Saturday, January 31, 2009
Why I Am Too Lazy To Be A Fanatic...
This blog has been deleted because the judges have voted it off the island as too boring.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Kimmi, Kimmi, Where Are You? Call Me, Baby!
A short, but somewhat humorous snippet...
So I have a dear friend who is under the weather and I'd been checking in on her daily with a text message so as not to wake her up. Well this is good and all and I was racking up good karma points until...
I typed in the wrong phone number into the phone for the text message. I was one digit off. Well I didn't realize I had done this and I sent off what would be a totally innocent message if you had the context and the receiver was the right person. But to a random stranger, well maybe not - without context.
Message was:
"Hey hon, how are you doing? Thinking of you..."
Well now the next morning while away from the phone I get a voice mail from the number I mistyped...
"Kimmi? Baby is that you? Oh I was so hoping you'd get back in touch..."
I ignored the message because I knew I wasn't Kimmi and well my desperate sounding drive-by text messaging victim was some dude.
Bored now.
Later that day the phone rings again and I miss it again. "Kimmi? Kimmi? C'mon, baby, pick up!"
Still bored now,
Even later, Mr. "Kimmi Doesn't Love Me Anymore" calls again. This time I pick up and feeling mischievous, lower my voice, "Hello?"
"Is Kimmi there?" says our lost soul.
Instead of telling him he had the wrong number, I simply say "No."
There is a long pause and then he hangs up.
Not so bored now.
I'm going to Hell.
So I have a dear friend who is under the weather and I'd been checking in on her daily with a text message so as not to wake her up. Well this is good and all and I was racking up good karma points until...
I typed in the wrong phone number into the phone for the text message. I was one digit off. Well I didn't realize I had done this and I sent off what would be a totally innocent message if you had the context and the receiver was the right person. But to a random stranger, well maybe not - without context.
Message was:
"Hey hon, how are you doing? Thinking of you..."
Well now the next morning while away from the phone I get a voice mail from the number I mistyped...
"Kimmi? Baby is that you? Oh I was so hoping you'd get back in touch..."
I ignored the message because I knew I wasn't Kimmi and well my desperate sounding drive-by text messaging victim was some dude.
Bored now.
Later that day the phone rings again and I miss it again. "Kimmi? Kimmi? C'mon, baby, pick up!"
Still bored now,
Even later, Mr. "Kimmi Doesn't Love Me Anymore" calls again. This time I pick up and feeling mischievous, lower my voice, "Hello?"
"Is Kimmi there?" says our lost soul.
Instead of telling him he had the wrong number, I simply say "No."
There is a long pause and then he hangs up.
Not so bored now.
I'm going to Hell.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Winter In Narnia 2008
So the plan was that I'd take two weeks off at Christmas and just putter around, doing a little of this a little of that. I knew I had several projects around the house that were in desperate need of getting done and the computer situation had gone completely cyber-jungle on me. So that was going to be the chores part of the holidays, but as rewards I would go out and visit friends, hit a few nice restaurants, fart about on the computer doing my facsimile of computer music or computer artwork, do the family thing and play Uncle Ross.
I would also take a day and hit the outdoor mall and casually finish my Christmas shopping taking in the the holiday ambiance watching the bustle and knowing that I was finally enjoying this holiday for once after long years of grinchiness.
Yeppers, that was the plan. How could I have guessed that Seattle would be hit with the snow storm of the half-century and that due to our collective snow preparedness, I would be reliving Stephen King's "The Shining" with a twist.
So first off, let me explain something now that comes into play a bit later. The house I live in has no central heating. If I get cold, which in a normal year is about three nights a year, I fire up the space heater in my office and my bedroom and just wear a thick sweater and I am good to go. Ok, so no heat going into the storm. Coincidently, this house has a bit of a history. In the Korean War, Seattle's north end city limit was 85th Street and I am at 97th, and this nice little house was one of the popular north end brothels. The layout of the house is very odd, but makes sense when you have that little factoid.
When the big cold hit, I fired up my meager space heaters and settled in. Winter in Seattle consists of snow for a day and then melting and rain. The weather site I use on the Internet hinted at worse, but really since it was calling for the storm on Wednesday and there was nothing, then I concluded they were wrong again. In this case they were a day early. But when it did hit, I found myself with two coolish rooms and the rest of the house a freezer. It was really intolerable to be anywhere but my office or bedroom. The restroom stops were cold reminders of when I used to ski. Nothing like putting bare butt on ice cold plastic. So when I actually had to leave one room, I scurried to the other room like a rat in a very cold maze. I actually left the orange juice out on the kitchen counter the night it hit 15 degrees only to have it mostly frozen the next morning.
So my house sits on a fairly steep hill, but not very far up the hill, so when it snows most of the time, I just muscle the truck out and get it on the main street at the bottom of the hill and I am good to go. Unfortunately this time was a little different. The truck's battery had gone flat.
The poor beastie needed a jump which was problematic because of the parking (no good access to the battery to jump off of another car). Given my super-intense phobia about jumping cars, this is actually okay with me. I had my chargers.
My car phobia comes from a time when I had no fear of electricity and jumping cars. I knew you could have some issue if you cross-connected and things like that, but my attitude at the time was retarded monkeys could do this kind of thing blindfolded, what harm could I come to? Lesson one for me: not all jumper cables are created equal. Some are absolute crap and well quite dangerous. Guess what kind I had? Lesson two: if you are going to jump a battery try jumping batteries that are not completely mismatched in power and size. Jumping a battery from a monster-sized Mercedes from the 70's to a tiny Toyota Celica (my darling "Car From Hell") is like mating a Newfoundland with a Scottish Terrier. Nothing good comes from it. It didn't help that I remembered some stupid tip that the jumper car should be running. So the Merc was kicking out even more electric fun. As I got out of the Celica after successfully jumping the car I got a rude surprise. Much to my shock and horror, I watched the black jumper cables quickly (and I mean seconds) go from black to dark gray, to lighter gray to ash color AND the leads start to glow red. I suspect that if I had not disconnected the cables as fast as I did, battery go boom. Strangely this has stuck with me since. But I am not afraid of slow charging battery chargers. Odd, huh?
So short story long, in theory I could get the truck going any time. Just needed to get out my trusty charger(s). Funny thing about chargers is they need to be charged. That requires you charge them with power and that requires a power cable. Yes, our hero has misplaced all of his cables and all his chargers are drained. This is starting to shape up to be a horrorfest. You know when you want to yell at the teenagers on screen, "Don't go make out in the van! There's a crazed axe-wielding killer waiting? Don't you know anything?" This was similar. "Why didn't you charge when you had the chance? Don't you know anything?"
So mobility impaired. I had the Lexus, but that was my last choice. Not a snow car.
So I am going to be indoors for a few days. Not a problem. I don't get cabin fever easily and had lots of unwatched DVDs and books to entertain me and being a computer whore, I can spend days zooming in and out of applications. Plus I could also chat with friends both on the cell and online. Plus that first day, I could do my online shopping for Christmas. The 18th. Yes, as you can see I am not very bright.
I had not done a lot of shopping online at Christmas and I had assumed 2-day shipping meant that the very second I hit the submit button, magic elves would whisk my order out of inventory and get it in the mail near the speed of light. Now the veterans of Christmas mailings are no doubt scoffing at my foolish, foolish naiveté. But when the email confirmations started to appear in my email that the package was just about to be sent at the same time I was actually expecting the package to arrive, all I can say I was glad I had the cover of bad weather when it came to explaining why most of the online gifts arrived late. I was even more grateful most of the people I was dealing with had the same line; "Sorry, UPS didn't make it."
Note to self: Online shop early.
So for the first four days I was set. In fact I was quite happy to have downtime and the excuse I couldn't go anywhere.
Then by about Day 5, I'd had enough. So I ventured out down the street to Fred Meyers to finish my Christmas shopping. Not quite the outdoor mall with ambiance, but it was better than a 7-Eleven “Post-it notes for everyone” Christmas. I also hit a nearby toy store, but it did not give me the joy of Toys 'r Us on Christmas Eve.
You see, the last several years I have had a holiday tradition of going to Toys 'R Us on Christmas Eve to witness the total carnage that out of control yard monsters can inflict in the Mecca of junior greed. It captures perfectly the spirit of the season my friend Wayland calls "Consuming for Christ". Ripped open packages litter isles and store employees wander the halls looking zombie-like and speechless pleading for someone to pop a cap in their brain to end the misery, As I write this, it occurs to me I really should make a Boxing Day jaunt to the store next year to see the after Christmas returns and bargain hunting. That could even be more apocalyptic. Hmmn. I'll have to make a note for 2009.
Now being quite used to hauling crap in cars, I had not taken into account that I would be walking up hill for about a half mile on ice and snow. My balance on a good day is is marginal. On the trek back there was sliding and swearing and gifts a' flyin'. Yes and since the main road had been somewhat cleared, there was dirty slushy snow that would be kicked up and flung by morons driving in the snowy part of the road not not the clear part. Again I curse the SUV owners. But after about an hour I made it home. Boy getting out was fun. I was so much more relaxed.
So Tuesday's big event was wrapping the presents. I have a bad habit of not wrapping gifts because, well, um, I am a single guy and well, I bribe others with my hopelessness usually - I am not trained well. Plus when I do wrap, it sort of looks like I am post doctorate of the Helen Keller Gift Wrapping Academy. But this year I would be better. So I got out the scissors and the paper. I scrounged up the Scotch tape only to realize I had about 6 inches left on the roll and no other gift tape. Was I going to go brave Snowmageddon just for tape? I tried other methods such as string and staples, but I drew the line at duct tape. Nothing says "I am a lame-ass" more than a thoughtful gift wrapped in duct tape.
So Christmas is approaching and several decisions were going to have to be made. I had an invitation to spend Christmas Eve with my friends Susan and Kevin. Kevin is a great cook and there would be great beer and wine, including my favorite beer of all time, the Belgium beer "Chimay Blue Label" and we'd watch DVDs and graze on gnosh and play with their dogs. I would crash there and have breakfast in the morning and we'd swap presents. Quite lovely. But I had to get there.
However, Union Hill in Redmond was not happening. It was closed they tell me, but with Greenwood somewhat treacherous, all bets were off.
Being alone on Christmas Eve was ok, if not a little lonely, but the next decision was Christmas itself. Since my mother was gone and my sister was on the east coast and my father had canceled his trip to Seattle, I had no immediate family, but I usually went to Wayland's moms for Christmas dinner and had been doing this for twenty years, so this was a tougher decision. I really wanted to go, but given she lived on Capital Hill (a very horrid area for snow) this was going to require me to resurrect my truck. So with the clock ticking, I set out to find the power cable for any charger to charge the truck. After giving up I hiked back down to Freddy's and bought yet another charger. Sigh... This was four or five now.
I got the charger home and opened it. WTF? It didn't come with a cable. It would take an extension cord. But I didn't know what bin or box I had sorted all these into. At one point, I had sorted all kinds of household things into bins for possible donation and abandoned the project and forgot the contents. Boy after several moves, you would think I'd be smarter.
Back into the snow to go down to Safeway. More slipping, more sliding. Finally a cable. Back home. So I charged up Mr. Battery Charger, but it was a very slow process. Eventually on Christmas day I brought life back to the Toyota and made my way to Capital Hill. It actually was quite an easy drive despite what I expected until I got to 19th Ave.
What should have been relatively clear was a giant icy-slushy rut-ridden joke of a street, But what can't be cured, must be endured so I proceeded to head down 19th. The snow was pretty wet and heavy and the ruts bounced the truck around like a lunar rover. I saw all these SUVs and little cars sliding and getting quite stuck. I needed to get a fair ways down the road, but after getting nearly stuck myself trying to yield the way to someone. I realized that I couldn't get any further and was just about to pull over and hike the rest of the way when lo and behold a plow comes along. Saved! I waited for Mr. Plow go by thinking that this was awesome. If he went all the way down 19th, I could just follow, This was where I got to experience first hand the city's absolute moronic mandates. As the plow past me by, I realized the the plow was leaving almost everything the way it was. Maybe it plowed a few inches off the top, but there was at least a foot of crap. So essentially he was making it just slightly less hard to drive this damn road. Still totally screwed up even after the plow.
Well I fought my way down and about a block away gave up. I walked it with my gifts.
So I did the second family thing. The nieces and nephews are all taller and one of them now stares down at me and says things like, "Play Mario Cart with me." only to be followed a while later with "You really suck at this, don't you?" I start to wax nostalgic for the old Commodore 64 days and he looks at me like I am speaking of ancient times. From his point of view I probably am.
Dinner and the gifts were fab, but I was fascinated with the social experiment of giving an 8 year old a computer and then telling him he can't build it until he gets home. I thought his little blood vessels were going to pop out of his neck at the stress. You could have fed the kid a bag of sugar and not got him as hyper.
I ended up crashing there for the night and the next day made the reverse trek in the same amount of snow, just slushier.
Not much else to say about my winter torment other than I ended up playing Cranium's Family Fun on New Year's Eve and had to stack a set of six diced sized blocks in a stack using only my elbows. You see where this goes...
I should have been drinking more, much more to be talked into that one...
And of this writing it is snowing...again.
I would also take a day and hit the outdoor mall and casually finish my Christmas shopping taking in the the holiday ambiance watching the bustle and knowing that I was finally enjoying this holiday for once after long years of grinchiness.
Yeppers, that was the plan. How could I have guessed that Seattle would be hit with the snow storm of the half-century and that due to our collective snow preparedness, I would be reliving Stephen King's "The Shining" with a twist.
So first off, let me explain something now that comes into play a bit later. The house I live in has no central heating. If I get cold, which in a normal year is about three nights a year, I fire up the space heater in my office and my bedroom and just wear a thick sweater and I am good to go. Ok, so no heat going into the storm. Coincidently, this house has a bit of a history. In the Korean War, Seattle's north end city limit was 85th Street and I am at 97th, and this nice little house was one of the popular north end brothels. The layout of the house is very odd, but makes sense when you have that little factoid.
When the big cold hit, I fired up my meager space heaters and settled in. Winter in Seattle consists of snow for a day and then melting and rain. The weather site I use on the Internet hinted at worse, but really since it was calling for the storm on Wednesday and there was nothing, then I concluded they were wrong again. In this case they were a day early. But when it did hit, I found myself with two coolish rooms and the rest of the house a freezer. It was really intolerable to be anywhere but my office or bedroom. The restroom stops were cold reminders of when I used to ski. Nothing like putting bare butt on ice cold plastic. So when I actually had to leave one room, I scurried to the other room like a rat in a very cold maze. I actually left the orange juice out on the kitchen counter the night it hit 15 degrees only to have it mostly frozen the next morning.
So my house sits on a fairly steep hill, but not very far up the hill, so when it snows most of the time, I just muscle the truck out and get it on the main street at the bottom of the hill and I am good to go. Unfortunately this time was a little different. The truck's battery had gone flat.
The poor beastie needed a jump which was problematic because of the parking (no good access to the battery to jump off of another car). Given my super-intense phobia about jumping cars, this is actually okay with me. I had my chargers.
My car phobia comes from a time when I had no fear of electricity and jumping cars. I knew you could have some issue if you cross-connected and things like that, but my attitude at the time was retarded monkeys could do this kind of thing blindfolded, what harm could I come to? Lesson one for me: not all jumper cables are created equal. Some are absolute crap and well quite dangerous. Guess what kind I had? Lesson two: if you are going to jump a battery try jumping batteries that are not completely mismatched in power and size. Jumping a battery from a monster-sized Mercedes from the 70's to a tiny Toyota Celica (my darling "Car From Hell") is like mating a Newfoundland with a Scottish Terrier. Nothing good comes from it. It didn't help that I remembered some stupid tip that the jumper car should be running. So the Merc was kicking out even more electric fun. As I got out of the Celica after successfully jumping the car I got a rude surprise. Much to my shock and horror, I watched the black jumper cables quickly (and I mean seconds) go from black to dark gray, to lighter gray to ash color AND the leads start to glow red. I suspect that if I had not disconnected the cables as fast as I did, battery go boom. Strangely this has stuck with me since. But I am not afraid of slow charging battery chargers. Odd, huh?
So short story long, in theory I could get the truck going any time. Just needed to get out my trusty charger(s). Funny thing about chargers is they need to be charged. That requires you charge them with power and that requires a power cable. Yes, our hero has misplaced all of his cables and all his chargers are drained. This is starting to shape up to be a horrorfest. You know when you want to yell at the teenagers on screen, "Don't go make out in the van! There's a crazed axe-wielding killer waiting? Don't you know anything?" This was similar. "Why didn't you charge when you had the chance? Don't you know anything?"
So mobility impaired. I had the Lexus, but that was my last choice. Not a snow car.
So I am going to be indoors for a few days. Not a problem. I don't get cabin fever easily and had lots of unwatched DVDs and books to entertain me and being a computer whore, I can spend days zooming in and out of applications. Plus I could also chat with friends both on the cell and online. Plus that first day, I could do my online shopping for Christmas. The 18th. Yes, as you can see I am not very bright.
I had not done a lot of shopping online at Christmas and I had assumed 2-day shipping meant that the very second I hit the submit button, magic elves would whisk my order out of inventory and get it in the mail near the speed of light. Now the veterans of Christmas mailings are no doubt scoffing at my foolish, foolish naiveté. But when the email confirmations started to appear in my email that the package was just about to be sent at the same time I was actually expecting the package to arrive, all I can say I was glad I had the cover of bad weather when it came to explaining why most of the online gifts arrived late. I was even more grateful most of the people I was dealing with had the same line; "Sorry, UPS didn't make it."
Note to self: Online shop early.
So for the first four days I was set. In fact I was quite happy to have downtime and the excuse I couldn't go anywhere.
Then by about Day 5, I'd had enough. So I ventured out down the street to Fred Meyers to finish my Christmas shopping. Not quite the outdoor mall with ambiance, but it was better than a 7-Eleven “Post-it notes for everyone” Christmas. I also hit a nearby toy store, but it did not give me the joy of Toys 'r Us on Christmas Eve.
You see, the last several years I have had a holiday tradition of going to Toys 'R Us on Christmas Eve to witness the total carnage that out of control yard monsters can inflict in the Mecca of junior greed. It captures perfectly the spirit of the season my friend Wayland calls "Consuming for Christ". Ripped open packages litter isles and store employees wander the halls looking zombie-like and speechless pleading for someone to pop a cap in their brain to end the misery, As I write this, it occurs to me I really should make a Boxing Day jaunt to the store next year to see the after Christmas returns and bargain hunting. That could even be more apocalyptic. Hmmn. I'll have to make a note for 2009.
Now being quite used to hauling crap in cars, I had not taken into account that I would be walking up hill for about a half mile on ice and snow. My balance on a good day is is marginal. On the trek back there was sliding and swearing and gifts a' flyin'. Yes and since the main road had been somewhat cleared, there was dirty slushy snow that would be kicked up and flung by morons driving in the snowy part of the road not not the clear part. Again I curse the SUV owners. But after about an hour I made it home. Boy getting out was fun. I was so much more relaxed.
So Tuesday's big event was wrapping the presents. I have a bad habit of not wrapping gifts because, well, um, I am a single guy and well, I bribe others with my hopelessness usually - I am not trained well. Plus when I do wrap, it sort of looks like I am post doctorate of the Helen Keller Gift Wrapping Academy. But this year I would be better. So I got out the scissors and the paper. I scrounged up the Scotch tape only to realize I had about 6 inches left on the roll and no other gift tape. Was I going to go brave Snowmageddon just for tape? I tried other methods such as string and staples, but I drew the line at duct tape. Nothing says "I am a lame-ass" more than a thoughtful gift wrapped in duct tape.
So Christmas is approaching and several decisions were going to have to be made. I had an invitation to spend Christmas Eve with my friends Susan and Kevin. Kevin is a great cook and there would be great beer and wine, including my favorite beer of all time, the Belgium beer "Chimay Blue Label" and we'd watch DVDs and graze on gnosh and play with their dogs. I would crash there and have breakfast in the morning and we'd swap presents. Quite lovely. But I had to get there.
However, Union Hill in Redmond was not happening. It was closed they tell me, but with Greenwood somewhat treacherous, all bets were off.
Being alone on Christmas Eve was ok, if not a little lonely, but the next decision was Christmas itself. Since my mother was gone and my sister was on the east coast and my father had canceled his trip to Seattle, I had no immediate family, but I usually went to Wayland's moms for Christmas dinner and had been doing this for twenty years, so this was a tougher decision. I really wanted to go, but given she lived on Capital Hill (a very horrid area for snow) this was going to require me to resurrect my truck. So with the clock ticking, I set out to find the power cable for any charger to charge the truck. After giving up I hiked back down to Freddy's and bought yet another charger. Sigh... This was four or five now.
I got the charger home and opened it. WTF? It didn't come with a cable. It would take an extension cord. But I didn't know what bin or box I had sorted all these into. At one point, I had sorted all kinds of household things into bins for possible donation and abandoned the project and forgot the contents. Boy after several moves, you would think I'd be smarter.
Back into the snow to go down to Safeway. More slipping, more sliding. Finally a cable. Back home. So I charged up Mr. Battery Charger, but it was a very slow process. Eventually on Christmas day I brought life back to the Toyota and made my way to Capital Hill. It actually was quite an easy drive despite what I expected until I got to 19th Ave.
What should have been relatively clear was a giant icy-slushy rut-ridden joke of a street, But what can't be cured, must be endured so I proceeded to head down 19th. The snow was pretty wet and heavy and the ruts bounced the truck around like a lunar rover. I saw all these SUVs and little cars sliding and getting quite stuck. I needed to get a fair ways down the road, but after getting nearly stuck myself trying to yield the way to someone. I realized that I couldn't get any further and was just about to pull over and hike the rest of the way when lo and behold a plow comes along. Saved! I waited for Mr. Plow go by thinking that this was awesome. If he went all the way down 19th, I could just follow, This was where I got to experience first hand the city's absolute moronic mandates. As the plow past me by, I realized the the plow was leaving almost everything the way it was. Maybe it plowed a few inches off the top, but there was at least a foot of crap. So essentially he was making it just slightly less hard to drive this damn road. Still totally screwed up even after the plow.
Well I fought my way down and about a block away gave up. I walked it with my gifts.
So I did the second family thing. The nieces and nephews are all taller and one of them now stares down at me and says things like, "Play Mario Cart with me." only to be followed a while later with "You really suck at this, don't you?" I start to wax nostalgic for the old Commodore 64 days and he looks at me like I am speaking of ancient times. From his point of view I probably am.
Dinner and the gifts were fab, but I was fascinated with the social experiment of giving an 8 year old a computer and then telling him he can't build it until he gets home. I thought his little blood vessels were going to pop out of his neck at the stress. You could have fed the kid a bag of sugar and not got him as hyper.
I ended up crashing there for the night and the next day made the reverse trek in the same amount of snow, just slushier.
Not much else to say about my winter torment other than I ended up playing Cranium's Family Fun on New Year's Eve and had to stack a set of six diced sized blocks in a stack using only my elbows. You see where this goes...
I should have been drinking more, much more to be talked into that one...
And of this writing it is snowing...again.
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