There Goes the Left Leg

Thing #132: Clay, in addition to being heavy, is a menacing substance that, given the opportunity will suck half of your leg into itself.

I learned this working at our church's property this weekend. This is why I came home sore and half covered in muddy clay. Really, this is the only thing I could think of to post about. It's sad. I hope that it will get better.

Kiwifruit.

It Being Determined That Said Blogger Is A Nerd . . .

Thing #131: According to Article I, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution "the Vice-President of the United States shall be President of the Senate."

This question came up in last nights debate after Sarah Palin mention that the VP has the power to preside over the Senate. Joe Biden quickly 'corrected' her explaining that said VP can only vote when there is a tie and has no power to preside over the Senate. I thought he was right. He wasn't. Rather he was right that that is the only time a VP gets to vote, but not in whether or not the VP presides over the Senate.

Anyway, after watching the debate, I ran across someone pointing out this mistake while reading about the debate online. Then, after work today I did what any normal American citizen who has a question about government would do. I grabbed my copy of the U.S. constitution and started reading. After skimming it three times, I read more carefully and discovered the aforementioned sentence.

Naturally, after finding this out I had to take the chance to actually pull out an article and section of the Constitution like they always did on The West Wing. It makes me feel smart.

Kiwifriut

P.S. Thing #130 has not been skipped, it's just waiting to be completed. This may or may not happen. I can actually count.

Wired

Thing #129: I am a complete nerd.

Don't get me wrong, I already knew that I was a nerd, but a complete nerd? It turns out, this is true. It all started with a trip to the mall. Now, normally I don't like malls, but this time I knew there would be dinner involved, specifically one of those Chinese places where you get 3 meats and a side for $5.50. So I went.

When Katherine and I first arrived, we headed to the food court, past a music/movie store with life-sized cardboard cutouts of Barack Obama and John McCain prominently displayed in the window. So I did what any normal American would do. I had my wife take a picture of me in front of them and sent it to everyone in my family. This does not make me a complete nerd. It just means I happen to enjoy having my picture taken with cardboard cutouts/statues/action figures of famous people. (So far I also have Mahatma Ghandi and Ryan Seacrest. I never thought I'd mention them in the same sentence.)

Then we went to Best Buy and my wife and I convinced each other to buy a wireless router. This is where the nerd came out. Katherine dropped me off at home and went grocery shopping. I spent the better part of the next hour setting up the router, playing with the settings, and sharing our printer. Then we both took our places at our respective computers. Katherine went online and checked out various web pages. I, on the other hand, began pulling up shared folders, pinging her computer, attempting to hack her computer, and generally bothering her with all the cool stuff I could do on our new network. She was underwhelmed. Oh well, I'm going to go find some more thing to do on our network.

Kiwifruit

Gone With the Wind

Thing #128: If the remnants of a major hurricane are heading towards your area, it's wise to secure your trash can.

I'm sure everyone's heard by now about Ike the hurricane that tore across America. We in Northern New York ususually don't worry too much about hurricanes, for the same reason people in Miami don't usually worry about snowstorms, they don't usually occur here. However, last night the in its final blow Ike tore through the area blowing over trees and taking down large swaths of the local power grid.

So, when I got up this morning and I had power and none of my trees were down, and my tomato plant was still sitting merrily on my porch roof, I thought nothing was amiss. That is until I went down with a load of stinky trash to put it in our cheap plastic garbage can. It seems said can took this as the perfect opportunity to runaway to some home with trash that is less stinky. Oh, well, c'est la vie (Two years of French and that's about all I know). Next time I'm tying the can to the tomato plant.

Kiwifruit

Win Your Neighbor

Thing #127: It is impossible for a candidate to win the US Presidency without winning at least 2 states that border each other.

I'm about 94.6% sure of this after about 45 minute of trying to do it on NPR's interactive election map. Also two 'v's (vv) and a 'w' look very similar on CAPTCHA's. CAPTCHA's if you didn't know are those oddly shaped letters that you have to decipher in order to post on, say, this blog. I learned that a couple of weeks ago.

Kiwifruit

What's That Smell?

Thing #126: Covering up bad smells doesn't always work.

I guess this one's a little obvious, but true, none the less!

You see, it began yesterday with an... interesting smell coming from the bathroom. Ok, so I know what you're all thinking, but this wasn't your ordinary bathroom "interesting smell". Last night the smell was still there, only stronger. That's when Ian and I were finally able to identify the odor as it had a very distinct scent to it, the smell of something dead.

Having confirmed that some small critter must have died somewhere in the wall/basement/attic didn't help much. It still smelled. The solution? Mom lit a delicious mocha scented candle and stuck it in the bathroom. Which leads me to the covering up smells part. I wandered in to brush my teeth and mom came by to ask if it smelled any better. The answer? No. Now, instead of smelling like something died in the wall, it smells like something died in a cup of coffee... Oh well. Now is the part where we scour the walls/basement/attic and try to discover the source.

The Chimp

(Ok Kiwi, what did I spell wrong this time?)

Poolside Epiphanies

Thing #125: Never leave a pastor alone with a bowl of potatoe salad.

Sunday was bright and sunny, a good day to have our monthly church fellowship dinner at a house with a pool. We swam, we fellowshipped, we had fun. Then came time to eat.

Whoever said pot luck dinners were horrible... well, you're right, they typically are, but not this one! We had steak, baked potatoes, potatoe and pasta salads, bread, and enough sweets to decay every tooth in America!

There was one problem, I barely got any potatoe salad, definately one of the highlights of the dinner, and many people didn't get any at all. After we ate, a few of us stood around discussing the situation and it went something like this:

Me: "It was delicious. I barely got any!"
Mom: "Your father almost didn't! And the pastor's wife didn't get any except what she scraped off the serving spoon."

This is the point where the pastor walked up.

Pastor: "That's all right. Tell her I ate enough for both of us!"
Church member: "I didn't get any either."
Pastor: "Well I had plenty!"

The moral of the story: Don't leave your potatoe salad unguarded with a pastor around. It may not be there when you get back. Other things I learned at the pool include:

-If you give water guns to people in a pool, they will shoot them at the dry people not in the pool.

-Don't try to toss people in. They may land on the cement around the pool instead. (Don't worry, he was ok, just a slightly banged up knee.)

-If you help the small child out of the pool every time they scream "OUT!" they will continue to scream it every time.

-Small children's floation devices are not suitable for 200+ pound men. (Yes, this was my father.)

All joking aside, It was a blast, and next time, mom will just have to make a larger bowl of potatoe salad!

The Chimp

Hidden In Plain Sight

Thing #124: It's never too late to realize how brilliant a song line is.

So, I'm sitting on my futon playing my guitar a few minutes ago when I have a revelation, or maybe an epiphany. I'm not sure what it takes to get to the level of 'epiphany', so I'll just go with revelation. Anyway, I'm playing this song, "Close of Autumn" by Caedmon's Call. Now I first heard this song in 1997 or so and learned to play it several years ago. Then I run across the following line.

"I guess I'll drop my anger here/Before I float away"

I always thought it was a neat line, and felt like there was something different about that I could put my finger on. Now, I know your probably wonder what it is, but you probably already know. It's just a bit obvious, especially when you read it aloud. This is clearly a play on the similarity, soundwise, of anger and anchor. It took me far too many years to catch that. Brilliant.

Kiwifruit

Welcome Homes

Thing #123: Both of the guys running for president have a lot of money.

As you can imagine this was quite a shock for me. I just always assumed that all politician were good hearted saints who gave all of thier money to the poor, at least all the money they haven't spent helping save cute little puppies.

Seriously, though, now we've got this huge flap about John McCain having loads of houses, which they seem to have countered by pointing out that Barack Obama has a multi-million dollar home and, it seems, a private beach. Personally, I'm glad. I mean would you want to trust your countries future with a guy living out of a cardboard box? I certainly wouldn't.

This, to me, just drives home the point that it's much better to pay close attention to the presidential primaries and then just ignore everything until it's time to vote. The primaries were a constant debate about ideas, hopes, and plans, the meat of a campaign. Now we get Obama being compared to Paris Hilton and John McCain mocked for having a lot of real estate. Can anyone say middle school. (I realize most middle-schooler have neither houses nor Paris Hilton, it's a metaphor about petty name calling.)

So I hope somebody from these campaigns reads this, because, that would be just cool. And it would mean someone was actually reading this. But also, maybe then we could get some discussion of the issues that really matter. Like how may cars Obama has.

Kiwifruit

Beauty and the Beast

Thing #122: Men are civilized, women are savage...

I know, the last thing you expected to hear. And I'm sure many of you are laughing so hard it is difficult to read (Especially you women). But, it is the truth!

I have worked in retail long enough to know that when women shop, they transform into monstrous beasts that tear through your store leaving a trail of destruction. And men, well they transform too. They may be too stubborn to ask for directions on the road, but when a man walks into a woman's clothing store, they become timid and helpless creatures.

To illustrate my point, I will lay out two scenarios for you.

Scenario A:

Man goes into clothing store. He is looking for a shirt, but only because his wife FINALLY threw away all of his old ones that were ragged and full of holes.
He wanders around for a bit looking at shelfs and racks and tables with wide, fearful eyes. Suddenly, he sees a shirt. He decides he likes it, so he quickly grabs said shirt in every color available and proceeds to the check out.

Scenario B:

Woman goes into clothing store. She isn't looking for anything in particular.
She proceeds to the first rack, picking up, moving, and generally pawing through every item. Then the next rack, and the next.
Slowly, the beast begins to emerge. She begins to pick things up, walk around, toss them back on shelfs they don't belong on.
She heads next to the beautiful table displays. By now her transformation is in full swing. She goes into a frenzy, unfolding every shirt and tossing them all back in a pile on the table, the beauty now gone.
Finally she makes her way to the dressing room with the 14 items she has selected. She tries each one on, finally decides she hates the way she looks in everything and will buy nothing.
Before she leaves, she makes sure to take every one of her 14 items and put them back... in the wrong place.

So you see, I now spend my days and nights picking up the pieces left behind from these uncivilized encounters. I must now rest, and prepare to return on Monday, to try to bring some order to this chaos.

The Chimp

And the Gold Goes to Canada

Thing #121: NBC stinks.

This is a bit harsh, but not, I think unwarrented. You see I love the Olympics. Not that I would ever, ever . . . ever (no this is NOT to much emphasis) be able to actually compete in the Olympics. I once wanted to be an Olympic rowing, but then realized that never actually having rown or even been in a boat I should find a more realistic dream. I ended up with watching the Olympics, which is much more realistic.

NBC is 'covering' the Olympics, so I came home from work and turned on NBC. Then, my wife tells me that it's not on again until eight (3 hours away). I wait the whole time. Then turned said channel back on. It was men's syncronized swimming. Yes, there is such a thing. No, I did not want to watch it. I have since landed on the local Canadian station which is covering . . . rowing! I love Canada.

Kiwifruit

Where Oh Where Has My Little Tie Gone

Thing #120: It helps to be prepared, but if that fails, knowing someone who is more prepared works too.

I work at a job that requires a tie. I also work at a job that requires me to be out the door at 7:30ish. These facts when combined make for a situation in which I will once every month or two rush out the door sans tie. I am prepared.

I have a car tie. It's the tie that matches every shirt I own. It rides around in my car all day so when I forget I can slip it on and save face. No one likes to be the guy who forgot his tie. It worked well . . . until today. See, yesterday I forgot my tie. I also forgot to take my car tie off in the car. Then, I forgot my tie this morning.

I arrived at work at 7:50 with no tie. I also had no time to go back. I also had no iguanas in my car, but that doesn't really matter for this story. I had to think fast. Joe was in the car next to me. Joe is the newest tech we have, thus I felt it would be sensible to ask him if he had an extra tie. He did not. He did however mention that Jerry, our IT director might have one. So I went to Jerry's upstairs office.As soon as I walked in I knew I had hit the motherlode.

Each desk/table/computer in his office had a pile of ties the size of a large hill on it. I was stunned. So I asked him if he had a tie I could borrow. This is like asking Bill Gates if he had a couple of buck you could borrow. He said sure and I picked out a tie that would match my shirt. The moral of the story is never, ever bring your car tie in the house. An alternate moral would be it's good to know someone who keeps loads of ties on his person.

Kiwifruit

Old Fashioned Way

Thing #119 Film strips are still set up by hand

My husband and I have been frequenting the local drive in theatre. Last weekend was a great line-up of Wall-e and Get Smart. We talked about it all week and invited my sister to join us for the second movie. About ten minutes into the first feature I look and the picture is upside down and the audio is running backwards, it is starting to get annoying, I wonder is this pixars idea of a dream sequence? I think maybe it is just because he is upside down or something, I mean he is a robot and there is no diologue in this movie....eventually they stop the film and we wait while the projectionist fixes the reel. Yes, in this the digital age, there are still men who load the film. I know this because the elder projectionist stuck up a conversation with me about the new kid who put the film on for the first time while my sister was waiting for her mozzerella sticks to cook. He even gave me a piece of filmstrip to show me where the audio and picture are. Some things are still done the old fashioned way. 6 dollars a ticket and they don't charge an arm and a leg for popcorn either. You can bring your own even and sit in your lawnchair. That is why we love the drive in. I didn't know they still had to load the film, but I know that now.

Not the Max I Wanted to Know About

Thing #118: My company uses crude advertising tactics!

The Chef was greatly distressed today. He was working in his place in the print department which was toward the rear of the retail establishment where the Chef works (it shall herein remain unnamed).
He was merely minding his own buisness, when a customer walked past him and inquired where the location of the bathroom was, he pointed toward it and she looked up and said, where it says "Taking Your"?

He looked and also saw the phrase displayed prominently above the hallway to the bathroom, "Yes," he said, "that's it."

She walked past him toward the bathroom, and the Chef continued about his buisness. A few moments later however, he found himself over by the hallway entrance shaking his head as he stared at the rest of the phrase in utter bewilderment.

"Buisness to the Max" It boasted in bold lettering. "Taking Your buisness to the Max" sitting right above the hallway to the bathrooms...

Mork, Mork, Mork

Sweet Home Alabama . . .

Thing #117: The south is insidious.

I thought after more than a decade in Alabama, my family and I were relatively unscathed by the influence of the South. Sure the occasional 'ya'll' might escape our lips, but my dad still drinks unsweet tea, my mom talks like a Yankee, and I REFUSE to eat any part of a pig (except bacon) let alone EVERY part of a pig!

Sad but true, the south has finally reached us. I went outside tonight to find my dad and nephew shooting his newly acquired bb gun at empty playdo cans on the back deck. My husband and I came out and joined in the festivities. I'll point out when we came out, neither of my aforementioned relatives had been successful. My husband hit one of the containers on his first try, and I on my second.

Somewhere in the midst of all the fun, my nephew, dressed in his Alabama Crimson Tide shirt and matching baseball cap, said "Yep, this is what we do for fun here in Alabama." That's when it hit me . . . We are turning into rednecks. The next thing you know I'll be eating grits and saying fixin' and reckon . . .

The only way it could have been more southern is if they were beer cans, but being my nephew is underage and none of us drink, playdo cans were the next best thing.

The Chimp

Balloon Wars, Continued...

Thing #116: Balloons are naturally given to escaping.

As my colleague Kiwifruit mentioned earlier, balloons can sometimes be difficult things to deal with, however, what those difficulties pertain to can be be entirely opposing factors, for instance... Kiwi mentioned the malicious and destructive nature which some balloons possess, taking every opportunity to lash out at the world around them, on the flip side however, I would like to say a word about the elusive nature of balloons

To illustrate this I will use a few true childhood stories...

It was a Sunny Sunday afternoon, a group of children stood at the far end of a lobby inside of a church, at the other end a group of kid's camp counselors had just finished blowing up balloons and one of them stepped to the forefront, calling out that the kids may "proceed in orderly fashion over to where the counselors were and that they could each take one balloon of their choosing".

One boy (a.k.a. The Swedish Chef) was especially fond of balloons and was standing toward the front of the crowd, as soon as the "come over here and grab a balloon as fast as you possibly can" order was given the entire group of happy children surged on mass toward the balloons The Chef was younger than most and so was trampled underfoot by the throng, by the time he recovered his senses and stood back up on his feet all the balloons had been accounted for and the poor young Chef was out of luck.

Another time that same young man actually got a balloon and took it all the way home, once home he happily jumped out of his car and accidently tripped and fell, in dismay he watched his balloon drift down to the ground and touch the very tip of a single blade of grass... POW!

As if this isn't enough to illustrate the point...

Just recently the Chef was shopping at a prominent retail establishment on a certain holiday which embraces love, and romance, and all those wonderful mushy concepts... he was shopping for his wife and selected a large balloon in the shape of a big red heart which said "I Love You" simple, and accurate thought the Chef. He seized the balloon by the string and happily walked up to the awaiting cashier, still oblivious as to the transitory nature of his esteemed prize.

The cashier, snatched the balloon, yanked it forcefully downward, scanned it, and let it go... It flew up, it's string drawing tight, it's string not holding, it's string falling down the the ground as the actual balloon floated all the way to the very, very high ceiling...

The cashier didn't notice at first and after she did she and another lady began suggesting that the chef take a large ugly frog balloon which was holding a heart as a replacement... The Chef was very sad.

Fortuantely the Chef went shopping with his wife in that same retail establishment shortly after that and he pointed out to her the balloon he had meant to get... She seemed to enjoy it, even from far away...


Mork, Mork, Mork

We Can Finally Afford That Toothbrush You Wanted So Much

Thing #115: Nothing stimulates the economy like good dental hygeine.

So we finally got our much lauded "Stimulus Check." So what did we do with our hundreds of dollars in free* money. We bought new toothbrushes! YEAH!

The Kiwifruit

*-To be paid for by future generations at a later date.

And Then There Were Three . . .

Thing #114: The key to consistancy is getting other people to do stuff for you.

That's why we added at least one (1) new writer and possibly two (2). Now, let me just assuage any concerns you might have about our blog lower its standards. We don't have any. You know that. But, seriously, we have made sure that our new additions to the Things I Know family have all the qualities that make this blog great: a fascination with life, a random sense of humor, relation to the current writer by marriage and the inability to post on a regular basis.

Actually part of the idea is that if there are three (3) or four (4) of us posting here the liklihood of going long period without posting (i.e. 2007) go down at least a little. We'll see how that goes. At any rate, we welcome Sweet Talker, who just happens to my wife.

Kiwifruit

Man Vs. Balloon

Thing #113: Balloons are really wild, untamed beasts, bent on our destructions.

So, here it is, the previously foretold balloon post. About a week or two ago my wife and I were shopping for a new, used, cheap car. This, because she is looking at getting a new job that's not around the corner from the house. We had found a car she liked and thought nothing could get in our way. We were wrong.

We walked over to the car (which was on the opposite side of the lot from where the lady there sent us) and began checking it out. Of course, being a car lot it was filled with brightly colored balloons, streamers, and various other attention grabbing devices. I wondered which car was having a birthday but decided not to asked. This is when things turned nasty.

As I approached the car I noticed an innocent looking bright red balloon, which was tied to the car's antenna. I noticed it, because it was lunging straight at me. Naturally I thought this might be a good time to use my karate skills, but it's been many years since I took karate, so I just stood there dumbfounded while the balloon pummelled me several times before retreating back to its corner. I actually think I saw another balloon pouring water over its head and massaging its shoulders.

I know what you're thinking, "Man, this guys crazy. That balloon was probably just randomly blown by the wind." (If you weren't thinking this, go back and read that again while thinking it, so I can be right.) That's what I thought too, then it hit my wife. She pushed her way through and, before following her I looked the balloon squarely in the eyes, or rather where the eyes would have been, if it had had eyes and told it to back off. And then, it came at me. Wham!!! Needless to say I retreated as far away from the balloon as possible and stayed out of its range for the rest of the day. Next time, I'm carrying a safety pin with me.

Kiwifruit

One Tree at a Time . . .

Thing #112: There is more than one way to cut down on waste and save the environment.

I know this, because my mom has come up with a new way of reducing the waste we throw away each day.

You see, my family has a long history of being pack rats . . . sad but true. I myself have unfortunately fallen prey to this nasty little habit, but I am not so deeply entrenched in the need to save things as is my mother.

It all started a few days ago when I found a CD sitting on the CD rack by the computer. I pulled it out, and there, in said mother's handwriting, were the words 'Bad disc'. I had a good laugh about why it was labeled and not thrown away, showed it to the rest of the family, and then stuck it back in the CD rack . . .

But this was only the beginning! The next morning I woke up and was milling around the house. There had been a pot of oil on the stove in which my not entirely healthy husband had some oil to fry chicken, french fries, dog treats, and whatever else he could find to deep fry.

So . . I'm milling when my mom walks by and says, "Don't use the oil in the white pot, there is a fly in it!"

I am at this point thinking, "Oh, so she is warning me because it's still on the stove and she just hasn't gotten around to throwing it out yet."

I made my way to the kitchen to wrangle up some breakfast, and there on the counter I saw the pot of oil with something strange over it. I walked closer to find a piece of paper lying across the pot that said "Do not use, there is a fly in it!"





Yeah . . . what more can you say?






The moral of the story? We could all do our part to cut down on waste by keeping it in place and labeling it as trash instead of actually throwing it away.

The Chimp