The State Fair - a Minnesota MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
301

I’m pretty sure that Technical Thingies, Inc is one of the few companies in this area to be open this morning. The interstate was clear, and almost all of the surface street intersections were flooded on the way in this morning. And I am getting no phone calls or emails from people on the East Coast.

Mayo - Hellmann’s is mayo, Miracle Whip is salad dressing, right? I use the latter on chipped ham sandwiches, but Hellmann’s in every other application.

And here’s my (belated) top 4 llist:
Sex
Italian hot sausages (stop snerking)
Pistachios
Vanilla ice cream and orange sherbert mix (Dreamsicles)

302

OK, there’s no way I’m catching up with all of this! I’ll try to go back and read more of it later but until then, congratulations, condolances, good luck, and YAY! as needed.

I’m still planning to post pix from the fair. But KeithT’s parents are coming to visit this weekend, and I’ve gotta clean this afternoon. So hopefully I’ll get to the pictures, but if I don’t, they’ll be up next week.

Here’s a pun from KeithT:

What do you call two octapus together?

A hexadecipus.

What’s a hexadecipus?

A byte of calimari.

303

Oh, dear. If I let Mr. Lissar see that joke, he’ll be telling it to people for the next month. He still hasn’t gotten tired of the “Small medium at large” one.

Sex
Really good books
Poutine
Backrubs
Dark chocolate
Okra and grits have no place in my patheon of Best Things.

304

Ernesto Report

AFAIK, still a tropical storm. The center is very close to Mayberry; we have 40+ MPH winds whistling through the cotton. The only damage I have personally is VWife’s thermometer is off the side of the shed. Too bad the gusts haven’t taken down those old barns…

I have minor standing water in the yard right now, and it’s raining sideways. Supposedly, a tornado is headed for Mayberry.

That’s the bad news. The good is the rain will be done here by noon, and the wind by late afternoon.

305

:: dances through thread, singing ::

I’m off work for FOUR WHOLE DAYS! Woo-hoo!

I’m gonna have lunch with my Dad at James Coney Island, and go get my hair cut and a manicure and a pedicure. I’ll be byoo-ti-mous!

Then supper will be beef stew and “whomp” biscuits.

(Thanks for that nickname, Swampus. It’s perfect. And BTW, how do you feel about billing? :D) )

Maybe I’ll even get a nap in there somewhere.

306

Now that I’ve finished laughing at it I imagine I’ll be telling that for the next few weeks.

Its the sister who’s going home, and that is what I keep telling her! She is failing her main function in life here! Oh when will she learn?
(Disclaimer: Virgin that I am I can’t accurately place sex on the list so I have instead substituted ‘copious makeouts’ with the assumption that sex will eventually fit into the same position)

Copious makeouts
A good book (preferably old and used)
Any coffee based beverage with white chocolate or french vanilla
Honey Mustard

307

VBob Hunker down there. Do you still have my cell phone number, if you need any help cleaning up this weekend?

308

It’s beautiful here today. It’s windy and only 19C and sunny. Perfect. I love fall. I hate summer. I’m wearing a shirt with real sleeves in daytime. I hope we can take the air conditioner out of the window tonight. Maybe I’ll make pizza in celebration. That would be fun.

309

Hey Bobbio, I hope you and the wife remain safe and the house and surrounds remain standing.

I don’t quite understand the admin vs. personal leave thing. In my case, if the Commander were to close the post I would be charged ADMIN leave. Which really means FREE leave because I’m not charged anything. Personal or annual leave is charged to me when I take the day, days or a few hours off.

I’m working a half day today. Since hardly anyone here is at work, I figured I might actually get some stuff done. When I get home, though, I’m taking the kids to the mall to buy school clothes and supplies. Uggh!

I had a very short chat with the boss yesterday. I have been simply overwhelmed with requests for different projects. Some of these projects involve things I haven’t learned how to do, or applications I haven’t used. Consequently, I feel like I haven’t made much progress. I’ve finished a couple of projects up, but, they were, for the most part, simple. He tried to reassure me and told me that he knows I don’t have all the skill sets necessary to perform some of the functions he’s asked for, but, he expects me to learn them. Fine, I don’t have a problem with that, but he can’t expect me to learn it overnight. Also, I told him that I felt bad that I hadn’t completed everything yet, and again, he reassured me and told me that he’ll let me know when a project is a MUST HAVE NOW type of thing. In the meantime, he expects me to prioritize and just try my best to move along on the projects I have. Finally, he told me that he’d rather have me overwhelmed, than sittting there with nothing to do. Yeah…greeeeaaaaaat. I believe in keeping busy, am ALWAYS busy, but do not like being overwhelmed. This happens once in a while, and I can live with that, but I don’t like sustained periods of being overwhelmed. This leads to frustration and mistakes.

So, I found out yesterday that I was using the WRONG FREAKIN’ database to compare against another database. I have WASTED over a week trying compare these two DBs. What made me angry, was the fact that I was told to use what turned out to be the INCORRECT DB. So, now I get to start all FREAKIN’ over. I had to explain this to the boss. I felt like an idiot telling him this, even though it’s not my fault. If the freakin’ users of the said DB can’t even tell me which is the correct one to use, we’ve got problems. This makes all the data suspect and makes me wonder what’s missing.

Ah well. I’ll survive, I always do. I think part of my problem is that my boss is fairly new, I haven’t figured him out (we’ve both been so busy or on leave), and I’m concerned about my performance review which is due at the end of October. I hate, hate, hate, writing support forms for these damn things. I’ve never been anything but top blocked, but I always worry and sweat. I want to do a good job and take pride in my work and work ethic. I always turn in reliable products. However, with all of this, I always worry about what my rating will be.

This weekend promises to be busy, so I may not get to drop in. With that being said:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR PUGGY!

I didn’t want to miss saying that to you.

At any rate, I better get to working. Take care everyone.

310

Stay safe Bobbio. Hopefully by now the worst is over for ya.

Inventory Update

It’s done. All the physical counts match what’s on the spreadsheets. I’m not sure whether to be happy or worried. I’m not used to stuff going this good. Could it be we are finally competent enough with this to actually do it right? Will pigs fly any second now? Would it be fun to see flying pigs?

Product billing is done. I hate billing. I should be gettin’ started on the rest of it, but I Don Juan be here!

I’m eating peanut butter crackers for lunch cause I’m to lazy to go somewhere and get real food and I didn’t bring anything from home today.

Y’all know what really scares me though? I sorta understand KeithT’s joke. :eek:

311

Well, UPS called and told us that we weren’t having our daily scheduled pick-up today, and if we haven’t seen our delivery yet it’s a 50/50 chance we’ll get that, all because of the rain.

We’ve got water leaking into the building here - not from the roff as expected, but seeping in at the foundation.

312

Thanks for the concern, we’ll be fine. I have to pick up apples and sticks from the peecan tree, and I’ll spend Sunday mowing, 'cuz my grass has grown about 2 inches so far since the rain started on Wednesday. The tornadies didn’t even cause a stir on my police scanner, so that was a fizzle, too.

It was all so exciting that I just got up from a 2-hour nap during the height of the wind.

The local weather radar is screwed. Supposed to be clear here now, and it’s still raining sideways, but it’s tapering off so the clouds don’t slam shut. I’ll give it another hour or two, and see about a trip to Ahoskie for license plates, which is the real reason I wanted today off.

313

You get apples from your peecan tree? That’s amazing.
:stuck_out_tongue:

314

That’s how it worked when I worked at NASA as Civil Service, but now I’m a contractor, and I have to live by the company rules. I have to schedule personal leave ahead of time except for emergencies, so I put in for the day off on Monday before we knew Ernesto was coming.

By the company rules and contract, if they close, I charge reuglar time for Admin. However, if I schedule Personal, and something happens that causes Admin when I have Personal scheduled, tough shit.

315

Ah! That clears it up. I forgot you had gone to the “Dark Side” and become a contractor. :wink:

I’m actually glad to hear that the warnings for tornados and such fizzled out. Better to be prepared and have nothing happen.

Back to my stunningly beautiful, but boring spreadsheets.

316

How’s my day been, you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya!

Woke up way early, force of habit and all that. It was raining a little and gloriously cool in the house, what with all the windows open and stuff. By 7:30 we were both up and showered, in order to drop off our cars at the shop by 8. Well, it turned out only my car got dropped off. **FCD ** needs the timing belt changed on his Jetta. Unfortunately, the required tools had not yet arrived at the shop, so we just left my van, then went to breakfast.

We came back home for a little bit, then loaded Bernie into the car to take her to the groomer at Petco. Next stop was the marina where we found the tide was very high - high enough that the deck of our boat was probably 2.5 feet above the dock - too high for me to attempt, so I sat in the car while my intrepid sweetie checked the bilge and measured whatever it was he needed to measure. I talked to my mom while he was puttering.

On to West Marine for replacement engine gauges, followed by a detour to Leonardtown to check out the location of next weekend’s craft fair. From there, we headed home with a brief detour at CVS to pick up a refill. Home again, I had to close the back side of the house - the gentle sprinkle of the early morning has turned into a heavy, windy rainstorm. And I got a call from Petco - they had a power outage and didn’t know when they’d get to Bernie - did I want to come pick her up. Um, no, I’ll wait and see how it goes.

There was a brief moment of panic when I couldn’t get on line. I had an error message that said the internet cable was disconnected. Well, it wasn’t, but I discovered that by powering down the router, then turning it back on, all was well. So yay!

After I surf a bit more, I’m going to print out the business cards/price labels for my ceramics, set up the tables, and figure out how to display my stuff. Long range forecast is for a gorgeous, cool Sept 9, which makes me happy. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

The rest of the weekend is supposed to be nicer, so we’ll be working on the boat at least 2 of the days. One of my chores will involve flushing out the water tanks. Oh yeah, envy me!

:smiley:

Happy Friday, all!!

317

FCM, send me an email with info about where the craft fair is – that sounds like something we might enjoy driving down for. Mostly for the pretty drive, especially if the weather is nice. If we bring the dogs, can we walk them around the fair on leashes, do you think?

We’re having gusty rain now. The cat doesn’t care; she’s found a pile of (clean, of course) laundry to sleep on. The dogs don’t care, either, except that Rusty refuses to go out and pee in the rain; so later on someone will have to put a leash on him and walk him till he can’t stand it any more. Although he’s been known to hold it for 36 hours, so even that isn’t always successful.

The nice part about the nice cool weather is that even if it’s gusty rain, I can open the side window of my office because it’s behind nice thick bushes and under a nice deep eave so even if the wind is able to blow in, the rain doesn’t make it through the bushes. So I’m feeling the lovely cool 66° (that’s about 18° for any Celsius people) breeze right now. I hope I can keep the window even when the stronger winds arrive. If they arrive; Ernesto isn’t really causing much concern. Except for Papa T., who’s currently driving home; here’s hoping traffic isn’t appalling, as usually happens in DC when it rains.

I have a theory. You know those compressed sponges that you can buy, that are little flat things, but as soon as they get wet they mushroom up to full size? Well, I’m convinced that there’s thousands of little compressed cars scattered around, and whenever it rains, poof! they turn into big cars and clog up the roads. Makes perfect sense to me!

Swampy, I saw an ad for a mop with no metal, and thought of you. :smiley:

318

Mama Tiger - email sent!

My driveway looks like a landscaper just dumped all his yard trash and spread it around. I don’t care - it’s cool and it’s raining! :smiley:

319

Man, how did it get to be almost 3 o clock already? The day sure goes fast when you’re doing nothing. I played Super Smash Bros. and watched Clue. Good movie, that. I think I’ll go play some more of the Smash Bros game later.

FCM, glad you’re enjoying the rain. :slight_smile:

Here’s a pun. I know I was supposed to have two today, but screw you all. :stuck_out_tongue:

320

Well, I’m home. But…the kids aren’t ready to go because sleepy-head son slept in. Pfffft. I’m now waiting for him to get out of the shower so I can take both of the kids to the mall.

Traffic is appalling. Everyone is trying to get out of town so our roads are ridiculously clogged. As I drove by the mall on my way home, the parking lot was pretty damn full. This doesn’t bode well for me. I don’t like crowds. Oh well, it has to be done. The kids need clothes and supplies and it’s just better to face the pain and get it over with.

The weather here is lovely. It’s sunny and warm and the rest of the weekend calls for more of the same.

For those of you being hit with rain, etc.; don’t worry our turn is coming. November is usually nothing but a huge, long stretch of dark skies and rain ALL MONTH LONG.

Really, November through March is our icky season.