Weekend, By the book, Rednecks

The weekend with our friends from PA was fun. We went out to dinner, played golf, watched some movies and DRANK. We drank a lot. I had beer, zima, hard lemonade and even the combination of vodka and red bull. I drank more than the last few months COMBINED. I am tired. Friday and Saturday I didn’t get to bed until after midnight and of course Nicki won’t allow me to sleep past 6:30 am. The post weekend fuzziness is worth it. It was good to see them. We haven’t had any guests down (besides my mom) since last June, too long. Memorable moments included shooting a 101 on the golf course, Cheryl and I passing a mexican taking a piss facing traffic and the in-house Connect 4 tournament that I finished last in.

This week I am in Windows 2003 server training. I was surprised to see I recognized my trainer. He was my trainer 2 years ago when I took a MSFT course through another company. That company went out of business, he went elsewhere and now has wound up at this new company. I had mixed feelings about having this guy again. On the plus side, he moves along quickly and we normally get out of class early. On the downside, part of the reason it goes so quick is because he does little more than read from the book, verbatim. He offers next to no additional insight beyond what is printed in the training manual. I felt last time as I do this time, that I could simply buy this book, go through it and get exactly the same out of it as having the trainer there. He just doesn’t offer any additional value. He’s a nice guy and all, just not a great trainer. He drank about a half dozen cups of coffee at least and seems to be a heavy smoker as well, a nervous type of chap. 4 more days to go. Our “class” is me and one other guy. The training business is tough nowadays.

Usually when you think of typical Florida residents you think of old people and hispanics/immigrants. There is another major percentage of the population down here that I wouldn’t have imagined until I moved here, the rednecks. Or as they are known in some parts down here, the Florida crackers. Out in the rural areas we live in they are very common. Today while I was at the grocery store picking up a few things a perfect example stepped into line behind me. The older looking gentleman had nasty blood shot eyes, skin that looked like you could make a pair of boots out of and hair that looked like he just got done with a photo shoot for Drunks n Rednecks magazine. His items on the conveyor belt were 2 cases of Budweiser and a 10 pound bag of ice, nothing else. His 2 sons were with him, one of them was bare foot. All types…..