Happy August 1!
Not much going on here. I made a <gasp> crappy dinner last night. I stuffed chicken breasts with goat cheese, spinach, sundried tomatoes, and fresh basil. Whoa! Way too strong. It sounded good, though.
Tonight will be plain ol’ pot roast which is crocking as we speak.
That DOES sound good.
Not even 9am and I’ve already scalded my hand on coffee. This does not bode well. I hope to God I can get my paycheck crap sorted out today. I hate having to talk about money with the admin. I feel bad bringing up anything to do with money. Even though it’s something I really shouldn’t have to hassle them about in the first place. Bad enough they’re not paying me for my first month’s worth of work.
::Looks around and sheepishly raises hand to shoulder height.:: Well, it’s really good with some shredded Mozzerella. :o
haze, could it be you are being punked???
rebo, so what was too strong? The cheese?
boofae, what a first-class waste of air. Too bad his folks didn’t use condoms.
Well, there’s a hole in my back yard. Not a pool yet but on the way. They should be putting in the steel today before the yard caves in. The dogs are acting like little kids running around all the piles of dirt. So much fun to clean up. Luckily there’s construction fencing/webbing all around the hole so I’m not much worried about them falling in.
loune and rosie!! ::taps foot:: That will be quite enough of that! Do you want to be grounded?? I didn’t THINK so.
Well, I really need to do some work. Back later.
Tupug
Rosie wants to be grounded.
Welby, is that why the dog was so surprised?
How I spent my summer vacation. by dogbutler, age [del]5[/del] 36.
Day One.
I got to the airport early(9:15), in spite of traffic. The TSA swabbed the outside of my bag. Considering the amount of fireworks the neighborhood kids set off this last month, I’m surprised I didn’t get pulled for a cavity search. The plane was delayed in New York, so I waited and worried(I only had an hour layover in Cincinnati). The plane got in, and we waited more so they could add extra fuel. I got into Cincinnati at 1:35, right when my flight to Omaha left. The put me on the next flight, which left at 8:55. I read my book. I drank a beer. I walked around. I read some more. I drank more beer. I finished my book. I had more beer. My plane came. I got to Aunt Mary’s at 10:20. We had a beer and went to bed.
Day Two.
We drove from Omaha(in southeast Nebraska) to Hill City(in Western South Dakota). It was supposed to take 7-8 hours by the back roads. That was with one car driven by an ex-cop, on clear roads. We had 4 cars, and a 3 and a 4 year old. They were doing construction. They shut down 2 mile stretches of 281 to resurface it. 281 is a 2 lane road, and there are no other roads to detour onto. We would sit for 20 minutes, till 50 cars piled up, then the pace car would lead us through at 20mph. It took 11 hours. We saw corn and hay and cows for 500 miles. Western Nebraska looks an awfully like the forbidden zone at the end of Mad Max. We got in, checked in, had a beer and went to bed. Uncle Jim got put into time out for winding up the kids.
Day Three.
After breakfast, we piled into the cars :dubious: and went to look at Mt. Rushmore. We had ice cream and bought souvenirs, the went back to the cabin. Everybody was climbing on the rocks. Saturday night we got caught up on things, met the new kids, and drank a few beerverages, and took a group photo
Day Four
The parents and I went into town to go to Mass. The pastor was in Sturgis for the motorcycle rally. His retired associate was on Nebraska for a family reunion. We had another retired priest be the fill-in for the fill-in. After Mass, we went into Keystone, and looked at the tourist shops. They all sold abouth the same thing. We went home, and napped. Uncle Jim and Uncle Bill drove their families for an hour to look at caves.
Day Five.
We packed up and went our seperate ways. We went back to Omaha by I-90, so it only took 81/2 hours. We saw grass cows and water. We drove through , too. We grabbed Aunt Mary’s German Shepard [url=http://s41.photobucket.com/albums/e260/dogbutler/Clarkfest2007/?action=view¤t=Clarkfest2007069.jpg]Gracie form the kennel. She’s more mellow than last time. We had take out Italian, and went to bed.
Day Six.
We went to the airport, and I took a picture of the parents. The flight home was uneventfull, but I got stuck in I-40 traffic on the way home. Thus ended the vacation.
Sean, there are always delays on 85/40. You can keep track of them here.
FCM, if you are ever in Rapid City, S.D., you should stop here.
Much obliged. I’ll check it before I leave Sunday.
Jeebus, but it’s hot out – and it’s getting hotter. 33° (~92F) today, 35° (95F) tomorrow, and it won’t be dipping below the 30s 'til at least Sunday. Well, better that then there being a minus sign before the temperature. 
It’s hump day – wee! So I had an asshat customer on the phone last night. As I’ve mentioned before, we mostly deal with commercial clients – OEMs and shops and the like. We do get calls from end users though because we do provide some technical services for the manufacturers we distribute parts and products for. Yesterday a shop calls – on behalf of another shop (who is not a client of ours so cannot deal directly with us) whose customer had a riding lawn tractor with one of our transaxles in it and he wants a replacement because it’s worn out. I look it up and it’s one of the cheap trannies (yeah yeah, get your snerks out), with a sealed gearbox you can’t get parts for. If the gears are worn, you just buy a new one for a couple hundred bucks. Unfortunately for him, this model was discontinued earlier this year, so that $3k tractor he bought in '99 will need to be fitted with a new tranny, either one of ours or someone else’s, and probably a pricier one at that.
A couple of hours later, this customer ends up calling us because he refuses to believe that the tranny on his 8-year-old tractor has been discontinued. (Evidently he seemed to think that his service depot’s business model involved pissing people off and refusing to sell them things.) I knew it was our client’s customer’s customer from earlier in the day without him having to tell me, but I also knew that if he went to the trouble to get our number, he was only doing so to complain about that which neither he nor I can do anything about, so I made him go through the motions anyway. (Let it be known that we are not the manufacturers of said tranny. We simply distribute their parts and offer some technical support. If someone calls me to complain about them, the only hope they have of their complaint being heard the by manufacturer is if their voice is loud enough to carry from my headset to Grafton, WI. That’s about 600 miles. Perhaps not so surprisingly, some people are willing to have a solid go at it anyway.) My philosophy is this: Be nice and I’ll give you whatever parts of the world you need as I am able. I’ll understand if you’re angry that something you want or need is either hard to get, takes too long, or is no longer available – I would be, too – but I’ll try and suggest any possible alternative I can think of, or at least direct you to someone who can so that, if nothing else, we tried our best. If you’re an asshole, though, I have the ability to be an asshole right back, and you’ll never know it.
This guy rubbed me the wrong way right from the get go – his attitude came through clearly in his voice – but I’m always willing to do what can to try and explain the situation as clearly as possible so that at least you understand the situation. If I tell you that something is discontinued though, and your first response is, “That’s a crock of shit,” then you’ve just steered this particular conversation down a darker path. But still, I attempt to elucidate further, understanding being the cornerstone of wisdom and all. Unfortunately, stubborn ignorance is its sledgehammer, and some people wield it with a mighty grip. He splutters various incredulities and hurls complaints at me as though I was personally responsible for killing his tractor, discontinuing the one thing he needed to get it working again, and pissing in his morning corn flakes. He wanted me personally to send out a bulletin to all dealers about the part he’s looking for in case any of them have an old one in stock, like we have a magical bullhorn. I tell him it doesn’t work this way. Then he wanted me to actually fax every one of our dealers – of which there are over a thousand. I told him it doesn’t work that way either, and we can’t devote that kind of time just to look for a $200 part across the entire flippin’ country for one customer. We’d spend more in labour doing that than 10 of those trannies are worth. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Ultimately he seems to realize that he is getting no satisfaction from bitching at me, so he trots out that old “I’m never buying one of your products again” horse, to which I respond, “That’s fine.” I’m sure he wanted to hear me grovel or at least apologize. He obviously picked the wrong person to get a rise out of. “That’s fine?” he said incredulously. “Yep.” I respond. He didn’t like that. “Well then I’m going to tell all my friends, too.” “Okay,” I respond. He hangs up.
Now, that was probably a bit unprofessional of me, but he pushed the wrong buttons, quite frankly. When all was said and done, he was SOL, and I tried explaining that to him as clearly and calmly as I possibly could. Nothing I could do nor he could do was going to bring that tranny back from the discontinued graveyard – and anyway, we are entirely the wrong place to be calling to try. Anything beyond this rather salient and terminal point is just spoiling for a fight, which is exactly what he was doing. He wanted to bitch and moan and let his righteous indignation be known, and he wanted me to be contrite and apologetic and placating even after being told that we had nothing to do with the discontinuation and lack of available parts. Well, screw 'im. Screw 'im in the ear.
BooFae - What, no ASBO? Or does he have a few dozen more cars to key before he qualifies? Glad the little prat’s going to get fed a bit of the justice system, though I wonder what his parents have(n’t) been doing to curb his behaviour. Good thing you have that video surveillance system! Sounds like it’s paying off.
Heff - I slept better last night. I was good and tired from the previous night’s deprivation, so my body was pretty much ready to scrape off the remains of the day and zonk out. I’m good for another day. I’ll make up for it this long weekend.
Doggy - That sounded like a fun vacation, in spite of the delays and problems and unrelenting acres of nothingness along the way.
Perhaps he keyed our car in an attempt to get the same ASBO all his mates have got! You have to be a persistent offender to get one of those, so he’d have to vandalise a lot more property and be reported to the police every time too.
The CCTV system is worth it just for the peace of mind - the area we live in used to be quite a nice neighbourhood but it’s gone downhill in recent years. When it came to buying a new car, 'im indoors decided to go for an ex-demonstrator from the dealership closest to us so when we picked up the car from them, it had a whopping 250 miles on the clock. Most of the other cars on the street are rustbuckets that you wouldn’t trust to get you to the end of the road, never mind any further. Always mindful of the local scumbags who’d as soon steal your car as look at you, we had the front garden paved over as an off-street parking space too.
There are a lot of immigrants in our area who, in the main, are probably very lovely people. However, there are a bunch who we know drive cars that don’t have current tax discs. In order to have a tax disc, you have to also produce a valid insurance certificate and an up to date MoT (certificate from the dept of transport that says your car has passed a set of tests declaring it roadworthy). The police are very keen to catch people with expired tax discs because they can be 99% sure they are driving without insurance and MoT, and more than likely without a valid driving licence.
I point you to this character… Blind Iraqi Driver
Anyway, the main reason for having the off-street parking is that we have that little bit more protection against the car being hit by an uninsured driver who you can be sure isn’t going to leave his name and phone number behind!
SCL, how is Libby doing now since her incident? She is still in my thoughts and prayers.
Enjoy your holiday Nava! Glad you survived your vacation.
Happy belated birthday BBBobbio!
Dotty, I make something similar to your pepperoni bread. And yeah, it’s highly addictive. I’m always being asked to bring it to parties/cookouts/gatherings.
Since you won’t see this till tomorrow, hope the move went well, LiLi!
Haze, I’m really sorry for your paycheck woes. I hope it all gets straightened out soon. (You should be charging them interest 
)
BooFae, that’s awful! So glad you caught the little poop though. I can feel your pain - someone tried to break into my car earlier this year. They didn’t get in but they messed up the locks pretty good.
And since I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve missed appropriate reactions and emotions to all I think I have a teeny bit of the sick - didn’t sleep well last night and woke up with a headache, the sniffles and a little sore throat. It would be nice if it were just allergies and will wear off later today.
I guess it was the cheese and basil combination. Although I’ve made stuffed chicken with goat cheese before. Hmm. I dunno. Next time will be ham and swiss.
Canine Servant, except for the traffic problems, it sounds like a fun time!
Mork, that cracks me up! I can just see the guy sputtering when you said “That’s fine.”
BooFae, I’m glad you got the little punk on video.
My family’s camp (cottage) property is being sold. Everything out by Aug 6th. Im trying to decide if I should spend time out there, hanging out, quietly reflecting, so much of my childhood memories are connected to the place, every weekend with my grandparents…or have a wild drunken baccanal out there lasting from Friday night to late Monday…
Decisions, decisions…
My family’s camp (cottage) property is being sold. Everything out by Aug 6th. Im trying to decide if I should spend time out there, hanging out, quietly reflecting, so much of my childhood memories are connected to the place, every weekend with my grandparents…or have a wild drunken baccanal out there lasting from Friday night to late Monday…
Decisions, decisions…
You know what I hate? Visa forms.
My hatred goes beyond the standard “oh this is such useless paperwork” response. I don’t fit into any of the assumptions behind typical visa forms. They assume that the person filling out the forms has never been to the US before, or has only been for personal travel. I have this whole freakin’ history of 13 years in the US, and my visa status has changed multiple times, so there is never enough space on those stupid forms to fill in all my information correctly. Plus they want exact dates for everything, but it’s really hard to dig up documents from 25 years ago. Gah.
My 11:30 class has decided to be absent en masse. Do they want to pass this class or what?
I’d go for the drunken baccanal.
Well, duh. 
Oh, and your vacation account had me all psyched up about my own impending break. w00t!
Oh, that’s heartbreaking. I remember the cottage we used to visit every summer up near Sundridge (on Lake Bernard, the largest lake in Ontario without an island). When my uncle sold it, I was depressed for weeks, and I still miss it after all these years.
I’m not sure a drunken bacchanalia would make up for the loss.
Huh. OK, from now on, I’ll think of you in a Victorian collar with lace at the neck and long-sleeve cuffs and a long flowing skirt past your knees. How’s that? Pretty impeccable.
Hey thanks!! That’s mighty nice of you. (a Roo :::bounce, bounce, bounce:::. . . Heff don’t bounce; aren’t you glad?) Awww, but the flirting and smooches are part of the ritual. 
How about waving? Can we still do waving? And snoopy dancing? And singing is good too, right?. Would you sing me a line to a song? Please, please.
How about "I’ll sing you to sleep after the. . . oh, wait. . . that one’s no good.
or "Rock-a-bye. . . . hmm, maybe too suggestive.
Well, you could sing, “Sing, sing a song, make it simple to last your whole life long.” That’s a good one, right? Anything but mana mana!
~waving~ to Dotty!
And good morning everyone else!
**
LOUNE**, you only wear one tube sock? I was going to ask where. . . but nevermind!
I saw that! And I’m taking notes. You’re the guy that starts the trouble but then walks away and doesn’t get into trouble later. There’s one in every crowd. I’m keeping an eye on you.
**
doggio**, very cool account of your trip. Your airport pictures crack me up. I guess I’m not the only person that takes pictures of empty planes and airports where nothing is happening. You seemed pretty determined to mention cows in your story, but it sure looked like more corn and perhaps a tiny little bull way, way in the background to me. Maybe the cows were very, very little. It’s a good thing beer exists or your story would be very short. Did you have a good time on your vacation?
Mork, cool story and I’m glad you got some sleep last night. What holiday is it this weekend? You Canadians seem to have a lot of holidays. Or do we have one too that I’m not aware of?
another note to self: Don’t call Mork to vent righteous indignation and expect to get any satisfaction.
Fleader, get well wishes sent your way.
Haze, your whole class cut out? Do they all know each other or something?
Joolie, I’d say. . .have a quiet time of reflection before the drunken baccanal because not much reflecting will go on after.
It’s a pretty good day so far. And hopefully it’ll get even better once I get my butt in gear. So I’m off. Have a fun humpday everyone!
Maybe you should try to find out for sure.
Hi, all. Driving by. Pronouns vanished. Work piled high. Hugs, boos, etc. as appropriate. Children romping through thread at night: Behave!
Heff - The first Monday in August for us Torontonians is Simcoe Day. I think I’m one of about four people who knows what it’s actually called. To everyone else it’s just a “civic” or “municipal” holiday that some of them get off work for no known reason. In fact, not everyone gets that day off, as it is not an officially recognized holiday, much less statutory, but it’s traditionally a holiday in many parts of Ontario and, for those who actually know what it’s called, is known under different names, which is probably why “civic holiday” is the only one anyone actually recognizes, because that’s all the calendars ever say if it’s even marked, which it isn’t most of the time because it’s only a quasi-holiday, and it’s only in Ontario. As for venting at me – you’re perfectly welcome to, and I’m a great listener, as long as A) I am not incorrectly accused of having something to do with what you’re venting about, B) It is understood that I probably can’t do a damn thing about it beyond listening, nodding, interjecting the occasional “Hmm,” or “Ah, I see,” and possibly offering advice of questionable value, and C) It is kept at a volume level that assures that I can still retain a level of hearing in somewhere in the 90th percentile. If all that’s cool, then vent away. I do not offer a satisfaction guarantee, though. Not on venting, anyway. 
Rebo - Heh. He didn’t precisely splutter – not audibly, anyway; that would have been rather pleasing – but you could definitely hear that this wasn’t on the same continent as the answer he was expecting. The brief silence as he adjusted his expectations said, “Wait, what? That’s it? Where’s the apology? Where’s the begging to keep a customer? Where are the offers of free things that implacable customers are supposed to get? I WANT TO FEEL SUPERIOR, DAMMIT!”
Sorry, bruh. Homey don’t play dat.
