An Abomination in Progress

Motor Boating!

2009-04-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to report that the M's bought their first boat last week! It's a 13 foot Boston Whaler.

While I've always wanted to own a boat, this is definitely something that has caught me out of my element. We never owned a boat growing up so I have zero experience with these suckers. We're kind of in a period where we're finding our comfort zone.

Today was the first day out on the water. I took the boat out this morning from the local boat launch.

I backed the boat down the ramp all-the-while fearing that my car would slide under murkey water. I unhitched the boat, got on board and pushed away from the trailer, floating freely. I turned the key to start the motor. No start. I played with the fuel line for a second and tried again a few more times. Nothing. I'm starting to sweat as I float down the river with no motor and no paddle. I tried a few more times with no luck and finally the panic set in - I hand paddled it over to the floating dock nearby. Luckily no one was there to witness my motoring failure. It would have been a bad blow to my ego.

After pulling the car and trailer up the ramp, I fiddled with the motor for a while and finally figured out what the trouble was. The engine purred to life. Hooray!

I took the boat out on it's sea trials with only one notable occurance. I was cruising along pretty fast and all of a sudden the boat lost power and a big murky cloud of water came up behind the boat. I thought " Oh no! The drive system blew up!!! How could this happen on the first trip out!?! I'll bet the guy who sold it to me knew it was dying and screwed me over! What am I going to tell my wife!? She never even rode on it! How am I going to get a ride back!?! I'm miles from anywhere without a paddle! "

It turned out that the motor hit a submerged sandbar and didn't damage it. I was able to raise the motor up and slipped right out. I learned that lesson- luckily without breaking anything. We need to get a depth finder to avoid 'sanding out' in the future.

I got the boat back to our dock and declared the maiden voyage a success.

After lunch I took Stephanie and Katie out starting from our dock - This time we took a kayak paddle! Katie was scared when the boat went fast. Both of the girls were scared when we hit some choppy areas. The bow hatch was a little loose so it thumped when we hit the big bumps adding to the drama. I'm hoping they will get a little more comfortable with the boat and bumps as time goes one.

Stephanie did not get sea sick which is one thing I was pretty happy about. It doesn't take much to make her green. Luckily no pukie.

Overall it was a good day out on the water - we saw a local marina and also some residential areas we hadn't visited before.

Most importantly everyone got home safe and sound!

In this part of coastal georgia it is customary for boats to have names. Now that we've had our maiden voyage, I've been contemplating what name fits this boat.

Should we call her the BOBO? Maybe the SandWitch after today's hicup. The jury is still out on the name. We'll think of something before we take her out again.

Ice Cream Roobery

2009-03-31T17:27:00.001-07:00

Gotta Love Sea Gulls:

http://jet-point.com/2009/02/24/birds-stealing-ice-cream/

Behold the Power

2008-12-30T16:52:00.001-08:00

Most people know this about me but In case you stumble upon this blog let me inform you about one of my greatest qualities: EPIC FARTING.

Over this holiday break I've taken the sport of farting to new levels, which is saying a lot considering my farting track record.

After getting out of work on the 19th I started the season off right by eating a king size can of bush's best beans in a little over 4 hours. I'm not kidding. I ate the big one from the bottom shelf at the grocery store. Just to see what happens. Believe it or not, the beans were actually a Christmas gift from my brother in law.

For the next day and a half my farting was incessant and voluminous.

Part of this time period was spent while traveling to Buffalo. A guy heard me rip one in the Atlanta airport, while I was standing next to Katie and her stroller. His eyes got wide with amazement as he couldn't believe such a guttural sound could emanate from a toddler.

I must send Kudos to Stephanie and Katie for putting up with me over these past couple of days. We've been in close quarters while staying in Buffalo and they've felt the full brunt of my fury.

Stephanie got the worst of it. I had a slew of beans and eggnog on Christmas and a wave of fury was coming on just as we were about to go to bed. While in bed, I ripped something nasty and Stephanie and ran to the toilet to throw her guts up! She actually vomited until her stomach was empty!!

I must be a really good guy. Any other shmuck would be divorced and homeless after what I pulled.

Darth Santa

2008-12-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

Santa is one scary dude.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-scared-santa-sm-081202-pg,0,52957.photogallery

Dillo from HELL!!

2008-10-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Our yard has been plauged by an evil armadillo since the day we bought this house. Never once has our yard been free from armadillo damage....this sucker digs mini burrows as he forages for nasty grubs an it really makes the yard look like a construction zone.

Over the years I've tried several measures to rid us of this sucker.

First I tried salting my yard with mothballs to get this sucker to just go away. That was a joke. No effect on armadillo damage.

Next I bought a large raccoon trap to capture the evil sucker. He got caught in the trap but then subsequently broke out.....he's a powerful little beast.

After that, I decided to get medieval on the sucker and I set a conibear trap right in the entrance of his dillo hole. This is a snap trap that will suffocate him by pinching his body. A few days went by and I found the trap sprung and tossed out of the way of his hole. Clearly not even a deterrent to this bastard.

After all this valiant effort I finally came face to face with the SOB yesterday morning as i was leaving the house. I had just pulled into the street when i noticed him zig zagging in the street in front of my house. My pulse quickened as my foot hit the gas. I accellerated, I swerved violently and was treated to a pleasing THUMP-THUMP as I ran that bastard over!!

It was dark outside so it's not easy to tell what happened in the aftermath of this showdown. I circled back around and expected to see a mound of dillo meat in the road, but instead the scene was completely clean!! That SOB had survived a high speed runover by a SUV!!

I'm coming to think that I'm dealing with somewhat extraordinary situation here. This creature has thwarted multiple attempt that leave most ordinary critters either captured or dead as a door nail. What the hell does this sucker run on? Is he powered by SATAN?? maybe he's already dead and lurks in the night to haunt me and my lawn. Zombie Dillo!!!

Grit Face

2008-09-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

Katie is awesome. She's a true Malluck.

Pictures

2008-08-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

Well here's a pictorial post to share what the Malluck's have been up to for the past couple of months.

Steph Katie and Me went to Buffalo at the end of June for Steph to attend her friend's wedding. We stayed with Stephs parents, which was a nice opportunity for her mom to spend time with Katie. The weather in Buffalo was a nice break from the sweltering Savannah heat. While in town, we made rounds to all our favorite places, Niagra Falls, Niawanda park, Timmy HO HO's, Wegmans, Andersons and Diane's house.

Katie continues to grow like crazy. She's become quite a walker, though still clumsy. She's very tall now compared to the other kids in her toddler class. She started daycare a few weeks ago, which has been a tough transition for her - she misses mommy a lot while at day care.

I liked this picture of Katie and Mommy sleeping in the bed so I included it.

When we returned from Buffalo, our dock was complete. We spent the evening of July 4th watching fireworks on the dock with Michael and Sarah.

I've been out exploring in the kayak a lot lately. I'll need a power boat soon to extend my adventures......

My parents and Matthew came to visit at the beginning of this month. My parents spent some time with Katie and Matthew did a lot of fishing off our dock. Matthew left this great picture on my computer which I'd love to share, but it violates blogspot photo guidelines.

Kayaking!

2008-06-08T17:04:00.001-07:00

When we moved to Savannah I always intended to buy a sea kayak to explore some of the coastal waterways. Between work, the new baby, home renovations and lack of money, 5 years went by and still no kayak.

Steph has been secretly stalking the tell-n-sell listings looking for a good kayak to give me as a birthday or father's day present. She was having trouble doing it secretly though, because she didn't know what kayaks were any good.

Steph's dad has been helping her search for Kayaks and last weekend he sent her a listing for a blue kayak on Craig's list. To see if this boat might be any good she decided to let me check out the listing. Looked good to me! - Monday I met the owner to see the boat and ended up taking it home that night.

Friday and Saturday I took the boat on to the water for it's maiden voyage on the Tivoli River. This is also the inaugural launching from our nearly complete dock. Here are some pictures I took from the event:

Kayak in the Marsh Grass.

Houses Down the River from us.

A Sabal Palmetto on the back side of a hammock that I call "Malluck Island".

A picture of our House from Sweet Hill Creek. The crane is still there to finish the dock work.

My pet snake, Cruiser, was reincarnated as the neighbor's boat.

Here's the River Park down the river from us where people fish and crab.

It was a great trip to explore the river, but I did manage to drop my eyeglasses in the water near our dock. I'll never see those suckers again. Steph, Katie and I went to Pearl vision to pick out a new set of glasses.

I needed a new set of glasses anyway.

Walking

2008-05-04T17:14:00.001-07:00

Here's the update on my surgery tribulations: I went back to the doctor this past Wednesday for my 4 week checkup. All was well so he gave me clearance to start putting weight on my gimp leg.

A week before this checkup I asked the doctor's medical assistant about the ACL brace you are supposed to get once you start walking. If it was necessary, I wanted to schedule an appointment to fit a brace so it was ready as soon as I was cleared to start walking. He said that would be taken care of at the 4 week appointment and I would recieve my brace that day.

Well it wasn't. I had to schedule another appointment to be fitted for a custom brace which requires 2 weeks to fabricate. When I learned of the long wait for the brace I was pissed because I thought it was necessary to start walking on the limb. I cornered my doctor to talk about this and I let him know I wasn't happy. His first suggestion was to continue wearing the leg immobilizer for another two weeks. I told him this is unacceptable because I want to start walking regularly now. Finally, he admitted that the brace is really intended for 'extreme' activity and that I can begin walking on the leg without a brace until it comes in.

So from that day forward I've been walking on this sucker. Wednesday I started walking using two crutches for support. Thursday I used one crutch and Friday I went totally crutchless.

My knee has held up pretty well through relearning to walk. Not too much pain at first. Over the weekend I had a bit of swelling and some additional pain so I took it easy today to help things along.

The most painful part of walking was the atrophied calf muscles which have been aching really bad. Knee seems rock solid.

Everybody pray for me that I don't have any accidents or 'extreme' motion until my brace come in a few weeks from now. I've come too far to screw this thing up again.

Another Catch up Session

2008-04-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

My friend Mark has inspired me to get back on the blog band wagon. It's been almost a complete year since I posted anything. Part of the reason behind this was that I was in high gear most of the time tending to baby.

For reasons I'll get into, I'm stuck sitting on my butt for the next couple of weeks so hopefully I'll be able to crank out a blog or two. Now that I've set a precedent for 1 blog per year, I can only improve upon my record!

So what's been happening?!

Katie, a.k.a Pookas has been growing like mad. She's now 1 year old, saying simple words and pulling up on every bit of furniture she can get her hands on. She's walking two or three steps at a time now and is just getting enough confidence to walk on her own.

Here's something I'm worried about: Katie's a cute baby and she engages lot of people in random public places. I've had numerous people tell me " better get a shotgun!...." She is a cutie but it wouldn't bother me if she doesn't turn out to be a super model. Less worrying and conflicts in the future.

For Katie's first birthday we had a baby luau. We had the Georgia contingent of the family over our house and everyone wore Hawaiian shirts. Stephanie made a hawaiian themed barbie cake with a grass skirt for Katie to tear into. When we presented her with the cake she was suprisingly civil, tasting it very daintely. I was hoping she would tear into it like a beast!

We are building our dock! We signed on the dotted line before the holidays and the contractor has finished about 40% of the project. So far they have driven piles in the marsh out to the river and complete 200 ft of the walkway. We're gonna be poor people when this thing is over with.

A month and half ago I jumped off the third rung of a step ladder and hurt my knee. I felt something pop, but I was in denial that anything serious had happened. Four weeks went by and it was pretty clear that my knee wasn't getting any better so I scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic. After two visits and an MRI it was determined that I busted my ACL outright and I damaged one the cartilage meniscuses padding my knee.

Last Tuesday I had surgery to replace the ACL (I won't get into the details of how they do this... kinda creepy) and possibly repair the meniscus. I was nervous as heck going into the surgery - I've never had surgery before. The worst part was getting the IV put into my hand. Needles really creep me out. After the IV was in they started pumping me with some happy drugs so I barely remember what happened after that. I know I wasn't breathing frequently enough so they stuck an oxygen tube under my nose. I don't remember them starting the anesthesia because I was so drugged up. I just work up slowly and my leg was bandaged and swolen. They were supposed to use something called a femoral block to stop me from having pain from the surgery but apparently it didn't work and my knee was on fire after the surgery. ......So they pumped me full of more happy drugs. Stephanie took me home and I slept for the rest of the day.

God bless Stephanie for taking such good care of me while I've been out of commission. She's been working full time, caring for a 1 year old (NOT EASY!!), cleaning the house on top of cleaning up after me and fetching things around the house.

I'm having a run in with the orthopedic doctor over my rehabilitation. During my surgery it was determined that my meniscus wasn't repairable so they cut the damaged section out to avoid further complications. From my understanding, many doctors recommend an aggressive program to get you back walking after 2 weeks after ACL repair and meniscus removal. My doctor has commanded me to stay on crutches with no weight applied to the knee for at least 4 weeks. So I'm stuck on crutches for 2 extra weeks which absolutely sucks.

Physical therapy has been going well and I'm getting a lot of flexibility back. I'm wondering if we'll get to a point in the therapy where I've progressed as far as I possibly can without actually walking. It will stink if I reach this point and I still have a week to go before the doctor gets his head out and finally issues the command to let me put weight on it.

I have decided I don't like my orthopedic doctor. He approached the rehabilitation with a very narrow mind and didn't consider how/if intensive of therapy would be right for me. If I had gone to a different doctor in the area I would be very close to walking right now....

The other thing that bothers me about this doctor is that he acts like I'm wasting his time by asking in depth questions about the surgery and recovery. I strive to understand exactly what is happening in my knee as I recover so I understand what's at risk of breaking while I exercise. He answered my questions but his tone was annoyed when he was answering them. It's almost as though he wants the patients to be processed like a can of meat. There's no flexibility in his recommendations.....to me this suggests he is insecure and probably inexperienced with these procedures.

The good news is that the ACL repair is actually very good. Besides all the instant muscle shrinkage after the surgery my knee feels great. The joint is tight and there is practically no pain. If I get through this rehabilitation I'll probably walk/run normally again.

This last picture illustrates why we call Katie, pookas.

Well this has turned into a marathon post and I'm out of interesting things to talk about. That's all folks!!! See ya in ....? 6 months?

She's Here!

2007-03-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'd like to introduce everyone to our new daughter Katherine Ann Malluck.

She was born on March 25, weighing 7 lbs, 7 ounces and measuring 19 1/2 inches head to heal.

I am so proud and happy to be her daddy. My heart melts every time I see her. How could we have created something so perfect?!

I was a pretty nervous daddy for most of the labor and delivery. All the things that can go wrong were constantly on my mind as we progressed through the delivery. Fortunately , nothing bad came up during the progress of labor.

I am so proud of Stephanie for staying focused during delivery and dealing with the immense amounts of pain. She was in labor for 16 hours. She did a heck of a job for a first delivery.

Life is very changed now with the Baby in the house and I didn't realize the increadible amount of time that is required by having a new baby. Basically the baby sleeps for 2-3 hours, wakes up, poops/pees, feeds for 30 minutes and then repeats the cycle. This continues throughout the night so we are waking every couple of hours to tend to baby.

I should also proudly mention that in high Malluck fashion our baby poops like a CHAMPION! She has already blown out 2 diapers and ruined two outfits. This will make for a good story to tell her date before prom.

Man with No Eyes

2007-03-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

This past weekend Michael and began surveying the path we would use to build a dock behind our house. I bought this great new laser measuring device to make measurements easy. It's a really cool tool and Michael and I were have a great time using it until disaster struck.

Out in the marsh the salt grass comes all the way up to eye level. The tops of the grass are very pointy, probably for the purpose of keeping critters like me out of the marsh. While I was out walking around in my waders one of the pointy tips skewed under my eyeglasses and skewred me dead in the left eye.

After I got poked, I was pretty worried because I heard about a guy who had to have surgery following a similar incident with marsh grass. After a few minutes my vision cleared and the pain was not too bad so I shrugged it off and kept working on the dock layout with Michael.

About an hour later the pain in my left eye started getting pretty bad so we headed into the house to get a look at the damage. I couldn't see any problems but Michael and Stephanie could see scratches around my pupil. Strangely, the pain was progressing in waves almost to the point where I was wincing in pain. At this point, we sent Michael home and went to the urgent care doctor to get an assessment of the damage.

We waited 30 minutes in the waiting room of the urgent care doctor. We were one of two people in the room so it makes me wonder why the wait was so long. It's almost like they make you wait just to suffer a little more. Maybe to teach you to never come back. Eventually we saw the doctor and he put a chemical in my eye that made it go completely numb. I went from writhing pain to completely normal in the span of 15 seconds. It was pretty amazing. He looked closely at my eye and couldn't see any damage so he put a dye in my eye and then inspected with a flourescent light. I wish I got a picture of me with dye in my eye. It might have been an interestingly creepy shot! ...something I could use around Halloween. He then in inspected me with a fluorescent light to see the scratches that my wife and brother had already discovered. "Oh you've got a pretty good scratch in your cornea".

The doctor told us that totally immobilizing the eye was the key to having this heal quickly. He said the cornea can almost completely heal itself in 24 hours if immobile. Since the motion of your two eyes are connected this basically means covering both the injured and non injured eyes.

Apparently my injury was not too bad because the doctor only sent me away with a pain killer. Normally if you have anything half way worrisome they will at least prescribe antibiotics. This injury, unfortunately was not at the antibiotic level.

So when we got home Stephanie blindfolded me and I became the blind man. I had a little over 24 hours before work on Monday and the goal was to be ready for work to keep bringing home the bacon. Being blindfolded was an interesting experience because I had to relearn to do many of the things that you normally take for granted. For example, eating food with no sight is a pretty big challenge. You have to concisously remember where food is on the plate and you have to remember where the remaining food is after you eaten some. I actually of enjoyed being blind because there was sort of a new challenge to doing things. For example: I tryed to light my pipe and it wasn't easy. Luckily I had Stephanie nearby to coach me and to ensure nothing important caught blaze. Of course, after the pipe was lit she headed back into the house to avoid the smoke.

There was one thing that I didn't enjoy about being blind: Peeing while sitting down. Not at all manly.

On Sunday night we took off the blindfold and amazingly my eye was as good as new. No more pain.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Top 10

2006-12-06T17:10:00.000-08:00

I came upon a pretty funny website recently so I thought I'd share:

http://www.churchhopping.com/ten-verses-never-preached-on/

It's the top 10 strangest bible verses. I found Judges 3:19-25 to be the most funny. See if you agree.

Thoughts of the Day

2006-11-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

It has been 2 months since I posted so I thought I would post some random thoughts just to feed my extensive fanbase (Stephanie).

Thanksgiving is going to rock the world. I'm staying with my sister in Alpharetta. I can't wait to drive my new asSUV on a long trip and to go shopping in real "big city" stores.

We're going shopping for baby furniture while in Atlanta. Hoping to find a swedish baby tamer at Ikea.

Is anyone else dying to see the new bond flick? I've heard the reviews and it sound like an awesome movie. We're gonna see it when we visit Lisa/Brett/Tyler for Thanksgiving.

I stopped at an equipment rental place today to see about renting a tractor. I want one with massive tires. Next year we're building a dock so I'll need it.

Installing a new garage door tomorrow. This could be really bad if we don't follow the instructions. My brother Michael is coming over to help.

That's all, folks.

Getting Back to Normal

2006-09-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

This is just an "average joe" kinda post just to say how things are going. It's been too long since I got on here.

Last weekend Steph and I went to Dianne's wedding at Lechworth state park, outside Rochester, NY, and it was a very nice affair. Stephanie was the matron of honor so we were highly involved in the wedding preparations and happenings. I was the stealth photographer so I snooped around and grabbed some great candide shots. I think steph posted a few on her blog if you are interested in seeing them: thesouthernyankee.blogspot.com. Sorry, but all the racy shots I took in the bridesmaids' dressing room have been reserved for my private collection. The reception was a lot of fun with lots of dancing. I even busted a move, which is fantastic for a no-rhythm white guy with a mondo donut belly.

I had to be in Longbeach on Monday morning so after we flew back to Savannah on Sunday morning, I had to turn around and fly out to LAX. I had 15 minutes at the house to clean the kitty box, water the plants, switch suitcases and spend some quality time in the restroom before heading back to the airport. I spend over 8 hours on airplanes that day so I was pretty beat when I finally made it to the hotel at 11:00 pm west coast time.

I spent two days in Long Beach testing an airplane. The testing on Monday went really late because a cessna crashed on the run way and we had to wait until the runway was cleared before we could finish our testing....long story. I finished up at 4 in the morning and had to be back at 9 the next morning for another test. After all the testing was finished I was so beat and sleep deprived. Funnily, on the return trip to Savannah, I still had a tough time sleeping. I can't manage to sleep on airplanes....particularly when there are large, overweight, and stinky latino guys in the seat next to you that insist on taking over the armrest and spilling into your seat. Coach class sucks. There is no dignity it in. You are painfully sandwiched into seats, fed econo-snacks meanwhile passing the hours wondering who's flatulence you are smelling.

So, I'm back on the ground now and I made it a point to sleep-in on Saturday and Sunday. Steph and I slept to 10:00 both days, which is rare for us these days. Can't think of the last time we slept that late?.....maybe 2003? This weekend has been pretty relaxing and I made it a point to do less work than regular. I mowed the grass and stripped some wall paper in the bathroom. Pretty good for me, considering my usually break neck paced renovation drive.

It's Sunday night. My laundry is done. Ready for Monday's Rat Race.

TOTALED!!

2006-08-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

What a marvelous ending to such a crazy story.

I received a call from the insurance company regarding my death-bombed Toyota pickup. The adjuster broke the sad news that after spending over $3000.00 to destenchify my truck, the cab still reeked of dead dog.

Apparently the mythbusters are correct. It's almost impossible to remove the smell of death after it is baked into the car in summer heat.

The adjuster said the insurance company was not going to do any more work on the truck and that rather they will consider it a TOTAL LOSS and pay me for it's value. Normally this is a crappy situation because you never get quite enough money to replace your totaled vehicle. Interestingly, in this case the compensation worked out to be more than the amount I paid for the truck new, two years ago.

In short, I should be able to replace this sucker with a better, newer, and less odorous vehicle.

KING OF THE WORLD!!

2006-08-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, after days of toiling on the Delta skymiles site, I was able to obtain round trip SKYSAVER tickets from Savannah to Maui!! I feel like the champion of the skymiles system; like the man who fought the sytem, defyed the odds and came out smelling like roses.

Should I have started this post by saying that Delta SkySaver fares are REALLY hard to get? They are, and it's basically Delta's way of screwing it's customers out of their hard earned frequent flyer miles. If you are willing to spend double the skymiles they have SkyChoice fares available that are abundantly available and will allow you to fly when you want. The skysaver fares are so rare you basically have to get them 330 days in advance of your travel day. And even then, you get lucky if you are able to get 2 tickets on the same flight.

Had to share my jubilance....it made my day.

'H' and 'Emails'

2006-08-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

While there are a number of quirks present in the English language, recent argument with my wife and brother have invoked the urge to vent my deep rooted resent of two particular oddities. Without further ado, here they are in all their odious glamour:

The pronunciation of the letter 'H'.
Use of the word email in cases refering to a singular electronic message.

First off, who came up with the pronunciation of the letter H? While the letter 'X' is understandably screwed and was advertised as such at the Kindergarten grade level, the letter 'H' was panned off as a pretty normal consonant. Well franctly it isn't. The correct pronunciation of the letter 'H' doesn't contain the consonant sound found in words like Hector or Huberous. The pronunciation is more akin to the sound found in the word agent. I have just now stumbled upon the problem associated with this consonant, due to my own self correction of how the letter is pronounced. It seems that in my efforts to avoid picking up a soft southern accent I have begun pronouncing it much like the 'H' in Hay.

I was first informed of my mispronunciation of this letter by my wife, who is also a Kindergarten teacher. I agree that her pronunciation is probably the widely accepted one, but mine sounds better, is more clear and actually contains the consonant sylable of the letter that it designates. What could be better? With this said, I think I will continue pronouncing 'H' as pronounched in the word Hay. I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong! Okay, enough 'h' already.

My second hang-up is with the widespread use of the word 'email' in instances where it refers to a singular electronic message. For example: " I sat at my desk sending dozens of emails today". The word 'email' was originally created to refer to electronic mail in the plural sense but when the masses got ahold of it in the mid 90's they simply couldn't grow their technical dictionary to also include words such as e-letters or e-messages. I didn't suffer from this retardation so I started using 'e-letter' and 'e-message' for quite a while after the advent of widespread internet. Funnily I suffered quite a bit of stigma from those who though email was the one and only allowable term for discretely packaged internet messaging. It got to the point where I had to purposely use email for the singular case to avoid idiots from being confused from my correctitude. It's been a while since I used the term 'e-letter', probably because I don't use e-mail very much and I find myself surrounded more and more by total idiots.

It's a shame that my infinite colloquial perfection doesn't rub off on the rest of the world. It would certainly be a better place.

Death Bomb!!!

2006-07-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

Update 8/18/06

I called the body shop that has been working on my truck today. It's taken a while, but it sounds like they are finally wrapping up work. Interestingly, they ended up doing more work on the truck than I ever expected.

On the phone, the repair shop owner explained that they stripped the interior down to bare metal, and then let ADVANCED BIO TREATMENT get medeval with their super cleaners on all the components. He said they even used an anti-stench fogger in the cab to help remove anything left over.

I didn't know this before, but apparently when creatures die and roast in 140 degree heat all sorts of vile fluids exit their bodies. So much of the cleanup effort was focused on removing dog essence from my interior ( I got the word essence from the dark crystal....remember that flick?!)

To rid my car of dog essence, they replaced the carpet, the entire passenger seat and part of the center console with brand new parts from the factory. They also had to replace the tools in the tool well underneath where the dog died. I can't believe all the damage that this sucker unleashed on my car.

The moment of truth will occur on Tuesday when I get the truck back. Will the term 'deathmobile' stick?

Update 8/6/06

We're letting insurance take care of the truck restoration/desmellification. A flat bed driver came to haul the truck away on this past Wednesday. I have no idea why, but the driver decided to drive the pickup onto his flat bed. I wasn't there, but Steph said she could see the driver physically gagging while he was in the cab.

The truck is currently at a body shop and the interior will be removed and cleaned later this week. They are calling in Advanced Bio Treatment to clean the interior pieces as they come out of the truck.

After everything has been removed and cleaned they will begin reinstalling everything back into the truck. I just hope everything comes clean in the end. The nastiest part of the truck should probably be the carpet and I think they are completely replacing it. Fingers crossed.

Update: 7/29/06

The neighbor took the truck for a thorough cleaning on Monday and as of this morning it still reaks like death.

I called insurance and luckily my comprehensive includes dead-dog-in-the-backseat coverage. Insurance has contacted a bio-cleanup specialist and they are going to rip apart the interior to clean everything in the car!

Original Post:

In a blog a while back I complained about the neighbor's dogs that were using our yard like a public restroom. Since that time I have had a change of heart and I actually started to enjoy the dogs hanging out in the yard while I am out watering palms and such.

One of the dogs was particularly cute. He's was an old red labrador kind of dog, though I'm not sure exactly what kind. Everytime I'd go out to do something in the yard he was my companion, watching what I was doing from a comfortable distance, occassionaly rolling over to have his belly scratched.

Unfortunatly, all of that has changed.

Friday night Stephanie and I returned to the house some heavy shopping bags and we had to unload from the truck. We left the passenger door open, unloaded everything and then returned a few minutes later to close the truck door.

Unfortunately we did not know that my little red companion had hopped inside the truck and curled up in the back seat.

Saturday both my neighbor and I did yard work within feet of my truck and neither of us heard any barking or any signs that the dog was trapped inside my car. Steph and I went to leave for dinner on Sunday night and that's when we discovered that old red had died in the back seat!

Finding the dead body was a morbid scene. The dog was dead for 2 days in JULY heat!! The smell of death invoked an urge to vomit and flys were swarming everywhere.

My poooooor truuuuuckk!!!!!!!!!!

My neighbor has been great in this situation. We broke the bad news to them and they are taking full responsibility for the dog jumping in the back seat. Tonight they removed the body and begun the bio-cleanup. Tomorrow they are taking the truck (aka deathmobile) to the detailers to be cleaned. I'm just praying that they can get the smell out.

This whole situation is remeniscent of a bad movie or something....sort of like the myth where a dead body was stored in a Corvette and no one wanted to buy the car because it smelled so bad.

Anyone wanna buy a Toyota Truck!?

SuperJack!!!

2006-07-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I became trapped behind an eighteen wheeler that was traveling 35 in a 55 zone. There was really nothing I could do to get around it because it was a two lane highway with a solid double yellow line. While I was stuck, I came up another great invention, called a SuperJack. Words do don't do justice to this idea, so I created the following figures to get the point across:

Figure 1: Andrew's Truck stuck behind rig going 20 mph under the speed limit.

Figure 2: Behold the SuperJack!! SuperJack is deployed remotely from Andrew's vehicle and guided underneath the offending semi.

Figure 3: SuperJack goes into action!!!!!

Figure 4: No longer impeded, Andrew continues on his way....at the speed limit (maybe above).

I was WRONG!

2006-05-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

As everyone already knows, I am one sharp cookie. And when Andrew says something, it might as well be gospel. For this entry I wanted to pause for a second to highlight one aspect of life that I was wrong about. This is an important milestone in deflating my already ultra pompous male ego.

It is an unmistakeable fact that Stephanie's father is a junk monger. He collects trinkets for Salvation army and in many cases ends up gifting them to someone in the family. Over the past 2 years we've recieved some pretty interesting stuff from him that we usually end up storing in the attic. He means well but his sense of taste needs some work.

One of the gift he sent us was a set of Ronco kitchen knives. These are the knives they sell on the late night informercial. The bozo selling them performs 'amazing' feats such as sawing through bolts, rocks and even tomatoes.

We recieved the set of knives and I really thought they would be absolute junk. I told Stephanie these knives were not so good and that I'd buy her a real set of knives down the road someday.

We put the big chopping block of knives on the counter and I figured we would use them for a while until they crack, rust or implode. I was amazed however when I saw that the knives are actually pretty good quality! They are extreamly sharp and are made of great materials that are 100% dishwasher safe. We had them almost a year and I must say that they are extreamly convenient for cutting so many things in the kitchen. They are all labeled for the specific task they are intended for and the chopping block is a great way to organize them.

I'll give credit where it's due and I must say I am pretty sold on the ronco cutting system. In fact, if they had a portable set of knives I'd get one to keep in the back of my truck. You never know when you'll need to saw through a krispy creme donut or to fillet a bucket of KFC.

So in short, I was wrong. Ronco you rule!

Possible New Inventions

2006-04-22T17:42:00.000-07:00

Pretty frequently I come up with some great inventions and ideas while I am driving around town. These are some great ideas and I'm sure that they will change the world and make me a very famous man! Unfortunatley, I do a prety bad job of remembering my ideas so nothing has become of my amazing concoctions so far. I have decided to make a change, however, that will greatly benefit mankind. Yesterday I got a new cell phone with a great notepad feature that enables me to start recording some of my uncanny new ideas.

Last night was my first night harnessing the river of great new inventions through my cell phone. Here are the ideas that I recorded:

Tugboat jousting: A fantastic new sport!! 2 Tugboats racing head on with 100 foot lances drawn! Can you imagine the great carnage and wreckage!? Americans would eat it up. It would sell more tickets than Nascar!

Camoflauge golfball: This would be a gag gift for a golfer who always hits into the rough. They'd sell this kind of gag at novelty stores and it would probably show up on the rack next to the "Over the Hill" gifts. I'd better patent the idea fast before Spencers steals it.

Shocking Neckless for the Missus: For moments when the wife is too engaged to divert her attention, this necklace would apply electric shocks to redirect her attention to her very attention deserving husband. I just ordered the cattle prod parts for the prototype. Stephanie will serve as the first test subject.

Legless Segway: Segways could be modified to allow people without legs (people who were tragically separaged from their legs) to be mobile while being held in a normal standing position. In effect, the segway would serve as their legs. Here's the best part: If a recreational segway sells for $7,000.00, that means a medically modified segway would have to sell for $700,000!!! I am going to be rolling in it.

Limberger Firecase: Limberger Cheeze is entirely underutilized as a means of expression in today's prank culture. I attribute this mainly to the unfortunate odor during times when the Limburger is not being used. A Firecase is needed with a breakable glass door and a hammer for times when the Limberger is needed. Since the glass would form a hermetic seal, the Limberger would not present an odor problem (until you break the glass, of course) and the Limber would be conviently accessible for moments when Limberger is needed for pelting or placement in your brother's luggage.

And Finally: Zamboni Jousting! Much like the tugboat jousting, but on ICE!! You could do this between periods at hockey games. Ticket sales will triple!!!!

As you can see, I am really on to something here. It's only a matter of time before I am a household name.

House Hunters

2006-04-15T06:44:00.000-07:00

First the bad news: We got word this week that the buyer for our old house was rejected by their lender and therefore couldn't buy our house. This means we have to put the house back on the market to find a new buyer. This whole house selling extravaganza has been pretty frusterating. The house has been for sale for almost 5 months now, and still no sale.

Now the good news: HGTV has a show called 'House Hunters' that features home buyers checking out different houses and then deciding what house they want to buy. Really it's a pretty lame show, but we find ourselves watching it when there's absolutely nothing else on TV. Stephanie was watching the show 2 nights ago and was amazed when the show featured the house that we just bought!! Freakin' amazing!

If anyone is interested in seeing our house I think it comes on tonight (Saturday) at 7:30. Our house is the 2nd house featured. The tudor style on the marsh.

New House Escapades

2006-04-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted because of all the moving that has been going on. Two weeks ago we packed everything up and had a few friends come by to help us move into the new house.

Moving is never fun for obvious reasons. But I must say that there was a highlight to us moving this time. We rented a big-ass yellow van to load all of our stuff into and that sucker was dynamite!! It was by far the biggest vehicle I have ever ripped up on the road and it even had a great hydraulic lift to help you load stuff in the back. As an added bonus the driver's seat had a pneumatic lift that you could actuate to get the perfect driving position. Too cool.

We've been slowly unpacking things but we have a long way to go before we are quite 'settled'.

There is so much work that has to be done on the new place before we finally reach a cruising point for happy living. Walls must be painted, wall paper has to come down (not in that order), hedges have to trimmed and the armadillos must be controlled (long story...must use mothballs).

Steph and I picked out a yellowish color for the living room walls. Officially the color is 'summer moon' but I didnt' think that would ring a bell with anyone. Yesterday we cleared the room, taped it up, and painted the walls. It turned out to be a pretty big job, but I'm really pleased with the results. We'll have to post some pictures after we finish painting the trim. We get better at painting each time we paint a new room. This is the 8th room that we have painted in just the past three years!!

Next weekend is Easter and we are having my parents come to visit. Stephanie has been buying funny trinkets and candy to fill the easter eggs for the easter hunt. We've been racking our brains trying to think of great prankish ideas for the eggs. What are some other good ideas? Limburger Cheese?

2006-04-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

Me and the great Penske!

The end of despair

2006-03-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

We've been in talks for the past week with a potential buyer for our old house. Today we finally signed the contract to sell the house to the buyer. FINALLY!! This home switching idea has been over a year in the making and today we can see the end in site!

I have to say it's been way harder than I ever expected. You watch the home improvement shows on TV: A nice couple buys a run down place, puts some paint on the walls and some new curtains and wallah! The couple sells the house the next week and makes loads of money doing it.

Our story reads a little more like: A nice couple buys a dump from some hillbillies and then works their butts off cleaning, fixing, upgrading and pretty much go broke doing it. After the work is finished the house is put up for sale and then sits on the market for 5 months because it is in the not-so-elite part of town.

Alas this chonicle is finally ending. And I'm glad to say that we are never going to sell or move ever again.

Some good news: I recieved my yearly review today and I was promoted to the next level of engineer servitude. I am now a Technical Specialist I, rather than an Engineer II (never thought of it before, but Engineer #II sounds like a technical purveyor of feces). I got the raise and a big pat on the back from my boss. Now we just need to celebrate. Steph is finishing up the exit exam for her Master's this evening so maybe we will wait until this weekend to party it up.

Did I mention that the little old lady moved out of our new house? Tomorrow we are going to stop by the house just to enjoy having the place to ourselves. We probably should start cleaning, but I will likely spend most of the time playing with sprinkler system. New toys!!

New Blog In Town

2006-03-12T14:26:00.000-08:00

Occasionally in this space I like to endorse things that I whole heartidly stand behind. This week I'd like to feature a new blog that I just happened to come across that is most read-worthy:

http://thesouthernyankee.blogspot.com/

Actually, this is Stephanie's new blog and it's actually pretty good.

The benefit of me featuring this blog is that Stephanie has been updating her blog with all the neat things that we've been up to lately. If you refer to her blog, I don't have to update everyone on how we got the new house, or the cool bike ride that we embarked upon today out near the beach. Being the lazy butt that I am, it's kinda nice when she's already done all the work for me.

Yesterday I went for a great bike ride in downtown Savannah. The weather couldn't have been better and there were loads of people walking around. It was neat observing some of the tourists' perspectives: At a cross walk I stopped to let some people cross and one lady said "See! Even the bicyclists here stop to let people cross". It made me a smile. Partly because it made me feel like a nice guy and partly because I had already almost hit another dozen or so pedestrians in other cross walks.

Savannah is great city to bike in because the traffic is so slow around squares. It's easy to keep up with traffic without getting run down. Many of the local motorists are also used to driving around cyclists because there are so many people who cycle in downtown just to get around.

Sights from Downtown: Savannah is coming up on St. Patrick's day so all the fountains were dyed green and many of the streets were decorated. In a park off Bay street there was an irish step dancing competion for middle school girls. I had no idea that this riverdance stuff was so popular. In Forsyth park there were loads of students playing ultimate and also an organized game of rugby. I stood there for a good 5 minutes watching the rugby...which is good for me considering I'm not much of a sports fan... because it's really a cool sport. I like how unpredictable and chaotic rugby is. Far more grass roots than american football. It even crossed my mind to look into playing just for something fun to do. Not sure I want to commit to it, but it could be a lot of fun. ZULU!!!!!!!!!

Hardly Bearable

2006-03-06T16:03:00.000-08:00

Bear Update: It's been about 24 hours since the great bear sighting of 2006 and I've now had time to let all the facts sit with me for a while. Looking at the pictures today with my colleages we decided that the 'bear' silhouette was rather unbearish. As a sanity check, we did a check of bear habitats in Georgia and we learned that bears are not common on the coast at all. This pretty much confirms that my sighting couldn't have been black bears.

We have a new theory my sighting was actually wild boar. Wild boar are very common in the coastal area, have a black silhouette like the bear and the sows can grow to nearly bear size. Looking at the pictures, the baby following the momma has a pretty distinct floppy ear. This leads me to think these were boars, not bears. I'll let the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

Wild boars aren't quite as cool as sighting ferocious, man-eating bears but it was a neat find, nonetheless.

Bears!!

2006-03-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

The weather was sort of nice today so I got out of the house while Stephanie was working on some of her grad homework. I went for a hike to investigate the historic Ogeechee canal in Tom Triplett park, which is not far from the Savannah airport. The hiking was sort of crappy because many sections of the trail were totally covered with flood waters (got nice and muddy) and the trail was pretty poorly marked.

Since the trail wasn't marked very well, I never found the canal. But I did find BEARS!!!! Now this is an interesting situation. I've been hiking so many times over years straight through bear sanctuaries and never caught a glimpse of a real black bear. But today, on a 20 minute hike I saw a momma and two baby bears foraging through the undergrowth.

I first heard the rustling of their footsteps way off in the distance and I expected it to be another hiker. Then I caught glimpse of the mother bear shortly followed by two babies at her heals.

Until now, I had never seen anything in the wild that was bigger than me. When I saw these guys I must honestly say that a rush a fear swept through me. All at once I began to think, "Should I run? Is the momma going to charge me? Can I climb any of these trees before she closes the distance on me?".

I'm not sure if the bears noticed me or not. They actually might be used to people hiking through so they weren't phased by hearing my footsteps. I just stood there and took a few pictures of them as they passed through. They didn't really get that close to me, but I must say it was a neat sighting.

2006-03-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

BEARS!!!

Massive Tumult!

2006-02-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

Well we had some major developments in our house buying situation. We've been waiting to buy our new house because we need someone to buy our current house first. We set up a contract on the new house with a contingency where we will close on the new house when we finally sell ours first.

There was a clause in the new house contract where if anyone walked up and wanted to buy our dream house, the seller could make us remove the contingency -or- default on the contract, thereby letting the other party buy the house.

Last Friday we got the call that we had been dreading. Someone else had stepped up with an offer to buy our dream house and we'd have to either remove the contingency or lose the house. We were so shell shocked when we got the news. It was like a bomb had dropped and there was nothing we could do to keep the new house. It really set us up for the worst weekend that Stephanie and I had ever endured together.

My parents and sister came into town last weekend for my brother's weekend. We were in no shape to be very happy but luckily they did provide morale support.

Here's how things turned out: I ended up going to the bank on Tuesday and amazingly we were able to work out financing that lets us buy the new the house even without selling our current house. Even better yet, the bank was able to close the loan in time for us to meet our contracted closing date.....this was important because the seller was hopeing we would default on the contract so he could sell to the new buyer who was offering more money.

So in short, we get to buy the new house and we'll close on it March 8th. I need to post a picture to show off the new place. It's not an amazingly beautiful house but I think we'll be very happy there.

So it's been a hell of a stressful time here on the Malluck farm and now we're trying to get everything back together. Unfortunately the weather is a bit gloomy and cool. We could use some good bicycling weather to get out for the day.

Tasks for the weekend:
Go to work to make some overtime money (we are so poor!)
File Tax Return
Get haircut....getting too shaggy.

2006-02-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

Me with Beard Papa (famous hawaiian cream puff czar)

Catch Up Session

2006-02-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

Well what can I say, but it's been a while since I posted on here. Been busy and gloomy for a little while now. Trying to break the funk with a fresh post.

Here's a recap of what's happened since the last blog:

Steph and I had a beautiful wedding in Whitfield square. The weather was fantastic and my bride was as beautiful as a queen. The ceremony went pretty smoothly and best of all I didn't trip on my vows.....public speaking has never been my strong point.

The reception was fantastic and I was so absorbed by making the rounds and talking to everyone. Everyone seemed to have a great time and there was hours of dancing and galavanting. I even took my groomsmen outside for a cigar and a quick duel.....we actually had some toy bb guns that we were carrring with us the day of the wedding, so we needed a chance to play. The wedding night....ur....well that's an epic story that I will leave for my memoirs.

After the wedding Stephanie and I decided to buy a new house in a different area around Savannah that has much a much better school system. The schools in chatham county are NOT good! The new house we picked out is in a much nicer neighborhood and is located on a tidal creek with lots of marsh grass. The back yard has some very pretty views of the marsh.

To buy the new house we've been trying to sell our current house. This has not been easy. The house has been on the market for 3 months and the showings have been few and far between. The problem is partly related to our crappy realtor and partly due to the fact our house is the nicest place in the surrounding area....few people want the nicest place on the block.

There was a guy one block from our house who decided to part out a Toyota Supra on his front lawn. The place looked like a junkyard. I had to call the city to come convince the guy to start cleaning up his yard. We'll see if anything happens. I must say that it is really frusterating when other people around you affect your life so much. We've been ready to sell for months and I would estimate that this guy has scared away at least 3 buyers already. Pretty crappy. I need a crack delta force to storm his yard and steal the offending automobile. If you are part of an elite delta force and might be interested in an easy buck, please give me a call.

Stephanie has been gloomy lately because she dislikes her grad classes so much. It seems that her masters at Georgia Southern has turned out to be sort of a flop....poor class availability, inflexible for students with full time jobs, idiot proffessors.

Most of the stuff that has happened over the past year has been sort of gloomy but I must say Michael and Sarah have been the silver lining to all this mumbo jumbo. This past August, I put Michael's resume in at Gulfstream and they hired him! So Micheal and his girlfriend Sarah moved out here. Steph and I really love hanging out with them. We have some interesting coversations together about the Savannah locals. I'll have to elaborate on this in future blogs.

Well this pretty much covers the past couple of months. I'll have to get back on here to expound on some of the racier aspects of life here in Chatham. This blog has to live up to being an Abomination in Progress and I have yet to unleash the full surge of my insanity on this sucker.

Peace.

Reason to Buy Home Depot Stock

2005-06-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Steph and I went to lowes tonight to order a vanity top for our new bathroom. A few days ago we checked the price and we learned it was $650.00. While this isn't cheap, really I though this was the best I could do because we have a bathroom vanity that is a really odd size, so we were forced to pretty much special order the expensive custom top.

When we priced the top at Lowes we asked the guy when would be a good time to come in and place the order. He said anytime would be fine.

We showed up at Lowes tonight with money in hand ready to order the vanity. That's when the trouble started. First I couldn't find anyone to help me in the bathroom section. It's hard enough for a guy to belittle himself to ask for help, let alone to make him scavange the store shouting help me on the top of his lungs. When we did find someone who could help us he informed us that the bathroom specialist is on a 30 minute dinner break. So basically we would be forced to just wait around for someone to help us. I turned to steph and said, that's it....we're going to home depot.

When we arrived at home depot we learned that they actually carry the same special order vanity tops! Better yet, for the same damn item it was $100 less!! and to top it off the lady helping us was a) available, b) pleasant and c) knowledgable. Needless to say, Home depot kicked Lowes ass tonight in the epic battle between home improvement centers. I might have to buy home depot stock one of these days.

Back in Town

2005-05-31T01:45:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a while since I posted on here. In fact, I'd all but left the blog for derrilict and dead until tonight. So why the new post? Really I started reading a few of my old blogs and I was sorta impressed with my progress as a writer. I guess I have to keep a good thing going.

It's been a while since I posted, so I have to cover the highlights of the past few months:

Wedding planning has been going well. The wedding will be held in Whitefield or Whitfield squre in savannah. I spelled it two different ways because savannah has it spelled two different ways.....whitfield on the location sign and whitefield in the historical explaination of why the square was named "whitefield". Savannah is a screwed up place. The wedding should be really nice and we are still pretty excited about it.

Stephanie has been making invitations, though I do have to say her planning has slowed in recent months. I think she's running low of things to do. Everything is really planned now.

A month ago I went to Rockford Illinois on travel for work. While in Rockford I visited a local joint called "Beefaroo". I dont' know what it is about the name of that place. There's just something hillarious about the word "Beefaroo". If you didn't know any better, what would you imagine a "Beefaroo" as being? With this in mind, Steph and I have established "beefaroo" as a code word for a LARGE SCALE defecation. It'll only be a short matter of time before websters adds this definition to their master list. Eventually everyone will be using it. So years from now when someone in a crowd yells BEEFAROO!!, Just remember you heard it here first.

The yard is green and I've been cutting the grass every week. Man this house is a lot of work! My bathroom project is coming along. I'm almost complete with tiling the walls and the shower. The next step is to tile the floor. I'm a slave to this place. The only way to break my indentures is to work harder.

Okay too tired to continue. Maybe I'll post again in a few months.

2005-02-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

Work has been pretty shitte lately. John and I have been working on an acoustical model for one of our new aircraft and as of late things have been moving very slow despite my manic efforts. We are due for a noise prediction next week using the model and I just discovered that there are all sorts of problems that have to be fixed before we can even begin using the model. Needless to say I'm working friday.

The worst part is that I'm so fed up with making our ignorant higher-ups happy. The value they place in your work has nothing to do with the quality of what you have done. It's all about how you market your efforts. So really, in spite of the fact that we have worked really slow and inefficiently and our quality sucks we'll probably come out smelling like roses because we will make a really neat presentation.

This sounds good and all, but really I feel like a failure of an engineer having to hide behind a sweet smelling facade like this. There's a lot of reasons why our model sucks so bad which I won't elaborate on. In hindsight I just wish I'd had more control and financial pull to have done this job right from the begining so that our results are meaningful and actually helpful.

I came to to make the quietest interior environment in buisness aviation. This whole situation has me feeling like my efforts really aren't contributing very much to this goal. Sorta discouraging. I'm not postal yet, but things are going that way.

Tonight was pretty cool. I made up a batch of my african beef recipe for stephanie's mom. She's coming to visit this weekend so I thought I'd make something a little out of the ordinary. This recipe is supposedly from the buffet at disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. I've made it twice now and it's the bomb!

Bathroom Project

2005-02-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

Well it's been quite a while since I've posted on here, which is just what I was predicting in the previous message. Since the last blog I've been sick and spent countless hours working on my bathroom project.

Did I ever mention the epic bathroom project?! It's been a year in the making.

When we were shopping for the house here in Savannah we vowed to find one with a guest bedroom so that we could offer a little southern hospitality to friends and family. We found this house, which has the bedroom but the adjoining bathroom needs a little renovation to make it 'civil'. So I've spent the whole past year slaving away to finish this project.

Really my problem with the bathroom project is that it ballooned from the original concept. The preliminary goal was to move a toilet and install a shower in the bathroom. Well since then, I've replaced the vanity top, the old bath tub, and have decided to retile the whole room.

Currently, I've finished putting up this heavy backerboard on the walls and I'm in the process of plastering it all together. I'm no pro at this mortar-plaster stuff so it's not very pretty right now. I'm hoping when I lay the tile on top, it will hide my lack of trowel skill.

Too bad blogspot doesn't host images....I could post a few pictures of my progress.

Holiday Reflections

2005-01-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

Well we've been back from Buffalo for almost two weeks now so I'm definetly overdue for another installment in this quaint chronicle. I figure as long as I post one or twice a month I'm doing pretty well; I've never been much of a soul for keeping a diary or any other sort of journalistic hobby.

So Buffalo:
We had a good trip to Buffalo and we got our share of snow and New York cuisine. We basically lazed around for most of the week which was a nice change of pace after months of endless work. One of the cooler things we did was check into local real estate to dream what it would be like to buy a house in steph's hometown. Holy crap houses in Buffalo are cheap!! We found many massive homes in North Buffalo for way under $200 k. These were all quality homes built around the turn of the century and featured lots of charm like hardwood paneling, wainscotting and leaded glass. We found one place that we were particularly fascinated by. It was walking distance from Delaware park, around the corner from Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin house, and had more space than we would know what to do with (5000 sq ft +). It also had all the turn of the century charm: hardwood floors, wainscotting, hardwood staircase, built in credenzas. Its was pricey, but I think we could afford it if we were forced to sell our place in Savannah to move to Buffalo.

Funnily, with all the family and realestate fun we didn't make any time to visit Niagra falls. It was only 15 minutes away but we never got the chance to drop by.

After this vacation, I'll defintely admit that Stephanie's family is a source of stress in our relationship. Her family is very nice and homey, but more and more I find it difficult to feel very comfortable with these folks. I guess mainly, I don't find much in common with them and it's hard to find common ground for conversation.

The weather here has been incredible these past few days. Last night steph and I went downtown to walk around and the temperature was perfect for a night on the town. We basically walked from river street to forsyth park on Bull street and back. Good exercise.....though we did stop for desert at Leopold's which pretty much negated any healthy effect from walking.

While we were out walking around I noticed quited a few people walking their heinouse canines around "america's most beautiful city". Nothing quite bothers me as much as walking through one of savannah's beautiful squares as much as seeing a 100 pound dog torrentially urinating on a tiny 45 year old sago palm. When did it become okay for dog owners to dump urine and feces shamelessly around our urban landscape? Hyphothetically, in the context of my previous posts, an equivalent situation would be to take full grown retard (120 lbs) out on savannah's squares to urinate and defectate and to feel absolutely no shame in doing so. Does the fact that a different beast is defacating on our city change this sitation? No. But I'm sure that people would start talking if this were to happen in downtown.

Pre-Christmas Preparations

2004-12-18T17:15:00.000-08:00

Feeling good after a languid day spent at the house. Stephanie made me pancakes for breakfast so that helped get the day started!

I've accomplished some decent stuff today:
- Rented a car for the Buffalo trip
- Trimmed nasty dead leaves from the Banana trees ( did I mention that I have banana trees!? They are great for feeding homless primates)
- Mopped half the house

Unfortunately I did plan to go into work today but I can see now that isn't going to happen. I've had some serious work looming that I need to complete, though I hate going in on Saturdays. Maybe tomorrow?

The holiday season has been pleasant so far, aside from my financial destitude. I wrapped Stephanie's present and unveilded the package to her spectacle. Since we are going to Buffalo I said I would let her open it on Tuesday morning before we get on the airplane. (really there is no way to fit that suck'a in our luggage). She was sort of poopy because she wanted to open it this weekend so I made a deal that if the cats manage to unwrap and reaveal her gift before Tuesday, then she can have her present early. Surprisingly the cats stayed away from the presents.

Now this is something that is sort of surprizing. Our cats, whom to this day have managed to bite holes in anything paper and plastic, have suspiciously avoided this package. I even tucked a kitty treat into one of the fold to see if that would convince them to strike. Still the kitties aloofishly ignored the package. What is with these guys?! This reinforces one of my hyphothesises about cats. Cats can cunningly detect exactly what humans want and strategically position themselves to be contrary.

Christmas Cleaning

2004-12-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

Stephanie just informed me that lake effect snow is forcast for Buffalo! Just in time for the place to be snow-slammed for when Stephanie and I arrive a little over a week from now.

Man I miss the snow!

The Christmas season has been pretty decent so far, despite the lack of cold weather in Savannah. Steph has really helped to get in the holiday season by decorating the house and reminding me to buy presents. I've got some great presents this year....of course I can't elaborate on them because snooping eyes might be reading this blog. I'm under the sad delusion that thousands of geeks standby waiting for the next installment of this mangy cyber rag.

We had a work christmas party on Saturday night. It was a pretty great time but surprisingly many people were sort of nervous and stuck-up due to the"work" social setting. I'm still contemplating what contributed to the high levels of pretension. Maybe people think that our "work" is a real professional sort of place so these sorts of social gatherings should be a semi-elite engagement. Fortunately I don't suffer from any such delusions of grandeur. For one, I don't get near enough pay to be high and mighty. Really, I'm closer to being homeless than elite with all the christmas spending lately. So I did my best not to let other people's pomp mess with my cool mojo.

I was supposed to clean the house today but I got too pissy to make much progress. To me, cleaning is a sort of triviality that's required but isn't really that gratifying when it's finished. You don't earn money by cleaning, it doesn't accrue any interest and your efforts are only doomed to decay over time to where you are right back where you started from. So really I'm at a crappy crossroads here. To clean or not to clean. If I don't, it might get worse. If I do, I'll regret the efforts spent in vain. Really the best solution is to hire an immigrant worker to clean for me. That's the ticket!

New England Crust

2004-12-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

Thursday night I flew to Providence, RI to attend training in Groton on Friday. I noticed an interesting aspect of New England culture while I was up there:

New Englander's are freakin' crusty!

When we got into Mystic, CT (near our hotel) we ate at a place called JAMM'S. The food was good but the waiter was something else. First off, this guy was loud! The restaurant had a pretty average noise level and he managed to project his voice to a level that could be heard no matter what part of the restarant he happened to be in. I started calling him Mr. 6......because his voice was at least 6 dB louder than anything else in that place. Please excuse the acoustics nerdism. And to add to the causticness he spoke as pompously and rapidly as possible. He also refered to his patrons as "Buddy!". Quite strange.

I went shopping in Mystic and unbeknownst to me the shop was closing at 8:00. The lady in the store curtly informed me that it is 8:06 and tomorrow the store is open from 9:00 am to 8:00. Not a single "thankyou for coming" or a "sorry we're closed" . It seemed that I was in the wrong for entering HER shop.

Now besides the crusty, screwed up people in New England, there is one other thing that really bothered me. Both restaurants I visited CHARGED for refills of my coke. These people simply have no sense of hospitality.

Post Thanksgiving Blog-In

2004-11-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

Well Thanksgiving went well. Stephanie and I saw pretty much the whole family at my sister's place in Canton. Everyone congratulated us for getting married and my sister even presented us with an engagement cake. That cake tasted good too.

Stephanie and I set the big date for October 15, 2004! Mark your calendar. The ceremony will probably be at 2:00 pm. The location is currently a secret.

We saw the Incredibles over the weekend. What a great movie. I couldn't help but wonder what elastigirl could do in the sack.

Back to work on Monday sucked pretty bad. My sleep schedule wasn't cooperating and I felt like a zombie all day. To make matters worse, I sat with my boss for most of the afternoon to write a test report. I was so ready to crash when I finally made it home at 7:30. hmmm.... speaking of sleep, I'm currently falling into a somberous daze. Work was better today, but I'm still catching up for Monday.

Time to blog off.

Marriage, Savannah and Cats

2004-11-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

Okay big news! On Friday I took Stephanie to Il Pasticcio in downtown Savannah and popped the question. She accepted so we are planning to get hitched this coming October.

Really the coolest part was after dinner we sat for a while on a park bench in Chippewa square to hang around. The weather was really great and the moment made me feel really good about marrying stephanie and moving to Savannah with her.

Saturday we went shopping for Stephanie's engagement setting and stopped by the massive catholic cathedral downtown. That place is massive and ornate! They spared no cost putting the place together. Inside there are columns that extend 35 ft upward to support arched gothic celings. There is gold leafing, marble, stained glass, and hardwood everywhere. Probably some of the best architechture in Savannah. There was something erie about the place, though....you could almost make out the screams of a young boy being molested in the basement.

We also visited the old graveyard a few blocks away (I can't remember the name, but it's the really old one everyone knows). We saw lots of grave sites from the 1780's which was pretty cool. The graves were cool, but I kept having images of playing paintball amidst the grave stones. (paintballs smashing everywhere!! Karate kicking ancient headstones in half in order to kill thy enemy!!!) My destructive side is alive and well and fortunately didn't manifest itself.

Saturday night and Sunday Steph and put up panelling in our bathroom. It turned out okay and I think it will look nice after we paint some blemishes and put out some white caulk to cover my lack of carpentry skill. After finishing the work, I used the facilities to test it out. Nothing fell off the wall so I figure it should hold up to hurricane force winds.

In my last post I pretty much slammed dogs as the wretched and uncivilized beasts that they are. Out of fairness, I thought I would add a few thoughts to the whole pet topic, this time speaking of cats.

Now I could spend a few hours rationalizing why cats are so much smarter than dogs. But in reality, my experience tells me that cats aren't all that sly. While dogs have the intelligence of a retarded child, I think cats are more akin to the intelligence of a somber house plant. This fact is actually one of the cool things about cats. Instead of jumping around like a wild beast, cats are cool and standoffish. They simply aren't smart enough to require very much human stimulation. So there is very little blabbering and pandering. The cats just keep to themselves, which is really a great quality. Come to think of it, Cats' stupidity can actually be a source of comic relief. My cat, Chenzo, likes to chase after balls and I got a great idea when chenzo and I were hanging out in the loft one night. I wanted to see if Chenzo would chase after the ball if I threw it over the loft railing. Well he did, and fortunately I caught him midair before he carreened to the floor 12 feet below.

It's amazing darwin didn't do away with cats eons ago, but I think they are really great pets for people who don't care for panting, slobbering retards.

Jumpin' on the Bandwagon

2004-11-18T21:47:00.000-08:00

I first heard the word 'blog' probably a year and a half ago on some nerd website and just passed it off for cyber-geek types who are too introverted for normal social interaction.

Well here I am. I am a newly born nerd jumping on the blog bandwagon. I do have to say, the popularity of blogs definetly influenced my decision to infest this crooked corner of cyberspace. I got into reading my brother's blog and a few friends' and I sort of liked the chance to keep up with people without the effort of actually interacting. It's so marvelously dysfunctional, I had to have my piece of it. Maybe this is social interaction for the TV generation...just sit back and read. Little effort required.

So where to pick up? What to rant about?....afterall ranting is what blogs are all about, right?

Here's a few topics I'm considering discussing over the next couple of blogs:
Blowing up chickens, and why it's the fun thing to do;
Getting Married and maybe some other philosophical stuff;
Flatulation: so common yet so taboo.
Ranting about Southern conservatives (bound to be a topic at some point);
My career or lack thereof and where I should go with it;

Putting this list together, I'm not quite sure what I want this blog to become. I could use this space as a diary, a philosophical rant or even as a creavite outlet for comedy. Who knows?

But right now is time for comedy!!

I don't know what started the whole idea of keeping dogs as a cool pet but I think the idea is a pretty lousy one. For one, dog's are not a clean animal. They drool. They snivel. They fart. These are not qualities I would choose for an object of affection, let alone as my 'best friend'. I think what bothers me most about dogs is the fact that they essentially resemble retarded humans walking on all four's with a choke chain. Really dogs are pretty stupid creatures and their intelligence is pretty inline with that of a retarded child. They grunt, they drool, they fetch the paper, if you are lucky they defecate in the designated areas. Why people elect to harbor these sniveling, retarded creatures in their home, I will never know.

Now what I really can't get over is people who drive around town with the head of one of these retarded beasts hanging out the window of their car. If walking around town with a retard on a leash weren't bad enough they choose to showcase these works of drooling flem at high rates of speed for all the world to be disgusted by. If you had a retarded child--let's just call him mongo--would you let mongo hang his head out the window to drool all over god's earth?

The scariest part of the whole dog's-head-out-the-window is my deep rage that is invoked by these filthy beasts. It's a feeling that makes me grit my teeth; a hatred so fierce I cannot bear to look away from this spectacle. I fear that one day this hatred could grow into more than just a fierce hatred.....A day where I retrofit a 'dog-club' onto the side of my truck and then drive through the night seeking to rid the world of wind-blown dog-head.

I sense a therapy session coming on.