My first guest Q&A session!

Nikki at 'To Walk In My Shoes' was very kind and asked me my first Q&A session for her blog!

Go check it out here.

Thanks Nikki!

I'm not dead

Figured I better throw out an "I'm not dead" post, since it's been a while.

- All 3 of the girlies got sick, one with strep throat. I hung out with them over the weekend and picked up a mild version of whatever they had. We're all mostly over it, but I think the flem is going to hang around until the end of the cold season. Ewww...

- The stbx is going after another commissioned sales job. Selling mortgages no less. I just don't get it.

- Looking forward to having a big enough house for the girlies to have their own rooms. Hopefully it will help their relationships. They fight too much.

- There are 135 unread posts in my reader. *sigh*

- I want sex. *sigh*

- I'm currently the leader in that fitness challenge. But of the 11 sign-ups, only 5 have posted stats yet.

- We lost the Halo:Reach league games on Sunday. Is it sad that I'm glad I wasn't the worst performer? I certainly didn't do great, but I didn't choke either.

- The stbx is bugging me to pay half the child care. She says most divorced parents split child care 50/50. Ummm...I'm not so sure about that. She says she doesn't have the income. Would I be a jerk by pointing out that she could have found a new place that was $200-$300 cheaper per month than the one she picked? Yeah, her new place is cheaper than the old, but still. She already took all of the tax refund.

- It's not even that I'm unwilling to help, it's just that I'd really like to get the divorce going and I haven't been able to scrounge up the money yet.

- Can anyone else see the monkey on my back?

- My Grandma isn't doing very well. She wants to go home to God and be with Grampa again. She had some health problems over the last few days and they thought she was on her way, but she's been feeling better. It's to the point that we're all praying she goes home like she wants to. I hope to see her again before she goes, but we'll see.

- So there it is. I'm as alive as can be expected.

- With this being a 'journal' style blog, I wonder if I'll ever go back and read old posts? Would I even want to...?

Saturday Scavenger Shots - Wind

As you might guess correctly, this was taken a while ago, during warmer weather. Wind is a pretty common affliction around here. Average wind speed during February is 15 mph. That's average. The reports said it was up above 30 mph the other day, gusting to 50+.

No, I'm not exaggerating. The local joke is that since we don't have any water here, it's only wind, where other places call it a hurricane.

See that open car door? It's not strange to see dented doors that buckled out from the wind. It usually only happens if you let the door go before it's all the way open.


Haven't talked about anything gaming related for a while. Not that many of you are all that interested.... but here it is anyway:

Seasoned Gamers started up a league for Halo: Reach. I didn't sign up. Not that I don't enjoy playing with other SG'ers, but I don't really enjoy it when they get competitive to the point of frustration and anger. It's gets pretty tiresome. But I did sign up as a substitute and got tagged to play on Sunday. That means that I probably will not play next week, which is fine by me.

And our own Nikki has done a great job setting up the first official Your Shape Fitness Evolved Challenge. Pretty good turnout with 11 signed up. Not bad for the smallish gamer pool it's pulling from. Those challenges really help my motivation. With only one workout session done this week, I'm falling off the wagon. This challenge will put me back on though. It starts tomorrow! There are prizes involved and it's going to be a tough field. There are 3 categories to win, most calories burned, most time, and most different exercises.

I'm going to shoot for most calories burned, but it's going to be difficult. There are guys that weight more than I do and can burn at a rate up to 3 times faster. All the more motivation I suppose. Wish me and Nikki good self discipline!

Saturday Scavenger Shot - Bound....to be late

If I had know what the weekend was going to be like and had the choice to skip it, I probably would have. It's not that anything was especially bad, but just 'off'. I was absent minded to the point of leaving groceries in the cart at the store. Glad whomever found it was nice enough to put it in the store's lost and found.

My dad drove up to help my stbx move. I helped with him for most of Saturday, but she complained loud enough that he came back up on Sunday. She had been telling us that she had all of Monday to get out, but at last minute that moved up to 'out by Monday morning'. She sent me more than a few texts begging for help on Sunday, but I didn't help but also didn't respond with with what I wanted to say, which was "Maybe you should have done some work on Friday." I felt kind of bad for my dad though. I didn't find out until later that he was there on Sunday too.

As my dad was making the 45 minute drive up on Saturday with the trailer I built back in 1999, and refurbished for him for Christmas, blew off of his truck and went bounding down the hill.


There was nothing in it and those 4' sides acted like sails and it just blew away and rolled over, not on it's wheels. It's not totally destroyed, but one of the wheels or hubs may have gotten bent. If that's the case, it will never see the highway with a heavy load again.

It's remarkable how the weather conditions change right at the WY/CO border. The trailer blew off once, maybe a mile before the border, and then again almost right at the Welcome to Wyoming sign. That's where the picture was taken. My dad left it there and got my help dragging it back out. The winds were still up above 20 mph when we retrieved it.

So for next week, I've tagged our friend at Woman with No Regrets for next weeks word.

Randomursday

- I'm a bit of a homophobe, so why did I choose a banana and two clementines for breakfast this morning?

- These monotone online presentation narrators are kind of mesmerizing. My vision is kind of swimming and the screen looks like it's rocking back and forth. Is this what it's like to be high? )I wouldn't know.(


I think I just blacked out for a minute. The presentation is half way done and I didn't notice.

- If you were moving and had a box that was too heavy to lift, what would you do? Take enough out of the box until you could lift it? or wait a couple of days until you see the person you think should lift it and cry and whine, with hopes that they'll eventually take pity on you and lift the box? and would you follow that person across town to their old house, load the box into their car, follow them to their new house, yet again on the other side of town, and unload it for them? only because they cried? Well, if you would, you're a better person than me.


- Lord have mercy. Insurance is next in the training queue. *sob*

- What's your talent? What are you good at? Have you ever had a potential employer ask you that? I really am curious, so please answer. Pretty please even.

You want me to cry?


- Papa K is guest posting over at In the Real World Venus vs Mars. Very funny. Highly recommend it. At the risk of sounding creepy...his wife is hot. Smokin' hot. I don't think I'm any more geeky looking than he was a few years ago, so maybe there's hope for me after all. (yeah, yeah, I know I've said that before...leave me to my meager hopes...)

- At least this training is allowing me to get caught up with my blog reading. What!? There are quizzes? Crap!

- When trusses are installed, it's called 'erecting'. These trainers say "erection" a lot. teehee

- Apparently I can't effectively guess my way through the quizzes. I thought I'd get at least 60% correct, but it ain't happenin'. *sigh* I suppose I should go pay attention now.

- That first picture is making me nauseous.

Letters from the Editor

Dear Subway sammich maker girl,

Did you ever see that movie "Yes Man" with Jim Carrey? Pretty funny. In fact, I think I'll put it in my Netflix queue, just to see it again. The premise is that he has to say "yes" to every opportunity. I'm curious. How much would it cost me to say "yes" to everything you ask me to add; make it a footlong, extra meat, extra cheese, make it a meal, and cookies. Just a guess, but that probably puts the total over $10.

No thanks,
Mmmm...sammichs



Dear fellow bloggers,

Does an inflated followers list bother anyone else? The followers list for bGGG grew almost overnight from 15 to 33, due to my blogfrog visits, but it almost seems like comments have actually fallen off. Makes me wonder if my original 14 don't really care to read blogs with that inflated followers list. Honestly, I think I understand that. There have been blogs with 1,000+ followers that didn't engage me with the first post, so I didn't bother coming back. Of course, bGGG doesn't have 1,000+ followers, but what's the threshold?

Or the quality is falling off. Which would say something because it wasn't all that fantastic to begin with. No, no, don't coddle. I know what I write. ;)

Just a thought. Or an encouragement to leave a comment if you don't usually. However you want to look at it.

Sincerely,
3GK



Dear girlies,

I'm glad I can still make you laugh. It probably won't last forever, but it's nice right now. Like when Bellie got in the drivers seat and I got in her car seat and asked her where we were off to. Or like when I belch and you all yell "EWWWWW!" as loud as you can...in the restaurant...and we all bust up laughing.

Love you,
Daddy




To whomever decided not to put insulation in the saw room addition,

You sir, are a jerk and nearsighted. Sure, it may have saved a couple bucks on the front end, but how many thousands have been spent repairing frozen fire sprinkler heads? And the time last weekend and this evening, not to mention last year, that I've spent dealing with it is pushing my limits. I don't get paid enough for this crap. First order of business tomorrow is to insulate those pipes.

Sincerely,
Foggettaboutyou




Dear trainer people,

Props to you for doing as well as you could with this online slide show training session. It moves along fairly quickly, you have 4 or 5 different narrators, and it's broken up in to bite-sized pieces. But I don't think you can get past the subject. Risk Management is bo ring. And the crummy thing is that since I don't know anything about it, I can't just skip to the quizzes.

Nice try,
*snooze*




zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........

Saturday Scavenger Shots - Jar

I never like apologizing right out of the gate, but since today was a bit hectic and I took this picture for another post, I'm reserving the right to interpret the 'jar' theme however I want....even if it's a very loose interpretation. Sorry.

Someone jarred my coin bank, spilling the coins out.


Other SSS'ers

The Eclectic Spaghetti
What Fresh Hell is This?
AlienCG

Everyone is welcome to join us!

EDIT: I just noticed laura b. tagged me to pick the next word. So here it is: Next weeks word for the Saturday Scavenger Shot is 'bound'. Have at it!

Randombirthday

- It's my birthday today. (And if that doesn't elicit more than the typically wonderful 3-5 comments, I may be done with blogging....grrr. ;)

- "It's my party and I'll grrr if I want to, grrr if I want to..."

- I have a significant pile of evidence showing that someone is out to make the week of my birthday a hell week. First was a salesman making a royal screwup that will ultimately reflect poorly on my expense sheet, not to mention the royally bad attitude towards the guy and everyone else within reach, on top of the pain trying to get it all worked out. Next was 2, make that two, failures of the fire system at work, resulting in a lot of off-hours work for me (and no one else...except the plumber, who's getting paid for it) and visits from the wonderful firemen. Next was an assignment to sit through a super boring online class on business risk. And then there's that reminder that I'm getting older.

- This time of the year really sucks. There's nothing to do here so everyone's attitude goes to shit, including mine, people's performance falls off resulting in more mistakes made than when we were busy, and the littlest irks get under everyone's skin. I swear, if that salesman had been here, I would have punched him in the face. It's not enough that he knows I loath him for this.

- I'm back to taking that Dale Carnegie class. The short version, thank goodness. One good note is that of the 21 people attending the class, I can remember 41 of the first and last names. For the life of me, I cannot remember Mr. Maze's first name. They do this picture association game to help us remember names. Works pretty well, except Mr. Maze's picture was of him 'racing through a corn field.' What first name is associated with racing?

- One guys name is John Weber. His picture is of him sitting on the toilet flipping burgers. Three more are associated with some kind of alcohol. Reisling for Reisel, Miller for....Miller, and Guiness for Inness. And one lady's last name is Hinds. Yes, the mental picture of her is her slapping her butt. For me to remember that many names 3 days after meeting them is saying something. The last time I did that class, I'm not sure I remembered half of them. Using that skill in real life is something else though. Two of the plumbers I've talked to in the last 2 days told me their name, which I promptly forgot.


- So maybe this wasn't as random as I'd first imagined. My brain is shutting down and can't come up with any more randomness.

Weekly dose of musical culture - video games

You're probably sick of hearing about Halo, but I can't help but feature the music in a WDoMC.

Martin O'Donnell is Bungie's (the creator of the Halo games) in-house music guru. Michael Salvatori is his partner in crime. All of the music, from Halo: Combat Evolved (CE) through Halo: Reach, is heavy on the orchestra and vocal ambiance, but includes a lot of rock and weird techno stuff too.

The first in this playlist below is Opening Suite. It's the first thing you hear when you start up Halo: CE.

Follow Our Brothers from Halo 3 is great. Starts out kind of dark and builds into a kind of heroic theme. One of my favorites.

The next two are the themes from Halo 2 and 3. I'm not entirely sure about the theme song for Reach, but Overture is what you listen to when hanging out in the menus.

So if you like orchestra music, you may enjoy this.

As for other video games, I haven't heard too many that seem to put as much effort into their soundtracks as Bungie does. But then again, I'm a Halo fanboy and don't play a wide variety of games. A lot of games just use popular artists/titles and some use a brother-in-law with his synthesizer.

Enjoy.