Monthly Archives: January 2009

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Starting Off With A Bang!

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My wish for one and all is that so far your year has been better than mine, and that the rest of it be at least as good as I expect mine to be. And in the immortal words of Dave Barry, I swear, I am not making any of this up.
Today is January 6th. It is the sixth day of 2009. So far this year, I have…

  • …snapped the key off in the lock (with me on the wrong side of the door) at 2 AM New Year’s Day.
  • …replaced a broken thermostat.
  • …woken up shivering the following morning because the furnace was also having problems.
  • …stayed the following night with friends because the house was still too cold.
  • …had my Christmas cold return.
  • …spent two hours sitting at the car dealership only to learn that they’re not sure whether they’ve fixed the problem.
  • …had the problem with the furnace turn out to be easy to fix, except they don’t have the part in stock!

My take on all of this is that I’m getting the entire year’s worth of crap out of the way at the very beginning. Once I get past this, look out! The rest of this year is going to be fantastic!!!!!
Assuming, of course, that I survive January.

Pointless Posts, Video

Further Randomness

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As any good geologist will tell you, sometimes schist just happens.

I’ve been sick recently (I think my misadventure on New Year’s Eve may have come back to haunt me), so I made a conscious effort to get to bed at a semi-reasonable time. It’s nearly 5:00 AM and I’m still awake.
This bites.

Do you suppose Jeff Foxworthy is smarter than a fifth grader?
If you asked him, he’d probably immediately respond “No.” Then he’d come up with some reasons why he isn’t. He could probably then turn around and write a bestselling book of ways you can tell whether you’re not as smart as a fifth grader.
Then again, Bill Engvall has this pretty well covered already.

Back in 2006, I wrote about the events leading up to the proto-story Murder, She Caused. (I say “proto-story” because although there are a few paragraphs of dialogue, most of it’s just a summary of the idea for a story.)
One of the missing pieces of the story behind the story (would that be a meta-story?) is just how bizarre the conversation was that led to the idea of Mulder and Scully investigating Jessica Fletcher.
I have no idea how it progressed to a dead FBI agent (who eventually evolved into Fox Mulder), but the original conversation involved Kzinti roaming Cabot Cove. Come to think of it, I have no idea how or why the conversation started with the Kzinti; the need for an FBI investigation in Cabot Cove would be the more logical starting point. But no, the conversation started with Kzinti and ended with the FBI.
As I said, it was a bizarre conversation.

Because New Year’s Day was on a Thursday, lots of people took Friday off as well. My office was fairly empty on Friday; probably less than 20 of us on the entire floor. Likewise, there was pretty minimal traffic. (More than on Wednesday, but still, I managed to get to the office by 8:30.)
Monday’s gonna suck.

It’s now close to 6:00 AM (It took a while to find that video, you should watch it.) I’m still not sleepy. Perhaps I’ve had too much sleep the past few weeks?
This is why I part of why I don’t go to bed at what most folks would consider a normal hour.

One of the categories for this post is “Pointless Posts.” This may very well be the most definitively pointless post not only on my site, but on the entire Internet.

Assorted Ramblings, Stories

Happy New Year!

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I miss my niece Evangaline.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my nieces and nephews very much, but in the wee hours of this morning, it was Evangline who was foremost in my thoughts.
My New Year’s Eve activities went pretty much according to plan, attending a dance where the quite awesome Tom Cunningham Orchestra was performing. At the stroke of midnight, I was dancing with a complete stranger who happened to agree with me that it would be a shame to let a perfectly good dance song go to waste. The balloons dropped, the band switched to Auld Lang Syne, and everything was good.
The dance ended shortly after 1:00AM when the band played an encore number on the condition that everyone take home some of the left over cider. Another complete stranger (I think her name was “Marta” — they kind of run together after a while) agreed with me that we shouldn’t let this song go to waste either and that was the perfect ending to my evening at the Spanish Ballroom.
I pulled into the driveway about 1:45, gathered up my stuff and went to open the door. That’s about when Evangline entered my thoughts. As I put the key into the deadbolt, it snapped off at the base.
While I waited for the locksmith to arrive, I kept thinking about the story of how at age eight Evangline picked a lock at her school using no tools other than her father’s driver’s license.
Some people complain that there’s never a cop around when you need one. I’ve rarely had that problem. The only time I urgently needed a police officer (after a hit and run 12 years ago), I found several of them a block away at the 7-11. But if Evangline had been visiting this week, she could have saved me $200 and most of an hour.
So aside from that little glitch, my 2009 is off to a good start. And I’m taking the view that the problem with the broken key simply means I’m getting all the problems out of the way up front. Nothing but up from here, y’know?
May 2009 be the best year of your life so far with the best yet to come.
So what did you do on New Year’s Eve?