Category: Weblog

I am currently on a work conference call. It’s muted, so they can’t hear me type.
I have these kinds of calls all the time, and usually I’m OK with it.
Today, for some unknown reason, I want to reach through the phone and strangle them all and make them shut up. The urge is great…
I’m sure this is some sort of stress reaction to the current wife-out-of-town, mother-in-law-in-town situation.
And, I still don’t have any Diet Vanilla Coke. But this person is taunting me! Why am I being punished.

It’s 2:41 PM and I’m wondering why the hell I don’t have any Diet Vanilla Coke.
There’s a conspiracy to keep it away from me.
Must… resist… food coma…

My brother is a child’s dream come true.

Every now and then I realize that my little weblog of Mike’s wierd stuff could be so much more.
I mean, I post some personal stuff here, but I never forget there are people out there reading every word. The mental firewall of what to post remains in place to filter out things.
Thanks to Escribitionist, I read a post that Sour Bob wrote. Holy fuck, that’s some real stuff. If it’s not real and he’s faking it, then he’s a great damn writer.

Yea-haw!
The new Charlie’s Angels Trailer is out and Bernie Mac is playing Bosley!
All hail Drew Barrymore, she again is producing the movie.

Our group of friends got together yesterday for the annual pumpkin carving party. This year we also made ‘Spooky Houses’. The spooky houses are basically mini-gingerbread houses. It gives the kids an excuse to stick candy to edible houses with frosting. They loved it. Many thanks to the Diggs for hosting the shebang, to Colleen for all the prep work on the houses, and to Len & Monique for bringing the booze.

Earlier in the morning, I tried using the new skillet. It sure gets hot. Once it gets hot, it stays hot. IT will take some getting used to before I stop making so much smoke in the house. I made goetta and it turned out OK, but the smoke was much more than normal.
After the pumpkin party, I went to a bar meeting of people who visit the WWDN site. It’s not the first time I’ve meet people in RL that I had known first online, so I wasn’t too nervous. It was a little strange to walk into the part of the bar where everyone was and have people recognize me that I had never meet before.
I was a bit of a hit since I brought a laptop with internet access to the bar. I was able to upload a couple of pics from the bar and let everyone post to & read from the message board while sitting there drinking beer. After a bit of getting to know who’s who, I was soon involved in my normal conversations about linux, video games, geocaching, and other nerdly pursuits. I stayed out of the hardcore Star Trek & Ren Faire discussions. Since most of us knew a little about each other, it made the conversation a lot easier than if it was 20 strangers with nothing in common in the room. A little later, Martin showed up to have a few beers and he got sucked into the geocaching discussions as well.
Today, my mother-in-law arrives in town for a week. It should be a good time. She and I get along well, and Michele will be on yet another quilting trip this week. We kind of have a mutual agreement that she can spoil the children while she’s here, as long as they get to school and bed on time.
Lastly, I was reading MeFi and saw a Slate story about the stain-free pants from Lee. You know the commercail where the daughter-in-law spills red wine on her pants to shock her mother-in-law. It appears that the pants really do reply and prevent stains. The writer made a good attempt to stain the pants and simply could not do it. I think a pair are in my future. The strange thing about the MeFi thread was the large amount of cyncism over the positive report. Accusations of the story being paid for by Lee and being a puff piece struck me as a bit over the top. Are people really so cynical that good news must always be seen as a trick?
Lastly, the Angels won Game 6. On my way to the bar I stopped a supermarket to get some cash from the ATM. Inside the store was a TV set. Around the TV were 30+ people watching the game together. Complete strangers were chatting about the game and enjoying the group feeling. It was the biggest outpouring of spontaneous community I have seen in a while. Kinda neat. I guess you had to be there…
OK, I gotta hit the shower to get clean or Michele is going to get pissed.

As I type, my new Lodge 10″ cast iron skillet is seasoning in the oven.
I am baking in some oil into the cast iron as directed my my cooking guru, Alton Brown.
Tomorrow, I hope to use the skillet in some glorious cooking adventure.

In a moment of brilliance, I posted some comments on the Styrofoamkitty weblog.
The post was about men liking women being aloof. My thoughts in regards to male/female relationships were so good, I felt the need to share here.
Guys hate that aloof stuff. It’s way too complicated.
Guys like straight forward stuff without a lot of middle ground.
For example, all things in life can be categorized into one of two realms. Either something sucks, or it rules. There is no in between.
To put it in relationship terms, the guy wants to know if you want to date him or don’t. This aloof stuff is way too confusing for our tiny brains.

For the good of baseball, Bud Selig must go.
This is beyond the pale.

I finally took a few minutes to make the site more readable via non-IE browers. I put the main part in a clearly defined table instead of purse CSS and the site looks identical under both IE & Mozilla under WinXP. The right column shows up all the time now.
If you still have viewing problems, let me know.