Brandon, we have a problem.

The chalupa is gone from the Taco Bell menu. This is a problem. I love the chalupa. Sure, you can feel your arteries seizing up as you eat it, but its SO good. I specifically went to Taco Bell last night to get a chalupa, and it wasn't there. I tried substituting a gordita but it just wasn't the same. The Taco Bell experience was good but, I missed my chalupa.

So far my latest trip to Souris has been a disappointment. First, I get here and we're shut down on producing water for a bateriological test. Then I try for Taco Bell, with the experience I mentioned above. Now I'm trying to get an email attachment onto a piece of paper, so I can use it, and I'm stymied on that front too. This is all very disillusioning.

I hope the rest of you are well. Toodles!

So I'm going to order a pizza for supper tonight. What's the deal with these restaurants? How can you start at medium? Doesn't the very definition of medium mean, its in the middle?

From dictionary.com:

medium - Something, such as an intermediate course of action, that occupies a position or represents a condition midway between extremes.

You can't start with medium! If you start with medium, that's the small. Its small, medium and large. Not, medium, large, and extra large! Who do you think you're fooling!

AARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

We just had a staff meeting. Kind of a weird experience really. People have been very childish lately, getting their feelings hurt by small things, making unintentional slights and examples of overlooking into monstrous transgressions. I stood in the middle of this meeting and had to listen to my boss rail at this people, adults, about how they were being childish. He seemed to be on the verge of a emotional breakdown, as he passionately poured out his heart about what he was trying to accomplish.

It was a little sad to listen to. He's baring his soul for these people, and they can't get past $10, or someone forgetting to say a thank you directly to them, or someone voicing their dissenting opinion in a way that's too strident. There were individuals that actually tried to justify their own reasons for actions, in the face of this passionate appeal for reason from my boss. But their opinions were hollow. It boiled down to a us vs. them mentality and its not fair. They talked about, having votes, versus, one person administrating. Well, you did a whole bunch of stuff, and I never got a vote on any of it. Can you really play the democratic card if you aren't polling everyone?

It all just pisses me off. Why can't grown ups actually act, grown up? One of life's mysteries I suppose.

Blog Song of the Day

Dropkick Murphys - Time to Go

Blog Question of the Day

Have you ever wanted to microwave yourself, just to see what it feels like?

I didn't blog on Wednesday. Did anyone notice?

Its interesting how things make it around on the internet. A couple weeks ago I got an email from someone that had the tagline of 'Sask Home Security'. It was some polar bears lounging around in the driveway of a house. It was cute so I renamed it 'Manitoba Home Security' and sent it to a couple of friends of mine in Manitoba, as a gentle dig.

To my surprise I got an email this morning. It was the same polar bears, with the 'Manitoba Home Security' tagline that I'd appended to it. Coincidences are strange, aren't they?

Toodles!

WTF is going on!?!?!?!?!

Can someone explain this to me? Explain it to me like I'm a three year old, I don't care. Just make it make sense to me!

I'm trying to chat with my friends on MSN. The stupid chat client kicks kicking me off, and alternatively telling me that the service is either unavailable, or too busy. But, BUT, when I click help and it takes me to a web page that displays the current status of the .NET system, it says everything is stable and in service.

How can that be? How can it be stable, and in service if I'm either temporarily unavailable, or too busy? That seems like pretty damn unstable to me.

Death to Microsoft!!!!!

I am mad!

I haven't been this angry in awhile. And as usual, its humanity that has incurred my wrath. I just don't understand. People are so infuriating. I have a real, definite problem, and I can't get anyone to care or help. There is nothing more aggravating to me than when I have a problem, that could have a solution, and people get in the way.

I ripped the last contact lens I have for my right eye, on Saturday. My only other source of eyewear is a pair of glasses that I got when I was about 20 years old, so that's nearly 10 years ago. I never updated them because frankly, I never wear eyeglasses. They're on for about 10 minutes a day, between taking out my contacts and going to bed. Its several hundred dollars for new glasses, and I"m not interested in investing that kind of money for 10 minutes a day.

So I need a replacement contact lense. All I was asking for was ONE lens, to get me by until I could schedule an appointment for an exam, and a new perscription. Could anyone help me out that way? HELL NO!!! The precious rule that my perscription was 'expired' was more important than the fact that I'm blind, more or less, over here. "Oh no, we can't be helping you out and giving you one lens on an expired perscription." Oh, but feel free to drive over here, blind, for an appointment. How does that logic work!?!

I was listening to a countdown show on the radio, as I drove across the city this afternoon. I heard them mention a new song, by Michael Jackson with R. Kelly. Where did these two guys meet, group therapy!?!

I need something explained to me.

What's the deal with coffee? Why is it that you can buy a cup of it in the corner shop for 50 cents, or whatever they charge for it, and then they'll continue to refill it ad infinitum, even if you sit there for 3 hours?

This kinda pisses me off. I'm in podunk Manitoba and the only places to acquire sustenance are there small cafes/coffee shops. The coffee is all but free, and plentiful, meanwhile I'm geting absolutely bent over for a glass of soda. For cost of product, the soda versus the coffee is probably next to equal. Meanwhile they want $1.50 for a 10 oz cup of Pepsi, with no refills, but my compatriot can get three coffee refills for 50 cents.

I HATE THAT!!!

Toodles.

I am a complete bone-brain!

I've been fretting about this package (KMnO4 meter) that was being shipped from Alberta, all night. I got a tracking number for the package yesterday, and emailed it to myself at home, so I could track the package last night. The trouble was, I wrote the number down wrong, forgetting one digit . (There were two 4's side by side, and I only wrote one into the email I sent myself) Thus, I have been worried and wondering about this all night, and getting no response from the Purolator, track your package, utility on their website.

All for one number. It pays to be meticulous about these type of things and I was not. And I paid a price in lost sleep for it. On the positive side though, the package is 'Out For Delivery' so it should be in Watson by mid-morning. That makes me happy.

Have a good day people! Mine is looking better now.

Toodles!

I had an interesting dream last night. Its morning though, and much of the coherence is gone now. I'm just going to type for awhile, and see if it brings some memories to light for me.

The main thrust of the dream was centered around this softball game. I wasn't in this dream. It was more like a movie, or a TV show. Maybe it was a softball tournament, because the action kept going back to the field, but shifted away from it on several occasions.

As for characters, I can only remember two people from it with any clarity. One was Zack, from Saved By The Bell fame. Another was an exotic, latin beauty. She looked familiar to me but I don't have a name. There were other, assorted young people in the late teens, early 20's age range, but no one stands out with any definition.

The field where the softball was played was, next to Griffiths Stadium, on the U of S campus. But the football stadium wasn't there. It was just wooded meadows, and grassy fields. The university factored into the dream, which is how I can place the field. And the overhead pedestrian walkway.

To the actual dream now. It started with all the players on the team I was following, scrambling from different places to make it to the game. There was some nebulous, poorly defined sense of doom surrounding the game. The team HAD to win, or something bad would happen. I think they would all die, but I don't know why.

They played the first game. I won't bore you with any details because a) you know what softball is like, and b) I don't remember them with any definition. There were lots of home runs, obviously, and the team won. The field looked really nice, with lush green grass, and vibrant, clay on the basepaths. It was quite colorful.

It was after the first game that things got a a little wierd. Zack took off somewhere and we didn't see much of him anymore. Things centered on the Latin girl. She ended up in this house with some other Latin-looking people, who I presume to be her family. This is the part that was strange. A bunch of masked guys showed up and the house erupted in a massive gunfight. The masked guys took over, and were executing the prisoners, shooting them each in the head. The heroine of the dream escaped the house, but she took a gunshot to the stomach and was bleeding badly. Also escaping was a young boy, who darted around a corner when they shot his father in the head.

There was a chase sequence after that, as the masked guys tried to capture the heroine, and the young boy. Mostly they wanted the boy because it became a royalty type of thing, since as the last surviving son, he would be king. The girl was bleeding badly, and sought refuge with some of the team members that tried to patch her up the best they could. She was going to be needed for the next game. The young boy was chased through the university, staying mostly in buildings, and having shoot ups in large theatres and sumptious looking rooms.

Both of our characters, the would be king and the wounded girl, made it to the final game. This was the ultimate event of the dream. If the team won this game, the girl would survive, and the boy would become king. It was a low scoring game. Lots of defense. Diving catches in the outfield, body sacrificing plays in the infield. Lots of collisions on the basepaths and ferocious play all around. It came down to the last out, and the girl was at bat. Her shirt was stayed deeply with blood, and her eyes were filled with pain. She got a hit, and someone scored from third. They won and the dream ended.

I've missed a LOT of details along the way but this is as much as I can recall. I sure have some detailed dreams!

Toodles.

I'm struggling with a question. Its one that I've puzzled over before, but not come to a satisfactory answer.

Why are the movies I'd want to watch, on at lunch time? I don't understand this at all. At lunch time, the programmers can't be expecting their highest audience numbers. They have to expect that most people are going to watch movies in the evening. So why are all the crappy shows being played in primetime? I turn on the TV and there's some obscure piece of crap Canadian show, or god forbid, what is obviously a 'made for TV' movie from one of the network channels. Why can't they play The Bourne Identity at 7:00 so I can spend half my evening on that, instead of randomly channel surfing, picking up interesting half hour shows along the way?

I really need to get into the entertainment industry and fix all these problems I see. I don't like complaining, I prefer fixing problems, but I don't think I command enough authority with this one. I need to move on this.

Toodles!

Well, I won't be getting any hand modelling jobs in the next little while.

It was a rough day for my hands today. First I'm opening boxes of membranes and I impale the middle finger of my right hand on a packing staple. That was both ugly, and painful. I bled profusely. It required a bandage as I was leaving red mess everywhere.

After that it was all fingernails. I ripped three of them over the rest of the day. None of those injuries were excruciatingly painful but, it netted me some ugly looking hands. On the upside though, its all evidence of having done something today, so I take pride in that.

Its snowing here in Brandon. I hope the rest of you have better weather.

Toodles!

I have a question.

Why is it that all the classes I hated from college, are all turning out to be the ones that I have need for during my career?

First it was surveying. I hated the class, and the camp we had to do on using the equipment. What's the first job I get? Surveying. Then there was the absolute worst class I had to take, project management, and then than one jumps up to be important too. I hated that project management class so much, I haded in a short story as my submission for the one assignment. I got an 80% on it, as I recall. That's kind of hilarious. Now its electrical that is biting me in the ass. I'm on site here, trying to get this project finished and what's the discipline hounding my every move? Electrical. How do I wire this? What's the signal cable for this. Is this relay open or closed? I can't get away from this.

I wanted to be a structural engineer, and ended up anything but. Such is life I guess.

Toodles!

The provincial election came to Watson this afternoon. My boss was pretty excited, because the party that came to visit our company is the one he's really in favor of. I, on the hand, don't really have much use for their policies. I see a string of bad ideas taking over if they get elected. They won't all be bad, but the general slant I'm seeing from them does not really impress me.

So we all rally at the production shop to show off what we do. It was kind of anti-climactic, to be perfectly honest. The politicians and the media came in, my boss said a few words, and they had some water. I won't say it was a waste, but I really didn't think it was really worth the effort that was expended on it. If I knew that my bosses issues were the issues of this party, I might have cared a little more. The whole thing seemed high on appearance, and low on merit.

So my afternoon was interrupted and I'll probably not get done. I hate that.

Welcome to the weekly report on Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica!

Good episode this week. The highlight? The absolute highlight? That is, without question, Nick and Drew moving furniture. When they set up that aluminum ladder, across from the retaining wall to the second storey balcony? I was just howling! These two idiots used an aluminum ladder to bridge a space between a retaining wall and the side of Nick and Jessica's house, so they could slide what looked like a very heavy cupboard across and into the upstairs bedroom. Oh god that was funny! Unfortunately for my sense of hilarity, the project worked for them and the cupboard survived. But it seemed so precarious while they were moving it.

Nick was decorating the house, while Jessica was in New York doing promotional work for her book. Jessica wrote a book!?! Jessica can write? She actually used the phrase 'clothes trier oner' when she was going through wardrobe for her appearance on TV. You have to wonder about that girl. Also amusing from the wardrobe scene was the editing that ran about 96 comments of 'cute' made my Jessica, and who I believe was her mom. The whole Jessica trip, and the highlights from it, were kind of secondary to the episode. Nick's decorating was the focus of this episode. We saw a few shots from Jessica's trip to New York. There was the wardrobe segment, the booksigning, where she was worried about there being a measly 15 people lined up to get her autograph, the trip to the Today show, and some fluff. For example, Jessica stopped in at a firehall to meet some fireman. Pure cheese. She does look good in T-shirts though. Jessica has some disturbingly appealing breasts. They could do a whole episode on just that. But, showing that the blonde in her hair goes straight to the roots, she actually lost her hotel room, when the number was on the paper in her hand.

Upon returning from the trip, we get to see Nick and Jessica go at it in the most hostile moment we've witnessed so far. Nick seemed pretty hot about Jessica's dislike for his decorating. In truth, she didn't care so much about the actual design choices. The thrust of her argument seemed to be that it wasn't done by a designer. Jessica didn't want to do it herself, but wanted to hire someone to do it. Someone did do it for you! Nick did! I thought her point was infantile and I totally stand on Nick's side on this one. An amusing comment from this interlude was Nick's assertion that Jessica could pay him for his decorating services, if payment for it was the sticking point. Of course his allusion was to some sexual favors, and not monetary recompense.

Again, another enjoyable half with the most amusing newlyweds on TV.

Now playing . . . Johnny Rivers - Secret Agent Man

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