Rocktober's a-comin!

Wake up, people. It's almost time for the coolest month on Erf. We call it October because it's the 8th month. Octo is Latin for Dr. Octopus who had 6 arms, and ber which is the international airport code for Berlin, Germany. See, science makes everything making sense. If you don't believe me then you're an idiot. But this October is even specialier. I'll be turning 30 years old. That means you have to buy me pearls and diamonds. Get shoppin'!

This is what my new car's butt looks like. She can handle quite a huge load. The picture links to September's web album. It's nothing impressive since not much happened. Been busy with work and side-jobs. And I mean really busy. People keep quitting and that leaves more work for the rest of us because nobody else wants to work here. We should ask Congress for a brazillion dollar bail-out. Problem solved!

Reads that is good.

If you haven't joined Good Reads yet then you are a lazy human being. That's what the liberal two-winged media would have you believe! I'm currently updating my books to avoid a certain Media Specialist. That and I'm lazy. This coffee better kick in or I'm gonna... probably just sit here some more.
Another tech is resigning so I get yet another school to take care of! At least Kelly works there too so we can do lunch on Friday's or something. I can help watch her back from the crazy vulture ladies with nothing better to do than start trouble. She's been having to do to the whole Jackie Chan "I don't wan trouble" routine only through overtly polite emails and positive behavior reinforcement... to 40 year-olds. Sometimes it's still surprising how immature people can be. Or how some people still can't plug in a mouse. Every teacher in our district has a master's degree. You'd think at some point in the process they would have come across an unplugged mouse or network cable and utilized incredible deductive reasoning skills to plug a cable into a port of the opposite shape. I used to think that their inexperience was my job security, but I've been to busy lately to see it that way. And by busy I guess I mean pissy... now that I think about it... crap I better get back to work.
One last note before I paste a plug for Good Reads: listening to an entire school of teachers and kids recite the pledge of allegiance is really creepy. It's a daily reminder that we must obey the Republic and the Christian god under which it is ruled. TTFN!

I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is my first Start Wars book and it's not bad. Lots of action and geekiness abound. The library had a whole shelf to choose from, but with a name like Michael A Stackpole, how can you go wrong? I was actually looking for the new Michael Ian Black, but that isn't offered yet. Anywhoo, I recommend this book and Sam the Sea Cow to LeVar Burton and friends.


View all my reviews.

Busy beaver!

First I have to apologize to all of my awesome fans. I know there are practically millions of people who view my blog daily (probably because it's set as their homepage) and are met with the disappointment of another day gone by without a new amazing post. While I have no excuses for this I can only say here are some excuses: I've been like busy and stuff. My department keeps losing staff yet the job gets larger and larger with more to support and more problems occurring all the time. The start of school is a crazy time to be alive! Those hippies at MSNBC need to take a shower and get a real job! WWPBD (What Would Pappa Bear Do?) Reality has a liberal bias and it's got to stop.
It's hard to turn away from all of the up-to-the-minute commentary and pretty flashy lights on da t.v. machine. So many good questions are being asked and so many vague, misdirected "answers" are being regurgitated back as if it's acceptable. I'll soon reach the point where it's so frustrating I'll have to remind myself that it's all pointless. If you don't like one of the candidate's speeches that's ok! They didn't write it! And if you don't like who someone is going to vote for that's ok! We're only voting for people to vote for us based on the population of your state. Good thing Americans aren't good at math.

Alaskaless

My next blog was supposed to be all about Alaska and how much fun I had, but once I got back to work I had too much to do. The weeks between summer school ending and fall semester beginning is very busy. I've got all these computers to image and move back into trailers and network drops to run. Monday afternoon I got home to find our friend Jenni and her new sea foam green Buddy 125 scooter. She ran through the basic operations showing off the trunk space, 100mpg engine, and other bells n whistles I've since forgotten.

Since Kelly was too shy to try it out I thought I would. It looks so friendly doesn't it? So I get on out of the drive way like a pro, scoot down to the end of the block and stop. After a car passes it seems pretty safe to turn onto the street. That's where everything goes crazy! I start going forward with the little twisty handlebar scooter-go-bar-of-death and try to turn right, but the damn thing (now possessed by Mephisto?) decides to keep going straight into the street. I try a bit more to turn right, but only start to squiggle. I try really hard to turn right and this time the bastard bike of Fleet Street falls over and crushes my left foot. How did it crush my left foot when I fell to the right? I don't know. Another argument for demonic possession.

Kelly and Jenni, our new and possibly ex-friend, were waiting in the driveway. They remember hearing a bit of a crash shortly after my take-off. They made some jokes about how impossible it was that such a sound could have anything to do with a perfectly competent human on a perfectly innocent motor scooter. After a few more minutes of uncomfortable conversation some guy who saw me crash drove past my driveway and asked Kelly if that was her bike. I wish it was just a joke because that sounds like something I would ask some random guy to do, but alas, twasn't. Kelly took me to the emergency room because she could see white stuff poking through the red stuff on top of my left foot. It took 2 hours to get some x-rays done and 3 more to find out the lost my x-rays. But it's all good. Some guy said that it didn't look like anything was broken so I should check with my general prac. within 5-7 days. Despite my complete faith in the dickhead doctors at the University Hospital I went ahead and saw my doctor Wednesday. She did just about as much for me, but in half the time! She basically said check with an orthopedic specialist. So I crutched my way there today so he could poke the hell out of it with his fingers. At least he gave me a robo-boot so I can get around without fear of bumping into stuff and screaming like a little girl.

My pictures of Alaska are online, but I have yet to go through all the itineraries and write up a journal entry, but I'll get around to it soon. Starting next week I'll only have 3 schools instead of 5 so maybe I'll have an hour or two to write some stuff down, kinda like I'm doing now... oh crap!

blarg

I've had a couple of blogs composed in my head, but they all eventually spiral down to depressive subjects like the grossness of American over consumption. Speaking of frivolousness Kelly and I are going on an Alaskan cruise on the 26th. It's a bit of an extravagant expenditure of hard earned money, but it's Kelly's money after all and if she wants to spend it watching a glacier melt then who am I to rob her of that simple pleasure?
Which reminds me: here's a skater covered in bees:

Crampin' and Floatin'

We took off Friday and drove down to Lesterville, MO to go floating on the black river. Much to our dismay that idea was shared by dozens of the most annoying frat boys I've ever encountered. When booking your campsite and the proprietors inquire if you would like a family campground or a noisy campground you should respond with "family." We got about 4 hours asleep that weekend, but still managed to have a lot of fun. Not nearly as much fun as all the douchebags, but we enjoyed ourselves irreguardlessly. We had about a dozen people in our group and about 200 jello shots. Those helped.
Jess was kind enough to tote our kayaks on his trailer so we didn't worry about them flying off the highway. Saturday morning... or more like noon on Saturday we managed to get on the river. It was a bit low so you had to drag your boat in some parts, but others we deep and full of fish that you could see through the crystal clear water. Kelly and I never tumped over, but I think everyone in canoes did at least once. There were lots of downed trees which made for some interesting turns. I wish I had more pictures of the river, but I didn't dare bring my camera in the boat.
Sunday was more relaxed until we drove home. After only 2 miles past a wrong turn we found a car that had just wrecked. There was some teenage girl inside just freakin out. We pulled over and got her out of the car since it smelled like gas. I ran down the road to slow the traffic because people were taking the turns at about 65. This was somewhere on Route-J which is a 2 lane highway through some mountains so it twists around a lot. She lost control at the top of a hill and swerved all around, drove up an embankment, flipped over at least once before the car dropped by a tree. She was damn lucky to have stopped where she did because anywhere else she would have fallen down about 100 feet and we never would have seen her. I hope she's ok. Kelly said she could see her skull.
ANYWAYS! Fun weekend for all. Last night we went to a party and saw some kids dismember a piñat. That's always fun. I'm sure more happened this weekend, but I can't remember and I'd rather leave work now.

Greggy-poots!

Greg came to town Thursday night and we had a great time. The heat and humidity of the weekend tried to sap our energies, but we persevered. Greg didn't come into town until late so Kelly and I went to the Twilight Festival by ourselves. There was a concert at Flat Branch park with some guy who sounded like Willie Nelson. We saw some kids dressed up as mimes so we got scared and wandered around downtown. There were some more bands playing around and freaks throwing fire around.

On Friday we made pancakes and biked around Rocheport. Apparently Lewis and Clark explored the area exactly 240 years ago. I thought there would be more people around celebrating like crazy, but it was just we 3. That afternoon we went to Jess's 30th birthday party. We got him a first aid kit because he's always stabbing himself with something. After that we played around downtown since it was such a nice night.
On Saturday we went to the Art in the Park thing, but it was like 120 degrees and 120% humidity. Nobody really had the power to walk around and look at art. We rather felt like dying. After a brief nap and movie at home we mustered the energy to go to the symphony. They played what sounded like John Williams at first then after the intermission they rocked out Beethoven's 9th. I was awesome, but hard to enjoy as you can see from the pictures we were seated behind a 300 pound 4 year old. She could not sit still for 3 seconds. Every once in a while she thought the conductor needed help so she would wave her ham-hands around until her wrist got tired. It was very difficult to not pop her on the head with my program. But we restrained and it was a good show. After that we shot some pool and watched Spiderman.
Greg had to leave Sunday morning. He was going to go kayaking with us, but his innate fear of getting slightly wet prevented him from doing so. Kelly and I strapped the kayaks to the roof and hit Finger Lakes. It was beautiful out there and the perfect temperature to stick your feet into the water. In one of the pictures you can almost see the deer that was resting on the bank. We got pretty close before she darted off into the forest. I'll find her one day. And I'll eat her.
The end.