Friday the 13th

Amazing. Two months in a row that have a Friday the 13th. Last month the gang in sales region 13 did a 13 item buffet. It was very cool and I made repeat visits over the course of the day.

I have no idea what celebrations tomorrow might bring but I plan to make sure I hit every area of the building so I don't miss out.

Just checking in...

Busy week last week and it looks like all the weeks leading up to the holidays are going to follow suit. I'll stop back when I can but let me share this. MS Office 2007 helped me to finally solve a problem with previous versions of all MS Office programs. It only took 6 years to find the cause and solution. See, it takes so little to please me...

She'll be comin' 'round the mountain when she comes...

Did I mention who the company is that came to visit today? It was my current's ex. Yes, we sicko's just can't let go of the past and for some reason maintain ties that "normal" people cut, dynamite, or otherwise burn at the end of a relationship.

And the ex brought the exes current. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the ex. I mean, I obviously won here, right? And quite frankly the ex is a nice person and probably someone that I would have as a friend were it not for the prior claim on something I hold near and dear.

It was a nice visit. The dogs did not attack them despite the boot camp training and brainwashing I'd subjected them to this past week (which is probably good since the ex owns the sister of my dog). It was also a short visit because exes are like fish. Keep them around the house too long and they both start to stink up the place.

Watched two movies in the evening: The Bucket List (very good) and The Happening (not so good but not terrible either). And now I'm posting this. Night all!

Happy Thanksgiving

To everyone who reads this and the millions more that don't, Happy Thanksgiving day.


We had all the traditional ingredients for an American Thanksgiving meal, but the recipes were decidedly non-traditional. The Turkey was roasted in the oven (as usual, none of the deep frying $hit for us) but the stuffing was some decadent thing with bacon and pine nuts. Divine, I tell you. The green beans were stir-fried on the stove top with mushrooms and fresh thyme from our garden. The crescent rolls were rubbed with fresh rosemary from our garden and the cranberries were picked from out bog just two days ago---just kidding about the cranberries but anyone who's seen my pond would probably believe it.


I finally got out into the garden and planted the last few plants I should have planted last spring. I then promptly covered them up with mulch. And that means the mulch pile at the top of the driveway is no more. It's finally where it belongs. What motivated me besides the fact that it needed to be done? We have company coming tomorrow. I should have company come at least once a month to guarantee that I take care of the projects that are currently languishing around my house.

Unblocked!

Hey, they unblocked my blog. Hoorah! I'm not S*P*A*M!


Watched the news with horror and apprehension. My lady was just at one of the hotels and one of the restaurants that were targeted by terrorists in India. Interesting that instead of going to the heart of Britain and America they are now having to search out Western targets by going where the security is maybe not so tight and the surveillance not so pervasive. I thought we were rather lax here, but not counting the illegal immigration problem to the south we seem to do a pretty good job of keeping the bad guys out.


I really hope this is not something that escalates over the next few months and totally ruins my trip to Amsterdam and Paris. That would really, really suck

About last night...

Friday was a slow day. It's that time of year when things at work start to crawl from a production point of view and heat up from an expansion point of view. This year is no exception. The business of making and selling and delivering wanes and the construction begins. If course it will stay busy for IT because of all the new infrastructure that comes with the construction. We're also taking advantage of the slow time to expand our server room and bring back into our domain sites and services that we've outsourced in the past.

Sunday (Saturday)

As Saturdays usually go, it was marathon laundry day. Lots of stinky clothes brought back from India. We may be freezing in Kansas, but it's hot, humid, and stinky in India. The missus had an awesome trip. The last day was a tourist day rather than a work day and she was taken to see the marvelous Ajanta Caves. Of course no one in the United States has much of a clue about this national treasure of India.

We don't seem to be too concerned with history beyond our own young history and that's a shame. It's a World Heritage site that brings in visitors from all over the world. I guess it's pretty cool how she travels for a living and gets to scope out all these cools sites and see what's worth returning to when the two of us have an opportunity to travel together. Right now we're mulling a trip to Amsterdam and Paris.

In a break from laundry we met up with our neighbors for dinner at Ramblers in Wamego. It was nice to get together with them. We always enjoy each other's company and owing to the fact that the four of us are always so busy we just don't do it enough.

Saturday (Friday)

Worked a long day. The Friday after patch Tuesday is always a long one. All the servers needed to be restarted and I was anxious that my automatic log in hack work on the server that had to be replaced last month. It did so even if the never-ending battery backup they sold us fails, the server will log itself back in without human intervention once power is restored.

Ya know, the phone system won't work if this server isn't logged in. You would think that the company that sold us this bill of goods would configure the auto log in but no. Guess that's how they rack up service calls...

On the plus side, getting the servers rebooted last night means I don't have to go in this weekend. On the plusser side, no servers crashed this time.

Friday (Thursday)

The missus got home from India last night (early afternoon). She has some great pictures of a true natural wonder of the world. Her last day in country was a tourist day. They had two stops planned for her on the way back to the airport in Bombay. She was so fascinated with the first stop that all her tourist time was spent there at the Ajanta Caves. We did a little catching up at lunch and she managed to fight off jet lag long enough to greet me at the end of the day. One more day and she should be back on Kansas time. I'm looking forward to more tales of India.

Thursday (Wednesday)

When I picked that book back up today, it seemed I must have read a few pages last night while sleeping as none of the text at my bookmark made sense. I didn't bother to re-read anything to reorient myself to the story since none of the book made much sense anyway.

I have a feeling that the author is mentally ill as following the story was sort of like trying to make sense of the actions of a friend of mine who is mentally ill. Medication helps my friend, maybe the author should consider it too?

Wednesday

Well, I'm almost daily here again.

I enjoyed my last night of bachelorettehood. Fast food (but good fast food) and trying to finish off a book that I am loathing reading. The last time I read one of the books in this series, I swore I would never read this author again. The way all the characters have been twisted around makes for a very disturbing read. However this book was loaned to me and I figured maybe the last one was just an aberration. Wrong. The writer's lost it. Still, it's like a train wreck. I find myself unable to look away. Picking through the wreckage and wonder what fresh horror awaits under the next piece of debris.

I was unable to finish it last night, the eyelids refused to remain open.

This just in...

The missus just called from India where it is already 9 am tomorrow. She has some amusing monkeys-in-India stories and says that as a second-time visiting VIP she's gotten double the red carpet treatment she received last time. Still, she's looking forward to coming home. The question is, am I looking forward to the same thing...

Sick?

...not sure. Sore throat and stuffy nose this morning. Not sure if I snored all night and the sinus shit is a by product of the season change or not. As the day progressed, did not feel any worse than I felt on waking.

Know when to quit...

So I'm half-way through the most recent (and hopefully last) Indiana Jones movie. It doesn't help that I can't abide Cate Blanchett and Harrison Ford is far too long in the tooth to be whoring himself this way...

I am watching it with an open mind. I loved the first two and once I got past Sean Connery, the actor, I enjoyed the third one. But if it can't keep me so engrossed, so on the edge of my seat, that I can't step out for a smoke at the half-way point, I can't really recommend it.

At least it's not as bad a Snakes on a Train.

A Game Day

...and I'm not talking football. I should have known I was going to be intimately acquainted with the wild side of life from the moment I got up.

There were turkeys in the yard this morning...when I let the dogs out. They (the turkeys) must have not had anything to eat recently as they managed to vacate the yard without depositing any of Maverick's favorite parfume, eau de turkey poop.

On the way to work there was a deer speed bump on the highway...the 70 mph highway. I didn't see it until the last minute and wasn't of a mind to lose control of my car just so I could avoid the blood and gore. Fortunately it had been pretty well tenderized by the traffic that paved the way before me.

Then there was the matter of the game camera. It's a thing hunters use to identify good places to set up for shootin' stuff. Good places as in, Hey, this is a major animal trail here! Look how often the camera catches Bambi and family. And is that Turkey Lurkey and family strolling by? My boss got new memory cards for his game cam but his computer can't handle the size of the cards so we had to get him a new card reader for his laptop. The first picture on the card is him playing with the buttons on the camera. It's a nice big picture. All the other pictures are really small so he must have pressed the button that changes the resolution on the camera. He says that you can't change the resolution on a game cam. He's wrong. I looked up his model and it has four different resolutions you can choose. But I guess Mr. Big Game Hunter knows everything and isn't about to listen to some city girl tell him what his camera can and can't do.

The day is winding down and as I was browsing a friend's blog the dogs decided that there was something foreign in the yard that must be chased. Oh look, it's Bambi. I wonder what they'd do if they actually caught one...

I'm too old for this shit...Part 2

Well, I guess I got a little bit younger. After not getting the lawnmower running when we first put it back together, I guess it was good to take a break.

I still do not see anything wrong with the belt path. I did take another gander at the parts schematic for the mower deck and discovered there is supposed to be a washer between the top of the mandrel bearing and the bottom pulley. Really, how significant can a washer be? I didn't know about the washer because it was either missing to begin with or it disintegrated when the bearing seized. So I trudged to the shop where I bought the second bearing (the correct bearing, if you'll recall) and the young man at the counter simply gave me the washer I needed. Just gave it to me. No $1.29, no $.99, no nothin'. Just gave it to me. Sears would charge me $2.92 for the washer plus a minimum of $4.99 shipping and handling. And it's a rather hefty sized washer, let me tell you.

Now I hope the kid didn't think that the mower would turn up in the shop in the next day or two when he gave me the part. It will definitely go to them when it needs service that I can't perform on it, but this particular service is complete. Done. It be fixed. And no, I don't think it was the washer that made the difference because when it was all put back together, it did the same thing it did the last time I put it back together. I think it was shimmying the belt on one of the pulley's that made the difference. One of the pulleys is twice as wide as the belt is. The lower half of the pulley is all shiny with wear, the upper half dark and oxidized. The belt was sitting on the upper half of the pulley once the deck was re-mounted. I shimmied it down to the shiny side and when we started her up, the blades turned without binding and stopping. Hoo-rah!

I'm rather proud of myself, but I still think I'm too old for this shit...

Take it easy...

I thought I would share with you what Vampyra did to my hand. You can't even see a bruise on the other hand, the one that actually got a successful IV insertion.

But enough about the damage. The good thing is that my gallbladder was in bad shape for a long, long time and I didn't even know it. Since the surgery I've eaten all the things I normally eat with no problem. I've even eaten some things I don't eat all that often, like lobster. We had a lobster feast Saturday night, just two days after surgery!

I enjoyed lazing around for a few days without any obligation to do anything at all. It was sort of weird, but really nice.

I had planned to return to work Monday morning, but when I got in my car and tried to operate the gas and brake pedals, my abdominals objected. I tried again later in the day. You know how you always feel better as the day goes on? So I went out to my Monday night AA meeting and did just fine. I did better than just fine. I stopped at the grocer's on the way home for some must have items like toilet paper and milk. When I went to start my car it was dead. Deader than it's ever been. I've just replaced the alternator in the past year and I didn't notice that the amp meter was not registering so I'm thinking battery. I got four years out of a two year battery so I'm happy with that. Fortunately the grocery store was just down the street from Wally World and the tow truck was able to get me there before closing so I put another two year battery in it. Needless to say I was exhausted when I got home.

Return from the 3rd World

So the Missus made it back from India. She was amazed at the poverty. But the most amazing thing to her, was how happy these people are. These people with nothing. They are the happiest people on earth. They don't know they have nothing. Let me clarify that, they have nothing if you compare their daily lives to the daily life of the average American. They are grateful for the little they have. This may have been a life changing experience. Everyone should send their cranky, spoiled-rotten, Nike wearing, cell phone toting teenager to a rural area of India for two weeks.

Naturally her internal clock is fracked up. She got in about 11 a.m. and after bringing me up to speed in the whole trip (her cell phone didn't work there and internet access was almost non-existent) she slept for about 4 hours and then I woke her up for a few hours in the process of getting her back on Kansas time. She went to bed again at about 6 p.m. and slept through until about 10 a.m. this morning at which point I caught her up on all the news she missed while she was away from CNN.

Dinner for Two

So I had Bonnie over and we cooked the remaining steaks from the BBQ that did not occur on Thursday. I cleaned up the house in preparation for the return of the Missus from India. We had a real India connection going last week...

She was actually in India, and I ran across something made in/by India:

Dinner for three?

I had planned to have two of my co-workers over for dinner last night. I was grilling steaks, some zucchini and red potatos, bookended with a nice little salad and lemon meringue pie. But Daniel had to golf instead so Anthony & I agreed we'd try it another time.