Tired of cleaning up

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Frog

You should know cleaning out the litter box is the 3rd thing I do every weekday morning. This step in my morning process comes shortly after 6am. It’s good to start off everyday with something gross, don’t you think?

This week I had to pick a turd off the floor more than once. Simon needs to quit kicking it out of the box as he manically tries to cover. There was a huge hairball on Tuesday. The better-half rushed out on the porch to chase a not ours feral off the porch which caused an our feral to squirt out diarrhea all over one of the screen panels. Guess who cleaned it up? Guess. You have one choice.

Then there was the vomit on the porch floor another day. And, as I was vacuuming this evening, I came across a huge puddle of dried vomit on the dining room rug.

Whatever hits the floor this weekend is NOT my responsibility.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | 3 Comments

Too polite?

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Frog

As you know, I can be a smart-mouthed jerk. Usually I keep my manners in mind and I really try hard to be as pleasant as possible when I’m at work or in public. Really. Sometimes I’m not successful and people close to me have often said, “thanks for saying what I was thinking”.

With that said, today was my first day at work as an employee and not as a consultant/contractor. Folks were nice about it, although, they’ve worked with me for three months so there wasn’t much fanfare. I have a ton of paperwork to go through tonight so our benefits can kick in ASAP. The thing that has stuck in my craw today is the contracting company.

I know we were never friends and the whole point was for me to get a job and for them to get paid. But, when I emailed the three people I’ve dealt with on this contract my final time sheet and a quick thank you, the response was completely underwhelming. I maintained my professionalism, but screw them.

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Coming Soon

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Frog

We are going to brew our first beer tomorrow. Shooting for a summer ale. Details to follow.

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Posted in brewing | 1 Comment

On The Way Home

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Frog

Here’s a diagram so you know what I’m talking about. It’s not drawn to scale, but it does look a lot like a wine bottle, don’t you think?

There’s a stretch of road that sort of guides you into one lane and if you don’t stop at the gas station just down from the spot pictured above, then I consider you local. Because there is NO reason to go this way unless you are someone coming off the highway to buy gas or you are someone who lives out here in BFE. Being local means you know the frigging deal with this stretch of road.

I’m tooling along and realize the dump truck is Mr. Lee. I don’t actually know Mr. Lee but he lives not too far from our house and I’m frequently behind him as we both head home. He drives the dump truck like a race car driver. He doesn’t screw around. And, he keeps a very clean truck so there’s never, in the 10+ years I’ve been behind him, any thought of something flying up or out and cracking you in the windshield. He’s cool.

Now, you’ll notice in the above diagram there’s a Camry marked as Cow. This is because she started speeding up to crowd me out of being able to merge over into the lane. I DO NOT care about being behind Mr. Lee as I’ve said. But, apparently, Cow is a cow because she was busy speeding up to cut me off and FAILED to notice that she’d be behind a dump truck. At the last possible minute, she starts that “oh I didn’t mean to speed up, you go ahead and get in between me and that dump truck” crap. FUG no, Cow. You wanted to be ahead of me. Go right ahead. So I slowed way down and let Cow go ahead, pretty as you please.

Heh, heh, heh. That poor woman had no idea what hit her. A dump truck that flies around corners and a passive-aggressive maniac behind her making sure she keeps pace with the NASCAR dump truck. Because, if you are too damn dumb to see a red dump truck in front of you, then you get sandwiched between fast drivers and you SUCK it.

Posted in General Spleen Venting, Thinking | 1 Comment

Who is in there?

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Frog

We saw the first swallowtail of the season (Virginia’s state bug) and went out to investigate.

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Specifically, we wanted to know if it came out of the above. Nope, that little package is still wrapped up. And, the swallowtail evaded the camera.

Posted in Gardening | 3 Comments

Don’t Want To Know

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Frog

I have two big training sessions that I’m leading coming up in the next few weeks. And, by that, I mean my rooms are capped at 100 people and the registration is still open because we’re only like 60-70% full at this point (I stopped looking at the number earlier today). Sweet Jesus. I’ve never trained that many people all at once. In one week, I’ll talk to 200 or more people. I can go a month or more and not do that, easily.

One day I’m leading the training for an hour and then immediately (like in minutes) turning around to be the wing-(wo)man for my co-worker. He has a training of about 10-20 in the room right after mine. He’ll be my wing-man so both of us are holy-cowing it right now. The bummer is that we finish mine, start his and at some point say around 2 or 3 we can eat lunch/take a bathroom break.

I’m sure it will be fine. And, it is one way to welcome in my first week as a real employee. Yep, that’s right. I’ll be converting over on May 1st instead of June 1st. Additional background checks are going on now. Wheeeeee!

Posted in Generic Thoughts, Watching | 3 Comments

It’s OK

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Frog

Last night we walked around the yard and let ourselves into the garden to check the progress of the asparagus. Nothing yet, but I bet there will be by next weekend. We’re finally going to have spring temperatures here. I’m thrilled. Tomorrow I have plans to work on weeding flower beds and doing other outside stuff.

As we were walking around we checked on the aeration and seeding a service did for us earlier in the week. I told the better-half this morning that I was so glad someone else did it. I’m finally letting myself be OK with someone else doing the work. It’s not that I can’t, but it’s just not something that I like doing and the last time I was in charge of doing it the stupid lawn mower and I got jacked up. So, paying for the service is alright with me.

Today we took the chain saw and the weed eater to be serviced. The guys at the counter were happy to write up the chain saw for tuning and sharpening, but they were all “seriously, don’t spend money on that hunk of sh*t” when they looked at the weed eater. We walked out of the store with a brand-new weed eater and I’m thrilled. The battery packs are charging now and I can’t wait to buzz the crap out of stuff tomorrow. A girl and her weed eater is a happy thing.

Updated 4/7/13: The new weed eater is awesome. It’s a Black and Decker with a lithium battery pack. It’s light and I did not run out of juice halfway through the task. I’m looking at you, old weed eater.

Posted in House Proud | 2 Comments

Makes me wish I had an avocado

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Frog

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The Garden

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Frog

We went out to the garden today to mow down the weeds in the asparagus patch. The better-half hit the fruit vines too.

I’m happy to say the chives survived their wintering in the garage and I dug up either early garlic or onions that volunteered in the garden. I’m ashamed to say I’m not sure exactly what they are. At some point both onions and garlic were planted in the general area.
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Updated at dinner:
It’s garlic and is now tied up and hanging in the garage.

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Simon and Lucy are Friends

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Frog

I haven’t mentioned it before, but it seems Simon and Lucy are actually friends. I don’t know that they curl up together, but they spend quite a bit of time playing. Their favorite spot is the foyer rug where they get a long, slow patty-cake game going. Sometimes we see this odd game going on and we turn around and go the other way so we don’t disturb them.

Here they are this morning supervising my computer usage:

Speaking of cats, I’ve taken Jim off the About page. He doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t know where he lives but he’s always hale and hearty when he cruises past us. The last time we saw him he sat in the woods by the driveway and refused to pay any attention to either of us. So it goes.

Posted in Watching | 1 Comment