half a cat

Ahh… so I’ve been MIA for a few days from the whole blogisphere. I’ve really been getting good work done at CFS, so been directing the creative and expansive juices in that direction. Given that…time for a few shorties:

• Black Eyed Peas - sexy - sultry -georgeous lead singer. Mmmm, tasty — her, Gwen Steffani and a ..well let’s call it a good time had by all. Oh yeah, their music is pretty darn good too, been jamming all morning. How is it that I am actually listening to main stream pop culture music? Am I losing my discretion ?
• Great American Hillclimb. Good times, I will have to explain the fun after this weekend, as I’m just not going to do the stories of yesteryear any justice. So far it has been a bit of cat herding to get all the friends on the same page, but I think we’ve got the plans lined out. Rough plan is to get there at 6.30am to setup the double truck & canopy venue, bust out the steak & eggs on the grill, start drinking (DUH!) and get things situated before they start launching. Loooots of drinking. Lots.
• England - only two weeks until the sister and the niece fly out — I’m so happy for you!
• Back, back, back at the ORNL. I’ll be in TN again Aug 1-6, good times. Things.move.fast. This is supposedly the second-to-last trip I will make there under the current contract, but I can’t see how the contract would end now — to many things to be done. The good news is that after 4 more trips, I will qualify for Elite status on NWA — free first class upgrades and 150% miles. Oh yeah.
• Coding is fun - I’ve gotten to do some again this week at work, turns out I’m still good at it. Thankfully I’m not a completely useless “suit” yet.
• New motorcycle helmet. Modular, super comfortable and full face protection. I can’t wait to ride on the highway with this thing, I won’t have a super sore neck or bugs implanted in my face after riding at 100mph! I know, what a wuss, but have you ever hit a dragonfly at 100? How about a cicada? Didn’t think so! Them buggers hurt.

Well I’m getting bored now, so I’m going back to work so I can get to the gym and head out for a lovely dinner date, nothing like starting off the weekend the RightWay(tm).

Sometimes the news makes me laugh — today is one of those days. Some are not quite funny-haha, but are good news items nonetheless.

• Boy Scout Leaders Die. I know — death isn’t in the cutural norms of funny, but damnit I’m going to laugh anyways. Seriously though - hitting a power line with a tent? HA! I bet they won’t get the postmortem Jamboree badges. Better yet, this was at their national convention, so apparently these are folks deserving of some sort of elevated Boy Scout status. Still, got me giggling.

• Cadillac pedel bike. I’m almost at a loss on this one other than the standard WTF. I don’t see a place to put the DVD player or monitor yet, but I bet it would just skip if you took it off some sweet jumps. Hrm - where are the pimped 22″ chrome wheels (biotch)? Seriously — this is borderline retarded, only surpassed by the last paragraph in that story. Hemp: can the creators of this qualify for the burn in hell list ?

• World is just asleep. Apparently 9/11 was just another annoying neighbor with a loud stereo in the night. Sad, really. I’m not really arguing that he is wrong either - for some reason I have intrinsic respect for Blair, especially compared to other world leaders coughBushcough. BTW - England, my thoughts still go out to you on this one. Quite scary considering I know too many people who work or travel to London, not to mention family who is soon to live near there in 3 weeks. This attack solidified my gut ties to these things — I was just out of Barcelona for the Madrid bombing, living with two NY guys and in Philadelphia for 9/11. Scary, just scary.

• Up, up, and away. Wow, nice job NASA. Now just get the thing back. I’m hoping there are more and more good things for y’all in store, the romantic in me loves the idea of exploring space — that and I’d love to find that mystical but elusive race of intelligent beings. Hopefully they will let us in the party.

• I see Lance’s underpants. Nice job sonny, now get back to the really important things in life — like scrogging Sheryl Crow. Crass, yes! A good idea, yes! Not to detract, 7 TdF victories will probably be a record that will hold for a very long time.

• What Documents?. Washington politics suck. Seriously — what is the f’ing deal with just being open and honest!? Ass-masters. I really wish I could even want to think about politics again, but it is just not about making laws anymore. No one is happy unless they are forcing their narrow moral and religious views down our throats through some new law. Hey — I know, how about we FIX SOMETHING instead of being a bunch of zealots?

• Damnit, not true. Sigh, why can’t we get legitimate bad photos of pseudo attractive movie stars with no clothes on ? Am I really asking for all that much ?

• Direct link to less sex?. Another study along the lines of ‘if you give women alcohol, they have lowered inhibitions’. No shit NIH. Just another reason why giving old guys Viagra is a bad idea!

Just dropping this in because I’m having a good Monday at work, will qualify why later:

Update: Ok, now for why I wanted that shirt yesterday. This last weekend was a complete lazy-fest.

Saturday I woke up lateish, did the lawn mowing and a bit of yard cleanup. I then had to think about what to do for the rest of the day — thankfully Kris helped me out and I then spent the rest of the day on or near the Harley. I picked up sister Melanie for a house-sitting run to the west end, then off to McKenzie River Pizza for a few brews and lunch. Yummy says I. We stopped by Mom’s shop to chit-chat a bit, then dropped Mel off and headed to Kris’. A few more brews outside wandering around the place attempting to avoid She-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but Kris wanted to ride the bike so I headed for the sofa and the 64″ DLP. I zonked out for an hour or so while he had his fun, we both win! That night was an adoption celebration shindig at the Morse’s, followed by a good drinking binge on the patio at Tiny’s Tavern. Jager, DuckFarts, and a liberal application of beer did a Nic good. DD: Thanks!

Sunday - of course, I was well hung. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon snoozing on the sofa and chugging fluids. NAPCAR provided the 20min bursts of between nap entertainment. Nothing like taking 6+ hours to watch a 3 hour race. Sunday night — made some bread again, been ages since doing that. It was a bit on the oogly side and a bit dense side, but boy! was it tasty. Makes good toast too. Early to bed, quite late to rise Monday morning.

Now — with all that said, Monday morning I felt like a champ. I was able to really get cracking on a few work things and it looks like the trend is increasing for the rest of the week. I think I’m pretty well over this mini-burnout. I should be doing REALLY well after a few nice long Harley trips I have planned for mid August and the long weekends of vacation I have scheduled for then. Sooo looking forward to the 6 hours or so ride from here to West Yellowstone through Yellowstone National Park.

This was just going to be an Ode to my French Press as it truly does make coffee better than anything — besides cute little Catalan people in Barcelona, but I got to thinking on the various ways to wake up and figured I’d take it for a few laps around the dance floor. So hang on here we go..

Good ways to wake up:

• No alarm clock, just wake up to half open curtains feeling like that extra hour of sleep really did help. Even better if this is at 7am or so where you have the whole day ahead of you to do fun things like shag or ride the Harley. Heck, even cleaning the house or mowing the yard isn’t too bad, but moving hay would be a sucky reason.
• The 3am or 4am wake up call to go elk or deer hunting. I love the smell of morning during the fall/winter (ok, in Montana winter usually starts in November), coupled with getting all geared up with knives, guns, ammo, lunch fixins, coffee and donuts for the road. You are up early with a buddy or two, radio on in the truck and on a mission to kill something. Food must be hunted & gathered! No, no — not the blood lust of just killing things (that is what prarie dogs and gophers are for…) — the simple pleasure of being able to put a year’s supply of exotic meat in the freezer. Venison may not be exotic to those of us who grew up hunting, but outside of the gun-belt, it is a delicacy you pay upwards of $10 a pound for.
• With someone in bed with you. The is even better when you get to roll over and syphon body heat for that extra hour of sleep, otherwise known as falling asleep with someone again. There are the newly or just plain familiar smells of someone else’s shampoo and body, bits of soft skin (or hairy man skin for the lady readers), and those morning noises of yes I acknowledge being aware of you, but sooo not awake or willing to be awake yet. Want to wake me up?.This will definately start the morning with a smile on your face…
• Sex, a way to keep that smile going all day. Who needs coffee at that point? Ok, maybe if it turns into a morning non-quicky, that can wear you out a bit and then coffee is an appropriate postcoital drink. That half-hour of sleep can SO be sacrificed for a bit of sheet music. Guys - take note, most women love morning sex and you can score some serious points waking them up with some gental touching, remember foreplay! Women - take note, guys love sex, don’t need to ask - just jump us! It might be a good idea to wait until we respond a bit — just to make sure we are out of the grumpy wakeup and into the hey, sex! wakeup — probably goes for both genders.
• Music - anything soulful. To some Snoop or Eminem might be ok, but I need me some oldies country (thanks Flakes!), Dave, classical, opera, etc, etc. This just breaks the brain in for a morning of activity.
• Coffee, paper, fireplace. Hello winter! A Saturday morning in front of the windows watching it snow, fireplace roaring (none of those pussy crackling fires in the morning!) drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, maybe eating some berry & cheese danish. Mmm. This was life in Philadelphia and this winter in Billings - mmm, just beautiful. This can only be better if you are in a mountain cabin or lodge way up in the hills somewhere.
• After a massage. Generally I don’t fall asleep during a massage, but can near the end of them when the quiet period is starting. You wake up after 5 or 10min of just completely relaxed and refreshed, ready to go home and chill.
• There are a ton others, but I think I’ve gotten my favorites in here…. I might have to update it with a few more if I come up with them.

Bad ways to wake up:

• Fire alarm. Fraternity house, hotel, or worse yet your own home! The first two are usually less panicky, as some drunken idiot or wiring fault is to blame, but the last one usually indicates you will be talking to an insurance agent (hopefully!) in the very near future. Worse yet are winter mornings where you’ve yet to locate significant clothing, much less socks or shoes. Suck!
• Alarm clock for work. Evil, just f*ing evil. You went to bed too late, stayed up reading or watching horribly cheesy movies on hotel cable, or just plain couldn’t sleep. Add in a hangover for more fun. It would be so nice if there was an alarm clock that didn’t cost $2500 that could wake you up based on your sleep cycle so you would at least have a fighting chance at staying awake for the day.
• Wet spot in the bed. Let’s pray to all that are holy that it is some unfortuneate plumbing or roofing malfunction, a pet with a full bladder or some evil friend with keys and a bucket. No matter what the cause, there is always that moment of panic that oh crap, no! for god’s sake I’m 25 years…oh, stupid cat, you are gonna shittin’ die! Hopefully it is just a minor incident and you don’t have to replace the mattress…nothing like $1000 dollars down the toilet…or well, not in the toilet
  • Rick: “Yeah, yeah, I know! Shut-up!” Funny. waaaay too funny. Poor wifey!
• While driving. Ugg, I have had this one happen far too often and it is just about enough to give you palpatations. Pull over or change drivers, period. You are as alert as a drunk at this point. It is always 3 or 4am after 20+ hours into a road trip, coffee, cold air, midget beating you with a cane be damned, you are going to fall asleep. For added amusement throw in a heavy blanket of fog or snow. woot!
• Phone call. Unless this is a wake up call for some pre-planned activity, it had better be short and damned good to get me out of bed in the morning. Worst yet, your brain starts working just enough to keep you from falling back asleep. Ass-masters!
• People talking in the house waaay to early. Usually some form of relative or housemate with a death wish. Do you realize that I only needed an hour more sleep you inconsiderate fuck? I will kill you, at least until you die from it! I really hate this — not only are you now awake, you are so pissed at the lack of respect that you have no chance of going back to sleep. I’d call it justifiable homicide. Go ahead, put me on that jury!
• Not being able to sleep. Ugg. I got drunk, washed down some Tylenol PM with a few more drinks, everything! Usually the brain is churning overtime for some pseudo-important reason, leaving you tired and a bit peeved the next day. You’d think that they would have better drugs for helping us sleep, no ?

Ok folks, time for the reader participation game — what ones did I miss ?

So the Pilsner I’m brewing is coming along nicely. It is now in the laagering stage (35-40F for 3-4weeks). It is a bit darker than I’d planned, but still a nice golden. It had a bit of a licorice smell in the bucket — not sure what that indicates, but bears investigation. Tasting this young beer was neat — a bit of the usual bite, plenty of hop nose and a bit of a hop biterness aftertaste. If previous experiences are anything, that biterness will mellow out in the 2 months between now and it being ready to drink from bottles. Mom was over to chit-chat for a bit while I did the usual cleanup and sanitizing of all the needed derbis.

I’m hoping to brew again this weekend - a Cream Ale. The basement here stays around 68F, so I should be able to ferment right in the utility room. I might need the help of a big bucket of water to help cool things down, but I’m looking forward to drinking this beer too.

Hrm, now for what to brew next? I’m thinking of trying my hand at a nice Belgian Ale. One of the first beers I made was a Dubbel — it fermented a bit warm and had some really funky (but good!) side tastes — like banana. I’m thinking of adding a bit of pure cane sugar to sweeten it up ala Flying Fish and fermenting in the lower ale range to make sure I keep a handle on those crazy Belgian yeasts. It should be good, a nice fall beer. Hrm, I am going to have to do another lager too…maybe a nice Wit Beer or a super chugger for the friends.

A few weeks ago, I added some pictures to the Gallery:

• Bogart is getting big
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• Rest of the muddy truck pics
• Chicago from the plane during the Knoxville to Minneapolis leg.
  • 

It has to be shared: Hooter Shooters, courtesy of JWZ again.

I know someone whose friends are all getting the same gift for Christmas. Oh lord are there going to be some strange camping trips next summer. And you thought men wearing women’s thongs and naked 4 wheeler races were bad…

In honor of all my gearhead friends and those of us having split fingers and wounds from wrenching on things, I bring you a joke from the email bag:

A little boy and a little girl, both about eight years old, were playing in the sandbox. Unexpectedly, the little boy farts, causing a little sand between his legs to shift.

The little girl notices, and squeals with laughter, “How’d you do that,” she asks.

“Easy,” he exclaimed, “I just farted..”

“Can I try it,” she asks?

“Sure,” he says, “anybody can do it.”

She concentrates as she strains and grunts. Suddenly, there’s a huge explosion, the sides of the sandbox fly off, all the sand flies out, and the little boy is thrown 20 feet, landing up against a tree.

He groggily gets to his feet, runs back to where the little girl is. He finds her laying on the ground, out cold, flat on her back, spread eagle. Curiously, he lifts up her dress, peeks underneath, and loudly exclaims, “Just what I thought……DUAL EXHAUST.”

What a weekend — this one was a bit rough. We started off Friday night with the Urban Pioneers first game in the Big Sky State Games. I was riding the pine for the first few innings, not such a bad thing given how damn hot it was. My team seemed pretty determined to hit the self destruct button — error after error after error. It was the proverbial coupling of monkey and football. Thank goodness no one kept an official count. I got to play the last few innings, until we the game was called on the 12 run mercy rule. Home for a nice carbo-load dinner, and a quiet night. Quiet night gets interrupted when Landon called, Josh’s b-day to be celebrated. Grabbed the Harley and headed to Bullwhackers for a 2 drink cheerio and out of there before people got too damned retarded. Side note: Bullwhackers now to be called Nutsacks due to the abundance of idiots wearing pink (!!) shirts to the bar and trying to start fights. You dumb, for goodness sake there were 2 of you and 4 of us; not to mention we were much younger and bigger. You dumb.

Sat Morning I was the official pit & road crew for my 1/2 marathon friend. It turns out there is a 6am and it is pretty early, but sadly the sun has risen at that point. Dropped off for the start (in Laurel), headed home, ate breakfast, filled gas, got a cup of coffee, drove back, and they are still running. A whole new respect for those that abuse their bodies in such a fashion. For crying out loud, my truck takes more than 1 gallon of gas (yes, such a gas-guzzler) to go that far! Sometimes people just need a friend, and it is nice to be that friend

The rest of Sat was spent dozing and avoiding the heat until the next softball game at 3.30pm. It was freaking hot, but not as bad as the previous evening. I played the whole game, and had one of the best games of the year — all over the outfield helping back up tough plays, lots of good compliments. I still need to work on the hitting a bit, but I’m making good progress there. Not too shabby for not having played in years. We still lost 10-15, bumping us out of the tournament, but it was a great game nonetheless. Off to home to scarf down a pizza and nurse my wounds. I slid into homeplate to score a run, forgetting that sand works much like a cheese grater. It suuuure is ugly, that is for sure. Out to the pond during a big rain storm for the night. Played cards in the gazebo with the crew until midnight or so, I was pooped. Bogart is hillarious — running around in the rain and pond, then comes in right under the table where we are all sitting and shakes off. Hosed everyone — good doggy!

Sunday was another day of playing mechanic. The truck no longer leaks ATF out of the transfer case and has a bright shiny new A/C compressor installed. I just need to get a few new parts and adjust the power steering belt tension — then we have A/C in the truck! wOOt!!! All that is left is to do the rear brakes and get new tires. Sooo gonna be glad to have that done! It was pretty fun hanging out at the shop all day. Matt, Mandy, Landon and Mary were there for food runs & comic relief. Bogart got to run around with 3 other dogs for the day and wear himself out. Speaking of which — funniest Landon quote of the day: “Ha! On Wednesday Bogart will live up to his full name — he will be Humpfrey (hump-free)”. Yes, goes to the doc Wed for the snippy-snip. I am still chuckling about that joke…poor dog! Stopped by Mom’s for a beer on the porch and a chit-chat before I came home to NAPCAR and bed. Such a tiring day.

A fun weekend, sadly not enough Harley rides, but I am looking forward to a couple of planned weekend road trips to make sure I get enough miles on the girl. Hrm, need to go down this week and get those new plates too. Wee, now off for another rat race week!

Dear self,

You have shit that needs to get done, I’ve been so nice to compile a list for you so that there are no more lame excuses and so everyone else out there can see that you are a big fatty-fatty-bo-batty slacker and just sit around drinking booze and watching porn. Now put down the coffee (yeah, like you need to be awake for cleaning the toilet) and get moving. Oh yeah, sorry forgot about that job thing. I figured since you never get anything done, you were still phoning it in. Silly me. God, if it were not for me, you’d never get anything done! Ok, you did get the truck fixed last night, but I’m gonna chalk that one up to extreme luck.

• Finish cleaning the house - floors, laundry, mow the yard, bathroom, beer stuff, bird cage.
  • For god’s sake take a day and clean the office. I wouldn’t poo on the floor in there, much less work 8 hours a day.
• A/C Equipment on the truck. Can we say 106F yesterday? I think I sweated off the second testicle, lucky for you I can regrow one. Not that you ever let people know you have a set. Wuss.
  • Make appt to get this serviced at 17th St Conoco. The A/C idiot, unless you like the bees fondled by auto mechanics.
• Buy a softball glove. How many are you going to drop before you just spend the $40 USD, lamer?
• Pay bills. Actually file away the stubs into the filing system. I’ve heard if you do this you can actually find them again if you need to!
• Water the plants
  • Swap the tomato plants and astilbes. Transplant your lame excuses for herbs & green pepper plants to the “garden”. Heh, yeah garden, riiiight.
• LOTS of weeding and plant killing to be done in landscaped areas, not to mention some serious gutter cleaning (yeah, the landlord sucks assmahr) and trimming up the Ivy vines.
• Fix holes in fencing that let Bogart get out and about. Speaking of the dog, I’m gonna call PETA if you kick him one more time - stick to punching around women, cause we all know you are good at that.
• Figure out vacation days, it looks like your lazy ass does not need a solid 2 weeks off next month.
• Buy plane tickets to England. Make sure to go on NWA so you get freq flyer miles this time.
• Get new motorcycle helmet, this time a full face one. No one wants to scrape your brains off the road, but then again that shouldn’t take too long! Make sure to look at the non-HD stores, you Label Whore.
  • Look into helmet-to-helment comms for long rides. I’m not sure who would want to talk to you, but I have to figure that it would be much better if you could annoy them with your drivel rather than listening to Barry Manilow and talking to me.
• Get chaps repaired, figure out if you can get jacket waterproofed and the sleeve zipper fixed.
• Dry cleaning & arrangements for next ORNL trip.
  • Need to see if can push off a week until first week of August.
• Move the ’server’ computer to a spare room that has cooling.
  • Might be good to install an OS from this decade, so you don’t have to keep adding security fixes by hand.
• Laptop to get serviced !!!!!!!!!
• Ride the Harley, all over. Doh — need to get the 5K service done too.
• Find a way to make $5K USD more per month, apparently you cost me a lot of money and need to start carrying your own weight.
• Do more running per week at the gym. I’ll give credit to you here — you are down 7lbs and starting to see definition in the abs. Now just keep it up. I think you are onto something running faster miles rather than further. Bring a book, so we have something to do, I’m getting bored.
• Dog to the vet. Too bad we can’t have you neutered too, for humanities sake!

I think that should do the list for now. If you can manged to get this done, I’ll crap my pants. No really

Editors note: God, that guy is such a dick, see if he ever gets to get laid again.