What did that say?

Yesterday I was driving back to work from a delivery and I glanced to my right off of Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, and I saw an all-red billboard that had three words in white typeface in the top left-hand corner. The billboard said:

My Boogers Itch.

That’s it. My Boogers Itch. I snickered and then snickered some more and wondered aloud “Who the fuck is responsible for THAT? I mean, what is that advertising exactly?”

So I got back to work and called MadSapper to tell him about it and wondered aloud what it could be for?

He said “Well, Google says…..” which brought the following thought to me:

“God dammit. I, an IT professional, just called a Project Manager to have him Google something for him like I’m one of those ‘I’m not a computer person’ people.”

Anyway, Google said it was part of a series of billboards that are promoting some new Cartoon Network shows.

The accompanying billboards say “I Pooted,” “I’m a Hot toe picker,” and “Clowns Hate Tangelos.”

I don’t even really watch The Cartoon Network, but I may now. That’s the kind of marketing campaign I can get behind.

100 things about me

Everyone that’s got a blog has done this already I think. Well, everyone but me. Anyway, here’s my effort. I hope you learn something from it. There will be a test later.

1) I hate needles and shots and anything about needles and shots.
2) I fainted while giving blood for my marriage license.
3) I don’t know what I want to do for a living.
4) I love 80′s hair bands.
5) I am very protective.
6) I can hold a grudge longer than almost anyone I know.
7) I am very very competitive.
8) I actually believe that I will win the lottery, and I’m not talking some scratch-off ticket. I believe in my heart of hearts that I will hit it for a big multi-million dollar prize.
9) I am very conscious of what people think of me.
10) I love to be the center of attention.
11) Despite number ten, I am very, VERY uncomfortable speaking in front of people.
12) I hate having Happy Birthday sung to me by anyone except my daughter.
13) I believe in God.
14) I don’t believe in organized religion.
15) I sort of believe that God saved my life last year so that I would become more conflicted about my disbelief in organized religion.
16) I would go to church if you didn’t have to sing.
17) I just realized that getting to 100 of these things is going to be hard as shit.
18) I worry about one set of parents feelings when they know I’m with the other set of parents.
19) I love all things Auburn.
20) I didn’t graduate from college but feel that I got 99% of the benefit of the college experience.
21) I feel very guilty about not graduating from college and wish I could go back and right that.
22) I don’t have many friends, and that’s intentional.
23) I didn’t want to have kids.
24) I can’t imagine not having kids.
25) I worried that something would be wrong with 1Doh every day my wife was pregnant with her.
26) I didn’t worry once that something would be wrong with 2Doh.
27) I have an addictive personality.
28) I wrote weekly NASCAR columns for several websites for over three years.
29) I turned down an actual writing job for a network that would have allowed me to follow the NASCAR circuit for about 20 weeks a year.
30) I haven’t written a column about NASCAR since that day.
31) I love blogging.
32) I have made friends over the internet.
33) I have two large Big Green Eggs
34) I am always reading something.
35) I carry whatever book I’m reading with me wherever I go.
36) I smoked for over 20 years.
37) I quit cold turkey on January 21st, 2002.
38) I am not as close to my brother as I’d like to be.
39) I check Jayski about 20 times a day.
40) I have been on Lexapro since the birth of my second child and my surgery.
41) Oh, I had cardiac bypass surgery in November of 2005.
42) I feel guilty that our medical insurance premiums went up 25% this year based almost solely on said cardiac bypass surgery.
43) I have done a poor job of being a good friend to some longtime friends.
44) I am currently trying to make up for number 43.
45) I don’t always fight fair.
46) I love to cook and am pretty good at it.
47) My IQ is over 135.
48) I graduated high school with a 2.5 GPA.
49) I miss playing competitive darts.
50) I have been in a bowling league.
51) I am honored to be friends with a veteran of the 82nd Airborne.
52) I frequently envy other people.
53) I believe that the pun is the lowest form of comedy.
54) I didn’t start drinking coffee until about two weeks ago.
55) I will be 38 years old on July 3rd.
56) I love my birthday more than any adult I know.
57) I sometimes wonder why my wife is with me.
58) I believe in the Fair Tax
59) I think both political parties are full of horseshit.
60) I swear way too much.
61) I am very aware of number 60 and NEVER swear in front of my children.
62) I wear a medic-alert bracelet that says “Difficult Airway: Fiberoptic intubation required.”
63) I am artistically retarded.
64) I want to be a competent photographer.
65) I know every zip code in the metro Atlanta area.
66) I am VERY opinionated.
67) I am an idiot when it comes to home repair and all things having to do with tools.
68) I love horrific reality shows like The Surreal Life, Celebrity Fit Club and Supergroup.
69) I am terrible about closing drawers. Any drawers.
70) I think porn is okay.
71) I’ve never watched or looked at porn with my wife.
72) Politically speaking, I am a moderate socially but conservative fiscally.
73) I wish I could play the guitar.
74) I have wanted to get a tattoo since college.
75) I am frequently guilty of road rage.
76) I have a deviated septum.
77) I have Psoriasis and am very self conscious about it.
78) I think about death too much.
79) I don’t like to let other people drive when I’m in the car. Unless it’s my wife.
80) I am allergic to basically all things fauna and flora.
81) I love dogs and hate cats.
82) I was molested by a babysitter when I was six years old.
83) I am in the process of building my own webpage and moving my blog there.
84) Of all the things I miss eating since my surgery, I miss buffets the most. Any buffet.
85) I love seafood and if the menu has the word PLATTER on it, that’s what I’m ordering.
86) I love nearly all sports. Except the NBA.
87) I think Bud Selig is the man that will be held responsible for killing baseball.
88) Boston is my favorite city that I’ve visited.
89) I cry every time I see Field of Dreams or Rudy.
90) I sing in the car. LOUDLY.
91) I am sorry I spent so long being an asshole to one parent and holding a grudge against another
92) I don’t know nearly enough about politics, especially local politics, as I should.
93) I am a pack-rat and I hate the fact that I am a packrat.
94) I love my XBox and cannot wait to get an XBox 360 AND a PS3 in the future.
95) I have little to no impulse control when it comes to buying things. See #94.
96) I need to spend more time pulling weeds. But just a little bit more.
97) I married the girl that I took to my senior prom.
98) I wish we had traveled more when we were dinks.
99) I wish we’d have had children sooner, even though there was no way I was ready for them before now.
100) I got arrested for stealing my own bicycle in college.

Where have you been all my life?

This morning I was doing my usual have a cup of coffee and rolling thru a few BlogExplosion and BlogMad sites. I frequently see the same stuff so I just roll on until I happened across THIS blog.

Something about his writing style amused me, so I dug a little deeper and was quite entertained. He also mentioned something called a “Garbage Plate.” That reference included this picture:

Now at first, when seeing this, I was fairly certain that someone had vomited on a plate and I was horrified. Luckily, he also included a link to the description of “Garbage Plate” at Wikipedia.

It states:

Nick Tahou Hots is a Rochester, New York landmark restaurant famous for its Garbage Plate. The restaurant was founded by its namesake, Nick Tahou, who died in 1997 after running the establishment for over 50 years. Despite the many regional variants all based on the same theme (such as Penfield and Fairport Hots), Nick’s is widely regarded as the original Garbage Plate.

A Garbage Plate is a disorganized combination of two selections out of (cheeseburger, hamburger, steak, hotdogs, white hots, italian sausage, chicken, fish, fried ham, Grilled Cheese, or eggs), which are placed on top of a choice of two out of four sides (homefries, french fries, baked beans or macaroni salad). On top of that you get the options of mustard and onions and the signature ingredient: Nick’s “hot sauce” – a greasy spiced sauce containing ground meat. The garbage plate also comes with a side of starchy white Italian-style bread and butter. Most patrons typically smother this in ketchup, mustard or a hot sauce, particularly Franks Red Hot. A1 Steak Sauce is also usually available.

Holy gastric orgasm, Batman!!! Read that again whilst I close my eyes and think back to a time where I would have moved to Rochester just to be near the restaurant that invented that beautiful monstrosity.

Now if you will all excuse me, my gullet would like to do the epecurian equivalent of masturbating over and over again while my brain tries to figure out a reason for the family (or just me) to make a day trip to Rochester, New York.

Wait a minute. I just thought of something. Rochester, New York has given me the one thing I love most (my wife) and the thing that I might leave her for:

The Garbage Plate.

Sweet mother of pearl!!

I’m fond of rednecks and especially of making fun of them.

I have recently enjoyed the trend of kids wearing a dumbass tuxedo / dress combo, whether that be the rebel flag, matching NBA jerseys, etc.

This however, takes the cake:

(courtesy: www.boortz.com)

sweet holy moley people!!

I have stumbled upon the greatest free online game ever! This freaking kills me.

Here it is. I’d wait until lunch or at home to play it, but you need the sound turned on to get the full effect. No, it’s not that “HEY EVERYBODY!!! I’M LOOKING AT PORN!!! thing either.

E N J O Y!!

Excuse me if this next one’s a little sappy

(Apologies to CJH)

Over the last two years I have become aware of friendships that I’ve let slide for one reason or another. Whether it be because the person moved far (or relatively far) away, was at a different place in their life, or just out of sheer laziness on the part of one or both parties, things just sort of slipped below the surface.

Two examples of that are two of my three roommates from college. One (The Great White Hunter) I had never met before we were placed together our freshman year at Auburn and the other (CJH) I knew from high school but we ran in very different circles at the time and while polite, we had never been called what I consider friends.

So, during the first few weeks of sharing a prison cell-sized room with TGWH, we ran across two guys that lived below us and one room over from ours. Oddly enough, it was CJH and one of his best friends and both guys I’d at least known since 8th grade but, as I said, had never spent much time with.

The four of us became pretty close during our freshman year. We also met four guys from the 3rd floor of our dorm that were our cohorts as well as our competition in little things like 4-on-4 flag football or basketball or whatever. Those guys (Kaye and Rowher and Robbins and Meyer) completed our non-Greek circle friends and that would more or less stay true throughout my (incomplete) career on The Plains.

After our freshman year, several of us had to stay in Auburn (either in school or working) to gain in-state residency to lower tuition. At that point, we (TGWH, CJH, Jon and myself) decided to room together for our sophomore year and, during that summer, CJH, Jon and I would secure and reside in our next residence and await the return of TGWH from his vacation-like existence at his home on Georgia’s Gold Coast.

(BTW the four “other guys” mentioned above went on to share residence as well and would forever be referred to as “The Brooks Boys.” Stupid? Of course. But it is what it is.

That summer I got a lot closer with Jon and CJH, buy primarily CJH. Although Jon was working with us, he spent a lot of his time at the Sig Ep house and with his fellow midnight-oil burning engineering students, which left me and CJH to ponder and party and whatever.

We became pretty close that summer, sharing time on the job, evenings at our apartment, playing golf, bouncing checks everywhere in town, and generally having a good time. And when TGWH rejoined us, we were our own little force of nature. School became almost an afterthought for me (as my grades and graduation status would later indicate), but I almost didn’t care. We were living the good life in relative poverty and enjoying the shit out of it.

The same happened for our third year, except we moved to a two story sweet ass townhome near the police station and Guthries, while the Brooks Boys moved into their new swanky digs at College Park (where GBD also resided).

Anyway, I’ve blathered on and on here. Even after I left school in the summer of 1989, I was that I was certain that these seven guys would be my friends forever and we’d spend our adult lives reliving our college years and having those “Big Chill” moments where we all got together to laugh and drink and think and mourn and do whatever it is that lifelong friends do for one another.

Naive? Sure. But still, I was 21 and didn’t know any better.

Then real life came along for all of us.

While the other three stayed in touch (more or less) including returning to Auburn for football games and stuff, and just generally staying in contact.

I, on the other hand, was effectively a college dropout trying to survive along with a fiancee and I didn’t have the time or money to make said trips.

Sadly, I fell out of contact with all of them. We did all get back together for the 1996 Auburn-Georgia game in Auburn and that was great, and we all said we wouldn’t let that happen again.

Until we did.

We got together for a wedding show in 1997 for CJH and his fiancee, and that was the last time I talked to any of these folks. That shower was held at CJH’s dad’s farmhouse near Lake Jackson, and that property alone had given us enough memories to last a lifetime. From fishing to playing poker drunk in a house that was 35 degrees with no electricity to trick shooting clay pigeons out back to being thrown from CJH’s S10 pickup whilst doing donuts in a horse-poo filled pasture to horseback riding to hayrides. That place was full of memories.

TGWH (at the time) had a daughter named after our fortieth president (look it up), Jon was engaged and GBD and I had already been married for about five years and were just starting to get our feet under us.

And then, after CJH’s wedding, we (or at least I) fell out of touch.

Then, about two years ago, I started casually trying to find CJH. I had somewhere heard that his father had been sick and I wanted to check in with CJH and let him know we were thinking about him and his family. I didn’t look all that hard really, but I did Google searches and white pages searches, etc., but had no luck.

Then, after everything that I’ve been thru the past six months, I decided to step up the effort. I contacted some folks thru our 20th reunion website that had been friends of CJH growing up, and eventually I got an email address for him. I sent a pretty sappy email (not unlike this blog entry). I sent that email about ten days ago and got no response.

And then last night, I got a call from someone purporting to be the Auburn Police Department calling about some bounced checks from 1990.

It was CJH.

You can cue the sappy music now. I don’t care. We talked for a good while, and after the awkward first few moments of trying to pace a conversation that is somehow going to bridge the gap of ten years, it was great. CJH is still married to the same woman and has a two year old daughter. He’s living in Florida and putting his degree to good use.

Sadly, his father lost a battle with pancreatic cancer last year and I felt terrible that I hadn’t worked harder to find him sooner, if only to offer my condolences for his loss in a more timely manner.

He updated me on our other old roommates and said that one was doing great from what he knew and the other, not so much. He said he had also lost contact to some degree with the others and had had similar thoughts over the years about it but, like all of us, was too busy and time just kept passing by.

So now that we’ve made contact again, I will try to convince him to come back for our 20th reunion in September. If not that, then I will try to get him to visit his mom here in town and we can hook up then. Either way, I feel better.

You see, you don’t meet really good people every day and you don’t make friends with good people every day. And when you do, you should make a better than average effort to make contact, stay in touch, and keep that going.

That after all, is a big part of what life’s supposed to be all about.

(Now having said all of that, I will make a point to post stuff that is MUCH shorter and FAR less serious for the rest of the day).

TTFNMF

Here’s a couple of nice pictures

That my friend Ethel made even better:

Thanks Ethel. I’ll see you in just three plus a wakeup!

Thanks Caca!!

Here are two pictures my sis-in-law took of 1Doh at the aquarium yesterday. Are these not awesome or what?

Welcome to dorktown. Population: me.

So ever since I moved into the man-room / office at our new house, I have had fair to serious trouble with teh internets. We had wireless and no matter what we’ve done, the signal in my office is weak as I am or cuts out altogether, which is uber-irritating when you’re writing a blog or downloading work to do at home or playing online poker or looking at porn.

Wait. Scratch that last one. Who does that anyway? That’s so 2002.

Anyway, I’ve been at my wit’s end and have been considering having an electrician or my brother-in-law run an ethernet cable from the office downstairs to my office upstairs.

But just to be safe I started sniffing around asking questions on messageboards to see if anyone had any other ideas.

And that’s where one of my Stalker friends BillP sent me a message saying how happy he’d been with THIS device:

See, you run a cable from your current router into this, plug it into a regular power outlet, then plug the receiver into an outlet where you want network connectivity, and that’s it. Instant network connectivity thru your home’s electrical system.

I’ll report back tonight on how it worked, but if it’s like they say, this is one of the greatest inventions in networking history.

And to think, I’m a network admin and had never heard of such a thing.

(me = dumbass).

Have a great Monday everybody.

A totally awesome knife block

This got posted somewhere that I hang out sometimes and it made me laugh. First of all, here’s the link. But here’s the picture.

Another style of block that could be yours for between $49.99 and $99.99 is this (available in white, red, black and stainless steel):