How Hard To Get Back Into The Swing Of Things

After a two week vacation from work it is now time for me to get back into the swing of things, to get back into my regular routine.

Waking up again at 6:30 for work instead of sleeping in until 8 – 8:30, packing lunches instead of reading the news and casually drinking my tea, slowly starting my day instead of rushing to get all I need to get done into the day, I mean yikes! 

It is amazing how quickly one can all out of a regular routine and yet it will take longer to get back into the regular routine again. 

But what did I really do during the holidays?  Well, besides Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, visiting families and friends, New Years Eve and New Years Day there was my kids school holiday events, my daughter’s birthday, Eagles games, putting together the kids toys they got from Christmas, and taking down the Christmas decorations. 

What did I really want to do while off?  Catch up on my Video Game playing!  I did not get time to do much of that.

It’s a new year but the same old life.  Only the date has changed.  Time to climb back onto that horse and ride into the routine that is my life.

Happy New Year Everyone.  I hope you all a merry and prosperous year.

Who’s Ready????

I am so in the Christmas mood lately.  I am excited to do some shopping, and for a guy that is just very odd, I am excited to see the decorations in the store, I am eager to hang up the lights on my house and get the decorations out of the attic and decorate the house. 

I have been listening to the all Christmas music station, I have begun my shopping and I have just been really, really amped for Christmas.

But why? 

I think that part of it is that it is colder than in the past years.  Right now in the Philly area it is in the 30’s for a high.  That is uncommon this time of year.  Normal highs are in the low 50’s. 

I think that because we got some snow already, yes, I said snow, I am more excited for the holidays.  The past Thursday we had a coating of snow.  It looked really pretty and made me feel like it was seasonal. 

I think that part of it is because my boy is at the age where he can get some cool toys.  He is asking for LEGOS and Iron Man toys and all the stuff that I used to play with growing up.  It has been fun for me.

I think that the stores and the Christmas music, the boy, the cold and the snow are really setting the mood early for me this year. 

Who else is ready?????

Can You Pass The Damn Mashed Potatoes?

I manscaped today.  Yep!  I am looking pretty well manscaped today.

I’m just kidding.  Really, I am sure that none of you have any desire to hear about the shaving of any parts of my body. 

When I started this blog one of the things I swore not to do was to get too personal with my readers.  I was not going to bring you into my pants nor into my bedroom, although I did do that once with my son finding the “lightsaber” in our bed.  But that was a story too good to pass up.

With all that has been going on, or not going on, in my life it is almost like I am out of things to write about that don’t expose me.  I like being anonymous.  I am not knocking anyone that opens up to their readers but that is just not me. 

So for me to come on here and talk about my tic tac dick or bald as a baby man area or my conquest of women all over the country when I travel, well, it is just not going to happen.  That’s just not me. 

I might open up more about my kids, more specifically, my son.  He is a pisser.  The kid just makes me laugh my ass off and has been talking some real jems lately.  For example, out of the blue, we are at the dining room table eating dinner as a family when he turns to my daughter and asks, “Can you pass the damn mashed potatoes?”

My humorless wife gave him that burning stare.  You know, the one that mothers have when they are trying to use their Superman-like heat vision to incinerate you where you stand, or in this case sit.  But he did not burn into a crisp. 

I did laugh and could not hold back.  And the boy said it with a straight face and was completely serious. 

Now I am not a huge swearer.  I try very hard not to curse in frontof the kids.  But I do slip.  So does the wife.  But for him to pick that up and use it correctly and in the right context……………… well, that is a proud poppa moment right there.

So as I get back into the habit of writing this silly little blog I think that I will keep true to myself and my goal of not getting too personal but at the same time provide you with the world as I see it.

Lots to do

Folks,

I appreciate you all checking in and wondering about where I have been. 

I have been so nuts lately.  I am still working on remodeling my kitchen.  I am working very hard on growing my forum on TalkPa.net  and I am on staff at 2 others.  My daughter now volunteers twice a week at the local Petsmart store helping with Forgotten Kittens, kids have started back school, my work travel has increased, my workload has increased, I’ve been exercising more, been going to NASCAR races like Richmond, Dover, Bristol and quite frankly I just have not had much time to blog. 

If you are on my blogroll, I am checking in on your blogs even though I might not comment. 

I am sorry that I let you all down.  It is just that I am in a stretch of being overwhelmed with a lot of other things. 

I’ll be back.  I have a lot of scraps of papers with notes on them with things to write about.  I just have not had the time to do it.

Don’t Mess With The Bull Son! You’ll Get The Horns!

When I am not traveling for work I am working in my office in the suburbs of Philly.  Where I work, because of my travel, I was never really part of the “group”.  But lately that has been changing.  I have been starting to be drug into the pranks and practical jokes that the others have been involved in.

The pranks are somewhat tame, for example, buying instant lottery tickets that claim you won huge sums of cash, jumping out of closets to scare someone, locking someone in the bathroom with bungee cords, etc….

But when you mess with me I will take it to the next level. 

They have now messed with me.  Yesterday they covered my car, which I park on the lot and close to the main road, with for sale signs and my phone number.  Not a bad prank but now it is my turn.

I have had tons of time to plot and plan on my pranks back before they even messed with me.  Yesterday I put plan one into play.  The main person involved with the for sale prank came out to find her car also covered in for sale signs and wrapped up in shrink wrap.  Lots of shrink wrap.  A whole roll of shrink wrap.

For those that don’t know what shrink wrap is, it is like large industrial sized clear plastic wrap.  We use it to wrap up pallets of merchandise to be shipped on trucks so that it does not shift on the pallet during shipping.

Other employees and a few customers saw the wrapped car and found it very funny but the real laughter began when she went out to the parking lot and found her car completely wrapped up and encapsulated in the shrink wrap.  Even she laughed.

Going through my head was that ditty that goes “What ever you can do I can do better!!!!”

You betchya @$$ I can!

As I was leaving work she says – It’s on now!

I certainly hope so.

What ever you can do I can do better!

I Have No Office Cred!

I was going to write about something else this morning but I suddenly got the hiccups. 

And why do you suddenly get hiccups?  Have you noticed that you never gradually work your way into hiccups?  It’s like one moment you are fine and the next you are violently spasming in your chair hiccuping.  You gradually get a cold, you gradually get the flu but BAM!  you suddenly get the hiccups!

 It is rare that I get the hiccups.  I can’t remember when the last time was I got them.  But I know that I can’t get rid of them.  I’ve tried holding my breath, drinking upside down (this brought back some college memories) blowing out all the air in my lungs and drinking water, etc…. 

I even had one fool here at work tell me that I should swallow a bunch of sugar.  Now here at work all we have as far as sugar is the little sugar packets.  Do you know how many of those #(@)ing little packets I would have to be ripping open to make a significant amount of sugar to swallow. 

Not only that but the mess it would be leaving behind.  Like the little fine white powdery residue left across my desk.  People would come walking by and my desk would look like Cocaine central.  Suddenly, I would be getting new text messages “Got some?”  “Need Some?” 

And I’ll start having the weird folks hanging around me more wanting to know if I got a score.  “No I don’t. But I do know the Phillies did lose again to the Dodgers in the 9th.  I didn’t catch the final score.  Sorry” 

“Yeah man, I gotcha”  *wink *wink

Than I spend the rest of the day wondering why old weird Harold keep looking at me funny.  No thanks.  Don’t need that.

So here I suffer, every 4 seconds, making a stupid, childish little sound at work.  Hiccups are not a very manly sound either.  I am not getting any office cred sitting here hiccuping.  I could let out a loud stinky fart in the workplace and have more office cred.  Hiccups in the office – well below hiccups on the office cred list.

So here I sit.  Suffering from Hiccups.  But the best part is that I don’t have to suffer alone.  Hiccups affect those that sit around me too.  So if I suffer, they all suffer.  At least something good came out of this.

Thanks For The Ride!

I know I promised a post everyday this week and I blew it.  I got so absorbed in my regular life that I forgot to post.  Sorry about that. 

So now on to the continuing saga of the Mad Man in Chincoteague…..

In Chincoteague, you can easily walk to almost anywhere.  Main Street and Maddox Blvd are the main streets in town and are for the most part walker friendly. 

I say most part because I almost got run over.

I was walking from the carnival grounds to the closest ATM and on the way back a guy was pulling out of a side street without looking.  I was, at this point, in front of his car and he never stopped.  He kept pulling out even as I was clinging on to his hood. 

So there I was facing the car, leaning over his hood, yelling YO!  YO!  YOooooo!!!!!! and the guy keeps pulling out into the street and never slows, stops or looks at me. 

It was not until I pounded down hard with my fist into the hood of his car before he even acknowledged my presence.  He had the nerve to ask what I was doing.  Oh, nothing, just wanted to get a closer look at the bird shit on the hood of your car in this darkness of night you big dope. 

He then had the nerve to complain about the dent I put into his hood.  Actually, I was proud of the dent.  I was proud that I could dent the hood of the car with such force while trying to hold myself up on his hood and not get run over at the same time.

Anyway, after the gentleman was kind enough to drop me off into the street and allow me to move out of the way of his motor vehicle, I proceeded to let him know what I thought of him and wished him a good night.  He also wished me a most pleasant evening and exchanged hand gestures. 

If that was the only bad experience that I had on vacation I can live with that.  And in reality, this is outside of the norm on the island.  The island is a very quiet and peaceful place.  Incidents like the one I mentioned above are rare, at least from my experience.

Where To Begin?!?

I am back from my vacation in Chincoteague Virginia and I am trying hard to get back into the swing of things.  I am back at work, checking my emails, checking my forums and looking at the few new projects that I have to begin. 

I am proud of myself for I have not checked my work emails at all while on vacation.  I usually check once or twice on vacation but I resisted the urge to check email.  Do I rock or what?

The weather was excellent, the water of the ocean was a little colder than normal for this time of year but it was tolerable, the kids were behaved, and it was one of the best vacations I have had in a long while. 

Chincoteague has to be my favorite vacation spot.  It is not fancy or built up which is why I like it so much.  Even at it’s busiest, Pony Penning, it is still much more quiet than the Jersey Shore or Ocean City Maryland.  One day I will have a house down there.  One day I will spend more than 2 weeks a year down there.  One day, one day…..

I have a lot of interesting stories to blog about but at this moment I have so much work to get to.  I will post every day this week to relate the interesting and funny events that happened.  From the pony swim to the beach, to my sister in law to actually having a Big Mac.  I will report on it all this week.

In the meantime, I have work and personal emails to catch up on, work to do, forums to catch up on, a kitchen to finish, etc……… 

Sometimes it does not pay to go away!

I’ve Busted The Conspiracy

I know why I was forced to buy a hew hairbrush.

It has become the community brush.  My wife uses it, my daughter uses it and the boy is using it.

My old one was small and could fit in the medicine cabinet over the sink and the new one that I was forced to buy was large and not suitable to store anywhere but on the side of the sink or on the tank of the toilet.

I knew it was a conspiracy!  I knew that there was something more than just my wife wanting me to “update” my hairbrush.  They don’t go out of style.  It’s a hairbrush!!!!!

There are a few things that skive me.  Things that no matter what – I am just not going to share with anyone!  They include my toothbrush, underwear, bathing suit, and my hair brush! 

So you know what?  I kept my old brush.  That’s right!  I saved it!  Hid it so that others could not find it and when I discovered this nefarious little plot the family had going I pulled it back out.  I pulled it out and used it.  Yeah, so you all can go on with your bad selfs and keep using that new brush and I’ll have mine safely tuckered away. 

Momma didn’t raise no fool!

I Can Actually Do Stuff!

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda!  These are all things we say in regret for something we didn’t do but should have.

For me it is picture taking. 

Lately, I have been working hard in my free time to improve my home but replacing windows and painting rooms and now my latest project is the Kitchen.

I spent the weekend emptying cabinets and ripping them down. 

There is something satisfying to taking a hammer and bashing the *&^$ out of it so that it will fit into the trash can.  Not only is it nice to get rid of something that is a remnant of the old owners but it is also nice to think about all the things that piss me off and then swing the hammer!

• That peckerhead that cut me off on the 95 – BAM!
• The friend that came to my home - BAM!
•  My daughter won’t clean her room – BAM!
•  The Eagles, Phillies, Sixers and Flyers have not won a Championship in decades – BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

It works out great!  I feel so much better today! 

Anyway, getting back to the main point to this post, I wish I had remembered to take before and after pictures of all the work I have been doing because I am proud of the things I have done and I like to show you all that I am not a useless sack of $#!^.  Of course, I have no evidence that I have done anything and you will just have to take my word for it. 

And lastly, it seems that I am the sole person responsible for Global Warming.  Yes, me.  For whatever reason, when I do my home improvement projects, we have record heat waves.  When I was doing the windows and painting last month it was near 100 degrees.  This weekend it was mid 90’s.  Al Gore is going to be coming for me!