Ever had the exhaust fall off your car? It’s LOUD… all the clanging, scraping, donking & sparking. You’ll notice. The Cabrio’s driver seemed perfectly happy with this situation this morning on the JFX. Or maybe he was busy talking into his blootoof earpiece. I hope he fixed it, or at least wire tied it out of the way. The muffler I temporarily put on my Golf for inspection came loose at one end on my way home from Rob’s, but I immediately pulled into a parking lot and called for my wife to bring me the tools & ramps. Fixed it on the spot before driving the rest of the way home.
It’s crap like this what kills motorcyclists. Thanks a ton, useless & ineffective ‘safety’ (State-mandated cash grab) inspection.
Still here. Still alive. Moving soon.
The Doctor got her dream job. Congratulations!
Spent 2 weeks in Slovakia for work. I liked it there.
Found out work won’t have a position for me where we’re going.
Had a fast roadtrip down to see the fam over the holidays. Everybody seems to be doing good. Found out what “PDM” stands for.
Turned in my resignation notice at work. Looking for a J-O-B in the Baltimore area. No offers or interviews yet.
Slowly panicking.
Not as much packing, mostly throwing junk away.
Trying to get the house repaired good & on the market fast.
Still rock my khakis with a cuff and a crease.
Chillin’ at home today, having a lovely morning. We made monkey bread last night and it was absolutely freakin’ delicious. Heading out in a while to go see a movie, but you should get to enjoy some of my favorite Christmasy songs, so I have put together this playlist for just such an occasion. My wife is enjoying a bit of a Christmas miracle herself, as her advisor has actually emailed her letting her know that he is working on his notes for her dissertation draft and she’ll have them in a couple days.
IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! “BOB” BLESS US EVERY ONE!
Insomnia? I dunno. Tired, but unable to shift that into sleep.
Great weekend, tho. My homeboy Mark came into town, as he’s been stuck out in Mongolia Wyoming Iowa Quad Cities Peoria for a while and he had his special lady rezendevous at my place for the weekend. Katie’s a hoot by herself but the two of them together are great. They even brought cookies & beer for us and bourbon for me. We had fun playing tour guide on Saturday and went out for a big fondue dinner at Geja’s. They had the good sense to want to see the Christkindlemarket/giant Christmas tree downtown, so we were able to walk off some of the boiling oil stank.
Today was a British morning, all tea & steel cut oats. They took off about 11ish to meet up with a different friend for lunch, so we took the rest of the day to install the iPod connector and the Sirius tuner box in her car. It’s so much cleaner looking now. We’re (thankfully) getting rid of the Sirius S50 (plus ancillaries) and I look forward to having EVERYTHING integrated into my headunit soon – I’ve already got the iPod connector, but we’ll soon install the Sirius tuner and blootoof module.
So, yeah. Always a treat to see Mark and especially so to meet his special lady. Hope y’all had as good a time as we did this weekend. If nothing else showing somebody else around really drives home what a great city Chicago is to live in.
ALSO MARK YOU LEFT YOUR FUCKING NALGENE BOTTLE.
Yeah, it’s been a while. So what’s new?
- Turns out the bike/car wreck was my fault, according to the eyewitnesses. Whoops. Needless to say, it has been handed over to my insurance company for them to deal with. I’m 99% physically healed but my ego is still bruised… as big of a stickler as I am for Same Road Same Rules Same Rights, I caused a wreck. Damn. I am making everything right on the car repair side and turning my mangled Raleigh Grand Prix into a parts bike for a road frame Charlie gave me years ago.
- My Senator got elected to be the next POTUS which delights me greatly.
- It’s cold here. And snowy. Just in time, too – I like seasonal weather.
- We had Fakesgiving III/Bullshit Thanksgiving 2008 at the home of Pete & Miz Royal. Fried a turkey in the chilly 15°F weather, had a couple Manhattans courtesy of Mr. Scott Action (Anton LaVey Jr.) and a great time was had by all.
- I’m keeping track of what I eat again. And losing weight again. I need to do this, badly. I’ve got two data points from this year. One where I signed up for fitday last year and one where I got weighed for a weight-loss contest at work in August. I’m back down near my August weight but have about 20 pounds to go until I’ve erased 2008’s ravages from my body.
- Out of homebrew. For now. Apple juice should start getting really, really cheap soon which means it’s about time to make another keg of hard cider.
- Work’s keeping me busy. One of my projects entails modifying some of our equipment, including getting the die set out of one of our presses, and nobody there has had it out before – fun, challenging and downright scary at times. You go elbows-deep in an 80 ton press and tell me it ain’t scary.
- My buddy Markh is comin’ up this weekend with his special lady in tow, which excites me. I haven’t seen Mark much since I moved 700+ miles away. Funny, that.
In short, first I:
But now:
And soon I shall again be:
…that I have never read The Da Vinci Code.
I suffered through another one of that hack’s book once, on my honeymoon in 2005. I started reading it on the plane from Chicago to Boston then to Keflavik and finally to London. When I finally finished Digital Fortress, I threw it across our hotel room near Kensington High Street and loudly proclaimed that Dan Brown was the worst hackjob of a writer that I had ever been tortured with, and that includes wading through the miasma of a rural Georga public school education. I’m fairly certain I also yelled that we should shut off BBC 4, don our jackboots and head down to the corner Sainbury’s for more lager and a curry takeaway on the way back.
Turns out I’m not the only one that thinks Mr. Brown writes like two shits in a biscuit.
Guess who has two thumbs and is gonna moonwalk out of this office in a short 9 work days?
THIS GUY.
Have a good Memorial Day weekend, kiddos.
I have a hard time making any sense of Hillary’s “Economic Blueprint for the 21st Century” in light of her campaign debt that’s running at least $20,000,000.00 and growing (according to the news today).
Barack Obama’s campaign so far appears to be fully in the black – despite something like $660k in debt, he’s currently got over fifty one million in cash on hand. YES, $51,073,999 ON HAND. That’s what, 9:1 income to debt ratio? Awesome. The carpetbagger from her adopted “home state” of New York has, according to this source, over $15M in debt but only $31M cash on hand.
If she can’t manage her own damn campaign, how in the hell is she gonna get the US economy back in shape?
Just in case you were wondering, tater farmers.
