With my 2nd ball of the 10th frame, I threw another strike. Joking the whole time with my opponents, I went back to the line for my 3rd ball and, wonder of wonders, threw another strike. Even our opponents were excited and all gave my high-fives as a 10th frame turkey is rare. Especially in our league. So I finished with a 162, which is WAY above my average.

Upon returning to my team's table, I realized that somebody was supposed to flash me. I looked around but all the people around me were middle-aged men. Man boobies were NOT what I was looking for.

Aargh.

So I've been cheated. But at least we won. And now I figure somebody owes me a flash.

I hope to God my mother-in-law doesn't read this and agree with me.

Laterz

Family Photos

S.A. recently pointed out to me that I might want to put pics of the fam on my blog, since I write about them enough. So here are a few.

Princess Roxie, the day she returned home from the Hospital, sans leg. And another pic from a couple days ago. Notice she's adjusted very well to the messing leg, but she'll only allow herself to be photographed from her "good side".
This is Velma. She looks perpetually confused and has a touch of what we lovingly refer to as "runt brain", meaning that all her wires are carrying current, but some of them are definitely soldered to the wrong spot on the motherboard.
This is Elphie. She's the new baby and the only one who's not named from the musical "Chicago". (Her full name is Elphaba, from "Wicked".)

Can I go home yet?

I'm now officially at the time-killing stage of my day. I've done my 2 trainings and earned my paycheck and now I'm just killing time so I don't leave so early as to look bad. So I'm browsing other blogs and checking out the user profiles of the folks who write them.

A few notes.

There's another guy in Petoskey with a blog devoted completely to juggling.

I've read more than one profile where the author lists "weight-training" or "lifting weights" as a hobby. Not surprisingly, none of these bloggers could spell worth a damn.

Females are much more likely to write about their daily lives. Guys are more likely to rant. I don't stay long on a rant-infested blog. I don't watch Survivor, Big Brother, or any of the other popular "reality" shows. Reading blogs is my own personal form of voyeurism. I enjoy getting to feel like I know the blogger a little bit. Therefore, the only blog I read that's written by a guy is actually written by the best man from my wedding.

If you don't have a decent sense of humor, don't blog. I mean, I know there are all types of blogs and the original intent of blogging was to impart and share information, not to entertain, but still, there's nothing worse than a really DRY blog.

Alright, that's all I've got for now. I'm outta here.

Laterz.