Category: general

Two of my friends at work had gasoline siphoned out of their cars while they were in the parking lot; during work.

I wonder what puts one in this circumstance?  Is this person on foot?  With a length of rubber hose coiled and hidden under his sweatshirt and a couple milk jugs tied through his beltloops, maybe?  Or are they driving?  Burning gas to steal gas, likely not even breaking even due to standard fuel economies and the volumetric constraints of such thievery?  It seems such a strange position to find yourself in.  You really need gas that bad?  Wouldn’t it be easier, and less risky, to panhandle on the train for a couple hours?  Hell, if you’re on the train, you don’t need gas anyway – you just got free money!  You’re a green thief.

Do you guys know how to steal gas?  It’s not hard.  Open the fuel door, remove the cap, drop in about three feet of rubber hose, make a loop that touches the ground, and suck hard on the loose end until the gas get to the bottom of your loop.  Holding your loop, drop the free end low to the ground to “pour” out your pilfered gas!  Congratulations, you are now a petty thief.  And, if I may add, I think you’ve chosen a poor field of thieving to focus on.  What’d you get there, maybe five gallons?  I mean, if you got much more you’d have a hard time carting it around, all sloshy and heavy.  So you saved $15 and now you have to carry a five gallon container back to your lair.

Doesn’t seem worth it.  Like those dudes who break into traffic light control boxes to rip out 300 wires for the copper  I bet the copper is a better take.  It’s also a pretty jerk crime.  One of my employees who got siphoned ended up with $600 worth of damage, everyone else just leaves work to find their car on empty.  I guess all crimes are kinda jerk crimes, except maybe jaywalking… that seems pretty innocent.  Illegal u-turns when it’s safe, that sort of thing.  But anyway…

Stealing gas seems to be admitting your stretched pretty thin, nothing better to do, maybe bored or something.  Maybe it’s kids.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  Goodnight.

Man, Sharaun made some yum dinner.

I can still taste the garlic and onions in my mouth.  No, I might not make the best conversation partner but they are certain pungent flavors which linger in the mouth that I absolutely dig, regardless of unappealing they may make my breath.  A good tobacco is one; pipe, cigar (certainly not the wet-ashes aftertaste that is American cigarettes; making the “why” of my sometimes-vice all the murkier).  Garlic is another, as is onion, and somewhat pungent meats, like lamb. A strong cup of coffee; a properly malty beer (be easy with those hops!, meister); chocolate.  I know there are more, but Sharaun looked at me all crazy when I asked her to name some.

But anyway, it was a fancy dinner to be sure – and I even downed a nice glass of red wine alongside it (yet another pleasant mouth-memory, this lingering malaise can be damned).

The salad had red bell pepper and little bits of red onion, the meatloaf was her “Greek turkey” thing… made with spinach, feta cheese and pine nuts and topped with a homemade tzatziki sauce.  As I enjoyed each bite I kept thinking, “Man, this is some fancy junk!  I mean… like restaurant-fancy and whatnot!  No really… who else has got a wife making him this kind of fare?!”  I think the gourmet spread actually helped me make dents in this cold or sickness or whatever.  Such a well-met meal was able to sneak into those chinks and and cracks and pockets, filling them with delicious and displacing fever and weariness.  And, with the help the pine nuts and the feta and the red onion I’m sure tonight will be my eve of conquer – the night I kick this sick.

It’s good, too.  I need to get back to work something awful, and need to shave my head and face (everything from the neck-up, I suppose you could say) even more.  And… if, by some extra God-given grace, I wake feeling 100% – I’d like to spend an hour at the gym before the sawmill.  One can want, right?

Goodnight internet.

I spent all weekend cooking in my own skin.

Last night I woke so cold (that deceptive, you know it’s not real, cold of a fever) that I stumbled into the living room in the dark to grab another blanket to cover with.  As I shivered my way back to sleep I stuck the digital thermometer in my ear for a few seconds.  It beeped and I hit a button on my cellphone to get enough light to read by (why, digital thermometer people, would you not backlight the temperature readout?): 102.1°, it said.

Reluctantly, I arose again to pop another couple Tylenol.  At the same time I swallowed a Sudafed, already knowing it wouldn’t, like the others I’d popped before it hadn’t, do a dang thing to diminish the tight ball of pressure in my head – the stuffy pain that I could will to one side of my face or the other by putting that side into the pillow.  I don’t know why that muck is so hard to get out, when it seems to be beating against my cheekbones and eyes all day to do just that.

I thought maybe be tonight I’d be on the mend.  But no, I’m still fevered.  Not running as high as the previous days, but I’m still dosing with a steady regimen to keep the numbers in check.  It goes in cycles, and every few hours I’ll break out in a warm sweat and feel so much better for about sixty minutes.  Much past that, though, and the heat returns to my skin and I get a bone-tiredness that takes me back to the couch or the bed to wait out another cycle.

I know how I got sick; it was that weirdo lady on the plane.  So strange with her two kids, one of them named Sophia who was two-and-something years old yet wouldn’t stop fondling for her mom’s breast and crying.  “As you can see, I’ve not quite weaned her yet,” she said.  Hey, nothing a whit strange by world standards… I suppose – but that wasn’t what made you so odd.  Anyway, you told me as we were parting ways in the terminal: “I’d shake your hand but I’ve got a nasty cold.”  And then there you and your family were, in 29A, 29B, and 29C.  And us, occupying 28D, 28E, and 28F, we must have been well within the zone of communicability.  Oh I know it was you, weird red-headed lady… but I don’t blame you… you got it from someone too.

Luckily, most of the others in the house seem to have recovered.  It’s just me sticking it out.  I’ve all but decided to call in sick tomorrow, but am stubbornly “playing it by ear” until the alarm bell rings.

Until then, goodnight.

Florida!

Vacation means daytime TV and daytime TV means seeing some of the worst.  Today I saw some “doctor” scaring his audience into believing that what’s making them fat are the chemicals which are leeching into their foods and bodies from things like Tupperware, shower curtains, and frying pans (he called them “obesogens'” a wonderful made-up word).

Yes, this is what’s making you fat, America!  Not your diet, not your inactivity; it’s the unseeable, unavoidable chemicals you’re taking in every day!  It’s not your fault; when you tip the scale after breakfasts of  fried eggs and hollandaise sauce it’s your frying pan that’s to blame.

People – you are grasping at straws.  Even if these things do somehow alter fat absorption, the levels in which you’re ingesting them are negligible at worst.  Stop blaming demons and spirits and phantoms.  You have much to much time to worry about things that ultimately don’t matter.  Go to the gym and eat less.  Advice I could stand to re-take myself…

I can’t wait to start vacation.  Yeehaw!

Until later.