O-Dark-Thirty

  We saw Thor yesterday. The movie started, the lights went down and it was LOUD. My Darling hands me a couple squishy things and I think “Wow, she remembered earplugs.” I almost put them in my ears before I realized they were Hot Tamales. I know. You expected something different, didn't you? Just letting y'all know (both of you) that I'm still here.

Another of those web things I captured years ago and saved on my computer. This one made me feel better on the days when I was feeling pretty idiotic. I finally decided to do some research and make sure they are real stories. Some I cannot find and others are proved false, but that's okay. They can be fake as long as they are funny. Enjoy. Measures of Dumbness If you ever felt stupid, read these and you'll feel much better.... I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter in to the Emergency room right away. I could ...

I found this a few years ago and it tickled me. It just turned up again on my computer. Lucky you. 1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce. 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was  time to present the present. 8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 10) I did not object to the object. 11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. 13) They were too close to the door to close it. 14) The buck does funny things when the does are present. 15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. 17) The w...

Darling and I played World of Warcraft for over five years. We enjoyed it immensely, though we quit because it eventually became a little ... trite. I'm not sure what the word I want is. Boring fits, but it was boring for us, and others didn't get bored with it, so I don't have a good analysis. I miss playing the game because of the interactions with my brother, his family and my son, but I really don't miss playing WoW. I even get a free week occasionally and don't use more than an hour dropping into the world and looking at it. There were some things that happened in the virtual world of WoW that still make me grin, though. Recently some players exploited flaw in the game and started wiping out the entire population of all the major cities, player and non-player alike. There are some YouTube videos on it. Of course there was the classic Leeroy Jenkins video , which still makes me grin. As a quick overview, a team discusses their next battle encounter and m...

Some ask me occasionally how I come up with story ideas. The ideas are pretty easy , and I've written that before. For instance, I ran across a fantastic picture of tree top camping. I captured the picture, but neglected to capture the photographer, and I'm sorry for that. Looking at the picture made me wonder if there was a story there. Perhaps a story with the Brothers von Crapp, so I thought I'd start one. Here's the current (draft) beginning, just for your reading pleasure. "We were younger then." Vic, the Gentleman Adventurer, reached over and picked up the steaming mug of tea with the first two fingers of his left hand slipped through the mug handle and his palm firmly against the thick side of the porcelain. The heat didn't seem to bother him, though he blew across the top of the mug and didn't immediately drink it. The soothing scent of Earl Grey made him smile. "Yes. Yes, we were. Though age doesn't seem to matter much to u...

I’m finally that guy. “Well,” I said to Darling as I walked into the living room from being outside. “I’m finally that guy .” I have to admit I was grinning from ear to ear. She just looked up from the book she was reading on the iPad (shameless plug;it was the Kindle app). “What guy? The guy who finally published a book ?” I shook my head. When we moved into this house I noticed that we were the old people on the block. Up and down the street are young families with small children. “Ha!” I said to Darling right after we moved in. “I’m going to be the old guy on the corner yelling at the kids to get off my lawn.” Let me be clear here. I didn’t yell at any kids to get off my lawn today. However… I have to give you a little background. When we moved into this house our first month’s water bill was over $200. I’m thinking maybe I’m paying for catching up the bill or for some extreme water usage as we were making the needed repairs to move into the place. The ...

I thought I wrote about procrastination in my blog when I first started writing it. It was certainly a major topic on my list of potential posts. I guess I never got around to doing the post. Around here the saying "If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done" is eerily accurate. As diligent as I am at work and even with my little project plans to manage some of my major tasks, the activities seem to expand to fill the allotted time. Inevitably as I approach my deadline there are one or two minor things that need to get wrapped up. Why is that? There really is only one answer: procrastination. A lot of people think that means I sit back and stare at the ceiling and put off doing my job, but it doesn't. What usually happens is that I procrastinate by doing work . Apparently a lot of people do exactly the same thing. Gretchen Rubin wrote an excellent article titled Working: One of the Most Dangerous Forms of Procrastination and it hit me right b...

I just had a conversation with a co-worker that went like this. "Hi," she said, smiling widely, "how are you, Vince?" "Good." That is my standard reply. "How are you?" "Awesome!" she said. "Awesome?" "Awesome." I looked at her directly and she mesmerized me with a grin. I had to smile. "You are awesome. I agree with you." I said. "This place is so fun. And they pay me to be here." The interesting thing is that this person is one of the most productive people we have in the area. Whenever I see her she has a smile on her face and a look of great contentment. That's the way work should be for all of us. Awesome.

We're working on the remaining items in the old house. Darling decided to have the long-postponed garage sale. Garage (still with carpet) I posted the sale on Craigslist. Darling's best friend D put the freezer on Craigslist and it sold in a couple days. Encouraged by how well that worked I put the used carpet rolls on the list as well, for free, hoping someone would come haul them away. All ready in the Living Room Nobody called. I was disappointed. Guess this stuff didn't work as well as I thought. Well, it does, but I suffered from that common error on the computer, the one between the chair and the keyboard. I only thought I posted it. Once I figured out my error Darling got more calls for the carpet than she could handle. The guy she told to come get it never showed up, though. Anyway, I posted the moving/garage sale and it got her quite a few customers. I didn't take any pictures of the house after the first day, but Darling was exhaust...

Years ago a link to a funny story on the internet crossed my desk. I captured it, since it was funny and I'm a humorist. (Really. Go look at my Linked-In profile. It says so.) I had my kids read it and hopefully they understand some of the underlying concepts. Even if they don't, it's become a family chuckle during some situations to roll our eyes and simply mutter the word "Chamomile." We all know what it means. Occasionally I even work it into one of my stories. Without more introduction, here is the story as I got it years ago. ACTUAL COLLEGE THEME PAPER - HEY I COULDN'T MAKE THIS UP Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Well, here's a prime example offered by an English professor at an American University. "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will t...

I ran across this a few years ago, and I kept it. This is a follow-up to the previous post. There are two take-away messages from this: 1) We're just human and we don't know everything. We haven't even been told everything. 2) While we're here we should try to keep our sense of humor. Laughing at ourselves is the best way to stay humble. These two churches are across the street from each other, and each has a church billboard in the front. This is the exchange on the billboards during one week a few summers ago. Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church (OLOM): ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church (BCPC): ONLY HUMANS GO TO HEAVEN READ THE BIBLE OLOM: GOD LOVES ALL HIS CREATIONS DOGS INCLUDED BCPC: DOGS DONT HAVE SOULS THIS IS NOT OPEN FOR DEBATE OLOM: CATHOLIC DOGS GO TO HEAVEN PRESBYTERIAN DOGS CAN TALK TO THEIR PASTOR BCPC: CONVERTING TO CATHOLOCISM DOES NOT MAGICALLY GRANT YOUR DOG A SOUL OLOM: FREE DOGS SOULS WIT...

There's an old joke: If a vacuum cleaner sucks, is that a good thing? That's kind of funny. There's an old saying: Life sucks. Then you die. That's not so funny. I am not good at a lot of things. Some things I try to do, and it takes so long for me to do a bad job of it that I get frustrated and think there's something wrong with me. But there isn't. Learning to do a new thing follows a learning curve, a steep suckage scale, so to speak. Quite often I forget this, and just get depressed at my total lack of abilities. Yesterday I caught a pretty good article where Thorin Klosowski explained how he handles the suck barrier when learning a new skill . The article made me feel less alone in the great big dark and scary world of new skill suckage. I recommend the article to everyone, and sent it to my two youngest, who suffer from the same self-deprecating malady I do. Thorin (I am going to guess we are on a first-name basis unless he calls to correc...

 Yes, it crossed my mind...  This particular story is delayed by about a month. I wrote most of it before Mother's Day but never finished it and, obviously, didn't post it until now. The Travel Travails of L's graduation… Let's make sure we have the back story. Darling was scheduled for her final surgery on Friday, May 11. I had to be there for the surgery, but still wanted to be at L's graduation so I did something I don't do often - I planned ahead. I booked a flight on Friday night from Houston to Abilene, and booked a car and hotel room in Abilene. I didn't get to reserve a room in our normal hotel since it was already booked for that night. My return flight was Saturday evening so that I missed about twenty-four hours with Darling and her recovery. Her friends stepped in, so we were covered. "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley" as Robert Burns said in his poem To A Mouse . This is more often heard as ...