I had an interesting time at a Halloween party with Kim and Don at their friends house. Here are a couple of pictures of us:
Category: Zany (WTF?)
Trapped In a Tree
I had a dream last night that I was trapped in a tree by a beaver. Do I need to say more? Damn! Fucking beaver had some serious claws. Is that normal?
Another Weird Dream…
I dreamt that my family was moving my Dad’s parents, who passed away years ago, to a new place. I can’t say where this place might have been but in the dream I thought it was some place like Dagestan or Chechnya. It was very third world and rundown but mountainous, and beautiful. The backyard had a fence running from one side of it diagonally across the yard. At the break in the fence near the back, you could see far off into the distance over a complex of lakes but there was a drop off of hundreds of feet right on the other side of the fence. Also, the fence was falling down near where it connected to the house and I was afraid that my grandfather would wander back there and fall through the fence off the cliff. I can see this all so clearly in my mind it is bizarre. Later as we were trying to settle in my grandparents, a group of military policemen pulled up in personnel carriers and started approaching the house. The last thing I remember was winding down a slope through a maze of houses and vegetable gardens trying to get away.
Mt. Vernon Pictures Posted
These pictures are from last year but I never posted them. My brother-in-law’s friend came down for the weekend from Vermont and somehow he and Ed and I wound up at Mt. Vernon…George Washington’s residence in Alexandria, VA, on the Potomac river, in case you wanted to know. George’s dead so we didn’t see him.
Somehow, someone decided that the way to get to Mt. Vernon was down Rt. 95 south from Washington, DC. After a wonderful tour of 95 and Rt. 1, which we eventually ended up on, someone, I won’t say who, figured we probably were not going to get to Mt. Vernon the way we were headed. So we turned around and revisited the beauty of Rt. 1 with all it’s car dealerships and sundry, sordid businesses out to take a serviceperson’s money. With Fort Belvoir and the Marine base, Quantico, in the area there was plenty of money to be made from the naive and unsuspecting serviceperson.
Anyhow, the whole reason for this post was to note that I had posted pictures from Mt. Vernon taken nearly a year ago. Follow this link or the links under my Photography section on the right side menu bar.
Drive Me Snow Blind Crazy
Pulling in to my apartment complex tonight I got blocked by a van in front of me. The driver got the front wheels over the first speed bump but seemed to have a problem getting the back wheels over it. Now take into consideration that we had a wintery mix going for about 30 minutes w/ an accumulation of perhaps 0.2 inches. It was a moderately sized speed bump so of course I wasn’t surprised that the dumb ass had to stop before he tried to take his rear wheels over that Mont Blanc of an obstacle.
I figured he was going to get out and put on the snow chains but he was wise to that realizing that putting them on the rear tires of a front wheel drive van would have been pointless. Accordingly, he put his vehicle in reverse probably figuring to return back over the speed bump, put the chains on his front tires, and then motor his way over the speed bump using his chained front tires to pull both front and rear wheels over it like Hannibal crossing the Alps.
Dumb ass…I passed on the left and pulled into my parking spot. I was a bit breathless from the high altitude when I got out of my car and had to wade soul deep through the “wintery mix” to get to my lofty, snow graced apartment but after a strenuous 30 seconds was able to successfully make my way to warmth and safety. Thankfully, I did not get stranded in a “wintery mix” drift and have to chew my arm off and drink my urine to survive.
Wasn’t there a movie?
The Transition Is Complete
It is done. I have officially, according to my body, moved over to the dark side. Nearly seven months of working midwatches 1800 – 0600 have taken the toll. I now officially sleep during the day, even on my days off, and have to wear suntan lotion when I go out into the light so I don’t waste away like an errant Dracudude.
Ironically, today my promotion takes affect. The position is a day job M-F if you ignore the on call duty required occasionally. Sadly, I am still on the schedule for midwatches until we get some new bodies trained to flesh out the watch schedule. If all goes well, I will be off the watch and into my new position just in time to have to retrain my body to get used to working days instead of nights.
Stay Creepy My Friends
I love this spoof on who I assume is the Dos Equis guy in the commercial.
Life Is a Fist Up the Ass
My new apartment management company (at least the 3d since I have been here for six years) decided they needed to issue new parking passes. This was because, in this advanced computerized day and age, the new company couldn’t import the previous company’s records into their database. And in this advanced age they only issue the permits that you have to hang from your mirror. This is an impediment to my site picture as far as I am concerned. It is even worse on my motorcycle because I really have no secure place to hang it and riding with it hanging from my rear view mirror is just not an option.
Anyhow, to get the permit, I had to provide a copy of my vehicle registration. Well I re-register as required every two years but I don’t know what the hell I do with the registration cards. Oddly, I found the one for my car in my glove compartment but the one for my motorcycle was nowhere to be found. So I thought, “Cool, I have one of the registration cards.”
Well, I left that one in my car and down the line cleaned out my car and added whatever paper products to my recycling and took that to the recycling center. Next thing you know I couldn’t find my car registration. Crunch time…I had to get the stickers by 9/1. So, on the last day of the month, bad time to be at the DMV, I drop in at 1400 or so. Thankfully the line was moving well. I got a bit freaked out when the woman who was setting us up w/ paperwork and such gave me some forms that asked for information I did not have with me. All I wanted to get was reprints of my vehicle registration cards…. So I filled out as much of the paperwork as I could and waited for my number.
When my number came up, I went up to the counter and was pleasantly surprised to find that my request, after I explained what it was, was easily and quickly fulfilled. I paid 2$ each for the reprints and marched right out of that place.
It was not much later that afternoon when I got myself ensconced in a chair in the rental office to get my vehicle parking permits. I handed my paperwork over to the clerk who was inputting my vehicle information when she stopped to ask me if I could have the same license plate for both my car and motorcycle. I said, “No, of course not” and looked at the printouts of the registration only to find that the DMV clerk printed out two copies of my car registration and none of my motorcycle registration. The rental management company, thankfully, and aware of the folly of trying to hang vehicle parking permits from motorcycles, has said that they will not be towing motorcycles.
So where is the fist up the ass? I don’t know but I hope it isn’t near me. I just want to say that the whole process felt like getting one. And then this evening when emptying my grocery bag, the environmentally considerate one, I found my car registration car. Fistulator, eh?
Coolest Rainbow I Ever Saw
The pictures of this rainbow action are terrible which speaks for carrying a camera with me other that the POS on my cell phone. I was driving home from work the other morning at 0610 and was able to view this double rainbow for almost the whole drive. The brightest of the two arcs was so clear I could clearly see at six different colors of the spectrum.
Water Ya Thinking?
To say that we have had plenty of rain this spring in Northern Virginia would be an understatement. It is green, green here. We are eco-green and green friendly. Those of you in the desert Southwest are green with envy, eh. But I digress…
Driving through the neighborhood this evening en route the grocery store, I noticed that someone had a rotary sprinkler out watering their lawn. WTF you say? Moi aussi! To make matters worse, the sprinkler was placed right next to the driveway so half the water was landing on that and draining right into the sewer system. Really, what are people thinking?