Um, er, uh.....heh heh Have you ever done something kind of stupid that you didn't realize at the time that you'd even done anything at all, regardless of whether it was stupid or not??

Maybe it will be simpler if I just tell you what happened. Last night, I wrote a "not so rare anymore" second post. Afterwards, I decided to change some of the settings on my account, namely the option of being emailed when certain favorites of mine are updated. Well...it seems that instead of selecting "NO" to being emailed when these blogs are updated, I selected "NO" for whether or not my blog was active! Oops!

LUCKILY, I received stern warnings of dismemberment and death because I'd "closed" my blog, which of course had me scratching my head because I was like, "what the hell have you been smoking...my blog isn't closed!" Imagine MY surprise when I clicked on the link to bring me here, and it was indeed closed!!

So...fear not. You all here can't get rid of me THAT easily!!

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Now, as for my day:

>>>I'm in a class at work for the next three weeks. On the one hand, it's BLECH! because classroom training is so freakin boring!! However, the BLECH isn't as bad as it COULD be because there are certain benefits to the boredom:
>30 minute break in the morning
>90 minute lunch
>20 minute break in the afternoon
>another 20 minute break in the afternoon
>leaving before 5pm (after having only been there since 8:30..so already I was going to be paid for 30 min I wasn't supposed to!)

Yes, class has it's advantages!!

Although.......(you just KNEW there'd be one!)........I don't know if I've ever mentioned my creepy co-worker before. Not "Joe"...him I could handle because he was just sort of nerdy. The guy I'm talking about now I'll just call "Crazy Man" because I really can't think of a good anonymous name that's easy to remember. Anyway, this is the dude that during our first training class for work kept insisting that I have lunch with him and followed me to every break. Yes, very creepy dude. Anyway, it got to the point where I'd have to make excuses to not have lunch with him (imagine someone eating with his mouth open ) and I even got to the point of intentionally avoiding him when it was break time...NOT an easy task when you sit beside someone you want to avoid!! Believe it or not, I managed to do it more than once though!

Well, since that class, Crazy Man has continued to be an annoyance, but since our shifts are different and he actually got reassigned to another part of the floor the most I have to put up with is feeling the presence of someone behind me and then turning around to discover it's him. Yeah, that's annoying, but he's easily gotten rid of when my phone rings. I was very happy when last week he told me that he would NOT be in THIS training class.

So I get to class this morning. Guess what.

You guessed it. He's in there. Luckily, I've managed to have a seat that is NOT next to him, which makes the lunch ordeal easier to handle this time around. I can get out the door and vanish before he gets out of the classroom!! Though today I did spot him looking around in the parking lot for me!! GAAHHHH!! Why do I seem to be a magnet for the weird ones??!!

So that's my story.

Somebody shoot me. Please!

It seems lately that I've had so much on my mind that my "rare" double posts on my blog aren't so "rare" anymore! Such is the case this evening. Since April of 2006 I've kept a blog here on the 'stream, and I've seen many folks come and go...and more often than not their departure is very abrupt. One day you go over to a favorite blog and you get the dreaded "sorry, that blog has been deactivated" statement at the top of your screen, and just like that...they're gone.

I've learned a couple of things about this phenomenon called "blogging" during the last year and a half or so. The first thing I've learned is that there are a LOT of people in this world who are extremely talented at writing, as is evidenced in their blog entries. The second thing I've discovered is that once you gain any sort of "following" on your blog, keeping it regularly updated and interesting can actually turn into quite a daunting task at times. Now having said THAT, it bears mention that having a "following" isn't always a GOOD thing. There are people out there in internet land whose only excitement in life is to surf around on these blog sites and then proceed to launch an attack on whomever they can find. In a lot of cases that I've seen, it's generally someone who updates their blog on a fairly regular basis, thus making it easier for the cyber jerk to wage their war on those who regularly take time to write something in their blog.

I've seen it happen on Blogstream more than once during the year and a half that I've been here. I've also seen it on other sites as well. It just makes me sick to see someone put so much of themselves into maintaining a blog and then be attacked to the point where they end up eventually just giving up and closing their blog. All because of some asswipe that has nothing better to do while sitting at home in his 1971 model single wide trailer watching black and white television and scratching his nuts through his gravy-stained boxer shorts (that are a size too small for him) besides lurking around on the internet talking a bunch of smack to everyone in sight!! In my opinion, people who do that sort of thing are NO better than those morons who sit around all day (most likely in the trailer across the way from the bulley in the trailer park!) thinking up new ways to rip people off over the internet...also known as SPAMMERS.

FORTUNATELY, I have personally never had an issue like that come up either with my blog here or any of the others that I maintained in the past. Actually, that's probably more fortunate for the internet jerk who gets off on acting like an ass, because I'm NOT one to let anyone walk over me either in the REAL world OR the VIRTUAL world. I may suck at HTML stuff, but I know enough about computers and the internet to make a pretty miserable time for anyone who'd dare to insinuate themselves onto my blog and proceed to talk shit. In fact, there are some things that I do rather enjoy eating for breakfast when necessary:

* Bill collectors (they taste like chicken by the way!)
* SPAMMERS (they taste much like what I'd imagine a pile of cow shit tastes like!)
* Internet bullies (they taste like chicken too...a very dry, tasteless, and overcooked chicken!)
* Stalkers (they taste like what I'd imagine rotten eggs would!) This is not to be confused with bullies...stalkers are those people who follow you around on the web, send countless emails, and just don't want to seem to take no for an answer until you get really rude with them...at which point they become bullies.
* Kirby vacuum cleaner sales people who try their damndest to get inside your house so that they can show you (for 7 hours) how this "miracle machine" works even when you have a sign on the mailbox that very prominently features the words "NO SOLICITATION".

Another thing that I've noticed about internet bullying is that more often than not, the harassment is directed towards women. In fact, with one exception, every person I've known who's been attacked via their blog has been a woman. This leads me to believe that the majority of these asses are men. Men who are either what I described a couple of paragraphs above, or some punk ass teenager who's hold up in his room stalking around on the internet while his mother is calling him downstairs for dinner. Whatever the case, you can bet that the chances are these guys can't get a date so they occupy their time with playing God on the internet. Or playing with themselves.

Ok, so I'm officially dismounting my high horse. For now. I'm off to bed now....long day tomorrow unfortunately! *sigh Oh well..it beats the hell out of sitting at home doing nothing, right?

My morning started out much as I had expected that it would. I got up, got ready for work and headed into the office. I had a few minutes to spare, so I was just sitting in my truck listening to Edgar Bergin and Charlie McCarthy on my XM Radio when my cell phone rang. It was Chris, my roomie, letting me know that his sister-in-law had finally (after three days plus) called his brother to talk about coming home. Needless to say, I had mixed emotions about that because I wasn't really thrilled about the way she'd gone about doing things, but I was happy nonetheless that at least they were going to talk. So I told Chris that I'd call him in the early afternoon when I took lunch to find out how things had gone between them.

So lunch time rolls around and I head outside and call Chris. The little shit didn't answer his phone, which of course drove me nuts because, well...inquiring minds want to know!! Seriously, I was concerned about what was happening, so I left a message and told him to call me as soon as he could.

A couple of hours goes by and my private line at my desk rings. I see that it's Chris so I pick it up and he proceeds to tell me some rather disturbing news:
It seems that when his sister in law left a few days ago, Chris's brother didn't give everyone the WHOLE story. The brother and his wife were apparently having a discussion about some problems in their marriage and when she disagreed with something that he said, he .....GET THIS....told her, "if you don't like the way things are, you can get the FUCK out!"

So, that's EXACTLY what she did! She grabbed her purse and walked out the door. It was at that point that Chris's brother decided to tell everyone that she had just mysteriously vanished without so much as a goodbye. Now, he had a few different reasons for doing this:
1) He is not in a situation financially to pay for a divorce. HOWEVER...his parents ARE. Making it seem as though SHE was at fault, he knew that his parents would take his side and pay for anything concerning the divorce.
2) This family is not only prominent in our little community, but extremely well respected. The story about her having up and left him with no warning would gain the sympathy of everyone in the community.

Of course, MY opinion is that he is just a big ass JERK!!

Ok so that's the end of the drama for now....HOPEFULLY!!!

In Other News:

>>>Remember a while back when I was talking about some really strange circumstances about my maternal grandmother's death? Well, my aunt just got back from Wisconsin (where they're from) and she brought home a box of some stuff that had belonged to her parents. While she was going through the box, she came across something VERY interesting: a deed and attached to it paperwork transferring the property from my grandmother to him. Now, there are a couple of strange things about this deed:

First of all, the area where the signatures were supposed to have been are conveniently distorted to the point where you can't make out the signatures.
Secondly, the deed is dated March of 1990. What's so bizarre about that? My grandmother supposedly died in January of 1969....21 years BEFORE the deed was transferred to my grandfather!!!
The aunt and I have come to a couple of conclusions...either she is still alive out there somewhere, OR she was alive as recently as 1990. Whichever is the case, we're convinced that she did NOT die in 1969!!! Yes, I am completely beside myself now!

>>>Remember "Sue", my colleague from work that "Joe", Chris and myself went over and did her yardwork? She'd been stressing pretty badly about the fact she'd not gotten a "regular" position with the company, and had pretty much been blackballed by one of the supervisors. The week before last though, she was approached by that very same supervisor and was offered a position in the area that he manages. Naturally, she took it so that she would have a better chance of being hired as a regular employee. So everything was beginning to work itself out. Anyway, I found out this afternoon that when she got to work yesterday, they fired her. The story that I heard was that she'd sent out some kind of "explicit" email. I'm not sure how much I believe that because she's not one prone to spending a lot of time on email unless she HAS to. If you all saw the volume that we get every day, you'd understand!! So now she's totally screwed!

Well, that's about all for now. Ya know, I think I'm going to have to sit down soon and start on that book I've been thinking of. I'd started one several months ago but hit a wall and stopped writing. I could make millions off the story of my crazy family & friends!!

G'nite!!

What I had intended to be a nice relaxing long weekend turned into three days of living in an episode of Knots Landing. I would compare it to Dallas, but I live on a cul-de-sac. From now on, I'm going to run away from home when I decide to take an extra day off from work!

The situation between the roomie's brother and the wife hasn't gotten any better. If anything, it's now gotten much worse. She still hasn't called or made any kind of attempt to come home. I just don't get it. When my brother made the decision to end his marriage with his first wife, he came home from work, sat her down and told her that it was over between them. Naturally she was VERY upset, but she'd have been even MORE upset had he not done things the way that he did. After nearly 14 years of marriage, he owed her that much. It's all worked out for the best...my brother is now remarried and is the happiest I've seen him his whole adult life. My ex sister-in-law is also remarried...I have no idea if she's happy (and frankly don't care!) but at least she's no longer carrying my family name! Is it just a LITTLE obvious I didn't care for her very much??

Now if the drama with roomie's brother isn't bad enough, today they had a pretty vicious argument that almost ended in a fist fight! I told roomie that it was just his brother venting...he needed someone to pick a fight with and since the wife is nowhere to be found, he chose the 1st person he happened to see. He called a little while later and apologized, which was commendable.

The house next door is almost finished. Another few days and it'll be finished. There have been a few people that have come by to look at it, but there's still a for sale sign in the front yard, so I figure that it hasn't sold as of yet. It's not an entirely bad looking house, but it's TINY!! It's less than 1300sq with three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. You can imaging how small the rooms are! From what I've heard, it's going to go on the market for roughly $130k ....you'd have to be crazy to pay that kind of a price for a house that small. Someone will though. There's a sucker born every minute.

Over in MY life>>>>>>

>>I am so disgusted with the government of the county that I live in. Get this: last year when I got Christine the Truck, I decided that I'd just transfer the tags from my Forenza to the truck so that it would be a little cheaper. Well, several weeks later I decided to re-tag the Forenza and drive it for a while, so I got new tags for it. Not long afterwards, the Forenza drove off into the sunset so I canceled the insurance and threw the tag into the toolbox on the back of the truck. Meanwhile, my tax notice comes in the mail for both the truck AND the Forenza. Being the slacker that I am, I put it into the letter holder and ended up completely forgetting about it! So just recently, I came across the bills and decided that I'd better get them paid. I go online to the DMV site and was just getting ready to put in my card information when I realized there was a HUGE mistake on the bills. It seems that they had sent two bills for the Forenza and NONE for the truck. It gets worse. The information on the bill showed that BOTH tags are still showing as registered to the Forenza! To make matters EVEN worse, I can't find the last tag that I had on the other car!! The last place I saw it was under the seat in my truck.....so somewhere between last November and now, the tag has grown legs and walked away! I just can't win for losing!!

>>I got a sharp dose of reality today: I am no longer YOUNG!! This is being made evident by certain events that have been happening to me for the last several months. The problem is that I've been having some issues with not being able to concentrate on much of anything unless I REALLY REALLY focus on it, as well as frequent periods of forgetfulness. The lack of concentration I can deal with...I've always been somewhat easily distracted, but the memory thing sort of frightens me. It's not just little things like forgetting to pick up bread at the grocery store or forgetting to return a phone call...it's much more serious than that. I'll be on my way somewhere and will completely go blank as to where it is that I'm headed and why I'm going there! There has actually been a couple of times that I've had to stop somewhere and sit there until I finally recall what I was supposed to be doing! That's a pretty frightening thing!! I've also found myself in the middle of doing something on the computer and going completely blank...it's especially bad when I'm making an entry in my blog. I'll be writing and then all of a sudden I'll forget what I was writing about. Only after I go back and re-read several times what I've written to that point do I remember what I was trying to say. My average blog entry can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to finish, whereas it used to be that I could pound out an entry in less than 2 minutes. Now, here's the REALLY bad news: my great grandfather lived to the ripe old age of 90-something, but unfortunately his last decade or so on planet Earth was not very good to him...as the story goes, he at one point decided that he was going to bury all of his money in the back yard of his house..and that's exactly what he did. Sadly, once he buried the money he couldn't remember where he'd buried it!! He was also known to wander away from home at times and end up lost in the woods near his house for several hours at a time. My grandfather only lived to be 57 but apparently he was also showing signs of "senility" when he died. Those two guys are on my dad's side of the family. Over on my mom's side of the gene pool....her father was actually diagnosed with Dementia...a condition that eventually caused his death. It was ironic that when his children looked back on things from the past, he'd actually been showing signs of the condition...... SINCE HIS 30s!! So given my family history, it's time to make a trip to the doc's office...something I am NOT looking forward to at all! Besides, if there IS something wrong, I'm not sure how I'd be able to handle it at this point in my life. It would be just my luck that me being one who cherishes the ability to remember even the slightest details about something that happened 30 years ago would end up with a condition that would wipe ALL of my memories out!

So that's about it for tonight! Hope everyone has a great week ahead!!

Can you all tell I've just had WAY too much to talk about today?? First of all, I had a friend comment that all of the pictures I have used on here never show me smiling, so I have since remedied that situation. You know who you are! hehe

I'm afraid that I've got some unfortunate news to report. I just came back from dinner with Chris and his family, and it looks like his sister-in-law has left for good. The evidence of her having an affair is mounting by the minute, and there is already talk of hiring an attorney, changing the locks, and suing the "other man" for alienation of affection. Yeah, here in NC a spouse can sue the "other person" if an affair can be proven.

The events of today have got me to thinking about relationships in general. As hard as it is to admit to yourself when it's just "over", I realize that it's even HARDER when you're the one who has to tell the one you're with that it's over. I've been there and done that. I even have a ratty old t-shirt from the ordeal. What sucks though is when that relationship has been going for many years and the time comes that you have to say goodbye....the pain is so intense that you think your head is going to explode...not to mention your heart. It's been my experience though, that it's better in the long run when you say SOMETHING. No matter what the problem is, when you've invested yourself in a relationship with someone, it's the very LEAST that you owe them...to say goodbye. Now, obviously if it's a situation of abuse it's a completely different scenario. What I'm talking about is when there's no one really at FAULT..it's just over..it's just not fair to up and leave without some closure. Even if one of the people has had an affair and wants out.....at least say goodbye. The situation with the roomie's brother is a good example. Whether she's had an affair or not...regardless of how ugly thing are going to get...it still could have been even a LITTLE less painful for everyone if she had just said goodbye. Doing things the way she has though, "goodbye" will never be enough now. Her mother an father in law have loved her as if she were their own daughter for many years now...and they are so hurt by this that it's not even funny.
Not to sound preachy here, but for anyone out there who may ever find themselves in a similar situation at any point in their life...remember this...no matter how much it may hurt, it's always a better thing to be fair and more importantly...honest. Yes, a relationship (or the end of it) IS indeed between the two involved...but there may also be others who will be hurting as well.
Ok, I promise that's all for tonight! G'nite everyone!