This is where you belong...

Good: Having someone that I went to High School tell me that I'm a good Professor.
Evil: McAngus Bacon Cheddar Burger.

Since the first day of classes, I was a bit uncomfortable about having someone in my class that I knew personally. This is something that is never encouraged due to all the issues of favoritism that could come up. However, since I hadn't spoken to that person in nearly seventeen years, I did not think it that much of a problem; at least professionally speaking.

My style of teaching is very much driven by interaction with the students. I want them to give me their feedback, their thoughts on a particular topic. I constantly ask them to tell me what they think on various issues that we're discussing hoping that they'll understand the topic more because it's relevant to their own lives. When it comes to someone that I've grown up with - this could be possibly a problem. It's easy for a student to say that they grew up with a person who has done "something" or knew of someone who had "something else" happen to them if they don't know the professor. They're a fairly anonymous face in the crowd as far as that goes. However, when you know that person for years, you know their family - know their history and could easily put two and two together to create a more complete picture of their own childhood.

It goes both ways. I continually use examples from my own childhood to illustrate points in class. Usually the students are nearly fifteen years younger than I am so there's no frame of reference for them. When there's someone in the class who knew me growing up - it's like revealing part of your life to them on a more personal basis. They -knew- what you were like growing up, or knew what kind of kid you were, etc.

Well, all of this was what had been crawling through my head for the past week or so with one student in particular.

Stella is a woman that I met in middle school, I believe. We grew up together having mutual friends but not mutual interests. In the broadest sense of how I felt about her - she was nice. This is a huge difference to the majority of the people I grew up with who I could classify as "will be destroyed when my army of evil robots arrive" or not-nice.

She found me after class last night and wanted to touch base since we've only briefly spoken a word or two within the context of the lecture. The first thing that she said blew me away.

"This is where you belong. You were -meant- to be a professor."

I couldn't stop grinning.

She had heard stories from her co-workers as to how I taught and what kind of professor I was, but she said that she couldn't imagine me as being "that Riley". After three weeks had passed, she was more than impressed.

I don't think my feet touched the ground all the way to the parking lot.

Even now as I type this, I'm grinning once more.

It's good to know that others feel the same way about your career choice. I'm glad that I'm no longer working for the City / Count / State any more. I think that if I had continued working with them I would continue to be an angry, unhealthy person. Here, I can use my skills for what they were meant for.

Notice, I did not say "Use my powers for good".

Change happens slowly.

The Wedding

This past weekend, June 13th, marked the wedding of June's son Adam to his girlfriend of many years, Anna.

For as long as I have known June and Adam, there was no doubt that he and Anna were going to get married at some point in the future. They were equivalently High School sweethearts who, now in college, decided to get married over the summer so that they could finish out their degrees.

When I showed up to the Amphitheater at Greenbo Lake, I saw the usual spread of chairs out in the green lawn and picked up that it was an outdoor wedding. True to Adam's style, I also noticed that the groomsmen, bridesmaids and others in the wedding party were in garb. Here you can see a picture of Anna being escorted to the altar by her father in a kilt.

The wedding march itself was a piece of bag pipe music that I only know as Scotland the Brave. It was a very cool service. Adam's younger sister was there to shoot the place with her camera - a budding photographer. I've seen her work and the girl has a very good idea for capturing the shot.
It was a small ceremony - perhaps attended by no more than fifty to sixty people - but no less enjoyable. It should be a lesson for the times and perhaps a good theme for their marriage:

"Keep things simple".

Blood Stains in Carpeting

Sometimes I get some very weird phone calls; usually the more weird come from my friends. Tonight was no exception when a buddy of mine called up with a tone to his voice suggesting that he was somewhat upset.

"How do you get blood stains out of carpeting so that there's no trace?" was the question asked of me.

Before I could even ask, "Now why would I know something like that?" I ended up splurting out an answer.

"Soak a rag in peroxide and then dab / rub the blood and it should come up. If there's a bad place or it's turned brown already, coat it with a mixture of salt and water."

I have no idea where I'd heard that before but I knew that it would work.

Sure enough, my friend tried it while on the phone with me and the peroxide did the trick.

It turns out that his girlfriend had gotten bit by their dog and she bled... a lot.

So... in the spirit of "Friends help you move, Real Friends help you move Bodies"... I add this.

"Friends tell you things. Real friends tell you how to clean up blood stains without asking why."

Almost a Daddy

A friend of mine from High School, who has kept in tenuous contact with me over the past 18 years, appeared on my door step on Sunday with a tale of saddness and woe.

She, Stephanie, had seperated from her 48 year old husband (she's 36 like me) and her youngest son, Conner, had been having severe behavioral problems with the man over the past few months.

After the kid was put into handcuffs for fighting with other kids in school and threatening teachers, she had to remove him from that school and decided to drive all the way up from Florida to drop the kid off with her own parents here in portsmouth.

Normally, the child would have been sent to go live with his father, a man named Chris, but Chris had died in 2006 from... something. So there was no family on the father's side to take care of the boy. That left Stephanie's own parents to figure it out. Her own parents are getting on in years and her dad's health, from what I understand, isn't the best.

So she and two guys that she know made the road trip up to Portsmouth and she ended up on my doorstep. She said that she attempted to call me, but I probably ignored it since I don't answer numbers I don't recognize.

This is when it gets weird.

Since Stephanie, who has had no job for 6 months and is attending school in Florida for an Associates, is still living with her soon-to-be-ex husband, she wanted me to act as a "mentor" for her son.

It was clear that she didn't want me as a Mentor, she wanted me to be a dad to her son since her son "was just like me". I'm not sure what she meant by that since, at 13, I was damn-near homicidal, half-blind, and seriously in need of time alone.

Her own father is ill enough that he couldn't go tromping the the woods with the boy - which is what Stephanie wanted. I told her that I had no interest in being someone's surrogate father. Immediately she back-peddled and tried to explain that it wouldn't be that much and just a few hours a week or so.

Her plan, it was revealed, was to drop the kid with her parents here in Portsmouth and bring me in as a surrogate role-model for the boy if they couldn't keep control of him. This would work, in her mind, long enough for her to finish her Associates degree (by July of this year) and then she could collect the boy and reunite him with his older brother (at 15 years old) . The three of them would find some new place to live and everything would be great - once she has her degree.

So... a woman I haven't seen but for maybe a half-dozen times in eighteen years arrives with a thirteen year-old son and wants me to watch over him because he can't stand her near-fifty year-old husband. Rather than pulling both of the boys out of Florida and relocating to Shawnee State (since the only thing holding her there is the degree that she's working on down there), she's dropping a child with parents who are ill-prepared for a teenage boy and wanting me to pull up the slack.

Even though I had such a perfect role model as a father, I would somehow be able to utilize my uber-cool teacher mojo to take care of a child that I've met twice.

Yeah.

So, I was almost a daddy.

And then it happened.

Yes, it happened.

Listen for it....

"Oh HEEEeeeEEELL No."

Politely, yes politely, I explained that her entire process of thinking lacked any sense of logic and that she was being selfish. She was focusing on her own life more than her children's. She wanted her degree. All things will be better once she has her degree. She's not realizing that an Associates' degree isn't going to solve all of her problems and that even when she gets it, she'll have to go back and pick up the pieces of a child that has been fostered upon her own parents sixteen hours away from its mother.

I gave her a hug, some coffee, and sent her back into the game. She needs to fix her own problems and not include someone from high school.

Oh, and get this:

She continually tried to site our friendship in high school as 'eternal' and something that has lasted for the past eighteen years. Granted, I have kept in touch with a few people that I knew in High School - one of them I've lived with, attended his wedding on my birthday, etc., and he's even a soulless red-head, but come on. She is someone that I've seen only sparsely, for a few hours, once every two or three years. For her, nothing has changed because she's still living as though it were the day after high school graduation.

Those people are quite disturbing.

So... for those people who are reading this and wondering "WHAT THE HELL?"... there ya go.

Hopefully it was more entertaining for you than it was for me.

My life has more drama than a production of Les Miserables.

Franken-built

Well, with the death and mysterious resurrection of my desktop, it was only fitting -considering the halloween season - that we end up having to create a new machine from scratch.

So with pieces from Josh's old desktop and most of my desktop we have been building a replacement most of the evening. With my motherboard, processor, memory and the like - we installed it all on Josh's frame with my old DvD Rom and Josh's DvD Rom as well.

Then we took Josh's old hard drive (which was still running Windows xp when his motherboard died a year ago) and installed it as a slave.

What does this mean?

Sometime tomorrow - I think - I'll have a clean install to corrupt all over again with an additional 120 gig hard drive for extra storage for all of the series I keep downloading plus two dvd roms to burn the stuff too.

Who knows - I might ask Mike to put Ubunto (A version of Linix) on the system rather than windows. See what happens.

Maybe I'll be turned into some uber Leet, white-hat something.

or... not.

I still think in Analog.

-Tom

Hammies and the curse of the sadistic bastard

Guess what I discovered?

I found out that I have hamstrings once more.

Hamstrings are the muscles on the back of your thighs. I haven't really used such muscles in quite a while. However, my "Sadistic Bastard" of a weight-trainer (aka. Will) has had me doing some pretty messed up things in the gym of late.

After Wednesday's workout my legs were tight but nothing more than that. I stretched out and all that and thought that they would be fine. The next day, while I was giving my Criminology students their first exam, I could feel those hamstrings start to tighten. It's not like I could start stretching out my muscles as people were writing out their essays so I took it in stride.

Then, later at home, I realized that they were more than just a "little" tight. They were starting to really make their voices known. By Friday morning I was half-crippled every time I tried to bend over or take a long stride while walking.

Today, after a soak in the hot tub yesterday, my legs are less of a chorus and more of a whisper. I can still feel them but they're not crippling me.

Sadistic Bastard!

Update

Well, it turns out that Josh was hurt more than previously thought.

Even though his muscles have started to relax and the swelling has gone down, he was in more and more pain. He couldn't figure out why his arm was hurting more as it got further from the date of the wreck.

Today he called me up to ask if I could pick him up because he was in wincing pain just to stand still.

After a trip to the emergency room he found out that he had fractured his clavicle. The swelling of the muscles apparently disguised the break in the original x-ray.

So now he's on better pain killers and wearing some kind of cloth harness to keep his shoulders straight and allow the collar bone to heal.

Once more Josh is crashing at my place this weekend because he's not able to easily crawl into the top bunk at the dorms.

I'm such a nice guy.

NSTIW

It's been one of those days.

Today was my first weekend since classes start. It's the time when I try and get into a rhythm to clean the house and work on projects for the coming week. Well, I am still in the process of cleaning and de-junking the house so my project today was to launch another assault on the front room. However, before I sent in the army, I wanted to at least start on a project that I've been meaning to play with for several months.

To start things off I was working in the guest room and starting a project that I had on a shelf since Josh, my ex-roommate, had moved in. A friend of mine had asked me to repair a book of fairytales for her. It's an older book from the sixties or seventies that was well warn and very well loved and the pages were literally falling out of the spine. The pages had to be cut free from the spine and separated and then repaired. Each page can take hours to repair - not for the actual repairs but for all of the time it takes to allow the cleaning agents and glue to dry. So once I had one page in the drying phase I could attack the front room.

While cleaning on the front room I got a call from Dan, the Fish. He was in the area and wanted to swing by and catch up before he headed back up to Athens. So I took a break when he got to the house. I hadn't gotten much information about "The Family" lately but assumed that things were progressing well and measured as most things (save for people screaming on a roof) tend to do. Heather was on her way to Indiana, Morgana was in preparation to move into the dorms and start her education at Ohio University, and Dan was gearing up to start classes in Lancaster.

After a while Dan had to go because he was needing to get back to Athens so he could change in time for his weekend gig as a drummer for Barbara's restaurant, Salam. Yes, my friends are just that cool. So I bid him fare well and started to attack the front room once more.

A bit later, Josh and his buddy, Mike, showed up to grab a load of Josh's stuff. They were in and out in only a few minutes but it was another small break. Once they were gone, the spot that was once occupied by Josh's box was cleaned and things were moved to accommodate the new, open design. (AKA: No More JUNK.)

Em wanted to come over lunch and I decided that I could use some of her AbFab (that's ABsolutely FABulous) sense of design with me moving things around in the front room. A few more boxes got cleaned before she showed up and I took another break to catch up with her after her first week of classes.

Most of the conversation, after the consumption of some pizza, was flavored with me cleaning and pitching junk from the piles of things in the front room. While in the last throws of sorting, I received a phone call from Josh's cellphone. It wasn't Josh.

Mike was calling me to let me know that he and Josh had been in a wreck; the word he was used was 'T-boned'. I'm not sure exactly what I asked him but it was something akin to "PUT JOSH ON THE PHONE." I'm sure it was polite and civil (in my usual manner) but there was no doubt in my mind that I could, at that very moment, teleport through the phone if only to make sure that Josh was ok.

Josh explained what had happened but there were a few words that popped into my mind and didn't want to leave. Words like: Jaws of Life, and Backboard, are hard to miss when someone's telling you that they're ok. I think he actually repeated that he was 'ok' a few times in between his description of how they had to remove the ENTIRE PASSENGER SIDE of Mike's car. Not the door, the whole side. That is, both the back door, the front door and the connective membrane of metal that would separate the two.

At that time, Josh was waiting on the results from his x-ray to see if anything was broken. Josh's mother works at the local hospital were he was taken (and is also skilled in the taking of x-rays) so she was right there with him. I asked him if he needed anything, but since he didn't know when they were going to tell him what was going on and his mom was there - he didn't need anything at the time.

So I got off the phone with Josh, told Em the basic jist, and then unleashed a torrent, nay - a stream of cleansing energy; that is to say that I cranked up my tidy genes and organized and pitched with more gusto. My friend was hurt but there was nothing much I could do for him at that particular moment. So, being the controlling person that I am, I decided to bring some much needed order to my house - whether the universe wanted to allow it or not.

A few minutes later Josh called me and asked if he could get a ride from the hospital. Mike's car was totaled and his mom couldn't leave work. So Em took off so she could get ready for work and I put the Saturnator's headlights (they're the closest things to nipples) to the wind and was off to SOMC.

Long story short....


.... Too late.


Josh is crashed in the guest room right now with the right side of his body aching and twinging with pain. There is no bruising after several hours and he's on some mighty good pain killers and muscle relaxers. He could have gone back to the dorms but his bed is the top bunk. He would not have been able to crawl up to the top with his body so whacked out of shape by the wreck. So, since I had just cleaned the guest room and such, ran him to get his 'scrip filled at Walmart and down to his dorm to get some clothes and piled him on the couch for a while. Mike's parents eventually came and picked him up so he could figure out what he will do because of the accident (he was sited for failure to yield to a stop sign).

After I got some chicken-rice down him so that he would have something on his stomach to help the meds work, I poured him into the guest bed so that he could try and sleep to let his body heal.

Yes, it's been one of those days.

-Tom

P.s. NSTIW: No Shit There I Was... How -else- do you begin a blog such as this?

Merry Moving Day

Well, it's come.

Today is Moving Day.

Josh is in the process of gathering up his stuff to move into the dorms today around 1 p.m. We've already hauled most of his furniture to his parent's place and now he just has the little stuff that he'll take with him.

Well, I shouldn't say "little stuff", because he's got the idea that he's going to take a TON of things along with him. Josh plans on hauling all of his kitchen stuff with him so that he can cook in the dorms. He's never lived in the dorms and is operating on the idea that the dorms are just like an apartment.

The dorms are very similar to an apartment (two large bedrooms with three people each and a connecting living room) and there's a small kitchen area there for people to store food or to cook.
At 25 years old, Josh will be one of the oldest people in the dorms.

I'm sure that this will be a very interesting experience for him.

Once he's moved his stuff out, I'm going to be cleaning and rearranging the house a bit. The house has had a 'cluttered' feeling ever since Josh moved in. There just wasn't much room to put all of his stuff away so a lot of it sat in baskets and boxes in the front room. That combined with some stuff that I am storing for some other friends just junked up the front room.

Not that many people came over to the house, but the first thing that they would see was all of the stuff cluttering up the front room and it just bugged the hell out of me.

Oh well, that'll be fixed soon.

More later.

-Tom

How to freak out your host in 13 steps

Step 1: Wake up at 8:30 a.m. and realize that the 'small' leak you discovered in your car yesterday may not have been so small with the torrential down-pours that we've been having of late.

Step 2: Investigate the 'small' leak and discover that not only is your driver seat wet, but there is an INCH of standing water in the floor board. Yes, an inch.

Step 3: Momentarily loose your icy facade and grumble out demonic slurs upon the birds and squirrels within ear-shot.

Step 4: Investigate the leak further to discover that what attempts you have made to seal what -might- be a leaky spot has been completely ignored by the rain as though it were the Maginot Line.

Step 4.a.: Wonder if Saturn was invented by the French.

Step 4.b.: Scribble note to self, "Saturn. French? Dig!" in notebook.

Step 5: Check weather.com and discover waves and waves of rain clouds heading for your position.

Step 5.a.: Fully understand what it might feel like to be the commanding officer along the Maginot Line after the first wave of German soldiers have gotten past you and then find out that there are more coming.

Step 5.b: Consider your options and decide that rather than use a French answer to this problem, try Welsh.

Step 6: Realize that your car, though parked under a friend's deck, is also pointing nose-in to their garage.

Step 7: Decide that the best option is to simply remove yourself from the field of battle until you've properly prepared yourself. (And hope your hosts won't freak when you want to borrow their garage for the rest of your visit.)

Step 8: Investigate their basement.

Step 8.a: Realize that for the years that your hosts have lived in their house, you've never seen them use their garage as a container for anything other than boxes (both full and empty).

Step 9: Organize their basement / garage into a space that's large enough to accommodate your car.

Step 9.a.: Move piles and piles of card board bits thither and yon. (Can I use thither in a thentance?)

Step 9.b.: Discover lost pages for the Pilgrim's Journal in the piles of empty boxes that have been scattered about.

Step 9.c.: Fight overwhelming urge to tidy your host's garage / basement.

Step 9.d: Become stumped at the presence of a weight bench in their basement cocooned by box-debris.

Step 9.e.: Really fight the urge to tidy your host's garage / basement.

Step 9.f: Discover that the large lump under the pile of boxes is actually a couch. (so that's where that thing went.)

Step 9.g: Really, no kidding, fight the urge to tidy your host's garage / basement. (This is where I'm channeling my inner Welshman. Yes, I'm still Irish but I bare a striking behavioral resemblance to a certain Welshman named Ianto and we'll leave it at that.)

Step 9.g.1: Fight the urge to sing 'Captain Jack' by Billy Joel while writing this blog.

Step 10: Finish cleaning a space for your car and go back into your host's house to ask if you can do what you've been preparing to do for the past thirty minutes.

Step 11: Quietly creep up the stairs to their bedroom since they're still not moving this morning. (around 9:30 a.m. - which may be early for some people and especially if there's a baby involved.)

Step 12: Ask the question: "Can I borrow your garage for the rest of the day?"

Step 12.a: Wait for their sleep-induced, mental-lethargy to catch up with what you just asked.

Step 12.b: Explain the situation about your car and pause dramatically for appropriate snickers and repeats of "What? What?" from your half-asleep hosts.

Step 12.c: Wait for one of them to say, "It won't fit." and then explain that you've already made a spot for your car.

Step 13: Gratefully accept your host's permission to use their garage for a while and move your car out of the range of fire (or rain) that is headed your way.

Step 13.a: Wait for them to fully wake up and wonder if your asking to borrow their garage was actually a dream or something.

Happy B-Day

Happy Bryian Day,

UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

Happy Birthday Bryian.

Lack of a Living Room

... Well, actually it's a 'front room', a salon or Parlor.

Mountain Dews: 2
Mountain Dew: Code Red 1 (v. long day)
Massive Quantities of Supah Chinese Buffet 1 (ugh, I have Buddha Belly)
Trips back and forth to Ashland 3 (it was a lot of small trips in a tiny pick-up)

Almost the new year and I spent almost all day today hauling furniture down from Ashland in small, pick-up sized loads. My front room is full of stuff and there's barely a path through the huge lawn bags full of clothes and stuff. It'll take a few days to get through all of the stuff and get some sense of order but I'll get it taken care of soon.

For those who might actually care, I've got a new roommate for a while. A friend of mine is going back to school and needed a place to stay for a while - probably just for the term. I have a guest room that's not being used and he was in need. So, voila.

The Lime Green Leisure House is no more, but my place is always a haven for wayward travelers. I'm glad that I can offer my friends a place to stay as the need arises. I've offered people three-nights sanctuary from time to time. Friends from Huntington, Columbus, Parts-Unknown in Kentucky, etc.

"If I have it to give, then I must."

Sometimes I don't have much to offer but what I have is there for those who need it.

The last go-round was a few weekends rest for a friend who needed to talk, before that was a summer escape for a friend who needed to escape, and then before that was a few years of weekends for a friend who needed to game. It's not exactly Rivendel but hopefully it's been a place where people can come and relax and get their feet back underneath themselves once more.

Ok, it's late and I've been hauling furniture all day.

Talk to ya later.

Corn dog Blues

It all began with a flaming corn dog. However, let me take you back...

Last week, on Black Friday, I was up in Huntington visiting my buddy Chris. It was a cool day and we were deeply involved with a game of Halo 3 on his new X-BOX. And then, in the middle of a mission to liberate a small air base, my phone rang.

Another buddy of mine, Josh, was calling from just outside his apartment. It was somewhat that he called since it was barely 3 p.m. and he usually works (at a bank) until 6. (BTW: He's a collections agent for the bank. Talk about evil.) He was calling me to ask for a favor; I could tell by the sound of his voice.

He asked if he could crash with me for the weekend.

It was no big deal for me since whether the house is known as the "Lime Green Leisure House" or the "Khaki Shack" it's still "Tomcat's home for wayward guys". So I told him how to get into the house (since I was still in Huntington and wouldn't be able to get back in time to let him in myself) and figured that I would get the whole story later that night.

His story begins with a tale of a Corn Dog.

The older man who lived next to him in his apartment complex was a bit absent minded. He was attempting to cook some corn dogs in a skillet. However, he walked outside to talk to the complex's handyman. After a few moments, a lady who lives above the older man came outside to say that she smelled smoke in her apartment. Within a few minutes, they had deduced that the old man had left the corn dogs cooking in the skillet when he went out to talk.

The old man's apartment was gutted.

The apartment above his was severely damaged.

Josh's apartment had the adjoining wall get scorched and a lot of soot damage. Everything smelled of smoke and he had to get most of his stuff out because the fire department obliterated his front door and windows.

The weekend became the week because the apartment complex couldn't find him a new apt to move into until later. So we spent the week washing everything he owned and then this weekend I went back up with him to move him from one building to another. This gave me the opportunity to grab pictures of the damage to the apartment next to his.

So a week with a house-guest, about a dozen or so loads of laundry and a visit from the 'Amazon Moving Company'.

And all for a damn corn dog.

-Tom

My Week

Monday All-Day:
Grading papers for take-home psych tests for extra credit.

Tuesday Morning:
Changed mind on house color from light gray to Tan (Coffee + Cream / Khaki)

Tuesday Evening:
Forgetting to pay cable: Last-minute payment.

Wednesday Morning:
I replaced the water pump on my car.

Wednesday Evening:
My buddy goes into the hospital with some heart problems.

Thursday Morning:
Another friend calls to tell me that she's in the hospital after an emergency Appendectomy.

Thursday Evening:
My tooth cracks and I end up accidentally swallowing it while giving a lecture in class.
It's broken off at the gum line.

Friday Morning:
Plan on buying some paint for the house
Find a dentist to pull tooth?

Saturday All-Day:
Painting the House?

Sunday All-Day
More painting?

Visitor from Florida

Just after 10 o'clock this morning...

I'm up, showered and on the front porch waiting for someone I haven't seen in years.This will be the second time, almost to the day, that someone from my past has just popped up to visit. This time it's Stephanie, one of the few people that I'll speak with from High School. She normally lives in Florida but her father lives here in Portsmouth. She said that she's been up here since Sunday and they're leaving to go back tomorrow so I figured that hanging out with her today would be fun. I'm waiting on the drywall compound from my granddad so that I can repair the hole in the back bedroom wall. He said that he's not been able to find it, but will keep looking.

I've settled on a shade of blue for the office and will probably be buying it in a few days assuming that everything works out. Even when I get the back bedroom painted, it will take me a while to disassemble the furniture in the front and move it. I may go ahead and paint the shelves white since they can be painted and be drying while I'm working / waiting on the other steps to be finished.

Once the back office is finished, I can start to paint the front room and then move all of the bedroom stuff out of the middle room. This, then, will allow me to pull up the carpeting and start moving shelves around. The middle room is going to become something of a media room. The bookshelves are going to be moved into there and I'm thinking that the tv and such as well. The front room just isn't designed to have people comfortably watching television in there - not with the way the fireplace takes up most of the space. So, I'm going to convert it into something of a sitting room with a love seat and a few chairs for when I want to play with the fire or something like that.

The middle room, since it has much more wall space for furniture, will be the place to watch television and such. Once the old carpeting has been pulled up, it will be much easier to have hardwood floors sanded in both rooms and fix things up. I need to make sure that there is cable run to the front room and that they haven't cut it or something. The cable company is sending someone over this Friday to replace the cut cables in the back room.

The smell of rain is on the air. I know we had a storm last night that was more of a shower than anything else but you can still detect the traces of moisture in the trees. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll have another storm or shower this afternoon; probably while we're out at the lake.

I got a hold of Dan last night on Yahoo; he's moved into the house down from Barb & Zak and he and Heather are doing their thing. Dan was telling me how he WALKED home from classes the other day since they now live in town and that he was hitting the net with High Speed. I can't imagine going from what I have now back down to Dial Up; just gives me shivers sometimes even thinking about it. Granted, I also have a weird issue between a Digital life and an Analog one, but that is slowly getting resolved. I sent letters out on Monday and I enjoyed the whole process. I know tht writing letters is not necessarily a 'lost' art, but definitely a tradition or practice that has faded with the rise of the digital age. Most of my students can barely write legibly, but I'm sure that they could probably send you a thirty-word text message before they would even remember how to start a letter.

I figure that with our society going more and more digital, the ways of the Analog Anachronist will become viewed by society as clumsy if not abnormal. Why take the time to write and send a letter when an email is instant? Logically, emails are more efficient means of communication when that's all you're doing.

A bit of a detour...

Around 9:30 a.m.

Well, guess where I am? Last night, Jim and I were going to head up to Huntington to watch Harry Potter and grab some food. Well, while driving through New Boston the idea struck us to go kidnap Heath who is all by himself up in Columbus; April and the kids are down in Kentucky for the week. After a quick phone call to confirm the plan, Jim and I grabbed clothes and we drove up to invade Easton mall.

O.M.G. It's not a mall, it's a small community of capitalism. I love it. We saw the Order of the Phoenix and had dinner at Panera. Afterwards we ended up crashing at Heaths and talked until around four or five in the morning. It was definitely something different than just driving up to Huntington.

Who knows what we'll get into today.

***

Later, around 11:30 p.m.

Today was very cool. Jim and I crawled around Columbus for most of the day - I didn't get home until around ten o'clock. We ended up back at Easton and we started at one end and walked its four corners. I hate being poor. I need to go back up with about 100 dollars to blow and then I'd be quite happy. I had to walk by Barnes and Noble six times with less than 20 dollars in my wallet - oh, the agony.

Jim grabbed some cologne at Abercrombie and Fitch (awesome place) and we ducked into dozens of shops selling everything from electronic gadgets to a shop, Eddie Bauer, where I saw a possible new bag.

Leave it alone.

One of my Quests is for a perfect Field Bag.

Eventually we ended up at an awesome sea food restaurant (McCormick & Schmick's) and then meandered our way back home.

When I got into the house, I could smell the unmistakable odor of decay. The kitten's body was decomposing somewhere in one of the rooms. I ditched my bags and grabbed the flash light and began searching behind and around things once more. This time I found it in one of the few places I had never entertained as an idea - behind the entertainment center.

It was so exposed and 'open' that it didn't seem like a place she would have chosen. All of the other places were under something with a real 'roof' to it; my bed, both couches, etc. The kitten's head was at an odd angle so I can only guess that when she tried to move it from the basket to somewhere else - she either snapped its neck or perhaps it suffocated. Unfortunate but now, at least, the matter has been resolved.

I'm out on the front couch and watching the tv a little while I write this up. I think I'm going to crash soon.

Night

-T.


Photo link

Amazon Moving Company...

... if we broke it you didn't need it.

7:00 p.m. Dan and I are cleaned up and recovering from the great migration of stuff down to Ironton from Athens and then the drive back. We're clustered around the dining room table in preparation for yet another migration down to Casa Nueva for fud.

The whole process to move things down wasn't bad at all. Dan and I were able to move stuff without much thought or effort, however, country stairs are a bitch.

Photo from: Sarah M. Golonka

A Warning to Dr. Who Fans

Don't click on this link.

Do not click on this link if you:
1) Are at work
2) Have liquid anywhere near your mouth
3) Have a headache
4) Have sore abs
5) are trying to keep quiet
6) Have any respect for the Dr. Who-Verse
7) Want to look at Dr. Who the same way again.
8) Want to look at me the same way again.
9) believe that Dr. Who should not be 'experimented' with.
10) Have any doubts that I am an Evil Sith Lord (I can't claim to be an Evil Genius, that's Bryian - it's a different Doctoral Program)

I'm warning you.

Don't do it.

Really

But if you must

Click

Here

Triangular Shaped Robots

From: My Army

After reading my post about "My Army", a friend of mine asked a simple question:

"Who would be scared of triangular robots?"

My response:

This model of triangular robots was quite effectual though a bit more on the 'lumbering giant' side. The ability to hyperexanguinate THOSE WHO ARE NOT ON THE LISTS is quite breath taking. I think it was the grey powder of their former shells that really helped push this one through R&D.
This earlier model is something that I had suggested. The triangular wing design allows for ease of mobility across the many types of terrain on this planet and can still use the beam weapon effectively. However, it must be said that the 'throng' used by the first model is superior at frightening the enemy targets.

So... I would say that there are some people who would be scared of triangular robots. :)

-T

Cinco de Mayo

Cinqo de Mayo

9:00 a.m.
Oddly enough, I'm not the first one awake this morning. I slept in until 8:30. I have no idea why my brain didn't get me up - perhaps a lack of sleep for the past few days had something to do with it.

Morganna is already off and experiencing the ritual of the SAT's and Zak and Barb are upstairs getting ready. I think that Kat may be gifting them with a 'present' this morning; all I hear is Zak repeating "Oh My God" over and over again. Doesn't sound too promising.

Barb and I are going to head out around 10:30 so we can pick up the cakes for the reception from the bakery; which won't have them ready until around then. Since I'm going to be in the wedding, I'm going to see if I can find someone to take pictures of the thing with my camera - I want something for my blog.

I'll have pictures of the before and after, but you get the idea.

Click here to go to the pics I've put up on Flickr

9:25 p.m.

Well, the wedding has been over for a few years. Barb, Dan, Heather and myself are watching one of the Planet Earth dvd's. Very cool. The wedding was cool; Barb and I helped with the reception to get things handled so that Bryian and Judi could sit back and relax. Well, not really sit back - they were up and moving around the room to visit the various tables.

The end of the rehearsal was much as I suspected. Though Judi's joke about the bouquet was about as successful as a wardrobe malfunction during the superbowl, I'm sure it was well-intended. However, the garter was practically put in my hand; I'm the last of the friends to be married.

Not going to happen.

When we got back from the reception, I grabbed a change of clothes and started work on my Psych test on Monday. Morganna, my 16 year-old god-neice, was preparing to go to her Junior Prom. She's wearing a nice dress with great big, buckle-clad, animae boots and black, lacey-fairy wings to complete the Punk Fairy Chic' look.

I still can't fathom that little Morganna, the Frog Hunter, is going to Prom. Sometimes I feel old. Sometimes I feel older.

It is so nice to be up here on a weekend. It's really nice to hang out my friends; it's even nice to watch Barb and Zak play the tickle game with Kat. Not that I would ever want my own kids, but I can appreciate them enjoying the experience of playing with their new daughter.