All posts by Duf

Its Time to Bomb Saddam – Flash ebaumsworld.com This is some funny stuff. If you need some good laughs surf around this site. TONS of funnies.

Nothing much new to report. Like most others, I have been following the war coverage closely. All indications so far have been positive and there is still a chance that we may have taken out Saddam and/or some of his top leadership. I saw on Fox News they actually had a reporter in an army convoy of tanks heading into Iraq. That was interesting to see from the battlefield, live action.

Brainless tv update. American Idol definitely has more talented people in the finals this year. There are at least 6 that are real strong singers. Last year, there may have been 4. Survivor has been interesting. Every week I continue to marvel at how disgusting Heidi is. Picture in your mind a skeleton with D cup breast implants. That is what she looks like. Horrible looking. The ironic thing is how she keeps grouping herself in the “young pretty girls with good bodies” classification. She looks like a total HAG. The women merged with the men already, they were falling apart and it had to be done. The immunity challenge this week was disgusting, perhaps more disgusting than the cow blood drinking stunt from Africa. The survivors had their hands tied behind their back and then had to rip off as much meat as possible using only their teeth in 10 minutes. It was bad. Emaciated, smelly people with their faces covered in raw meat. Who thought that makes good tv?

Spring training baseball, cleaning, puppy madness, neighbor gutter hanging and watching Bowling for Columbine are on the weekend agenda.

Been feeling really low energy this week. Sleeping like a rock but still feel tired. My strength at the gym is waaaaaaay off. I am not sure if it is a side effect of the antibiotics I am still taking or some left over aspect of the ear infection. I have one more day of antibiotics to go. Hopefully that will be end of the lethargy.

The puppy had accidents in the house each of the last 2 evenings but she also made it through the night last night without making any mess in her cage. A first. She still flusters us. Even though we may feel like just crashin on the couch and watching some tv, if the puppy is wound up and ready to go we have to entertain her. Does anyone sell puppy tranquilizers? 🙂

This weekend we are going to a spring training game between the Red Sox and the Phillies. It should be fun, last year we saw a Twins spring training game. Tickets for the Sox are VERY tough to get. I ordered mine nearly a month ago and could only get general admission seats.

On Monday night while I was out with Nicki, there was a surreal sky. We had thunderstorms earlier but part of the sky was clear. The moon was in this clear area, very full and super bright, lighting up the sky. On the edge of the horizon you could still see the thunderheads of the storms and they were lighting up all over the skyline. It was really something to see. Quite often I don’t take the time to really appreciate stuff like that. I need to do it more often.

War is coming. As soon as Iraq launches their first chemical munition at our troops the UN can all offer a collective “oops, our bad, I guess Iraq DID have weapons of mass destruction”. Even good old France said they would back us if Iraq used chemical weapons. How nice of them. I just hope it ends quickly. I don’t want Saddam exiled, he should either rot in an American jail or be 6 feet under. Some of the Iraqi troops are trying to surrender already but have been sent back because they had to wait until we were officially at war. Crazy world.

I was determined to call the Doc on Friday if my ear still wasn’t better. A week of ear pain was way above normal for me. Luckily it started to break Friday. I used less pain meds on Friday and then by the weekend I was off the pain meds completely. Crisis averted. I MUST protect my ears in water at all times, this is just too much of a pain in the ass.

Saturday I put in 15 hours at work. Yep 15. I was undertaking a project I hadn’t done before. I have a server that had 2 hard drives configured in a non raid fashion that is running a very complicated application. The server was running out of drive space. Not only did I want to increase the drive space but also convert it to RAID 5 hardware WITHOUT having to reinstall all of the applications (which would have been next to impossible without the vendors help) After some research I found a technique to do this on MSFT’s knowledgebase. The steps outlined in the instruction did work but I ran into a number of obstacles I had to tackle to get there. To make a long story short, it all works. Something I will keep in mind the next time I want to migrate a server.

So my one day weekend was spent doing a lot of house/yard work. We mowed the grass for the first time in a long time. (Well 3 months) One of the downsides to living in Florida is you can expect to be mowing grass around 9 months out of the year. The weather has turned summerlike with temps in the mid 80’s and high humidity.

The puppy has been improving. She holds it better and seems to be adjusting to a routine more or less. She is still a bundle to deal with but we are managing. Again, Ali is doing the majority of the supervision duties. However in an effort to allow Ali to get back into her gym schedule, I am working out over lunch and then watching the puppy from 5-6 while she gets a workout in. Not very convenient but until we come up with a better way, it’s better than her not going.

Speaking of the gym, on my lunchtime visit today I had something happen that never has before. As I pulled up I saw some young guy apparently talking to cars as they go by and also to people as they enter the gym. Odd, I thought but I parked my car and headed for the door. As I got closer, I observe that this guy is animated, angry and accosting every single person he can. As I approach he backs off his last target and addresses me. He is talking fast and is difficult to follow. In a nutshell he said something about I should not use this gym because the owner is in jail for cocaine and the owner owes him money and his girlfriend in the truck can verify it. I just looked him in the face, looked away, expressionless and went inside. He was already starting his sermon to the next gym goer. I really have no idea what he was ranting about but he was spewing it to every single person in the vicinity. He was obviously very mad about something. Gym patrons were quite perterbed by the whole scene, including myself. Eventually the police were called and the guy left. I don’t know what the whole deal was about but it was a new gym experience for sure. The new employees I have seen around the gym are shady, at best so it wouldn’t surprise me if this guy’s rant wasn’t based on some aspect of truth. I will seriously be looking for other gym options when my membership comes due. All I expect out of a gym is to be not be packed to the rafters with people and be clean and organized. This gym fails poorly on the latter criteria.

I’ve been out of work for 2 days with the ear infection from hell. Not only is my ear infected but the area around it as well. The left side of my face has a noticeable bulge in it from the swelling. I am hoping the meds kick in soon and it starts getting better. Ever since Monday night I haven’t been able to make it through a night without being woken up by stabbing ear pain.

The puppy progress is slow. Of course it always has seemed better during the week because I see her less. This weekend will be the big test.

Ya know I always say how it would be nice to have off and nothing to do but it is damn boring, at least if you feel like shit and are at home. By the end of the day, I felt like a big worthless blob for not doing anything productive all day long. I don’t know how some people do it.

Added another plane to my fleet and promptly flew it into the shed. It was a low speed crash with minor damage but I just thought it was funny that I got my first crash out of the way on day one.

http://terrytate.reebok.com/watch.asp# Woops my funny link got hammered. Here ya go.

This is really funny stuff. I love these commercials.

I decided to make a pit stop at WalMart over lunch to replace my melted lunchbox milk container. I knew it is normally a mob scene there but I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad today. Wrong. Wall to wall people. As usual I pick one of the slower checkout lines, I have a uncanny ability to do so. I am behind 3 mexican women, all obvious related. Each pays for their own stuff individually. The oldest woman of the three purchases not one, not two, not three but FOUR purses. I was trying to figure that one out for awhile, running scenarios through my head of why you would want to buy 4 purses. Hey it helped pass the time while the cashier opened all the pockets in each purse to make sure the old lady wasn’t lifting stuff.

Speaking of checkout lines. Has anyone else had any experience with those self checkout stations at Home Depot? Our one HD store recently got them. Being the computer savy person I am, of course I head right for the self checkout station when I see it on Sunday. It is quite interesting. You scan the item and then you MUST place it in a designated area on the machine. It MAKES you do this and tries to sense if you haven’t. I had the machine tell me I didn’t put the item there when I did, tell me I removed an item when I didn’t and I wound up having to have the clerk come over and clear an error. Not very self service at all. I guess if I had a simple checkout of a couple items it would have been ok. I had over 15 items, some that were quite small. Anyone else see these in other stores? I like the idea.

Puppy weekend number two. It wasn’t all that different from weekend number 1. By the end of the weekend we were stressed out and frustrated. Multiple accidents, incessant chewing, terrorizing the cats and crying when she is crated. It appears that Ali’s experiment with letting the puppy go through the night without being taken out is not working out very well. The cage has been getting progressively worse so I think she is going to have to go back to early AM dog walks. As cute as she is, it STILL doesn’t make up for all the drama, at least not at this point. I busted ass to get a floodlight in the back so we didn’t have to be eaten alive by bugs at night. Unfortunately it seems that she doesnt like going to the bathroom unless you are out there with her.

We had a VERY busy weekend. I got the pool all ready for regular swimming by putting in new filters. We totally cleared out the bedroom my mom is going to use when she comes down. I set up shelves in the garage and in the new storage shed to accomodate all the crap that was in this room. We still appear to have way too much STUFF.

On the plus side, I got to enjoy the pool a bit yesterday, we had some friends over Saturday night and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding (surprisingly good) and I got in some time with my RC plane.

I had a very scary moment on Saturday. Ali asks me if I lighted a candle. I said no, why???? I came out to the kitchen and smelled it. Something was definitely burning. Instantly I had flash backs to my Buick burning up. Oh my GOD is my house gonna burn up next? I started frantically looking around to see where it was coming from. I now see the smoke, I am really crazy now. Ah ha! It is coming from the dishwasher! We throw it open. Smoke comes billowing out. The plastic lid to my lunch kettle milk container had fallen on the heating element and melted. Crisis averted, but man did that freak me out. I will never take the smell of smoke for granted ever again.

Today is the one week puppy anniversary. It has been a difficult week but we are working through it. It is slowly geting better and I would expect it to continue. The puppy now has a name, Nicki. Nicki is either fast asleep or running around like a maniac terrorizing the cats and trying to chew whatever she can get in her mouth. Her house training is a work in progress.

Just applied for a mortgage refinance. I am hoping to do a 15 year term. My payment would initially be about 100 bucks more a month than what we pay now but I will be cutting my term in half. That means I could be mortgage free by 50. That would be nice, real nice.

I am making a concerted effort to cut down on the reality tv. There are several new ones coming on including a new bachelor. I am going to try to not get sucked in. It really becomes an inconvenience to be tied into that much tv. I’ll stick with 2 right now, just Survivor and American Idol. Don’t want to cut into puppy time. 🙂

This weekend will be a lot of work. I want to go on a shelf hanging bonanza both in the garage and in the new shed to help clear out the junk that has been cluttering the spare bedrooms.

Today the high is supposed to be around 90. It has been feeling like summer. No complaints, I’ll take it over the snow.

Whew. The PUPPY weekend. It was a weekend filled with ups and downs. Lots of crying by my wife, lots of puppy “accidents”, and much discussion about how this was all going to work. The end result is we still have the puppy. We spent another 100 bucks on puppy stuff over the weekend so that puts the total up to $300 invested so far. We have come up with work arounds for certain situations and are stilll up in the air about how to handle others. I find it next to impossible to believe that my wife would return the puppy at this point. She is already severly emotionally invested in it. There is no denying that the puppy is adorable and as good natured as you can ask for a dog to be. I give Ali credit for getting up every night at 1 or 2am to walk the dog. However, this schedule is really hard on her since she normally needs more than 8 hours of sleep to just not feel tired. I made my puppy concerns well known over the weekend but stressed the final decision is Ali’s and that I would go along with whatever she decides. It’s been quite the soap opera.

We had our shed delivered on Monday. It is fantastic and will make our house much less cluttered. As it was delivered and being set up, I realized I didn’t have any cash to tip them. They were busting ass and doing a great job so I needed to tip them. Luckily Ali had some cash so we decided to give them 30 bucks. I signed the papers and reached into my pocket to give the guy the money. He said thanks and was on his way. Later, I reached into my pocket to grab my home depot shopping list and pulled out a 20. Evidently I only wound up giving them a 10 buck tip. I felt bad cause they really were quite nice and they wound up probably thinking I was a cheap SOB. Oh well.

It was actually warm enough to go in the pool! Mid 80’s and humid! The pool is up to 78 degrees. Swimming in March, can’t beat it.

Well I have been trying to hold out on blogging this, hoping that I would be able to reverse it quickly so I could act like it didn’t happen. Doesn’t lok like it is going to be quick so I might as well lay it out. My wife works in a nursing home where the humane society brings animals through every week for the residents to interact with. A nice idea. However, yesterday I get a call from my wife saying that there was an adorable puppy that she loved and wanted to adopt. I said that is nice dear, you know we don’t need any other animals. We already have 2 cats and 2 birds that get along relatively well. After some protesting from her that was it. I got 2 more calls that morning with more begging about the dog. She wanted me to at least come over to look at it. I knew doing so would be subjecting myself to hoardes of women fawning over the puppy saying how adorable it is and how we simply must adopt it. Against my better judgement, I went over and saw the puppy. It is a cute puppy like most puppies are. However, seeing it did not suddenly make me change my mind and want to adopt it. My wife and I had a prolonged discussion about it in the parking lot. I told her I just didn’t think it was a good idea. She was very upset. The humane society lady said she would hold the dog until 2pm and if we were interested we could call. Well after more talking I left it that we were not going to get the dog. Ali was disappointed and probably a little ticked at me considering all the stuff she lets me do but still, I held my ground.

Well, as soon as I got back to the office it was still on my mind. I really hate disappointing Ali on things. Would a puppy be so bad? I did some quick research on the internet. Yea seems like a reasonable dog. So I make the fatal mistake and call her back at work, 15 minutes before the deadline. I hem and haw but tell her it is up to her and if she wants the dog it is ok. She is estatic, overwhelmed with excitement. She makes all the arrangements and the dog is back in her office by 4pm. The fun is about to begin.

Of course our gym plans for after work had to be cancelled because we had to go get “supplies” The puppy was very good natured in the car. We got to the pet store and loaded up with 100 bucks worth of food, treats, beds, crate training dvd and toys. Even though we now had the puppy in our possession, my feelings about the whole thing did not change. It just felt wrong. We get home.

Next, over to the neighbor’s to pick up their unused dog crate. They have 2 puppies of their own and are thrilled with the idea of us now having one. Ali proudly shows off our new canine. I nervously pace. It still feels all wrong. I lug the crate back home and set it up. Ali decks it out with all the accessories. The cats come around the corner to greet us and stop, paralyzed by what they see. They don’t leave the front rooms for the rest of the night. That is a problem since their litterbox and food are located close to where the dog crate is. The night is spent taking the dog out and then trying to loosely follow our normal routine. We quickly find out that our normal routine is no longer going to work. One of us needs to be watching at all times to make sure that she is not going to relieve herself on the carpet or to stop her from chewing the leather furniture and anything else she deems fair game for her teeth. We can’t both just sit back and enjoy ourselves. My allergies started to kick up as well, something I am very unaccustomed to anymore. If I had a bad feeling before, I had a very bad feeling now.

It’s bedtime. Now only one of us can be back in the bedroom at a time because we don’t want the puppy in there but someone needs to be watching it. So we rotate shower duty. Then when it is time to put her in the cage I suggest that Ali take her out one final time just in case she needs to go to the bathroom. She says she thinks she will be ok. Earlier, Ali mentioned that she had not even heard the puppy bark yet. The puppy proved she was quite the noise maker once we put her in her crate, closed the door and left the room. You would think someone broke into the house and was stabbing the dog to death. It was horrible. 1,2,3 5 times Ali goes out and tries different things to comfort the dog. None of them work. As soon as she leaves, the unignorable howling continues. By now I am pinching myself hoping this is a nightmare that I can easily wake up from. On Ali’s last trip out she was out for awhile, so I went out to see what was going on. My first step out the bedroom door goes right into a big puddle of puppy pee on the carpet. Evidently while Ali was dragging a mattress out of the spare bedroom to put on the kitchen floor, the puppy left a little love puddle. Told ya we shoulda took her out again. I told Ali that it was ridiculous to have to sleep on the kitchen floor with the dog. She insisted. I trudged back into the bedroom feeling worse than ever. I had a hell of a time falling asleep. My mind was filled with nothing but puppy problems and how this impulse decision is going to affect everything we want to do for 15 years. I eventually fell asleep somehow but then awoke 3 hours later and tossed and turned for 2 more trying to get puppy thoughts out of my head. It was the worst night of sleep I have had in years.

The alarm clock sounds off. I feel like a zombie. Double check, nope Ali is not in bed with me, I guess it isn’t a nightmare. I go out and there is Ali, awake with the puppy. The puppy slept well, Ali did not. She got to do a 4am trip outside. I can tell Ali is frazzled. She starts crying and feels dumb for doing such a thing as adopting an 8 week old puppy on a whim. I console her. She indicates that it may be best to return the puppy and just chalk it up to a mistake. Of course inside I am very happy to hear her speak these words but can’t be too excited about it. She said we could drive separately and she would take the puppy back to the shelter. That was fine with me. After we took our alternating showers (one watching puppy) and were getting ready to leave, she asked if I could come with her to return her because she was so upset. Sure thing, no problem. It soon progressed to hmmm maybe I should take her to work with me and talk to people about it, call the Humane Society and get some advice. I knew I was in trouble. I talked to her once in the morning and got the indication that the peer pressure and guilt was making her rethink her decision to return the puppy. I tried to sway her back my way with reminders of how life altering this whole endeavor is. She said she would think about it more. I talked to her a few hours later and her decision is we need to give it a fair shot and keep the puppy over the weekend to see how it goes. Again I protest and give all indications that I was not at all happy with the decision. But she said that was the only way she could feel right about it. So, we have a full weekend of puppy madness at hand. I can only hope sleep depravation, pet stain scrubbing and a few chewed up household items will be enough to bring my wife back to the side of sanity.

Whew…. I’m so tired…

Girls beat the guys again in Survivor last night. What an embarrassment. Chumps.