Only one more day left before I have to go back to the office. Time has gone by TOO fast the last 6 days that I've been off! I've gotten a lot of things accomplished here at home that were in NEED of being taken care of, and I have also gotten some well deserved rest [despite the fact that I've stayed up until the wee hours of the morning most of these nights!]....

One thing that has been accomplished is the final touches on the new porch! The roomie stained the floor and steps and then painted the outside trim. It turned out really good I think! Of course I have pictures to show off:

Here's the stairway....I'm not real fond of stains that are SO natural that they look like they haven't been touched, so we went with a 'colored' stain....this shade is called "chocolate"....and for good reason....it really DOES look like chocolate!

I took this picture during the late afternoon, so it might be kind of hard to see with the shadows, but this is the floor part of the porch...the stain actually has a kind of high gloss look. Nightbug loved it when she saw it in person the other day, so I'm sure that everyone else will too!

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In other adventures today:

----> Cindy returned home from her trip to her place at the beach today and was NOT in a good mood! Apparently she had some problems with her dog Zeus...he didn't like the fact that she was going to put a leash on him, so he tried to attack her! This is VERY out of character for him, so he's off to the vet's later this week to see if he's having pain issues again from a surgery several months ago. Usually an animal will be aggressive if they're in some degree of pain, so she wants to have him checked out.

Another annoyance was the fact that her cell phone didn't seem to be working. She complained that it wasn't holding a charge, so she brought it over to the local electronics expert [ME] and asked me to look at it. I opened the phone and hit the power button. The phone was fully charged and I didn't see anything else wrong with it.....Cindy looked at me with a shocked expression and asked, "how in the hell did you get it to come on?!" I replied, "um, I pressed the power button......." Then the screen went dark and she says, "Ha! See Mr. Expert, it just died again!" A quick touch of a key and the screen lit up again. As it turns out, the only thing that was wrong with the phone was user error....she didn't realize that you have to turn the phone ON to use it....OR that the backlight will go off after a determined amount of time.   So a quick reset of her backlight duration from 7 seconds to "always on" and she was on her way!

----> Not long after Cindy went back across the street to finish unpacking [and hide her shame of being cell phone illiterate!] I get a desperate call......"GET OVER HERE NOW!!!!" Then the line went dead! My first thought was that....well, to be honest, I didn't know WHAT to think, so I tore out of the house and yelled for Chris to follow me.....when we got across the street Cindy met us at the front door and said, "there's a huge SNAKE on my porch!!" I looked over, and sure enough....there he was!                                                       It was a black snake that was at LEAST 30 feet long with fangs protruding from his mouth at least 18 inches! He was curled up on the chair ready to devour any living creature that came within striking distance! Being the brave soul that I am [not to mention a quick thinker!] I deduced that Cindy should immediately abandon her belongings and run for the hills, thus solving the problem of the evil serpent that was hell bent on assuming control of her home! Chris the roomie came up with what we all decided was a bit more plausible of an idea.....he said that I should go get his shotgun so that we could blow the snake into little tiny bits. That idea would have worked had it not been for the fact that the snake was on a brand new wicker chair that Cindy had just paid $65 for last week! She seemed to be dissatisfied with the idea of blowing away her brand new chair to kill a snake. So we opted instead to get one of those "jar on a high shelf grabbing" contraptions and a shovel to solve our problem. I went to the barn and got a shovel and joined Chris back at the snake pit......he somehow managed to grab the snake by the head and toss it into the driveway where I was standing. Cindy screamed, I jumped, and started towards the snake.....I raised the shovel high above my head and prepared to whack him when Chris asks me, "what in the HELL are you doing??!!" I explained that I'd seen a similar situation on an episode of "COPS" yesterday and that the officers said the best way to dispose of the snake was to whack him on the head, thereby knocking him unconscious so that he could be removed from the area.                                                                                             

Chris didn't think it would work because if the snake woke up while being transported to his new home, then someone could get bitten. Hmmmm.....I guess I hadn't thought about it from THAT angle! So Chris grabs the shovel [meanwhile, the snake is looking at us as though to say, "um, hello? Dangerous serpent here...are you going to do something or stand there and talk all day?!"] and then proceeds to chop the snake's head off! He took the body to the back yard and threw it into the pasture that borders Cindy's yard, while I tossed the head over the fence into the neighbor's yard. Cindy doesn't like them too much, so she actually found it quite amusing to think of the "cow" who lives next door stumbling upon a disembodied snake head in her yard!   I made a mental note to myself not to piss Cindy off because if I were to find something like that in MY yard, I'm sure I'd have a stroke or something!!

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So....
that's about it for today! I hope everyone had a good holiday! Say your prayers for me tomorrow..I need the advance well wishes before I go back to the office on Wednesday!





                 

To start things off tonight, I'm going to launch a formal complaint about something that really shouldn't mean anything----

The homepage of Blogstream lists the most recently updated blogs as well as the most popular. Since I was waiting for a video to process on YouTube that I'll be sharing on "SIDE B" this evening, I decided to see where I fall in the rankings these days. Yes, I know I know...nobody pays attention to that list....but I've always had this curiosity about it...sort of like the Nielsen ratings for tv shows. When I started here in 2006, I was on page 10 or something and have since moved to page 6. I decided to see where I was in the "Life" category, where my blog is stationed....I was a bit stunned by some of the ones that are more "popular" than mine....and then I came across one that REALLY made me compare Blogstream's list to the Nielsens....the blog's title is "I SHIT MYSELF".  No, I am NOT kidding. Even worse than the title and subject matter was that the damn thing hasn't been updated since December of 2005!!! So, like the Nielsens, it seems that someone who talked about crapping themselves 3 years ago and then fled into the night is more interesting than good ol' me! I think it's time for the powers that be to do some cleaning out of the attic and dump all these abandoned blogs....but then thinking back to the response that I got from the guy a while back when I had an issue, maybe he likes reading about grown women crapping themselves?

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Ok, so on to another subject.....

I received a visit from a dear friend of mine today....Blogstream's one and only NIGHTBUG!! She was in town visiting relatives & ditching, er...dropping off her nephew and decided to drop by for a little bit. Since she's never been to Casa de BryM, I gave her a grand tour of the place and she got to see the new porch live and in person! I think that she would back me up when I say that the pictures do not do it full justice! Of course it helped matters that it was a beautiful day outside---that always makes porch sitting much more enjoyable!

Unfortunately, Nightbug's visit was all too brief as she had left her dog in the care of her relatives while she was out visiting and had to get back to him before he ended up in therapy with abandonment issues. So I walked Bug back to her car and immediately tripped over something....it was a bit embarassing to say the least--I've never tripped in my own yard before! Poor Bug was so embarassed for me....or was it for HERSELF??!!   You see, upon closer inspection I realized that what I'd tripped over was the muffler on Nighbug's car!! It protruded 14 inches from the bottom of her car!! It resembled some sort of primitive rocket launcher----I questioned her about this, and she replied that "it came with the car......" A likely story! Anyone who's read Nightbug's blog will know that she's in cohoots with rabid zombie squirrels intent on taking over planet Earth!!

Seriously though.....poor Bug was mortified.....but not nearly as mortified as she was when exiting my driveway....it seems that this rocket launching exhaust pipe is designed to make the car sound "tricked out"....I was expecting her to start playing some Speedy Gonzales maracas music and make her car bounce up and down!                                                                                                      

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And that was my day.....

For anyone who's interested, I'm posting something on my OTHER blog here (which I'm sure according to Blogstream is far less interesting that a grown woman pooping her britches!) called Side B....I'm doing it over there because it's a large file and I didn't want to bore anyone to tears on THIS blog....

It could only happen in my neighborhood:

Pedro the Goat came to live with my neighbors Todd & Christi a couple of days ago. He was a rescue...apparently he'd wandered into the yard of one of Todd's friends and this friend felt that Pedro would be happy if he went to live with Todd & Christi. Of course ANY animal would be happy living there because Christi is a sucker for an animal with a sad story---such as Sadie the blind dog, or Rudolph the Red-beeked Rooster.                                         
Now, Pedro has apparently grown accustomed to people being around because he was NOT happy when Christi decided to put him on a chain at the border of her yard and mine. *Note to self: thank Christi for chaining an unhappy bleating goat 20 feet from my house! Anyway---Pedro was quite unhappy about his accomodations and was very vocal about it while the four of us (Christi, Todd, Chris the roomie, and I) stood in the back yard earlier this evening. Since the post holding Pedro's chain was 3 feet tall, we all felt that he would be secure, although I wondered aloud how in the world we'd keep him QUIET!!

It was coincidence that Todd & Christi left to have dinner in town at the same time that Chris and I decided that it was time for some food ourselves....and since it's not yet time for our bi-monthly trip to the grocery store, we went into town as well for some grub. When we came back, we didn't notice anything unusual and went about our business. Chris was watching a movie and I was working on my soon to be revealed all new website when the doorbell rang. It was Todd & Christi......

"Where's my goat?!" Christi insisted.

"HUH?" was my response.

Yes. It seems that Pedro was MISSING!!

At first, Christi and Todd thought that maybe Chris and I had played some sort of joke on them and hidden Pedro---we'd talked about how funny it'd be to chain him on Cindy's back deck to see her reaction when she gets home from the beach tomorrow--but we insisted we had nothing to do with Pedro's mysterious disappearance. It was then that the four of us started out on our adventure:

I grabbed my flashlight & one for Chris. We went into the dark cool night looking for Pedro. We checked the back yard, the side yard, the field behind the house, and we even checked up and down the main road. There was no sign of Pedro anywhere! Chris and Todd rode up and down the street in our neighborhood while Christi knocked on all the neighbor's doors inquiring about the missing goat.

The four of us met back up at the last place that Pedro had been seen.....the creek that divides our yards. It was then that yours truly spotted something: there, in the mud was a hoof print! A CLUE!! I called Shaggy & Velma...er, Chris and Todd....over to look at it. Daphne...er, Christi...concluded that someone {or someTHING} had pulled Pedro up the bank of the creek!   

What happened next could ONLY happen in MY neighborhood....to me....

Christ and I searched the entire area from the creek to the street for hoof prints and goat poop. Christi deduced the following scenario of Pedro's disappearance:

• Bandits had been staking out the neighborhood for the last two days. When they saw all of us leave at the same time, they sprang into action. There were four..no, SIX of them. They snuck up the creek, grabbed Pedro & then dragged him back to the street where they threw him into the back of a van with all of the windows blacked out and then went speeding into the night. Christi felt they were going to either send a ransom demand or worse....EAT HIM! Apparently there are those that find goat to be quite tasty!   I cautioned Christi not to panic until she got a part of his horn sent to her in the mail.
  

So here we are....going up and down the street at nearly 10:30 in the evening looking for hoof prints and poo....we eventually gave up and headed back to Christi & Todd's place.....the poor thing Christi went inside to look on Craigslist to see if anyone had posted an ad about having found a wandering goat...or perhaps a ransom demand.

As Todd and I stood talking in the back yard, I shined my flashlight towards the house. Their sunroom isn't enclosed at the bottom, so there's a rather large area where you can see directly under the house....my light hit something shiny----

IT WAS PEDRO!!!

He'd somehow managed to get the chain off of the pole it was attached to and had ended up under the sunroom! Now here's the FUNNIEST part of the WHOLE ordeal......when Christi went into the house, she'd walked right by where Pedro was, and had even stepped OVER the chain and didn't even notice him!!!

So that's the story of how BryM saved the day....and Pedro the Goat!

    

Well it's been a day.....

I had to get up at 6am to call into work to let them know that I wouldn't be in today. I struggled with the decision for days--no, really....I did! By the time that I go back on Wednesday of next week, it will have been 7 days since I've been at my desk, and you KNOW what that means:

• 10 voicemails, 6 of which will be from the guys in the field saying, "Gee, you need to change your announcement. It says you'll be in on Friday."
  
• 120 emails, 119 of which will be from my boss demanding to know why I didn't answer the question that I answered on Tuesday before I left.
  
• Scowls from the hens because I *DARED* to take vacation....nevermind the fact that THEY will be on vacation in two weeks from my return date.
  
• Panic looks from my boss because *GASP* I'm behind in my work because I *DARED* to take vacation...AND didn't come in on the day that I didn't get off in the MIDDLE of said vacation. Naturally, this will have caused the complete collapse of the medical industry as we know it....all MY fault of course.
  

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After I left the voicemail for my boss, I attempted to go back to bed [considering I'd only had 3 hours of sleep, it didn't seem like an unreasonable request!] but the roomie had a better idea--"Let's go to the Waffle House for breakfast!" Knowing that I am always up for a good helping of almost burnt-to-a-crisp hashbrowns, I agree and we headed out. Along the way, we got behind Mozelle---the old lady who used to live next door to us. "Mo" is a very nice lady, but she's nearing 800 years old and her memory isn't what it used to be...and neither are her driving skills. It's a 7 mile trip into town from where she lives, but it takes her nearly half an hour to get there!     As it turns out, she was headed to the Waffle House too---lucky us!
You see, much as we love ol' Mo, she can be quite the story teller at times......to hear her tell it, she's the most respected & loved "old bat" in town.....or where ever she happens to be. When she moved away from our neighborhood a few years back [to her place at the beach] we'd visit her [she was a neighbor down THERE too!] and it was the same thing....she was the most loved and respected, yada yada yada.....suffice it to say, she'd greet people that she's "known for 50 years" and they wouldn't have a clue who she is!
It was the same way this morning. *sigh
Now, if Mo's tall tales weren't enough to start my morning off right, I had to contend with taking a big gulp of SOUR tea before my breakfast arrived! Folks, there's not many things in this world that taste worse than sour tea-----except of course for rotten chicken.....which was served to me on a biscuit this morning.      

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Once the horror of breakfast was over, it was back home and time to get my work assignment for the day---the roomie was off too and he feels that a day off of work means that you spend all day working in or around the house....or both.

I do not share this same philosophy.

So he ended up staining the floor and steps of the front porch while I watched. Now, before you start "boo-ing" me, keep in mind that he bought exactly ONE paintbrush to do this task, AND disregarded the handy gadget that I'd bought to do the job....it's this thing where you fill up this thing with the stain and then brush it on....a project that took him all day to do could have been completed in half an hour, but MY gadget would cause "runs"....heaven forbid!

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Other than that it was a pretty boring day!

Now, my fellow Blogstreamers, I have a question-------


WHERE IN THE HELL IS GLORIA?????????!!!!!!!!!
 

I have to admit that last night was a first for me in quite a long time. I was absolutely UNINSPIRED---I couldn't think of ANYTHING to write about here!                                                                                                            


I had plenty to talk about, but just couldn't focus I suppose!

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Yesterday at work I got quite a chuckle out of a conversation that I had with a customer. His name is Roy and he's quite a character. He owns 3 scanning clinics in Texas---I was calling him because 2 of his 3 clinics are due to have some pretty time consuming hardware & software upgrades done on some equipment he has. So as I was talking to him about the length of the upgrades & what days we could send someone out to do them, he is listening but I can almost hear his blood pressure going up! He tells me, "look son, I'm just a poor boy from East Texas and I can't afford to have two of my machines down for a whole day....." He then proceeds to tell me that he pays out almost $30,000 a month for all of the contracts that he has with us and that we should be willing to work with him so that he doesn't lose revenue from the equipment being down!                                                                                              

   He was REALLY nice about the whole thing, so I showed him some mercy and agreed to work with the suits to accomodate his request---even though his request would cost MY company several thousand dollars! I could just picture this Texan with faded blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a big belt buckle talking to me from his cell phone----located in his $50,000 Hummer & trying to convince me that he's some poor soul who can't afford milk for his baby! Like I said though....since he was extremely nice {and had me laughing}, I made my case to the upper idiots at my company and I think that we'll be able to handle his request for doing the work outside normal business hours! Hey who knows....maybe one day I'll get a call from a lawyer saying that I was named in his will for having been so nice!   ????? Hey..it could happen!

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Since I know you're all hanging on the edge of your seats to hear about day 1 of my vacation-----

Actually I didn't do much of anything today. The roomie's uncle came over and finished painting the new front porch!! It looks great! He did the railing and the pickets (is that what  you call them?) in this high gloss paint so that it will always look like it's somewhat wet. The floor of the porch will be stained a medium colored stain---and you'd NEVER guess there are so many different colors of stain until you start trying to decide which one to use!!                                                                                                         



Once the roomie's uncle finished with the painting & left, I decided to tackle a project I've been dreading for a year----cleaning out the spare bedroom. To say it's become a disaster area would be an understatement! It's been the 'catch-all' for some time now----Christmas ornaments, computer parts, exercise equipment, old clothes....and the list goes on! The problem is that this room is only about 10 X 8 and in addition to all the crap that's been thrown in there, it's also where Sammy the Ferocious Guard Poodle has his "house"....which is large enough for a St Bernard----AND Miss Bigglesworth the cat also has her food & water in there. Combine all this stuff with the fact that there's also a double bed & dresser in there and you can understand why I openly weep whenever I have to clean the clutter!!                                                                                       

   The first task was to disassemble the bed---in the 5 years that I've lived in this house this bed has been slept on exactly ONE time, so I decided that it was time for it to go. Of course the damn bed is about 800 years old, so while trying to take it apart, I received various bruises & cuts....and almost bonked myself on the head a couple of times!! It was NOT fun!! Naturally I also had to contend with Sammy & Miss Bigglesworth staying under my feet the whole time because I was in THEIR room!! Two hours later the room FINALLY had just a little more space than before, although it came at a high price. I'm surprised I remember any of it because I finally DID bonk myself on the head with a renegade dart board that didn't like being hung on the part of the wall I chose for it. The pain on my head wasn't top on my list of concerns for long though because after that damned dart board hit my head, it landed on my foot.                    

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After I hobbled away from the bomb shelter I call a spare bedroom, I got online and decided to download some songs off of Limewire. That was going along just swell until I start to download this one song that I'd been looking for----I get this big pop-up from my anti-virus that tells me this file is trying to download a trojan horse onto my computer!!!                                                                                    



There are few things in life that irritate me more than these boneheads in the world who have nothing better to do than create malicous code to try and infect computers all over the world. I mean what's the point? It's not like they're going to gain anything from it! Besides, most viruses out there are blasted into oblivion with the simplest of anti-virus software!

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So that was my exciting day! I say that tongue in cheek, but hey--at least I didn't have to contend with the office today!!