Spooky Poodle Noodles

*Crap. I just realized that I haven't had any coffee yet today.

*Double crap. I just realized that I'm probably going to have to wait till the end of the year for season 6 of Lost on DVD.

*Triple crap. The cost of the cars and the refi may have killed our chances at even a brief end-of-year vacation.

*Seems that a contingent of the FOM will be descending on Trader Vic's in Chicago tonight. I, however, will be at work. So, no mai tais or hot Hawaiian waitresses for me. Need I even mention just how much that completely and totally sucks?

*I offered. That is my complete defense to the whole incident. If I see her about to try and cut something, I offer to do it for her. Sometimes she accepts, other times it's taken as an accusation of incompetence. My reasoning is simple in that I'm used to working with cut up fingers more than she is, and, at the very worst, I get paid sick time off of work. Neither of those is the case with her, and she often does very scary things with knives. My offer today was met with the response of 'I can do it myself'. And she did fine, right up until the very last cut she made. It was that last little shifting of her grip that made the whole piece of bread move, and the blade of the knife went right across the side of her finger. Fortunately, her fingernail stopped the blade from going down to the bone. Unfortunately, she got a couple of days off of work and a tetanus shot. All I could say was that I could really, truly, earnestly, and deeply empathize with what she did, and next time, I'll slice the bread.

*Got a Friday off and no real plans to speak of. I do need to finish potting Julie's signs, and there's a desk full of paperwork that needs to be done, but those don't really count since they are absolutely no fun at all. Also need to get some gas for the mower, which again leads me right to something that isn't any fun. I could tackle the basket of shredding that needs to be done, but that's only entertaining for about 10 minutes or so. Right now, it's looking like Friday will just be filled with all kinds of unfun 'catch-up' type projects. Whoo-freakin-hoo.

*Just got word that all tropical drinks at the Chef on Saturday are going to 34% off. And they were already super cheap to start with! Still, knowing that whatever I save on beverages still wouldn't be enough to pay for a divorce, I don't see more than a couple on the horizon for me. I am betting that the place is going to be packed to the rafters, since there are already going to be 2 large tables just of FOM folks. What I have yet to be able to figure out is where the bands are going to be set up to play. I think that taking sonic refuge in the bar area with the Boss may be necessary to keep her from getting a migraine. Not really sure what time we'll be heading out that way, either. The bands start playing at seven, so it would probably be good to get there and get some food before the place goes completely insane. I'm thinking that if I take (and actually use) my camera, I could possibly use it to keep myself out of any major alcohol related trouble. Complete evasion of trouble of any sort, though, is something that remains basically impossible for me.

*The Goat remains ominously silent.

*The concept had seemed so totally ludicrous as to be laughable at first, but I am beginning to think that it just may be what will fit the bill to such an exacting degree as to be painfully astonishing. I just need to polish the inflection a bit and work my way through the accent, and then the Work Character will be all ready for public display and usage. I thinking of maybe Tuesday as a rollout date, but we'll see how things go.

*Kittyluv seems to have vanished completely off the face of the planet, and I think she took Dhawk with her. Bluegirl flits in and out of the fringes on occasion, and the rest are but infrequent visitors in my dreams.

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Arcsine Over Tangent

*It's orange. The name of the color on the can was "paprika", but it looks pretty damn orange to me. But, she's happy with it, the project is done, and her stuff has been moved out of the garage, so I can't complain a whole lot. At this point I think I'm even willing to forget the slight orange, excuse me, 'paprika' colored haze that settled on most everything in the garage.

*I think I could very easily end up spending lots and lots and lots of money in the I-Tunes store if I'm not careful.

*Was Hot Tub Time Machine better than The Hangover? Nope, not in my book. Amusing, yes. Definitely a guy movie. Just not as funny overall as The Hangover.

*Why it is that I always have good ideas for projects that involve a ridiculously short timeline, I'll never know. For now all I can say is that if I can get what I'm working on now done by Saturday, it will be awesome. If not, it'll have to be awesome for next month, even though it will lose a few degrees of awesomeness in the process.

*Got an interesting call from the State's Attorney this week. Turns out that the guy whose DUI case I was supposed to testify in this week failed to show up at some pre-trial meeting, so the judge cancelled the case and put out a warrant for his arrest. I love it when things come to such a neatly self-fulfilling ending.

*One more step taken, but for now the rest of the path remains shrouded in mystery. Will there be an announcement Saturday? All I can do is wait and see.

*Concrete is heavy. Seems to be a simplistic statement, but it gets more complicated when you're trying to guesstimate just how much weight someone else can pick up. I need the concrete to be the weight in the bottom of the signs I'm making for Julie, but the pots themselves already weigh 12 pounds on their own. If I throw 50# on concrete in there too, the wind won't blow the sign over, but that would all but eliminate the mobility factor. I'm thinking that I'll be going with about 20# per pot, which should put the total weight of the end pieces in the ballpark of 40#. That should still be moveable by a person, but be pretty resistant to being tipped over by the wind. I hope.

*Pearls Before Swine is now officially my #2 favorite comic strip of all time, right behind the immortal Calvin and Hobbes.

*Both cars are now functional and finally back in our possession. Our bank account is also $2K lighter as a result, making me think once again that I am not in the correct line of work. On top of all that we just refinanced our mortgage to a lower rate, so we're out another $900 to make that happen.

*We were offered yet another free dog. This one was a 4 year old, 200# mastiff. While it certainly would fit the bill for what the Boss wants in the next dog, it just isn't a time when we can take on such an animal.

*For some reason, the spider population this summer has exploded into freakishly high numbers. Must be all the mosquitoes they're eating.

*Another night in the Blue Moai Room, and another good time was had by all. There was an exploding cocktail shaker, a command appearance of the kilt, and general agreement by all females in attendance that they'd do Sean Connery at the drop of a hat. I still have yet to clean off the top of the bar, and came within mere fluid ounces of acquiring a cripplingly wicked hangover. I discovered I can trade Oreos and Dr. Pepper for a hug, and drinks that taste strongly of lemon still really don't agree with me (bad bad bad tequila memories). And even thought the annex was open, the oppressive humidity kept anyone from using it. I have also hade the decision that if I ever get my hands of the purple room, not only do I want to build a new bar in there, I want to try and build a booth in the one corner. Or, I may just build the booth in the main room in the corner where the bar is now. That space has always been a pain in my ass, but a booth would work there quite nicely.

*The so-called 'beanbags' are actually full of corn, and I don't think we ever had any real hope of beating Bart and Steph, but beyond that, it looks like Cornhole will be something the Boss and I can enjoy and actually play against each other at a fairly equal level.

*Seem to be hitting a stretch of time when there's just way too much fun stuff to be doing, and not enough time to be able to do it all. Not sure what's going on Friday (Trader Vic's maybe?), but there's part two of garbage pickup on Saturday morning, the Chef event Saturday evening, and Kane Co Flea Market the whole weekend. Next weekend got a family dinner on Saturday and Ohana night at Tiki Terrace on Sunday. The weekend after that is Festiki in Dayton. Just a few too many things going on all at once. Might just be time to fire up the ol' cloning pods.

*It is an extreme rarity for me to work a "normal" Monday through Friday work week, but I did this past week. If I hadn't swapped a day so I could go out to the Chef next weekend, it wouldn't have happened. Anyway, these 5 in a row workday schedules suck. Now I remember why the weekend used to seem like such a wonderful thing. Still, I won't be going back to that schedule anytime in the near future, if I can do anything about it. This week I'm on 3 days, off 2, on 1, off 1. Ahhhhh. That's so much better.

*I knew there was a name for it, but never knew what it was. Now I know it's called Mid-Century Modern. And thanks to Tim for pointing me in the direction of Atomic Ranch magazine so I could find that out. Now if he could just point me in the direction of a few hundred grand so I can redo my whole house in that style.

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Glass Tuxedos

*Well, at least I have my car back. I'm out almost a grand to get it fixed, but I do have it back. I was also told that I'll be needing a full set of tires by around October or so, and there is a small coolant leak somewhere that they can't find. Yay. More things to look forward to. And since the parts for Sheri's car aren't even in yet, I have no idea what the total repair bill for both cars is going to be. And, I don't really want to know. On the other hand, it was nice to know that Motor Works was keeping the second key for my car safe for the past three years.

*Going to be changing gears in the studio this coming week. The piece for the Saturday raffle at the Chef is almost done, so I need to switch over to a project (or projects) that I have been neglecting for a few months. Not that I haven't been putting any thought into them, but I haven't done much more than that. With any luck, a solid week of studio time should get me back on top of at least half of that project.

*I have greatly cooled my jets when it comes to buying new games in the past few months, but I have found a new card game that I just have to have. Apparently it's a tweaked version of Oh Hell that had somehow never made it onto my radar. Now that I know about it, I simply must have it. Regardless of my lack of fellow players. It's a deck of cards, right? Doesn't really take up that much room, right? Should be really easy to find on the 'net, right? You wanna guess what I'll be doing later?

*Z and K are scheduled to arrive on Monday, as far as I have been told. Not sure if their visit will impact me in any way, but that's what's happening.

*I read a thread in the FOM forums where someone was asking if there were any recipes out there for cocktails that had coconut water as an ingredient. One of the side discussions was the supposed effectiveness of coconut water in treating hangovers. Naturally, I was skeptical. But, while at the store getting more ginger beer for that night's round of Dark and Stormys, I walked right past an end cap display that just happened to have coconut water on it. So, I picked one up. Not that I really expected anything other than perhaps having a nice refreshing drink. Given my hangover experiences in the past, which nothing but time could cure, I have no desire to EVER get myself into such a state again. After a few cocktails though, I can pretty much guarantee that the next morning I will have a slight, but very persistent, headache. So, Friday night rolled around, and since it was my day off, I did indeed enjoy a few alcohol containing beverages. And when I awoke the next morning, there was indeed a headache present. I went into the kitchen, took the carton of coconut water out of the fridge, and drank maybe a third of it. There was no immediate or mystical change in my condition, so I went back to bed for a bit. The next time I got out of bed, I have to admit that there was a noticeable positive improvement in the condition of my head. Maybe it was the coconut water. Maybe it was the extra sleep. I can't really say for certain, and in order to do more research on the subject, I have to put myself in a condition that I don't care to be in. That means that for now, the question of the curative powers of coconut water over hangovers will have remain unanswered.

*After a brief encounter with the neighbor across the street, I will add two more things to the list of possibilities explaining why they're so bizarre. They could either be Russian spies or serial killers. Not likely both, but not impossible either.

*As much as I hat to say it, after we get done watching our way through season 5 of Lost, I'm thinking that I may get a decent sized chunk of my life back. The only reason for that being that season 6 won't be available for us to rent.

*I measured off the space for the bags court in the driveway yesterday, and 27 feet looks like a really long way to me. Guess that once I start pitching those beanbags I'll find out just how far it really is.

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