Time For A New Post

The Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL)

I read this amusing article (see below) and felt compelled to link to their website. I found that you can still buy T-shirts but the rest of the site defaults to this error message:

Typo Eradication Advancement League

Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come
~~~
Note the lack of period completing the sentence, sarcasm high-5. Anyhow, these guys have been slapped with a fine for their well-intended vandalism so I assume if they sell some shirts that will help cover their dues.

I don't want to see all misspellings and grammar no-nos corrected because our language has evolved and there is cultural relevance to some of these mistakes. However, if the signage is in the public eye and used to inform and educate I feel it should be accurate. We don't want to live in a world of stupid do we?

Article as posted on MSNBC --- TEAL

Meth-O-Lantern

The other day whilst I was driving through a part of town that seems to be kind of thick with meth users I had a rare stroke of genius.

I was thinking about the people that have been on meth long enough to start losing teeth due in part to poor hygiene, malnutrition, and direct contact with corrosive toxins.

With Halloween - my favorite holiday - coming up, I drew a connection between our beloved carved pumpkins and our despised pumpkin-headed tweakers. Hence "Meth-O-Lantern" was born.

I figured I better get it posted on the web because I've used the term a few times with a few different people and it seems to be a hit. You heard it here first ladies and germs.

Have a great day!

Getting ready for the babysaurus

It's a boy! Ruary Dale is going to be the newest member of our family coming early November. Kel has been doing an awesome job getting the babyroom ready. I have been very busy mentally preparing myself for the next 18 or so years.

Seriously though my big task this summer is making sure the shop gets built so we can get our extra stuff out of the house and get our things out of storage. The shop is coming along nicely and I expect them to be done with it a few weeks into August.

Where the F#$K is summer?!

It's been raining a lot, aaaaaaaaa lot. I donned my rain gear the other day and went golfing in a veritable monsoon. I shot bad and my hands were cold. I don't know if I'll ever get used to that but I still love the sport.

We've had some tough times around here lately but things are looking up. Kel is feeling better and we've got the spot cleared for the shop to go up. This is going to be a good summer.

Peace out --->

Golfing weather?!

Yes indeed, it's that time of the year when all my winter hobbies start to get in the way of my favorite summer hobby, golf. I wish I didn't suck so bad. Every time I hit a great shot I think to myself, "Maybe I could make a living doing this." Then inevitably I hit my next shot and predictably my dreams melt into a smoldering pile of shit.

So here's a bit of the list:

Baby upcoming
Bowling ending
Men's golf club started
Men's golf team upcoming
Planning cruise
OBEF auction retreat upcoming
Building the shop
Lots of firewood to cut
and so much more...

I friggin hate clowns-

Playing hookey! No not hockey.

I'm really looking forward to Age of Conan (a game) that is coming out on May 20th. Check these screenshots from their site:





I'm taking a day off work because I can. I figured since I never call in sick (going on a year and a half) the least I can do is schedule some time off here and there. I am doing some chores around the house and this afternoon I will be working at the non-profit group I am a part of. We are getting ready for this year's auction that raises money for the school district. I'll write more about the group later.

Have a great weekend!

2008

Happy New Year from us to all our friends and family.

It lives!!

Ewwwww. 9 days after the doctors did their deed I am limping around with less pain in my knee than I had before the surgery. Good times.

Christmas rocked. I had a blast in Lincoln City with the wife and fam shopping at the outlets and gambilino at the casino. It was over too quickly but I am glad to be sleeping in mine own bedn again.

Happy new year all!!!

Here we go knee surgerino!!

Thursday at 1:45pm is check-in time for my arthroscopic knee surgery. I have a tear in my medial meniscus and a ganglion syst in my knee! I'm excited because I've never had surgery before. They are going to put me in twilight sleep and go in and shave off the torn cartilage. It should be over pretty quickly and I should get some pain management tools. After a couple of days I will really have to start working the knee out. I'm hoping that I will be a super-human/robot/bionic/cyborgenic/beast-monster/hero when it's all over. I want to free-run (gets cool at about 2 minutes in) and jump and fly and use my knees to lift extremely heavy objects with. I will talk to you all when I can write again, wish me luck!

Apocalyptico

HOLY SHIT!!!

I am duly impressed. I knew this part of the state was prone to moody and severe weather from time to time. I have seen torrential downpour followed by golden delicious sunshine. I sweated out some nearly 100 degree days and we have had several inches of snowfall on our front lawn since we've lived here. But WOW, this last wind storm was fantastic.

I was out on-call Sunday morning when the wind started picking up. With a wary eye to the towering trees I ventured out of my work van to a customer's front porch. I spent about 10 minutes inside troubleshooting and isolated the trouble. When I headed back outside the wind was blowing so hard I had to hold my hat on my head and it was a challenge to open the door on my van. That was the little storm...

Sunday night the shnickety hit the fizzan. We had some power outages during the day and we had generators running the remote sites to keep people's phones working. I was supposed to go out and fuel up generators Sunday night but I was really reluctant to do it. My boss and I were going to go together but I think he smelled the fear on me and let me off the hook (forgive the telco humor). He went out and met one of our other guys. I was happy to head home and hang with wifey.

We have been doing storm cleanup for 3 days now. I fixed 911 on Tuesday when it was brought to my attention that it was not working properly. Due to a fiber cut in Qwest's network we lost our long distance capabilites and internet access. We have internet back as of this afternoon but I think Qwest has an SS7 (a channel dedicated to carrying long distance call routing information) problem and our long distance is still not working. I spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out if we could reroute our long distance traffic over our microwave shot to Raymond... it pretty much can't be done. Hopefully tomorrow.

I wasn't even able to return the calls from my doctor's office but they were able to contact me today. It looks like my knee surgery will be within the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Thaksn fro reidang my crapppola!!

-R

Turkey Week

My last post was boring so I am hurrying to bury it with something new. Let's see, I had my doctor appt. at 8:30am on Monday. The physician's asst. was cool. He had me walk and squat and bend my knee. He moved my kneecap around and it made popping noises. He actually checked both my knees. Then doctor dickhead comes waltzing in. I don't know if my problem is just so minor that he felt like I shouldn't be bothering him with it or what but he was really aloof and only spent about 3 minutes in the room with me asking a few questions. I guess when you're a specialist you can be an asshole.

Anyways he ordered an MRI for me then he took off. I got to the nurses station and was looking around for him thinking he would give me some instructions about how I should treat my knee. I actually had to send a nurse to ask him for me and she came back to tell me all the doc said was "avoid squatting". So no more crapping in the woods for me for awhile.

Happily they were able to get me in for my MRI Monday night at 8:45pm so I didn't have to drive back into the city. The MRI took about 25 minutes and the only thing I saw all day regarding what was possibly wrong with my knee was the paperwork the doctor's office sent over that send 'Torn Lateral Meniscus'. So I guess we'll find out if that's the case. I prolly won't hear from the doc-tator until after Turkey day.

I did manage to spend a lot of money whilst in the city though. Gotta love REI... and Tonkin Toyota. This is a stock photo and I'll post some of my own soon but here's what my new truck looks like:



Oh yeah, everyone have an excellent holiday!!

The wind and the rain and the ice and the snow...

Novemberino is here. I will be heading to Portland this weekend. I have a doctor's appt. Monday to get my f'd up knee checked out. I'm going to an excellent Ortho and sport's rehab specialist. We shall see what comes of it. I sat out of bowling league last week because I didn't want to aggravate my injury. It sucked though because I ended up losing all 3 games. So last night I went ahead and bowled. A few beers helped numb the pain and I ended up winning 2 out of 3, 189-134-184. Guess which games I won, lol.

Talk to you after the knee doc! This entire video makes my knees ache... even when the sales guy is talking about his product.

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The Festival of Samhain

Ahh the dark night approaches. I think one of my favorite things about Halloween is what is means to different people. Some people consider it a super pagan holiday and totally refuse to even recognize it. I like how all the churches have a "Harvest Festival" party, as if calling a horse a marshmallow makes it not a horse anymore. Then there are other people who go decoration crazy and have pumpkins, skeletons, spiders and witchy stuff hanging everywhere. Some people, especially little punks, use it as an excuse to do mischief.
I like to use the time to get in touch with the mystical and horrible types of inexplicable evil, occult and supernatural in the world. This year I will be attempting to conjure a demon (or poltergeist depending on your school of learning) and Wifey and I will be watching for ghosts and monsters by the light of the moon in the front yard.

May All Hallow's Eve see you well...

The results are...

I finally got an eye exam and my prescription hasn't changed since last year which is good. So I'm going to get fitted for contact lenses Monday and I'm really excited. I don't have anything against glasses but it gets irritating having to switch back and forth between glasses and sunglasses. The weather changes every 20 seconds down here so it happens a lot.

Next, el dentisto. I tried a local dentist and I liked him. I have had a tooth bothering me and it turns out it's broken and I get to have a root canal. Yippee! I have had these before and I was going to go back to my old dentist but I figured what better way to try out a new dentist than to get a root canal!

Last is the thing that hasn't happened yet, I need to get my frigging knee checked out. I really f'd it up, I think I over-golfed or something. I almost bought a cane the other day... it was a really cool, clear plastic cane with a formed grip. I felt like I was one pair of goldfish filled, high-heeled clogs shy of pimpitude when I was trying it out at the pharmacy. But I digress, the knee problem is either a torn meniscus or a bad MCL strain. If there were any doctors around here I wasn't afraid of I would have seen someone much sooner. Off to Longview I go. Wish me luck.

Time for a tune-up

So we have been living down here for more than a year now and I haven't been to the doctor, dentist, or eye doctor. I tried to make an eyeball appointment last week but work got in the way. I figured the only way to get this stuff done was to take a day off of work and do it all. Next Tuesday at 8am I have a dental checkup and cleaning. Then at 9:45 I have my eye exam. I'm going to learn about contact lenses. Finally I was just about to schedule an appt. to get my knee checked out and maybe get a physical but I decided to go get a massage instead.

Then murphy's law struck. I found out I have an important job to do next Tuesday morning. The last time I did a job like this it took all day long. FFFFfffffFf!!

I guess I will have to reschedule everything...:::sigh:::

Tough day

It has been a rough couple of days as some of you know. My wife's 83 year-old grandma is not doing well, mentally. She is physically healthy other than being dehydrated and malnourished from refusing to eat or drink anything. I called an ambulance out to her house last night because we felt she needed to be checked out. They ended up taking her to the hospital after much indecision by the family members that were taking care of her. Grandma wouldn't allow the hospital to give her any fluids or do anything to get her better.

I have to take a step back here and remember that I am only the spouse of a grandchild of this woman and the decisions regarding what to do with her do not lay with me. I am just going to do my best to support my wife and her folks.

-out

What is new?

So the auction is over and it was a raging success. We raised over $76,000 for the foundation! Everybody looked great, check out Secret Squirrel and yours truly on Wife-O-Dactyl's blog, lookin' pretty damn good if I do say so myself.

I am finally getting the hang of being the bowling league secretary/treasurer. The software is great to use once I figured it out.

I am starting to get back into cigars again. Something that I use to enjoy quite a bit and now they are even better with a couple fingers of single malt Scotch.

It looks like it is going to be harder to get out golfing now that the fall is here. Nice days are fewer and further apart. But that's what bowling is for! See you in a few years.

Posting isn't so hard...

OK, it's been awhile and I know it.

I follow several other blogs like my geek-bro BC his dame Catgirl (my pseudonym for her), the one and only Celerina, and of course WifeOdactyl. These other blogs get updated at random times so I use them as a gauge to see if I'm falling behind in my duties as a blogger. It appears there is no standard interval for blog-posting.

Thank the gods.

Recent info on me is: OBEF auction is coming up on September 22nd. Lots of fun and lots of work. Bowling league started again and I am Secretary/Treasurer. I need to open a league checking account because I just paid the bowling alley the other night with my personal credit card. It came to $315 or so to pay for 37 bowler's games. Work is extremely busy right now because we are short one guy. If anyone knows anyone who knows telecom stuff send them my way and I will detail the job to them. Also trying to finish painting the trim on the house.

My B-day is coming up and damn-almighty if I don't continue to get older. One of the things I want for my B-day is a Rubik's Cube. I want to impress people with my mad Rubik's skills.

Ok that's it; falling asleep at the wheel. I leave you with this and I will see you soon.

Random Task

Summer is rocketing by and soon I will have my first whole year in at my job. I love my wife and my dogs and I think life is pretty damn good. Talk to you all sooner than later.

You can't tell me this is not cool...