Weirdness

Sundays are usually a pretty busy day at work. Not that the rest of the weekend isn’t but on Sunday everyone waits until after church and we do the same amount of business in about three hours that we do in seven on Saturdays. Needless to say I am usually pretty busy and don’t have time for foolishness or small talk.

So I am right in the middle of cooking the fairly heavy lunch today, just humming right along and one of the waitresses comes up and stands between me and the other cook and starts talking about Electrolux vacuums. What?

Both of us just looked at her like she had lost her mind and kept on cooking. I suppose it could be worse. I’ve had to stop what I was doing to break up fights, put out fires, call the law and all other sorts of weirdness before. While strange it was certainly not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened at work.

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Bombs Blast Istanbul…

Updated Monday July 28th 2008 – They are now saying that at least 17 people have died and at least 154 others injured in the bombs which went off this weekend in Istanbul.

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At least two bombs have gone off in Istanbul killing at a minimum 13 people and injuring 70 others according to the government of Turkey.
CNN has the story up:

Two deadly explosions rocked suburban Istanbul Sunday night, killing at least 13 people and injuring 70 others, a government official told CNN Turk.
Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler called the blasts “an act of terror.”
The back-to-back blasts happened in Istanbul’s Gungoren community at about 10 p.m., a journalist with Turkish news agency DHA told CNN Turk.
The journalist, Zafer Karakoc, said he witnessed the explosions.
Video footage from the scene shows several bloodied people being transported into ambulances.
Dozens of firefighters and paramedics were on the scene.
Glass and debris were strewn all over the brick sidewalks.
Authorities asked residents to evacuate the heavily pedestrian, working-class Gungoren neighborhood within an hour of the blast, reporters told CNN.
“This is just the type of neighborhood that ordinary people live in,” journalist Andrew Finkel told CNN.

When you put up with terrorists in your neighborhood pretty soon they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
According to CNN the governor of Istanbul Muammer Guler reported that the explosive devices were placed just under 50 feet from each other. The first one was a stun grenade that was detonated first in order to get attention and draw people toward it. The second bomb went off within ten minutes of the first.
As of right now nobody has claimed responsibility for the bombs.

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Just Another Day in Paradise…

I had every intention og going to work out this afternoon before I came home. I even packed a bag so I could just change at the gym. Instead, I ended up working a bit later than I had planned and I just came on home. I feel like shit today. My throat is swollen, it hurts and I am tired as hell. I even took a nap yesterday afternoon so I know I got at least six hours of sleep between napping and last night. Part of it is the heat but I don’t know about the rest. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to go work out, because I always feel better afterward.

Today is my ninth day straight at work. I will damn sure be glad when this coming weekend rolls around. I’m off and it will be awhile before I have any of my managers on vacation. As a matter of fact I think the next one is mine which is in October. I have at least two more to cover before the year is out but the long ones are done with.

I have some more stuff to post but I think I will surf the Internet and drink coffee. Perhaps I can wake myself up enough to be motivated…

Birds…

I love the early morning. It’s a shame that I can’t do this more often. I went outside for a smoke just a little while ago and just sat listening to the birds. Near and far they were all chatting with each other. In the pre-dawn hour it was almost overbearing there were so many birds chatting with each other, but pleasant at the same time. As a matter of fact I think before I get ready for work I am going to sit back outside again for a few…

Speaking of birds, we have a Hummingbird Feeder mounted on our kitchen window just off the deck. As I sat there yesterday afternoon a little hummingbird flew up to feed. It only stayed a few seconds as I moved a bit trying to see if I had my camera with me. Of course not.

The Hummingbird returned a few times yesterday evening. By the time I located my tripod so I could go ahead and focus the camera and sit still it was too late and didn’t come back. I think I will save it for today or tomorrow afternoon and get an earlier shot. Part of the fact that it didn’t come back was the fact that the girls kept running out on the back porch like a pack of wild dogs every few minutes.

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Even after having to get up so early yesterday I stayed up pretty late. Of course I should have been to bed early but we decided to sit down and watch National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. It was pretty decent actually. The wife turned off disbelief mode for a couple of hours and got to enjoy it with me. The thing about being married to a science teacher is that it makes it difficult to use your imagination and just enjoy shit that you know CAN’T possibly be true or couldn’t happen. Hell, who gives a shit. It’s a movie…

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I probably should have already gone to work but I am going in a few minutes late today. Actually more like an hour and a half. The two manager trainees are just going to have to deal with it for a while. One of them was at my Tallapoosa store yesterday, which is about seventeen miles from my house. She didn’t pull them enough food so the store was calling me at 11PM last night out of stuff. I ended up getting it to them but was not particularly happy about it…

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Linkfest Haven, the Blogger's Oasis

This post is going to serve as my weekend open trackback post for July 25-27th. What’s Open Trackback? Well, that’s where you share your link to other people that might not have been to your site before. Share something witty, your best work, your wost work, or just slutty pictures of actresses. I don’t care (up to a point). Ping or trackback this post and your link will show up here in the body of the post as well as on my main page for everyone to see. If you want to do something like that regularly then check out one of the trackback blogrolls from my blogrolls page or click the link on the graphic above for more information.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, , Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Nuke’s, third world county, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Walls of the City, , The Pink Flamingo, , Dumb Ox Daily News, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Wordless Wednesday – Star Wars Potato Heads

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Disney World - Richie's Pictures 445.JPG


…and now for something REALLY nasty

Dude.

Dude!

Check out this video…

Hope you haven’t eaten yet.

Think that was bad? How about this exercise routine…

Damn!

I hope you haven’t eaten lately.

Apparently I had just enough Absinthe to leave a slight buzzing in my head. I am also not the only sick fucker around either. I found both of these videos over at My Blog Rules Your Ass! I think I’m gonna have to add this one to the blogroll. This guy’s gotta come to a blogmeet and have a few….

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Finally Tried the Absinthe…

A reservoir glass filled with a naturally colo...

Image via Wikipedia

When I went beer shopping for the cookout last week my eyes happened to fall on one of those little bottles that sit upon the counter at checkout. Absinthe. or Abseenthe I think is the brand name.

I had to work second shift today in order to cut out some payroll and as I am sitting here wide awake but need to be up at four AM I decided I would medicate myself and try the absinthe. I am here to tell you that it is some evil nasty foul shit that smells as if it leaked from my bunghole after a week of binge drinking. Damn!

Licorice. I hate fucking licorice. It tasted just as bad as it smells, even after following directions and dissolving cold water over a sugar cube. Of course I had to substitute a spoonful of sugar for the cube and absinthe spoon but I don’t think that having the right accoutrements would have helped much. I did manage to sip a bit but then poured the rest into my lawn when I went out for a smoke. 110 proof. not quite rubbing alcohol but it certainly tasted like it.

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Tactical Gear

I’ve got a case of knife envy now… 🙂

AG_GER15_L_1.jpgI was over at Brigade QM and came across this Gerber Automatic knife. It runs about $150 or so and is pretty sweet. I used to collect weapons when I was younger. Nothing serious mind you, I just enjoy them. Knives, swords, guns, whatever. When my son turned about a year old and was starting to get into things I packed away all of my small knives and sold my guns. I just really didn’t want to arrive home one day and walk into an accident. Boys will be boys and you can train them once they are older but as toddlers they tend to get into stuff.

Anyhow, Brigade QM has some pretty cool gear. Besides knives they also carry all sorts of tactical gear and outdoors supplies. They used to be Actiongear.Com but have recently changed to the new domain but it’s the same cool stuff.

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…and so it begins

Pete was on the cell phone a couple of days ago chatting with one of her friends as girls do when she dropped it in a bucket of water.

She was watering the plants out front.

And talking on the phone at the same time.

It was the wife’s phone since neither of us believe that the kids should have a cell phone.

oops.

Needless to say the wife was not terribly impressed by this. We set it up with the blow dryer on it for 40 minutes or so but no go. It was on when it got dropped and it didn’t have the chance to dry out properly before it got turned on again so the circuit board is fried. A couple of the keys work but you can’t dial out, answer or make calls or do anything else useful.

Luckily I took insurance on her phone when I got it, and the same on mine. In general I believe that you shouldn’t take any type of extended warranty on any kind of electronics as it’s not worth it but with each phone upgrade we get the phones are more expensive and if you are in the middle of your contract and the phone dies you get to pay full retail rather than getting the deal that new folks do.

Luckily for us I took the insurance. It’s a $50 deductible and they have already shipped her new phone out. I did manage to back up her pictures and contacts using Bitpim rather than pay the extra $10 that Verizon rips you off with charges you for transferring the stuff to a new phone, so she won’t have to pay for it.

I still have a bit of phone envy for the new iPhone 3G but I am pretty sure that I won’t get one. AT&T doesn’t offer 3G where I live or work, the iPhone has useless GPS and no Bluetooth so it would just be an expensive MP3 player. What a waste. Maybe I’ll get an iPod Touch instead for Christmas or something. I’m leaning toward one of the touchscreen Blackberrys that’s supposed to be out before the end of the year though. I’ve really grown to like my Blackberry and while the HTML browser leaves a lot to be desired it’s still the best game in town. The only problem with upgrading is that I’ll have to upgrade my accessories as well. Cell phone holsters, extra battery, memory card, USB cable if it doesn’t come with it, the list goes on. The case or holster is particularly important for me. I would prefer to just keep the phone in my pocket but it gets such heavy usage at work that I have to wear it on my belt or hanging out of my pocket. The only issue with that is that I beat the crud out of my phones. My current case has paint all over it, scratches, grease and all sorts of other nasties.

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A Macabre Weekend…

I’m running short on time this morning but wanted to get a post up prior to going to work. I mentioned a little while earlier that I had a pretty busy weekend. It wasn’t so much busy as it was just staying away from the computer and doing other stuff.

I posted a bit about the barbecue Thursday night. We actually got to bed at a decent time, prior to midnight, so I didn’t sleep to terribly late on Friday. Originally I was going to take Pete to Six Flags but decided to save that trip for another day since the wife had to leave somewhat early to go see the Braves play. The girls made sure to watch and look for her on TV 🙂 There was actually a reasonable chance since they were sitting behind home plate. On at least two occasions they would run in and tell me they saw their mom. Who knows, maybe they did…

Prior to the evening though we took the girls to the movies. Going to the movie theater just isn’t something that’s a high priority on my list. It is prohibitively expensive and between tickets, drinks and snacks you can just about go to the fucking amusement park. There are maybe one or two movies a year that I am willing to spend money on. The rest of the time there’s Netflix. I would rather wait for the DVD release than waste money at the theater. That having been said, Pete and I went to see the Dark Knight and the wife took RePete to see Space Chimps. I think that I most likely got the better end of the deal on that one…

Saturday I worked briefly in the yard and then just hung with the wife. We sat down and watched Sweeney Todd on DVD and then the Sixth Sense on cable. Talk about creepy movie weekend…I was pleasantly surprised at Sweeney Todd. Not that I would like a musical, I knew that. It was more the fact that Johnny Depp and musical just don’t go together. Pretty good movie though…

Yesterday I spend planting some more trees and stuff and then basically did nothing. I intended to at least write a bit but don’t think I managed to accomplish a damn thing. Should have gone to the gym after work. I do plan on going today though. My store manager in Temple is on vacation for the next ten days and that’s pretty much where I’ll be living for the next week and a half. Another week with one day off. What a pisser. It will give me the chance to go work out in the afternoons though since the gym is right behind my restaurant.

Hopefully I will have something interesting to post for Odd Shots Monday before the day is out. I always carry my camera so there is no telling what will come up…

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