Scar

The putty knife incident last fall has left a seemingly permanent scar in its destructive wake. Its not huge, but it’s on my face, and when I look in the mirror, I see it. It isn’t particularly hideous or ugly, even my family claims to barely notice it, but I notice it in much the same way that I would notice an orange triangle on an American flag, a brussel sprout on my pizza, or a tattoo on my moms forehead. Luckily, its an inny instead of an outy, and I imagine that when I get old, it will be the site of my first wrinkle. Perhaps the same thing will happen when I start working on the opposite side of the house, and the symmetry will be restored to my lower lipple region.

Gravity

brrrrrr......12° is too dam cold.

Imagine if gravity was variable, like temperature is. The weather man would say things like, “Today’s gonna be a heavy day, with a gravity index of 1.3” or “Today should be as light as a feather, with a gravity index of 0.7” The light days would be good for hiking, rock climbing, and sports in general. Heavy days would be good for napping, strength training, driving fast on tight curves and demolition.
Today feels heavy.

snow

The weather channel radar seems to be showing a swirling mofo of crystalline waterflakes comin my way. Probably wont amount to much, but I think its gonna beat me home.

My New Room

I finished a massive refurbishing of my garage this weekend. I now have shelves 8 feet high, 2 feet deep, and 12 feet long. These shelves are everyones storage fantasy. They can hold all the boxes of crap we've decided to keep, like old school books and random memorabilia, and there's still plenty of room for coolers, old lamps and vases, suitcases, grass seed, fertilizer, peat moss, etc. My ladders, shovels, axes and rakes are all hanging neatly from the walls. All my lumber is stored on racks I built on another wall. The bikes are hanging gracefully from vinyl-coated hooks in the rafters, and the scrap cardboard and wood has been reduced to ash. I put another gnarly shelf behind the workbench, and below it, there are nice rows of screwdrivers, wrenches, clamps, and saws hanging from hooks. I felt like I should be wearing some gray coveralls with a little crest on the chest ...... like the old men do in their neat garages.

I'm a nerd

At lunchtime today, I got in my truck and headed into town. All the radio stations play crap during lunch, so I tuned in to NPR. For some reason, the station wasn’t coming in very well, and I was trying to hear Earth and Sky, so I cranked up the volume. When that was over, the classical music started. My brain tuned out the music as I pulled up to a stop light. When I looked over at the car next to me, I noticed a carload of “cool kids” in their late teens, laughing and pointing at me. That’s when I realized that I was cranking some overly pompous baroque music with too many trumpets at an obnoxious volume. My 1st instinct was to switch the station, but instead, I rolled my window down the rest of the way, cranked the volume up some more, and laughed on down the road like a cheesy nerd.

The spelling bee

My little girl recently won her class spelling bee, and it made me remember a story.

When I was in 5th grade, I won my class spelling bee. Then I had to compete against the winners of the other classes. I remember standing there on stage in the cafeteria and spelling words for what seemed like eternity, because the words were easy, and we were all good spellers. One by one the kids dropped out until it was just me and a girl from the class down the hall. We spelled and spelled, until finally she got a word wrong. I spelled the word correctly. It was almost over, and now I would be the winner. My classmates hooted and hollered, and I grinned with abandon. Then they asked me to spell cement. I quickly said, “cement…s-e-m-e-n-t…cement”. Still grinning, I watched the jaws of my classmates drop towards their laps, and I realized I screwed up. The girl spelled cement correctly, then she spelled library, and then it was over…..I had lost the spelling bee. A few days later they presented me with a plaque for being the spelling bee runner-up. The best part is.... they spelled my name wrong.

I'm Lovin it

the following is a transcript of a story caught on tape in 1990 as told by the zenmaster

There was a time that I went to McDonalds. I was standing next to a guy that I had never seen before in my entire life. It was quite busy at McDonalds. I went up and ordered a quarter pounder with cheese, a large fry, and a large coke. I had not seen what the guy next to my had ordered, I had no reason to pay any attention to it. The lady came up with two trays, one of them had a large fry, and a large coke. The other one had a fillet of fish, a small coke, and an apple pie. I had nothing to do with that order. Well, the man next to me began eating the fries off of my tray. He reached his hand over and pulled fries out of the large fries that I had ordered. The shockness of the situation made it so that I could not react appropriately. Yeah, so you know, I was trying to be calm.....so to prove that I knew that they were my fries, I reached over and put my hand in the box, and I pulled out four fries, and I ate them one after the other. I never got a single glance from the man, but he kept eating my fries. Well, it was a very strange situation, and it kept going on until the entire box was empty, and we never exchanged a single glance or said a single word. It was about then that the lady walked up, handed me a bag and a coke and said, “Here’s your order sir."

Top 20

I have about a bunch of CDs that are filled to the brim with MP3s. Some of these CDs are compilations of lots of good songs, others are more like archives that have a dozen or so albums on each one. These CDs have been taking turns entertaining me for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the last few years while I’ve toiled away in workland. I was goofing around with my media player the other day, and noticed that the player was keeping a count of how many times I listened to each individual track. I keep the player on shuffle, and if I’m not in the mood to hear a song, I’ll skip past it.

Here are the resulting top 20:

1. in limbo: Radiohead
2. there there: Radiohead
3. red: King Crimson
4. flutes of the chi: Ween
5. junkhead: Alice in Chains
6. genghis khan: Iron Maiden
7. level 5: King Crimson
8. atomic punk: Van Halen
9. go to sleep: Radiohead
10. take it outside: Dean
11. the ides of march: Iron Maiden
12. lateralus: Tool
13. bus: Dean
14. myxomatosis: Radiohead
15. revelations: Iron Maiden
16. limo wreck: soundgarden
17. mutilated lips: Ween
18. elektrik: King Crimson
19. shape of a word: Shadowfax
20. beercan: Beck

666

It looks like labmonkie was the 666th visitor to my blog. I'm sure she didn't mean to leave the mark of the beast at the top of my page, but now I'm all scared. I hope she uses her powers for good instead of evil.

whiplash

When I got to work this morning, I had a lot of work to get done real fast. So I popped in Reign in Blood by Slayer to keep me going. When it was over I put in Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes. Now I have a bad case of musical whiplash.....the only known cure for this horrific malady is, of course, Radiohead. Wish me luck.

Oh Yeah.....Come to Chesters Thursday night and enjoy the soothing sounds of Jive Market.

I'm Back

Man……it’s been nice livin da life without the man breathin down my neck for the last few weeks, but now I’m back and the worlds still turning. Two days ago I was driving around town with a t-shirt on and the windows down, in the spring-like 70 degree weather. Today its snowing and freakin cold as hell.

I’m pleased to say that I had a killer holiday. I got to hang out with my nuclear family for days on end, and chill out home style. I started my remodeling adventures during my vacation last year, so this year I made a point of not doing any of that. Instead, I acted like an idiot with a gnarly bed head, muttered random absurdities, did some puzzles, and played with the kids and their new toys. My brother the monkey scientist came down from New York and got to spend a week with us, which was fun and good. The kids got to see all the grandfolks and aunts and uncles they could stand. Everyones happy and healthy and that’s what its all about.

I’d like to announce from the tallest tree that I got “Piece of Mind” by Iron Maiden for Christmas. It’s dam good. Also I bought a re-mastered edition of Van Halen 1 at Hastings. I love that crap. I also went to see Return of the King. Whew!…..The story is now complete, and except for the 10 minutes of everyone looking lovingly into each others eyes, it kicked massive ass.