My Odd Thoughts

I read a headline the other day about a truck carrying 14 tons of Oreo cookies overturning.
My Odd Thought: I wondered to myself if they sent a tanker truck filled with milk to the scene to help with the clean up.
I had later heard that two lanes of I-80 were closed as authorities cleaned up the cookies.
My Odd Thought: I pictured all the worker as cookie monsters in yellow reflective vests and hard hats.

I was driving to work the other morning and I got behind a old Honda that had one of those flip top DVD players sitting on its dash. We have all been behind one of these cars, with it playing a Disney movie for the kids. This wasn't one of those cars; this guy was watching a porn DVD.
My Odd Thoughts: What job does he have that he has to watch a porn before going in.
As he drove away I saw the car lurching as he shifted gears.
My Odd Thought: Thank God it's a manual transmission.

Town Hall Meetings

The new big boss at work (a reference to her position on the food chain and not her size) has been having town hall meetings. I avoid them like the plague. It’s not that I don’t want to hear what she has to say, or learn about what’s happening with our company. It’s that I value my time. I feel I can contribute more to the company by working. I might attend one of these meetings if they were a half an hour or so. But, most of the time they turn into one of two things:

• The 2 Hour Bitch Session – Why can’t the company buy me this or that, why do I have to pay any money for my insurance, why do I have to be random drug tested and you don’t, whaaa, whaaa, whaaa… on and on. – If I want to hear bitching, I can call my sister and ask her, “how’s your boss?”.

• The 2 Hour Pep Rally – Yah!!! Yes, we are laying people off, but isn’t it great that I got a bonus for cutting the budget. Yah!!! Aren’t we great? You make this company (true, but most of them make the company mediocre). Rah, rah, rah. – If I wanted to attend a pep rally I would go to one that had cheerleaders in little costumes (college or professional cheerleaders, not most the women from work in little costumes (there are two that I wouldn’t mind seeing in a cheerleader costume).

I understand that some people are required to attend, but I’m not. I am not that high on the food chain. I understand some people want to try to suck up to the big boss, but not me; I’m too busy brown nosing my immediate supervisor to worry about anyone above him. I understand that some people like to feel that someone with authority is listening to them, but I don’t; I find if you have good enough ideas, it will reach people above you.

I have no use for these Town Hall Meetings.

Welcome to the Family

I would like to take a moment to welcome a new member into our pack. Her name is Dixie Belle and my sister adopted (rescued) her a few weeks ago.

Allergies

I am not feeling well today. My throat hurts and I’m drowsy from the over medication I did to myself. Normally my allergies aren’t that bad, but yesterday I hurt myself.

Yesterday, I finally got the parts to fix my lawn mower (I ran over a brick that my neighbor’s dog pushed under the fence trying to get into my yard (she has a crush on Buddy)), and a battery charger (my lawn mower had been broken so long that I thought the battery might have died (it had)). Once the mower was repaired, I decided to cut as much of the lawn as possible before the sun set. I figured I would be able to get most of the yard. Boy was I wrong. What I didn’t take into account was that I hadn’t cut the grass (weeds) in a few weeks. My lawn was high. To give you an example of how high; when my dogs would lie down in the grass, I would lose them.

It took me all the time just to get the front cut (and I still need to cut it again to get it lower). Because it was high the grass (weeds) had a lot of pollen. So, by the time I stopped mowing I had a sore throat, watery eyes, breathing trouble and the general feeling of blah. And, because I’m not a doctor I don’t always medicate myself well. I took to much allergy medicine (with beer), and now I a little bit out of it.

Allergies suck.

Heft on Wheels Again

My bike screamed in agony and so did I. The small little tires of my road bike are not made for people like me (Hefty), so my bike screamed under my weight. The big tires of a cruiser or a mountain bike are better equipped to handle my rotundness, but there I was on my little road bike pedaling my ass off (actually I would have to pedal thousands of miles to pedal my fat ass off) and my body screamed in agony.

I am following a woman ahead of me (not in a stalking way). She is a cyclist. Lean, aerodynamic and skilled; she glides through the trail. I had vowed to keep up with her. I was doing everything to keep up. She made little circles as she pedaled, while I stomped down on the pedals; she easily talked to people as she passed them, while I gasped for air. To her this was a little training ride, to me it was war (and not a cool war like WW II or the French Indian War, but a crappy war like Vietnam or Iraq (not the first Iraq War)).

In the end two truths came out. She is a cyclist and I am Heft on Wheels.

Bat Safari

I went on a Bat Safari the other day. That sounds cool doesn’t it? In theory it is, but in reality it wasn’t.

It started off bad and progressed into pathetic. I got to the State Park that it was being held at an hour and a half before the actual start time (I want to say they changed the start time, but knowing my memory I was probably remembered it wrong). I asked the park rangers where everyone was meeting for the bat safari, and was told at the Nature Center.

At 6:10 another person showed up (it was suppose to start at 6:00) looking for the bat safari. We couldn’t even ask the ranger in the Nature center, because it closed at 5:00. At 6:30 I found another park ranger, which informed me that the meeting was at the other park entrance 8 miles away. So I informed the other bat safari patron a, and away I went.

At the other park entrance there was no one to be found. So I headed off on the dirt trail in search of them. Unfortunately I headed in the opposite direction that they were. Luckily, I met a park ranger about a half a mile down the trail and he drove me back to the bat safari.

At the safari, the instructor taught us about bats (it took about 15 minutes; I have no idea what he was talking about to everyone else the 45 minutes that I wasn’t there). At dusk we headed out to track bats (he had an ultra-sonic detector). From dusk to about 8:30 we didn’t hear anything and most of the people headed home (it had started raining). At around 8:45 the rest of us headed back.

At the parking lot, the instructor gave the area one last sweep with the ultra-sonic detector, and he heard one (ONE). Somewhere in that direction over the lake, but by then you couldn’t see five feet in front of you (by now it is well past dusk, and it is dark out).

The whole experience was disappointing. I was expecting it to be like a scene out of Batman, but what I got reminded me of the static from an AM transistor radio (with a few clicking noises added in).