Work Blogging…Yeah, I know, It’s Wrong And Stuff

I used to do a weekly Top Ten And A Half list each Friday and then got too lazy forgot to keep doing them. So, I am reposting one of my Top Ten ½ lists today. Please remember that I do a Top Ten ½ to avoid copyright issues and because back when I started this last year, I thought the extra 1/2 was clever for some reason. With age comes wisdom and both are now telling me it might not have been as clever as I initially believed. I'm pretty sure the inventors of the Edsel and New Coke know what I'm talking about.

As I sat in the office all day, I realized how much I miss blogging at work, and believe me, I used to blog a whole lot while in the office. I can say that now because I already got caught. I knew it was taboo to do so, but so is flaunting bad taste and we still have Paris Hilton walking around. So, I will dedicate this Top Ten And A Half List to:

‘The Top Ten And A Half Ways Work Is Different Since I Stopped Blogging There.’

11. I find myself gazing into my monitor dreaming about how many comments I have gotten or what other people have posted on their blogs. It’s a lonely, distant feeling.

10. I am apparently one of my office’s top performers.

9. It appears as though I have a new coworker – and he started back in November.

8. I am now forced to say ‘That’s What She Said’ to my coworkers because I can’t visit blogs and leave TWSS in other’s comment sections. They are not as appreciative of it as blogsville is. At least that’s what the lady from HR advised me. Well, that’s what she said any way.

7. Apparently we hold weekly staff meetings. Now I am wondering how many of them I missed. Or more importantly, why no one bothered to let me know about the staff meetings as they were happening.

6. I never noticed the phone in my cubicle. It rings, too. A lot. Too much actually, if you ask me.

5. For some reason I have three calendars on my drab cube walls and they haven’t been changed in 4 months. Oh man, did I miss a lame and questionable holiday again??

4. It turns out I sing very loudly while in the office and never even realized it. The fact that I don’t get requests should tell you how popular the singing is.

3. I wasn’t aware that every day I am required to be in the office for 8 hours – in a row.

2. My office computer can actually be used for something called ‘work tasks’ like email and document creation.

And the number one way that work is different since I stopped blogging there is:

1. In my at-work blogging stupor, I didn’t realize that a photo was taken of me while I was...


OK everybody, have a great holiday weekend and unofficial start to summer. I plan on grilling...the first person that ticks me off at work tomorrow. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Happy Memorial Day Weekend!!!!

An Exercise In Futility (Also Known As ‘This Post…Sucks’)

If you have ever seen my favorite movie, ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer,’ then you know exactly how to say ‘this post…sucks.’ Keep that saying close at hand for the next few minutes. I have taken a holiday from sharing holidays with you this week. And I promise if that is as clever as I can be today that you can just stop reading now and I’ll still respect you tomorrow. Well, I might not respect you as much, but I’m certainly not going to tell you that or act like my respect for you has diminished in any way. I mean not that I’d be fake about it or anything but the truth is that I have already forgotten the reason I was writing and was just sort of hoping I could write my way out of it until it came back to me. It’s a pretty handy trick if you’ve never tried it. And the best part is that it works with both speaking and writing. In fact 87.4% of my 590 or so posts have been completed with this method and just ask my boss how effective the speaking form of the trick is when I am in staff meetings. On second thought, don’t. My last employee review specifically mentioned no longer using filibusters to cover up for what I was not prepared to speak about and to lay off the work blogging. Ok, I made that up, but I know that’s what he WANTED to say.

So here’s the deal. I have come up with nothing to write about today. Oh sure this week is National Backyard Games Week, I FINALLY found a Melting Pot close to me and one of my coworkers just told me that he recently attended a 1980s costume party dressed as Magnum PI complete with short shorts, but nothing has really struck me as being truly blogworthy today. I thought about following up my atrial fib post with one about how fun it is living with inner ear damage, but it just seemed too soon. And yes this is the weekend of 1100 beautiful miles of Indy Car and NASCAR racing, but all too often not enough people seem to care.

Once upon a time, I was going to assemble all of my possible post ideas in an easy to use, indexed and categorized file box complete with stickers, but I found a penny on the floor and got a little distracted. Now I’m wishing that penny had never entered my life. Heck, it costs our government more to make a penny than it is actually worth. I guess in retrospect it’s ok I didn’t spend all that time working on it because I would have gotten all excited and made the box the focus of my life for about 4 days and then gotten too lazy to keep putting ideas into it.

Then on a day like today when I can’t think of anything to write about I would remember the existence of the box, open it up and hear crickets and see a moth fly out of it (assuming of course that I lived in an animated cartoon world) and only have 4 index cards to choose from. And with my luck, 2 of those cards would probably contain recipes because I wasn’t paying attention when I filed them. That of course would lead to the time when I am looking for a new dish to cook for dinner and pull out a new recipe to try and instead of ingredients and instructions it has my thoughts about how we can beat global warming by making more ice cubes.

I was tempted to brag about how I let a little useless office information (which is way different than a rumor, thank you very much) slip so I could test how quickly it took to get back to me (less than 23 minutes, by the way). I could give in and finally write my ‘100 Things’ post that gives you completely useless information about me. 100 of them to be exact, but I couldn’t guarantee that several of them wouldn’t be the same things mentioned in the song ‘My Favorite Things.’ Although, raindrops on roses really don’t do anything special for me. Actually, either do whiskers on kittens or bright copper kettles. Warm, woolen mittens on the other hand (or both hands) come in very handy. I could continue, but I think you get the point.

In fact, I think I’ll just end this post right now. Yep, it took just shy of 2 years, but it looks like I have finally jumped the shark with this post. Oh wait. Now I remember what I originally wanted to write about. It was fish sticks. Oh well, there’s always another day. Please?

Fun* With Atrial Fibrillation

I debated about whether I would write a post solely devoted to atrial fibrillation since it might not be as fun to read if you have never experienced it and no one likes an inside joke that they aren’t part of. Do I say this from first hand experience? I don’t want to talk about it! Anyway, I shall attempt to get to the heart of atrial fibrillation. Oh come on, that’s funny. Perhaps not as funny as an America’s Funniest Home Videos crotch shot, but then what really is.

A couple of weeks ago, I slipped back into atrial fibrillation, again. That basically means that some part of my heart isn’t pumping right and that my heartbeats are all irregular. And no amount of bran is gonna fix this irregularity. My heart more or less quivers instead of pumping blood to wherever it should go, which is undoubtedly somewhere in my body. I’d like to be more ‘medical’ with my descriptions, but I tend to drift off when my cardiologist gets all med school graduate on me. Sadly, the same thing happens when people start mentioning numbers or stats to me. When you combine both, I think I just sort of start drooling and mentally picturing rainbows and leprechauns and dolphins that know my name. It’s really a nice place. They have cheese and ice cream and steak. Wait a minute, when did I walk into the grocery store…

Essentially, I have an irregular heart rhythm. I’ve had it about 10 times over the last 8 years, which really sucks because rhythm is the one word I cannot spell. I think it’s the placement of the ‘y’ that messes with me. I’ve tried to come up with alternatives to ‘rhythm,’ but haven’t succeeded. Sadly, my guilty feet (and every other part of me) just have no rhythm (Wham). Oh sweet patron saint of John Wayne movies, did I just quote Wham? Well that was most certainly a careless whisper on my part. Aw crud, I just did it again. The closest alternative word I came up with was ‘off beat,’ but it doesn’t sit with me well yet. Hopefully some day I’ll learn how to spell rhythm without the aid of a spell checker. I mean how hard can it be to spell when in my sleep I can spell supercalifrag…never mind.

One may ask how someone’s heart can develop an irregular rhythm. Actually go ahead and ask me that so I can answer it. I’ll wait, go ahead…

Well, that’s a great question. Thanks for asking. My cardiologist says that my atrial fibrillation is due to the stress and development of heart failure after having lived with my bad valve for so long because the heart was forced to work so hard (at least now I can take solace that part of me is a hard worker), though I think it has to do with me sticking my tongue on too many 9-volt batteries as a kid. Apparently, the heart is one big mass of electrical impulses. When the heart gets tweaked, the electrical impulses start firing at the wrong time, thus messing up the rhythm. I should also mention that having the heart cut into doesn’t do much to help it either. In fact, I can support this with my 3 receipts for emergency room visits within 2 weeks of coming home from open heart surgery.

In the past, I have gone to the emergency room, been put asleep and had my heart shocked back into regular rhythm. If you have never been smashed on the head with a hard object and then seen tweety birds and stars, let me tell you that it’s pretty much the same thing. There are a few negative side effects to this, such as having part of my nipple shaved off by a nurse who wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing and burning of the skin. I also bit off a chunk of my tongue once when I lurched in my sleep during the shock. The medical term for the procedure is ‘cardioversion,’ but I prefer to call it a very expensive jump start. Then they adjust my antiarrythmic medication in the hopes that the atrial fib won’t return. I’m pretty much out of medicine options right now. The strongest and last medication I haven’t yet tried will turn my face blue. As I am already short, I do not relish the prospect of being referred to as a Smurf for the rest of my life, so that option is off the table. I should probably mention that the same medication ruins the lungs over time. My cardiologist assures me that reason is much more important than the Smurf thing. I seriously have my doubts.

However, lest you think that having chronic atrial fibrillation is a downer, I am here to tell you nothing could be further from the truth, especially when you have an artificial heart valve that ticks loud enough for people to hear it or children to be able to make comparisons between you and the crocodile that ate Captain Hook’s wrist watch in Peter Pan. I’m not sure that I just wrote the longest sentence ever, but I was definitely hoping for top ten there. One of the fun things to do is sit in a car with coworkers or in the conference room during those quiet and awkward final moments while we wait for a staff meeting to start. If it’s quiet enough and the acoustics are right, you can watch people start looking around trying to figure out what the ticking sound is. I love it when they finally rule out everything else and realize it’s me. This is usually when I start singing Rod Stewart’s ‘Rhythm Of My Heart’ softly. I know what you are thinking and the answer is yes, that’s the ONLY Rod Stewart song I often go around singing. Seriously.

That’s not all the fun to be had though. At night, I enjoy laying in bed and listening to my irregular heart beats and ticks. If I’m patient enough, the heart rhythm becomes the same as some of the 70s’ greatest disco tunes. Except when I get really calm right before falling asleep and then I swear I hear the beat of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ (Gordon Lightfoot) or Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’ and that just freaks me out to the point of not being able to sleep. I’m also pretty sure that Lucy and Ethel have learned the tempo of a proper waltz thanks to my atrial fibrillation.

So there you have it, with the proper frame of mind, anything can be fun. This includes having low enough blood pressure that every time you bend over you begin to pass out and get all white headed. Oh wait, I think I mean light headed. White headed would mean I need Jessica Simpson’s ProActive.

*In this case, the word ‘fun’ is being used as a subjective, somewhat sarcastic term, much in the same way that I use ‘Oprah’ or even ‘the.’

The Cheese To End All Cheese?

I love cheese, many of you love cheese, so it just seemed that writing about this next cheese was something I had to do after learning of its existence. And I will admit that it’s a much better topic than the other one I was toying with: Starbucks’ new nudie mermaid logo. They get enough publicity. But Casu Marzu on the other hand, does not. If you had asked me about Casu Marzu, I would have told you it was the fancy name of the mansion overlooking Corona or that it was possibly the name of that weird sounding band from the 80s. Oh wait, that might actually be Spandau Ballet, and I have no idea what the heck that means. I understand ballet, but is Spandau just a fancy way of saying Spandex? Because a spandex ballet might be kind of funny to watch. Perhaps a little chaffy for the performers, but that’s what they get for wearing non-breathable spandex during a dance performance!

It seems I have drifted of course, again. This post was supposed to be all cheesy. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. It’s the same temptation I gave into yesterday when Lucy and Ethel were playing with their magnetic letters and there was a little issue with Lucy needing 2 ‘p’s. For those of you keeping score at home, that would also be ‘pp’ and it led to me spending most of the afternoon saying things like ‘Ethel give your sister your PP’ and ‘Ethel Lucy wants your PP.’ I realize it’s not very grown up, but then either am I. It is a little unsettling when you realize that your 5-year-old daughters are slightly above that type of humor however…

OK, back to the cheese. By the way, I swear back to the cheese will the title of a screenplay I write before I die, most likely from clogged arteries. At this time, I would like to introduce you to a little something called Casu Marzu. I guess I actually introduced you to it in the first paragraph, but I didn’t introduce it correctly. I am horrible at introductions and often mess them up. Now days I just try to stand in between the two people I should be introducing and just hope they take it upon themselves to introduce each other in an effort to break the awkward silence. I come out looking like an idiot, but they get to meet each other and I usually discover I had been calling at least one of them by the wrong last name. It works out quite beautifully.

Casu Marzu is cheese. Unofficially, it is referred to as maggot cheese. MMMMM, doesn’t that sound scrumpulicious? I need to mention that it’s not one of those cute or clever names that has nothing to do with the title because horribly enough, this cheese has a lot to do with maggots. I may have just lost many of you with a double maggot reference (triple if you choose to count that last one there) and I will warn you that many of you may not want to continue. If that is the case, have a great day and I will see you tomorrow with something much less gastronomically offensive.

This cheese will test how loyal of a cheese-ist you really are. It will make you question how serious you are to your cheese commitment and how far you will go to prove your allegiance to one of life’s most delicious things to come from a cow’s udder. It is a somewhat altered or embellished cheese, if you will. As the cheese begins fermentation, it is filled with larvae, who eat it, break down its fats and allow it to further ferment into a soft cheese with a little bit of liquid, according to Wikipedia. Sorry, I just dove right into that description without much of a warning. Please forgive me. So now, not only do we have little bugs in our cheese, we get liquid out of it. That is completely disgusting. I’m sure you were already thinking that, but I like to state the obvious, such as ‘it looks like it’ll be either Barack or Hillary for the Democrats.’

However, that is nowhere near the best part of this cheese. It is actually dangerous. What, you ask? Maggot larvae filled cheese with oozy cheese-water is bad for you? Shocking! Why yes it is. It can become too toxic, the larvae can cause intestinal problems and the cheese can lead to some allergic reactions. But the one danger that takes the cake for the cheese, to awkwardly mix metaphors, is the fact that Casu Marzu can lead to eye damage. Go ahead, ask me why cheese can cause eye damage. Well, the LARVAE CAN JUMP AND OFTEN STRIKE PEOPLE IN THE EYES AS THEY ARE EATING THE CHEESE. Is that not precious priceless? So now when you show up to a family event wearing an eye patch, you will no longer have to tell them that you are pretending to be a pirate, hurt yourself horsing around with lawn darts or got that part as the evil villain on a daytime soap opera. You can tell them that you were struck by cheese larvae. On second thought, your reputation might be better served to say you think you are a pirate.

So that my friends is Casu Marzu. I love cheese, but have now officially drawn the line with regard to my love. Apparently, there is such a thing as conditional love. I would now like to express that conditional love in the form of a Dr. Seussian type poem, if you’ll permit me.

I love cheese.
I love it more than my knees or that stuff that is made by flowers and bees
I love it in the night; I love it in the light
I’ll eat with hair or even a bear
I’ll eat it when it falls in the sand, right straight out of my hand
I shall melt it or smelt it or fry it or dry it
I’ll take it with wine or with pulled swine
I shall eat it off the floor or instead of a smore
I like it with holes, I like it with moles
I will eat cheese every day; I will eat cheese every way
I will even eat it with thugs or melted in mugs
But one thing I will not do is eat it with bugs
So yes, I will eat fondue, but never, ever Casu Marzu
Seriously, that’s freakin’ disgusting

Hello CIA, I’m Responding To Your Ad

I joked last week (meaning November of 2006 when I originally wrote this because yes, this is a repost, but I took the time to spruce it up and add things like George Lucas did to Star Wars) about wanting to do a story based on a radio commercial I heard about the fact that the CIA is hiring, but I was too afraid of Big Brother. I mean if my work monitors my blog, there's no telling what the CIA is doing. Well, after reading this AP story about the CIA on Yahoo, I’m ready to. The story is about how the CIA is looking for new employees, which I guess they call 'vacuum sales persons,' though I think that's code for something. The story says that they have shown ads during baseball games, taken out ad space in various magazines and airport billboards as well as during movie trailers and airtime during 'Dancing With The Stars.' Ok, I made that last one up. It even says the CIA has hired an ad agency.

I bet the ad company’s creative folks are having a blast pitching ideas to CIA employees. I can hear it now, 'ok guys, if you don’t think this tagline is good, you’re not going to shoot or torture me, right? Guys, smile, that was just a joke, really. The last thing we want to do for you guys is bomb. Get it, bomb? It's an explosive device and it also means to do something poorly. OK, it was a bad joke. Let's just keep that a secret. You guys are good at keeping secrets. Oh, I'm killing myself. Well, better me than you CIA guys...'

Now I’m glad to know that I wasn’t the only one noticing how weird it is that our government’s intelligence agency is publicly seeking employees. Apparently one of the things the CIA wants to do is wipe away the notion that all CIA work is like the very fictional world of James Bond. I’m sure my stereotypical driveling in the next few paragraphs is the EXACT type of thinking they want to discourage, but I just can’t help it. After all, when you've spent your entire life watching the 25 or so Bond films 30 times each, that works out to about 73 Bond viewings, right? Any way, that's a lot of stereotyping to have to forget.

What a relief though to know that if the CIA were to hire me I wouldn’t have to go out and buy enough tuxedos for every day of the week, especially those 1970s ones with the bow ties the size of a small Volkswagen and bell bottoms that could hide, well, the same small Volkswagen. It would be a little sad in a way to be hired by the CIA and have all of those myths associated with covert work demystified so quickly. And when in the heck did I start using phrases like ' myths associated with covert work demystified?' Sorry about that. Let me try that sentence again. It would be a little sad in a way to be hired by the CIA and get all dissappointy because the job wasn't all James Bondish like I thought it was going to be. Whew, that reads much better! I could see myself sitting in my new cubicle saying to no one in particular, “so this is it, really? Can my ballpoint pen kill anybody? When do I get to meet Q? Did I miss the lady with the caviar cart or does she come by after lunch?” At that point I’m sure I’d be executed…I mean fired. Oops.

Although I know nothing about the workings of our country’s intelligence agency (I swear. I don't even know anything about the workings of the company I work for), I would imagine that working in a cubicle there beats working in a cubicle for anyone else. Let's face it, right off the top the actual cubicle is going to be better because it's probably bullet-proof. My guess is that the two most interesting departments would be HR and the requisitioning department. My mind can only imagine what items would be requisitioned at the CIA. Of course, in reality it’s probably the same type of stuff at any company like pencils, pens, computers, paper, copier toner, post-its that can render someone unconscious and explosive tie clips. Wouldn’t it be great to hear a line like 'did you get that order of magnetic, homing device, self destructing wrist watches filled yet' or 'the submarine, machine gun equipped, flying, invisible HYBRID (because we all should go green) Ferraris will be here next week' just once while at work.

HR might be the easiest department since every personnel file would be marked ‘classified.’ Imagine having to review someone’s file to determine whether administrative leave is necessary after he or she destroyed an entire riverfront Bistro in pursuit of a wanted dangerous international smuggler. More than likely, the day-to-day monotony of a CIA HR person would be filled with healthcare enrollment options, retirement packages and sexual harassment claims filed by older cold war spies who can't stop themselves from hitting on their new, young secretaries by calling them names that have sexual innuendos like Ms. Honey Chest or Florence Tightpants and asking if they’d like to see his Aston Martin (if you catch my drift).

Man, I bet the training films are great to watch. Do you think they save money and just show Bond films or do you think they actually make the training films themselves? Do the training films talk about how important it is to put the poisonous breath mints in a different pocket than your mints or to make sure you check for bugs and wiretaps when you check into a hotel, even if it's a Holiday Inn? Does it cover the importance of leaving your disguises in the office and not forwarding government email to your best friend from high school just because it says ‘for your eyes only’ or ‘this message must be destroyed after receipt?’ My mind tingles at the possibilities.

Do you think the CIA plays other government entities in a governmental softball or bowling league? I bet that all the CIA players show up in Ray-Ban sunglasses and fake beards. I wonder if the other teams just throw the games right from the start because they are afraid of what would happen if they beat the CIA. No matter what the answers to all of these questions are, I think it would be great to join the CIA. I may actually have to apply. Or perhaps I applied several years ago and was hired...Bwahahahaha.


**Author’s Disclaimer: Of course, I do not work for the CIA. Although if I did, I could not tell you. No, seriously, I’m just your everyday Monday through Friday cubicle dweller who writes a blog. I have no knowledge of espionage or intelligence gathering. I am not even pretending to, as that is probably a crime. Although if I did have knowledge about it, telling you would definitely be a crime. But I’m not, so there…

Randomocity Killed The Cat*

Pat yourselves on the back. You made it to the end of another week. Please join me in celebrating that achievement with the next two days off and way too many Pop Tarts, won't you? Now, here’s the usual end of the week leftovers random thoughts. Have a great weekend!

* I have come to the conclusion that Friday afternoons are the afterbirth of the work week. You know it’s coming, but the important stuff has already passed.

* Next time it is 4:42 in the afternoon and I accuse a coworker of cheating the company by setting her clock so far in advance, I should pay attention to what that day’s date is. What never occurred to me is that my coworker’s clock can also display the numbers ‘5-09’ as the date and not the time. As my coworker rightly predicted, I will NEVER live that little mistake down…

* Does anyone else find themselves averting their eyes whenever Ronald Reagan kisses a woman in his movies because it’s a woman other than Nancy?

* You know you are doing something right as a parent when your daughter is stirring the sweetener into your tea, takes a test sip and tells you ‘you’ll like this Daddy, it’s like steak, except it’s a drink.’ They grow up so fast…

* I should never eat peanuts when in a put down session at work. We often engage in put down sessions daily as we yell loud enough to be heard without having to leave our cubicles. I’d say we do it to ease the stress of the work day, but I think we just can no longer stand each other. I was the recipient of a rather sharp put down the other day and responded with my mouth full of peanuts by yelling ‘it’s a good thing I have a mouth full of peanuts right now or you’d be in trouble!’ Sadly, when your mouth is full of peanuts, it actually sounds like you are saying that your mouth is full of something else. And let’s face it; there is really no way to recover from that.

* Perhaps I am too easily excited when I have to announce a family party just to celebrate the fact that I found a version of Shirley Bassey (the woman who sang some of the best James Bond themes: Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever and Moonraker) singing Barry Manilow’s Copacabana. Needless to say, the family party ended as a party of one.

* Even though you find it both timely and topical, never tell your boss that something is as useless as a Hillary Clinton win in West Virginia. Oh shoot, I referred to politics and probably just offended some of you. Sorry.

* Here’s a tip: when you walk into the break room and you think you hear one female coworker tell another female coworker ‘and you put it in your bra,’ just shut your mouth and don’t make a stupid comment. Doing so will allow you to hear the rest of the conversation where you would learn that they were sharing recipes and what was actually said was ‘and you put it in your broth.’ Plus, it might prevent you from accidentally offending two more people in your office.

*No feline was injured in the making of this post. Though, I did accidentally step on Ethel’s stuffed cat last night in the dark. But it wasn’t a real stuffed cat, it was from Build A Bear Workshop, which means I probably paid way too much for it and it probably has an outfit for every day of the week.

The Mow The Merrier

The gas price spike hike (I can’t even say it one time fast) has affected a lot of things from the price of food to the reduction of traffic to the stopping of the wonderful gasoline water fountain down at city hall. And it’s a shame too because the ‘fueling the future’ sculpture was so nice. Perhaps even more than that, it has put yet another crimp in my attempt to get a riding lawn mower (the other crimps of course being the relatively smaller size of my yard and the price of the mower, but those objections can be overcome with time, by which I mean constant nagging, whining and pleading until I get my way).

My pure unadulterated lust desire for a riding lawn mower was renewed when I read an AP story recently about how NY police arrested a man wearing a tuxedo who was tooling around on a riding lawn mower in the middle of the night. Yes, he was drunk, but I feel that just obscures the real story here. The real story being that he loved riding lawn mowers so much that he was willing to leave some event that required him to wear a tuxedo just to take a spin. Of course that is all pure speculation on my part (and it more than likely is due to the fact that he had been drinking, but I’m still ignoring that because it cheapens the whole beautiful story).

What guy out there has not fantasized dreamt of walking outside and mounting his trusty steed. Yeah, those last few words made me a little uncomfortable too. I’m just trying to say that I have yet to meet another guy that wouldn’t turn down the chance to pilot a riding lawn mower on a sunny, warm weekend afternoon with ice cold beverage in hand while listening to the selected hits from the Smokey and the Bandit canon? Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine taking tight turns around bushes and shrubs (also defined as smaller bushes) leaving a fresh cut path of beauty in your wake while Jerry Reed serenades you with ‘Eastbound and Down.’ Yes my friend, you have a long way to mow and a short time to get there.

While riding a lawn mower might not be the best way to get in shape, it is a more fun way to manicure your lawn. I imagine it’s also a great way to have a little alone time. Just you, your ride and green asphalt baby! (I’m calling grass ‘green asphalt’ in an attempt to be hip. I’m pretty sure I failed in that objective). While the makers of mean green grass cutting machines might never have intended for people to sip away and slip away while on their mowers, they DID begin building them with cup holders on board. I’m just sayin’…

An oft overlooked point about riding mowers (and one that I employ frequently in my dialogue begging) is that the riding mower can actually be the most fuel-efficient vehicle in your garage. Mr. Tuxedo in NY obviously knew this. So too did country legend George Jones when his wife took away the car keys so he couldn’t drive to the liquor store. Yep, you guessed right, he took the riding lawn mower instead. Is it just me, or is that not one of the coolest stories you have ever heard? Useless Trivia Alert: That’s where Vince Gill got the line ‘she may have took the car keys, but she forgot about my old John Deere.’

I had hopes of teaching Lucy and Ethel to drive by using a riding lawn mower. Sensing that might not happen, I have started using Mario Kart on the Wii instead. I fear they need more realistic training though as I’m pretty sure I got whiplash after letting Lucy drive on Autopia at Disneyland last time we were there. Yes, I know that ride is on a track, but with enough speed and reckless abandon, you can still get hurt. I also realize that they are only 5 ½, but my Dad didn’t start teaching me to drive until I was 16. Just think how much better a driver I would be if I had that extra 10-11 years of practice. Heck, I’ve just recently mastered the art of looking over my shoulders when I change lanes. And did you know most people use the rear view mirror on the windshield when backing up instead of angling it so you can see what your children are doing in the backseat? I say it’s never too early to start driving lessons.

So, I am officially adding riding lawn mower alongside deep fryer on my list of things I really want but would probably just end up getting me hurt. And speaking of fun things that aren’t good for you, could you imagine if someone found a way to put a deep fryer ON a riding lawn mower. The ramifications are just too exciting for me to even begin to vocalize. Cutting grass while preparing homemade corn dogs? I’m getting all shivery inside (that’s what she said).






By the way, it was 10 years ago today (May 14th) that Frank Sinatra passed away. I did not mean for that rhyme, at least not this time. OK, the last rhyme was intentional. So, let's all tip our fedoras to the passing of one cool cat.

Poly-Ticks

Have you ever wanted to write about politics (heck, even hearing the word can get people riled up) but were afraid to upset or anger or offend or sadden or enflame or pander to or accuse or disenfranchise anyone? Well, I don’t know that anyone actually worries about disenfranchising readers, but the political pundits say that word whenever I watch election coverage on CNN and I wanted to try it out. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get to use it this early. I thought I’d have to mention Florida or the 2000 election before I got to say it. I have to admit though that it feels good. Well, saying disenfranchising feels good. I’m not really sure how actually disenfranchising somebody feels since I haven’t done that yet. There was a McDonalds in town where I grew up and they had horrible health standards. I think they were disenfranchised since the place is now a $1 Burger joint, but that might be something different. I’ll let you know for sure as soon as I look up the meaning of ‘disenfranchise.’

Truth be told, I enjoy politics. The ongoing race for the Democratic (uh-oh I probably just ticked half of you off) nomination is far more exciting than anything we have seen in politics in a long, long time. Well, with the notable exception of that hot chick that brought down the Governor of New York or that girl on Gary Hart’s lap back in the ‘80s. Those were kinda fun. And it was exciting when Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle that he knew JFK and Quayle was no JFK. Or how about when Reagan responded to a jab from Walter Mondale by saying ‘Well, there you go again.’ I’m going to stop now, as I fear my Geeky Geekerson side is beginning to show…

Other than the tiny, practically insignificant fact that many people believe it would completely and permanently shatter the Democratic Party, the possibility that the nomination could go all the way to the Democratic National Convention (of course by the time you read this it could all be even a moot-er point than it is while I’m writing it) is enough to make some people downright giddy. Take that John King guy at CNN who uses that specialized digital map with so much dexterity that watching his fingers operate it is enough to cause people to experience vertigo, for example. I bet he’d be giddy.

By the way, is John McCain still running (uh-oh, I probably just ticked off the rest of you)? I haven’t heard anything from him in a while. I guess he’s already got his ticket to the proverbial big show so he can sit back and relax while everyone else tries to find a scalper or overpriced ticket agency that still has a pair (of tickets, that didn’t come out right). Yes it’s still May and no we don’t have a Democratic candidate yet (depending on who you ask), but I am ready to make a prediction. I am projecting that the next President of the United States will come from the United States Senate. That has not happened in quite some time. We’ve had an awful lot of Presidents recently who were governors prior to moving into the White House, but no Senators. The last person I can think of who became President directly after leaving the Senate was JFK. LBJ was a former Senator, but he served as JFK’s VP prior to becoming President so I am not counting that.

Whoa, there was a lot of information in that last paragraph there. Sorry, I didn’t mean to come so close to providing you with actual substance to read. That’s not my bag. Wait, that didn’t feel right. I’m not sure saying ‘that’s not my bag’ is really my bag. Although, it did feel a little better the second time. That’s what she said. There we go. That felt right. That’s what she said again.

So, how do you write about politics without offending half of the audience? I’m not sure that you really can because many people have their own side and their own view and stick to it the same way that peanut butter sticks to the roof of a dog’s mouth. Actually, politics can make some people salivate in the same exact manner. I think the real trick is being fair enough to not offend EITHER side, but since it’s politics and someone is gonna get ticked (plus the fact that it’s much less work to upset people than it is to not upset them), you should work on offending BOTH sides. And we all know that’s a lot more fun…

*It has come to my attention that I was not fair and unbiased in this post. It seems I mentioned some form of the word ‘Democrat’ four times and never actually mentioned some form of the word ‘Republican,’ even though I directly mentioned their candidate, John McCain. So, in my ongoing effort to upset both sides, I need to do this: Republican, Republican, Republican, Republican. There, now is everyone happy upset?

Top 10 Things NOT To Do On Mother’s Day, Even If They’re Accidental

I realize that this list would have been more helpful if I had shared it BEFORE Mother’s Day. I promise I’ll try to repost it in time next year. The following are examples culled from all of my male friends and family members. Please note that they are not mistakes I have made. Shirley Surely no single person is capable of being so absent minded. You believe that, right?

10. Do not sleep in until well after 10:30 (also know as Noon), especially when you may or may not have offered to serve breakfast in bed. Also, make sure you remember whether or not you offered to serve breakfast in bed. In addition, a late afternoon nap is not a good way to follow up the other stuff I just mentioned.

9. Not everyone believes that Indy 500 qualifying is the most important thing happening during the second weekend of every May.

8. Similarly, not everyone puts the same importance on having to watch a Ronald Reagan western just because it happens to be on TV. Though, who programs stuff like that on Mother’s Day? Father’s Day maybe, but not Mother’s Day. That’s when ‘My Fair Lady’ and stuff like that should be on.

7. Due to contrary belief, ‘having me and the twins’ is not always the greatest gift one can give...or get.

6. ‘Whatever you’d like to do honey’ may seem like a nice way to spend the holiday, but you really SHOULD have something planned. This is even truer (seriously, Microsoft Office assured me truer is a real word) when the phrase ‘whatever you’d like to do honey’ is followed with the disclaimer ‘except go to your parents for dinner.’

5. When your wife asks you if take out chicken sounds good for dinner, she’s not as much asking as she is telling. For God’s sake, don’t tell her you’re not in the mood for chicken.

4. Even if you did see your mother the Saturday night before Mother’s Day, or Mother’s Eve if you prefer, you should still call her on Mother’s Day. After all, ‘your brother in Arizona with a new baby found the time to call.’ Mom’s tend to remember this sort of error and won’t hesitate to bring it up when you least expect it or when it promises the maximum guilt effect for them, even more so if the mutha mother is Catholic.

3. Never get your father a Mother’s Day card with the explanation that ‘he did half the work.’ You may mean it as a joke, but your mom won’t take it that way.

2. Just because the entire family can use the inflatable pool you bought for Mother’s Day doesn’t make the gift special.

1. Before you buy and grill up several pounds worth of steaks, check with your wife to make sure that’s actually what she wanted for her special Mother’s Day meal.

The Gettin’ Ready Song

No, that’s not a real song title. I mean there is the Temptations’ song called ‘Get Ready,’ but that’s about a different subject matter. That one is more of a warning to a lover or some chick that doesn’t wish to be the lover but is about to be pursued by 5 really swell guys all dressed the same who can dance to the music as one. Ok, I think that clears that up. I guess I never admitted to the blog world that I once wanted to be a Temptation. Don’t laugh; if it weren’t for that Peter Brady-like period in ’92 when my voice kept cracking whenever I would sing, I might have become the bass voice for The Temps. Well, until they saw me dance.

But enough about spilled dairy products, what I mean is the song you listen to or at least mentally play in your head while you get ready for a day at work or an evening out or maybe a job interview or like me, just taking the trash out. You know what I’m talking about here, right? It’s that song that fills you with confidence, inspires you and helps you walk just a little taller. And no, before this gets out of hand and nasty rumors start, my getting’ ready song is not from the songbook of the great Barry Manilow. It’s also not the theme to The Office, though I do hum that ‘incessantly,’ as my coworkers are fond of telling HR. Nor is it from Frank Sinatra or even Dean Martin or Bobby Darin. I’ll admit that those three play prominent roles in the soundtrack of my life, but in this case, they have become supporting cast.

It just occurred to me that maybe not everyone has a mental soundtrack that accompanies their life. Perhaps I should expand on that a little more so that you understand what I am talking about here. Simply put, you do things and it makes you think of a certain song. In fact, you may or may not hum or hear the appropriate music while doing the thing that made you think of the song in the first place. OK, I’ll admit, this whole idea seemed a lot better before I actually started committing it to paper. Now I’m just trying to fill empty space until I can wrap this up (as evidenced by those last two sentences that basically said the exact same thing. It was the same writing technique that got me through high school and college), because as some of the regular readers here have noted, the end of a post can sometimes be the most swell part (as I laugh, nervously. Hehe.) Once again, this is one of those times when I’ve already written too much to scrap it all and begin something new. Not only is that approach to writing efficient; it’s also lazy. So, my apologies in advance, but I am going to continue.

Music means a lot to me and adding music to our most mundane or enjoyable events is the spice or marinade on the tough and too lean piece of meat that is our metaphorical life. It softens it, makes it easier to enjoy and most certainly makes it more memorable. Unless of course you let is sit too long, at which point it just becomes overly mushy. And honestly, at this point I can no longer tell if I’m still writing about the soundtrack of life or metaphorical cuts of marinating beef. However, I will attempt to give you a few examples (of the mental soundtrack. I lack the dry ice required to give you examples of meat and the shipping would be tremendous). And now, a few examples…

When I am sneaking around the office (the reason WHY I am sneaking isn’t important), I often hum The James Bond theme. It makes it so much more exciting. And speaking of James Bond songs, whenever Lucy and Ethel accidentally strike me in the Man Area/Manitalia, I hear Tom Jones singing ‘Thunderball,’ but I guess that’s taking things in an entirely different direction. On those few occasions when I see animals doing that natural thing that eventually leads to more animals in the back parking lot of our office space, I hear Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On.’ When I find a way to overcome adversity, be it not being able to reach the top cabinet to put a dish away until I climb up on the counter or spell the word rhythm correctly instead of taking me the usual seven attempts, I hear Frank Sinatra’s ‘High Hopes.’ To me, there’s just nothing as inspiring as that little ole ant who actually had the audacity to think he could move that rubber tree plant.

During those two to three times a year that I use tools (like a hammer or a butter knife) I always sing James Taylor’s ‘I’m Your Handy Man.’ Whenever I have to go through multiple doors like in a building lobby, yep, I whistle the theme from ‘Get Smart.’ When I see two people that normally would not look like they belong together, I sing the ‘Odd Couple’ theme. At those times when I am overcome with the urge to dance the happy dance, I often hum the theme from ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show.’

Ok, I guess that was more than a few examples, but shirley surely you now know what I am talking about. Truth be told, you may have understood what I was talking about way back in paragraph two, verse one when Eve turned to Adam and mentioned something about an apple. Sorry, the verse, paragraph thing got me all biblical there for a moment. More than any of the other songs that are featured in my daily soundtrack, the one I enjoy most is by Carly Simon. And for those of you that guessed ‘You’re So Vain,’ well, you’re so wrong. It’s actually ‘Nobody Does It Better’ from ‘The Spy Who Loved Me.’ Granted, there are only about 7 words in the entire song that actually apply to me, but I hum it instead of singing it, so the words seem to lose their importance. Hmm, now I’m thinking I should pick a song where the words do matter. Oh blurg, I’ve just wasted your time…