A Short (Stolen) Winter Poem

Winter

SHIT! IT’S COLD!

This is almost the perfect weekend — almost because the weather is doing a nice job of being crappy. I tink it has been in the 60s and overcast all weekend. The bonus to this of course is a lot of time spent testing the finer points of Quantum mechanics - specifically that of whether two materials ever actually touch. In this plane of existence I’m speaking of my ass and the sofa. The evidence is not quite conclusive, but the dents in the cushions seem to indicate that I have a significant electron cloud which is impacting the atom spacing in said cushions. That is the beautiful thing about Heisenberg’s principle. I know exactly where I am but no idea of where I’m going. Or do I Shrodinger the whole mess and only really know which atoms are my ass and which are from the sofa by observing the separation ? Wouldn’t that be a kick — if one could somehow take electron energy transfer from the sofa to become more energetic? Hrm — it seems that may already happen in reverse, given the propensity for sofas and napping. Is my sofa going to spontaneously combust some day from the absobtion of so much energy ?

Anyhooo…. Most of the weekend has been spent watching World Cup games. I’m not planning on watching all of them - Tivo only has instructions to record the England, U.S, and Spain games. I may have to alter that if any of them go tits-up before the elimination round. I have had two consecutive mornings of coffee, sofa, blanket and el World Cupo. Currently Mexico is trying to convince Iran to bring their “war faces” next time. I’m hoping to see one of my 3 teams make it far enough to get me interested in the final games. I do find myself really wishing I had HD TV at this point - but only with a HD Tivo. Soon, but must pay off other bills and purchase a house.

Speaking of said house…it is looking like time to re-evaluate the finances and determine exactly how much of my income I really want to spend on a house payment. From the initial look at the current rates of exspenditure, I won’t be able to afford a house that I really like. Boogers. I’d really really like to get a nicer house because I don’t fancy myself moving in the next 10 years again unless something really strange happens. Yes, I like my new job that much

Speaking of said job (and here starteth the rantingseth) - I’m starting to get a bit miffed at the old job, where I started to think that I wasn’t bright enough or skilled enough to do actual Lustre hacking — network, kernel, disk layer, super-complex distributed networking programming. Yes, I’m not going to design the next great filesystem, but I really am starting to think that I can make a pretty good swipe at debugging and understanding the code base. Time will tell It just pisses me off that someone or worse yet — myself — convinced me that there were limits to my skills in this area without actually exploring them.

Ok - the old elbow is starting to kill me here from some retarded furniture re-arranging last night. Just a final note to those Right Coasters - I’ll be in Philly Jun 30th, July 3rd-4th and in D.C July 1st-3rd. Be there or get sprung.

Cheers!

This weekend was balls hot. HOT. Yes, those kind of balls. Sparing the innocent, but the metaphor is waaay too fitting. So! The Portana is back “home” for a weekend and I’m left up to my own devices. Muhahahahha!

What did I do with such unfettered access to massive quantities of stank and hormonal imbalance? Err, not that much really. Too hot. See previous statement on anatomical weather patterns.

Portana and I ran around Saturday - shopping here and there with a final stop at the Brew Shop for me to drop the semi-annual mint for brewing widgets and thingys. For those that brew - Stainless steel ball valves and a counterflow wort plate chiller are SO the best money. We also got sprung for a Gewurztraminer wine kit. It is dead simple to do with the existing beer equipment and is promising all sorts of tasty goodness. I’m looking forward to many o summer nights spent passed out amidst a few wine bottles on the deck. The sun shall wake me!

Saturday evening did see the lawn mowed - well at least most of it, apparently 90 minutes is just 15 feet shy of done I’d have continued but the dogs were getting pretty pissed from all the close calls during twilight. Not to mention that the mosquitos tend to focus on the fleshy white part of ones buttocks. Note to the public - don’t mow nude. Between the sunburn and the mosquitos — you are gonna be lumpy and red. Dead Sexy.

I did manage to get a nasty headache that took me out for most of Saturday - I think it is from not getting caffeine. Stupid free coffee at work and my lack of will power.

Sunday was the day of days. I woke up earliesh, cranked up the coffee pot (see I do learn) and headed to the garage to get beer-a-brewin’ and stuff arranged and cleaned up. It was hot enough that I put up the canopy out front of the garage for the full RedNeck look. It is the details folks. De-tails. Did I mention that I was walking around shirtless in baggy shorts and messy hair? Truck and Harley in the driveway? Details.

Heh — De-tails makes me think of all sorts of funny things about animals loosing their tails in horrible accidents. Hrm, bed time looming…anywhoo… Once that was all setup and going - I tackled the mess in the corner. Lots of moving things around and it appears to be slightly more accessible and organized. I’m hoping I did a few flourecent bulb replacements (do NOT drop on the floor…) and hung up the tennis ball for Portana’s windshield marker. I’ve heard if your are handy around the house, drives them nuts. Juxtapose that with being handy at the bar and all you get is slapped. Women — just don’t make sense.

Anyways…I’m starting to ramble and it could get messy. Power through this! I finally finished up brewing and got the beer into the fridge a meer 15 minutes after knockout. That’s right folks - 5 gallons of 200F sugar water & hops to 62F in < 10 minutes. These are some heady times in which we live. Man, not ending sentences in prepositions is a real biotch. Sigh. Ok, headed off to Auds for some grilled Elk and veggies on the grill. Homemande smoothies (mit boozen) were quite the treat to finish off a decent weekend, albeit alone

I’d best be off to bed, I’ve got dragons to slay at work tomorrow and another day of trying to keep the giblets out of the blender.

Update Is it wrong that I called the french press the coffee pot ? Did I hurt it’s feelings?

Duuuuuuuuude, Harley season is sooo near. Not quite, but it was close damn enough to bust out the long johns and leather again today and ride the bike into work. If I get to ride my HD into work most days this summer, boy does commuting not sound like such a bad thing

The ride this morning was a bit chilly — I decided to forego the helmet option, I figured it was warm enough I really didn’t need face protection. Dumb idea 40F at 60 mph is a bit cold. It wasn’t so bad after ~5 min, I either got used to it or my face whent numb. The speed limit between Auds & work is 50 mph, and in MN that means 55mph minimum. I was more than happy to oblige! I’m looking forward to chowing my lunch at my desk and getting out for a nice noon-time ride today, might as well get it while I can.

The day starts well….

What a great weekend. Saturday was a marathon shopping day (yes, I do feel a bit odd admitting that) - craft show with the girls, then to a very near closed stained glass supply shop — they were selling the shelves, to the Pinball Warehouse, then another 40 minutes north to the biggest damned furniture store I have ever seen.

The pinball warehouse was just the coolest — seriously. They probably had ~25 refurbished machines on the floor and you could play most of them for free. There was an Indiana Jones game that totally tripped my wicket but at 3100 bucks, I’m going to have to save for a bit. They also had an older Star Wars machine that was still living up in storage that was only ~1900. Portana drooled, I could see it. I’m thinking once I pay off the credit cards and get my eyes laaaazered…yeah, pinball machine. Or Tivo Series 3 — it is a race to see if the v3 comes out in time… Oh sweet sweet dual HDTV tuners and cable card…ahhhh!

The furniture store was fun — an astonishing collection of stuff. Portana and I managed to find a end table and coffee table set that will go well with our newly purchased sofa & loveseat — but not before a Battle Royale was had. We agreed on the wood, but it has beveled glass inserts which I am less than fond of — we agreed we could get marble or granite tiles cut and use those instead. We really only wanted the one end table, but as it was in the “outlet” wing of the store, it came in a 2 table & coffee table set. Frass. Portana is dead set (and for good reasons) against having a coffee table in front of the T.V, so her & Aud had to beat me about the head and neck to convince me that it will make a good T.V stand. I compromised…we shall see Aud managed to make a pretty good haul — lamp tables, curio and appolstered chair (wing back? too many seen to remember) to match her new sofa.

We had left at around 10 am that morning, returning around 8 pm or so — tired, very tired. It was a good tired though — a great day of getting things done, but boy was sleep welcome

I awoke Sunday with the grand intentions of being a bum. There was NAPCAR and College Hoops to watch, other T.V to surf in the meantime and I made some mean coffee to start things off. I was doing well with my “Day o Laziness” until around 11am where apparently the Wild Hair started sprouting…it was 40F+, why not wash up the Harley and get out for a ride. There is never a good answer to that…other than yes A quick trip to the storage unit for leathers and helmet later, I was off to the self-service car wash to give the bike a good warshin’. It was pretty filthy — 1000 miles of bugs and road grime, not to mention moving dirt. Thankfully some “pre-soak” and a nice pressure washer later - no bugs! I tooled around (including a nice rear tire roasting coming out of the carwash — god bless a little water and cleared the cobwebs out of the motor. Boooooy is having real air again nice, Hello Msrs Horsepower and Torque, oh look there is your tag-a-long Mr Adrenaline. I boogied home to give Portana a call so we could get out together and enjoy some V-Twin Therapy. We checked out the local HD dealership for a bit, then motored over to Champs for a NAPCAR & Basketball grubbin. Not sure if it was being tired or what, but that ride home was a bit chilly. We both passed out pretty quickly on the sofas watching the race…damn you Rubberhead.

That about does it for the weekend — there was a small battle with Auds furniture (moving it out to the garage to make way for the new stuff), but other than that — crashed I’m reqlly looking forward to this Saturday - we should have the movers, the cable t.v feller, and the new sofa & loveseat all in one day. Wow, what a whirlwind weekend this will be Oh yeah, supposed to be in the 50s this weekend…soooo going out riding again.

Holy Feck. I’m looking forward to the move to Mipples — got my new email addy today (nic AT cray.com. sexy), along with my new office number and phone number for it for next Monday. Anyways,…back to this weather thing, today was retarded nice here in Billings. I’m talking t-shirt in the backyard nice, putting plants in the back of the pickup and driving them around town nice. I spent the day demolishing the garage, utility room and patio with Mom — thanks ! We can check that off the list now, just need to do the bedroom, kitchen foods, and the bathroom now. One more day of packing! I even managed to get the HD out for a ride tonight — just ’cause I can.

Anyhoo — Mipples: Please take a note out of our weather forcast. 50s or 60s for daytime highs. Nothing less, nothing more until April. I will serenade you with my sultry Big Twin rumble to your hearts content. Seriously. I promise. Sadly, looking at the weather forecast for MN reads like a whos-who of bad winter driving. Ice, ice pellets, snow then rain, rain then snow, etc. Thank god I spent this weekend redoing the front end (bearings, races, seals & hubs) on the Brown Beast - having 4×4 again will be nice. Now if someone could only tell me where to find a copious amount of sticky-icky mud near the TC that I can play in and not get arrested for…. This is your chance people — the comment link works!

Well — I’d best get folding and editing the wardrobe here unless I want to sleep on the floor. Yawn

What is more fun than sandpapering the rear-end of an aligator in a phone booth? Oooh! ooh! I know! Pick me! How about a lagoon-esque flooding of a crawl space discovered in 6F weather at midnight after a long weekend of traveling and partying ? You betcha!

Poor Portana’s crawl space was flooded from a burst cold water pipe when we returned. We knew the pipes had frozen the morning we left, but we couldn’t really do anything about it as she was babysitting her rockstar boyfriend in his morning of Retchery and we had to get packed and to the airport. We did have some family members check in on it, but the main shutoff was frozen and couldn’t be closed. We figured that two days of good luck might hold through, but alas it twas not to be. Walking into her house and turning on the kitchen faucet rewarded us with hot & cold water — the hot just a trickle, but at least running. The bathroom…well the hot water trickeled as well, but the cold water just made an ominous gurgling sound. A quick check with my Super Sniffer 2000(tm) confirmed that we were standing over a yet to be determined quanity of stagnant water.

Popping open the crawl space access (external to the house) showed us that we were mere feet away from having a very nice house-boat. There was 2 to 2.5 feet of water just sitting there, all icy and cold looking. My external thermometer was not looking forward to a Polar Bear experience. After finding out there are NO 24hr plumbers in Billings that have pumping equipment (seriously, what kind of fuck ass town is this sometimes!), we rang up one of my friends who had an irrigation pump. We tried to get some water pumping out, but at 2am we were just making a big icy mess of her yard. A call later to the public utilities company here got the water shutoff. We called it a night — there was no immediate danger to stay up and play Ahab. Oh — forgot to mention: The main water shutoff for the house is on the other side of the crawl space, on the other side of the swirling mess.

Revisting the pond this morning found the water level down about 2 feet. I fired up the pump again to move a bit more mud around, but at the end of the morning I left about 6″ of water standing. Thankfully the crawlspace is all dirt, so we are going for the “what goes up must come down” method of home repair. I’ll check in tomorrow to see if it is dry enough to slop around and examine the damage — so far it looks like one minor break in the bathroom cold water feed. A soldering job and we should be back in business. All-in-all, it turned out to be not quite as catastrophic as we had anticipated…so far!

Fug….fug….FUG. What a day, hell what a week. Work has been sucking a bit of the life out of me this week — just stressful issues with testing and such. Kinda one of those weeks where you look at what you got done on Friday and say “gee, that almost is visible”. I think there should be a large mark on my forehead by now too from all the of the head-against-wall whacking.

But I digress… TGIF! So — it has snowed every day this week. Snow makes me a happy man. I’ve got a fireplace, a dog, a canoodling gf and ample quanities of food & booze. It is gonna be a good night I’m looking forward to a nice slow-brained evening, possibly getting hammered flat. I could do it, I swear. This weekend is looking up - I’m on the hunt in the house here for my Christmas Tree decorations…I’m really hoping I got those in the move. If I find those, gotta get a tree — something about that smell. You people with your fake trees and fake holidays — BAH!

The “group of us” is heading up to RockDodge town for a night of drinking in a small town. Why? Someone needed to burn a gift certificate to a hotel up there…and the rest of us are going too. Not staying in the same room though, I don’t like anyone that much There has been promise of snowshoeing on Sat, and I’m sure I will freeze, fall over, get snow in very unfortunate places and have a generally fantastic time.

Well — here is to you and your weekend, now get the fug out of my way, I’ve got time to waste!

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!

Well, its another Friday! Woot! What does that mean in real terms ? It means that today is the end of a long week of work, abusing myself in the gym and sleep deprivation. So in the spirit of good humor, here are some random thoughts on Fridays:

• Why does it always have to be the best weather of the week on Friday ?
• Working 4 days a week would be so nice. I could start drinking in earnest Thursday.
• Does the word ‘Fri’ indicate something? It sounds a lot like ‘fried’, as in ‘dude, I am totally fried’.
  • For those German speaking folks, also quite similar to German ‘Fri’, meaning ‘free’(as in beer, not speech).
• 2 hour lunches are contagious. You take one (or three) of them in one week, and then having just an hour for lunch on Friday seems like a crime against humanity. Besides, doesn’t everyone need to watch MythBusters to clear the lunch nap fuzzies ?
• Shit. I have to go to the gym tonight. Yes, it is going to hurt, but it does a body good. F@#k you, milk people and your marketing drones.
• To drink or not to drink? If I decide to go all out on playing ‘Hide the Bourbon’ with the liver, I will be hung as all heck tomorrow morning and won’t get anything done before noon. If I don’t drink, what the heck am I going to do, clean the house!?
  • To those of you thinking ‘Why don’t you just drink in moderation, say just have a few?’, I would like to respond to with this link
• Always nice when the co-workers break out the Pimpbot 5000 links.
• Girls are fun.
  • Guys - if you have a good girl, keep her, at least until she goes insane. Then run like hell. Hold on, hold on — I am saying nothing bad about women in general, just if they do go insane, you don’t want to be in range of the event horizon. Most likely there is something retarded that you could say, and given our lack of ability to say the proper thing at the right time, we will say anything that comes to mind, and viola you are running for your life.
    • Editors Note This is not reflecting any recent personal data (quite the opposite really!) I’m just attempting to be funny.
  • Girls - don’t judge us by the masses. Most guys are lacking critical brain function and don’t appreciate you. However, the rest of us (yes I include myself. bite me!) are relative gems and deserve an ever so slight break once in a while. We are, after all, the weaker sex
    • Yes, Tom Cruise is cute, but see what kind of bat-shit-crazy he has gone over Katie Holmes ? God, I must be a sap, but I wonder what Nicole Kidman thinks of all this?
• The votes are in. Christians 10, Lions 1;

I think I’ve gone off the nutty end of things for long enough! Happy Friday!

And for those of you e-voyeurs curious what this weekend, in all it’s probably unbloggable glory looks like:

• Telling the alarm clock to go have sex with itself. Unless you are getting up to run.
• Mowing the lawn. Not necessarily all that fun, but if your yard consisted of a 15′ square brick patio, you’d be excited too. Besides, I get to play the ever so fun game of ‘how-many-dog-turds-can-the-lawnmower-pick-up-with-the-bagger-so-I-don’t-have-to-by-hand’.
• A surprise BBQ for someone…happy b-day!
• Mud bogs perhaps ? Quite tempting, “I’m just not sure if I will have time”.
• Harley. Oh, how I will miss you! So let’s celebrate by abusing you and the laws of physics.