Ode to NyQuil

NyQuil, NyQuil, you never let me down;
Whenever I need you, you're always around,
To dry up my mucus when it's all green and brown.

You make me sleep like a fuckin log,
and out of my throat you keep the snog*.
(*-Snog, in this case, referring to the crap that drains down your throat when you sleep. I actually just made up the word so it fit, I hope no one notices.)
I used to feel all crappy and in a funk
But thanks to you, this weekend I shall be able to get rowdy and be all drunk.

You know it

Happy pop n' lock Thursday!

Mandate Proposition

I'm proposing the following:

If the proceeding are all true:
A) You own a convertible
B) It's sunny out
C) It's over 75 degrees

Your top should be required to be down. People who don't comply with these guidelines are pissing me off for some reason. Since this whole convertible thing is new to me, I'm the dumbass going 80 on the highway when it's 60 out with the top down getting an earache and loving the shit out of it. This, I don't expect of Foe Mofo.

All I'm sayin is, if it's absolutely perfect convertible weather out, and you have your top up, why did you pay the extra cash and put up with the extra wind/road noise of a convertible?


In other news, I'm lovin' me some independantly suspended rear-end love... It's like a totally different less-brutal car now.

Uncle JK

So, I'm gonna have a niece apparently, Ann just found out like 10 minutes ago or something. There's no point to this post, I just am sick of staring at this website I'm working on.

twofertuesday

Not sure what I'm referring to there.

How about a late weekend update?

Sure, don't mind if I do.

Friday: Hung out with the dog. Drank some beer. Caught up on my banking shit. Played Xbox.
Saturday: 9am-Drove to Granite City to start the swapping of my solid axle rear end for the independent suspension rear out of another guy's 01 Cobra.
1am-Came home to sleep after having every possible thing go wrong and take entirely too long on the swap, including me snapping one of my brake lines.
Sunday: 9am-Drove to Granite to finish out the rest of the swap, minus brakes.
6pm-Had Steve drive me to Enterprise to rent a car while we figured out how to get mine somewhere to get the brake line patched.
9pm-Slept.

There was the weekend.

Yesterday worked out fairly well. Had it towed to Carx in Granite at 3, they were done with it by 530, I was able to get the rental back to Enterprise w/o being charged for 2 days. So the total cost of the swap including incidentals (brake lines) was $167.49. Oh well. I have some independantly suspended rear lovin now, and it's pretty damn nice.

For those that give a shit, there's even a nice 4 step pictorial of the swap. Note the complexity difference between the IRS (pic 4) and the solid rear (pic 5).
http://forums.stlmustangs.com/index.php?showtopic=69067&st=0

Beyond getting my car actually finished yesterday, we got our house appraisal finally finished yesterday, and the countertop folks called to setup the install date for next monday, w00t. Funny enough, the appraiser thought that our current shitty countertops were nice and noted it in the appraisal, before Ellen told him that they were getting replaced.

FYI

For those who care, Hillary had her kid(s) this morning, two girls I think.

My subconcious is stupid and apparently sterotypes.

Actually had a dream about the E. Coli spinach last night. This is bizarre for two reasons:

1. I never dream about current "events".
2. I played Dead Rising for about 2 hours directly before going to bed last night.

Anyway, it played out like a crappy ABC movie. Apparently, the E. Coli spinach was deliberatly contaminated with the idea that only gay people like spinach salads, and thusly was a ploy to make all homosexuals sick.

Now, I absolutely have no idea where my brain got that from. I personally don't care for spinach salad myself, but I'm sure plenty of straight people do. And I'm equally sure plenty of homosexuals don't care for spinach salads. So obviously this is fundamentally flawed. I'm just relaying what my subconcious was watching on the dream television. It was weird.

General Tso Full

I really, really hope that the fine people at New China in Collinsville don't think that the General Tso's combo is a meal for one person. I've been eating on this fucker for 3 days now. I finally finished it off today for lunch, only because I was sick of looking at it in the fridge at work. And I'm completely fuxing stuffed.

I really want to put this under the tag "Chinese Food", but I just dont' think I talk about Chinese food enough on here.

I will say this, however. I greatly miss Yen Ching in Urbana.

And Lil Porgy's. Which is still there, but I just never get to go.

Schwiggity-schwang.

Knowledge Me Again

I had to school Ellen on Rap History 101 this weekend.

Here's what's she learned:
House of Pain is comprised of members of the Caucasian race.

TheMoreYouKnow'd!

'nother wierd one

So, there's apparently some code you can type into a Tivo (07701634, not sure why), but it will reveal the future. But not on TV, you actually experience it somehow. It was fucking weird. I was walking around in a prison jumpsuit, I remembered looking for this chick I knew, and she was like a rotting corpse.

The code actually was told to me (in dream) by some kid who was living in this basement dungeon-type thing. Just really bizarre dream.

Monday thang

Whew.

Friday: Dinner with El/Hel @ Ramon's. Came back, I drank jack for some reason (so tasty, probably). Watched The Jerk. Slept.

Saturday: Putzed around for a while, went to Fairview, bought some clothes, Dead Rising for the 360, and a RC Plane. Came home, flew plane for about 10 minutes, Ellen flew plane directly into large tree. It rocked. Endless shit was given.

About 6 or so, went over to Helens, and headed downtown for ItalianFest, where we met up with Nate and Beth. Much pseudo-Italian food and $3 16oz beers were had. We setup base between the liquor store and portapotties, and it was good. Eventually Clayton/Rachel met up with us. Did the I-fest for a while, then consolidated cars. Headed to Ducks, where drunken pool was played (my best game evar), expensive Jagerbombs were had, and we left due to shitty service (1 person working the whole place wtf). Headed over to Good Times, where good times were had. More shots, more beer, my hat got stolen by a 400lb bridesmaid. Which I'm really fine with, since it was $15, and she was gunning for my new John Deere shirt....and trying to take it off me in the bar. So, I was happy to let her 'borrow' the hat. Rachel took it upon herself to search the purses of the giant hookers in the parking lot, which I thought was funny, because while the prinicple of the matter sucked, it was a $15 hat, and definitely not worth getting Rachel's ass kicked over. I digress.

Headed home after that, hopped in the jacuzzi and continued to drink until sunrise, as it goes. Think we finally hit the sack around 730 or something retarded.

Sunday: Dog woke me up at noon. Bastard. Ate frozen pizza, fell asleep at 1 watching some shit on History. Woke up at 5. Got Chinese. Watched Inside Man. Went back to bed around 10. Oddly, I wasn't hungover at all, which was completely awesome. I thank Coors for that. I always seem to have diminished or non-existant hangovers on Coors Light. You'd think I'd learn that and drink more of it. I shall.

Good weekend. Ellen's gone next weekend, so I shall play with Mustangs and generally relax a lot prolly, before the Ides of October are upon us.

Skillet!

http://www.bahnder.com/images/Skillet

Pics of the squirrel encounter.

I whooped Mighty Thor's ass

So last night (beyond playing with squirrels) was the true test of Thor's valor. Ellen did a double-up vacuum job with the regular vac until it stopped finding Boris-hair. Then we sent Thor on a mission, and he got...more fucking hair and dust outta the carpet. Awesome. Set him loose bedroom, and apparently under the bed is dust hell.

I fucking love Thor.

Of baby squirrels and table tennis

So, let the dog out to piss when I got home last night. As he was running inside, I heard this squeaking, and say something kinda moving towards the yard. Pushed the dog inside before he saw whatever it was and freaked out. Wound up being a baby squirrel. Freakin' cute. Shakes a lot. Having never dealt with a baby squirrel before, we learned a lot of things yesterday:

-They enjoy climbing on khakis.
-They like riding on shovels
-It's hard to use a shovel to put a squirrel back in a tree
-They shake a lot.
-When baby squirrels fall from a shovel about 6' in the air, they make very pathetic sounds.

We wound up just puttin him (Skillet) down in the neighbor's yard, out of the dog's reach. Not sure if he wound up surviving or not. We have a lot of random baby squirrel pics now.

Um, oh, Ellen whoops my ass hardcore in Table Tennis on the 360. I need to practice. It's rather embarrassing.

Awesome.

So, since I've moved to Illinois, I've been randomly pulled for emissions inspection on my car twice. Of course, the title awesome is referring to this fact: both times I've recieved notice, it's been after I've sold said car.

Ergo, awesome.


So, I'm sure they're a little suspicious, that the 2 times they've ever sent me anything, I've already gotten rid of the car. Just bad/awesome timing I guess.

You know what's funny?

The Chevy Aveo. Holy crap. Hilarious.

Seriously.


Ellen's Jetta is in the shop, and that's what they gave her. I laugh. Ha. Ha. Funny little car.

Matt Damon

Really fucked up dream last night.

I'm not sure what was going on exactly, but it kinda felt like a Bourne movie. Except Matt Damon was just hanging out with this Asian chick. We were having some sort of BBQ at the house, and Matt had made some sort of puzzler out of a patio umbrella by bending the neck of it.

Someone had made an opposite bend in the umbrella later on that resulted in it being straight(ish) again, and Matt marveled at it. Eventually we went inside, where Matt had made these assorted deserts. I gave him a lot of shit for his portion sizes. The gooseberry pie (??) he had made was in like 4 huge pieces, which he gave one to the chick he was with. I went to get a piece of peach cobbler, and the pieces were super-tiny. So I gave him a lot of crap over how he cut up stuff.

Woe is me

Entertainment options are mind-boggling. One the one hand, it's a great thing that this is really the biggest worry in my life. I'm not worried about getting bombed or anything, just what my entertainment options are. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Anyway, our contract with Charter is up this month. The cheeky bastards won't let me change my service prior to our deal expiring, lest we get hit with a $250 termination fee. So for one bill, our cable will be $100. And that, my friends, is lame. Especially since there's still the $60 phone/internet bill to be paid.

So the options are:
1. Stay with Charter, see if my SBC contract is close to termination, drop SBC, get a Cable/Internet pack from Charter, get a Tivo for standard def stuff, and use an anetnna for HD and not DVR it. Total initial cost: $0 Total monthly: $80ish

2. Drop Charter, stay with SBC, get back with Dish. Awesome HD pack, dual-tuner HD DVR, and HD locals (including ABC finally). Total initial cost: $250 Total monthly: $100ish

Of course, this shit is all kinda contingent on 1) My SBC contract being over with or close to it, and 2) If Dish will consider me a 'new' customer if I have a new address and haven't been a customer for over a year. May have to have Ellen be the customer.

Or, I could just sell my TV and become a hermit.

Doglog

I think the training is officially over an official. He kinda aimlessly wandered into it the other night when i had him on his long lease, and freaked the fuck out since he didn't get much of a warning.

Anyway, yesterday we started going sans leash, and just supervising him. (actually keeping a leash on him so we can grab him if need be, but he's just pulling it around). This morning I took him out to piss before work, with no leash at all. I was really hoping there'd be some critters out and about, and sure enough there were a couple rabbits in the neighbors yard.

Dog caught sight of them...stared them down for a minute...checked out the flags, and then made a bolt for it. Made it to the flags, got beeped (no zap), and stopped dead in his tracks and ran down the flag line. Shits yah. That was pretty much the ultimate litmus test of this thing working. So, I'm glad it works, and I'm also glad I didn't have to chase down the dog this morning.

So, huzzah victory, success and whatnot.

Oh...

Go Bears!

Of robots and vacuums

Aside, got our Roomba (named Thor) the other day. Holy fucking mother of shit this thing rules my ass on about 289 levels. I love it. Dog hates it. That's really all there is to it. Long live the mighty Thor.

Update of the weekend prior

We did so much, yet nothing.

Friday: Came home, changed, then headed to the Dub-G (Webster Groves if you're nasty) to meet up with some of Ellen's MERS people for drinks and an apparent game night. Went to Brian (the infamous Catfood Bagman) and Kristey's place, awesome little house. Drank some drank, wound up playing Balderdash for entirely too fucking long with a couple other...couples. Ellen got plowed, we wound up hanging out for a bit after the other folks left, got home around 1ish I think.

Saturday: Woken up by Monte calling, got ready at some point, had a bitchin breakfast burrito from Sonic, headed to O'Mo to help Monte et al clean up his condo in prep for selling it. Split around 2 or so, headed home, took a nap, met up with the Lowns around 6 and headed down south of Festus for Richstock, which is basically a big party/bonfire in the middle of BFE. Had a great time, good seeing the people who actually decided to show. Almost obtained a new dog (Lab Shar-Pei mix named Fathead, but decided against it). We originally were going to camp out, but since there was such a little turnout, we (I) decided to stop drinking and just drive home eventually, eventually being 2:30a or so. Sucky hour+ drive. Got home, hit the sack HARD.

Sunday: Slept till noon. Had eggs. Sat around the hoosegow. Dragged Ellen and the Dog up to Fairview to get some toys and crap for the dog and some shit for the fish tank. Got home, turned around and went back to F-view to meet Lowns for some Fortel's Pizza lovin. Fucking love that place. Rueben pizza FTW. Came home, watched 11:14, which was kinda interesting, but fell horribly flat at the end. Talked to mom for a bit, for the first time in at least 3-4 weeks (I'm a horrible son). Changed out the sand in the fish tank while Ellen read. She wound up giong to bed early, I wound up staying up till midnight or so fucking around on Youtube and burning CDs of my MP3s and whatnot.

There ya go.

The shit's starting to get a little hectic now. This weekend I'm hoping to do a rear-end swap on my car with a local Cobra owner for some independantly suspended lovin. Next weekend, Ellen is going somewhere for Andrea's bachelorette party, and I'm assuming there'll be some 'guys night' action. Weekend after that is Rob's bachelor party, which brings us into Hell Month (October). Ungowa.

Since I feel like I'm keeping a log on the dog (doglog?)

Dog is still smart, still didn't shock itself. He's actually a bit too smart. On his chain (when he's not wearing the shock collar), he apparently can reach some of the flags marking the boundry. He ate one. Stupid flags.

Fairly positive

I'm almost definitely sure I just ate the best Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich ever created.

Holy wow.

Dag

I got mayonnaise on my keyboard.


While that may sound like a euphemism, it's really not.


In other news, Ellen's parents had to put Murphy (the dog) down the other day. I guess it had a cyst/lump on it's back that had wound up being cancer... They knew about it for a while, but didn't tell any of the kids. Eventually it caught up to her, so they decided to put her out of her misery I guess Wednesday. Ellen was kinda sad about it since Murph was her birthday present like 13 years ago.


In other dog related news, electric fence training is going really well with Boris still. We started on perimeter training last night, where I walk around outside the area with him untied, and chuck treats at him for not coming towards me. He wandered off into an area by the deck that has a really fucked up boundry, and the collar beeped at him, and he made a b-line for the back door, so he definitely knows what's up and doesn't wanna get shocked, so that's good.

I feel like we probably should have started with the non-deadly collar first (the 6v one that runs on button batteries instead of the big vibrating/beeping beast that runs on a 9V and i'm afraid to test on myself), just because of how much the 9V one obviously hurts. But the smaller one has a different range, so I'm kinda hesitant to fuck up the boundry he's already learned, also, if he didn't respond to that shock, it'd kinda defeat most of the training.

Luckily, he's not retarded, and is scared shitless of the big collar shocking him, so I don't think its gonna be an issue. He kinda gets in "the zone" anyway when he's in chase, and I think the big fucker might be a necessary evil to keep him in check. We'll start distraction training this weekend, should be interesting. I need to find some squirrels. They've oddly all scattered since we started training...dunno if they can hear the fence or what.

Yay for smart dogs

After only getting the bloody pissed shocked out of him twice, Boris has definitely figured out "hey, if I cross those flags, that sucks." He' won't go within like 5 feet of them, which is perfect. The training method (throw a bunch of treats at him inside the area, then toss one over the line and see if he still goes for it) is cruel as hell, but apparently effective as a motherfucker.

Today we start mild distraction training, where I have to walk around the outside of the boundry and make sure he doesn't try to come to me.

Then the real test, we need to have the neighbor walk his dog by the yard, or figure out how to train a squirrel to run around outside the perimeter to test the will of the mutt. He got close to the line once the other day, and the beep alone scared the shit out of him and he made a b-line back about 2 feet to avoid the shock.

So, there you have it. Electrical shock conditioning works. On dogs. That aren't retarded.

Weekend update

Long one, here we gooooooo!

Friday: Came home...uh...wow. No clue what we did. Sat around a lot....I think we may have gone to blockbuster or something at one point, but decided there was nothing out we wanted to watch. Drove around a bit.... Seriously we didn't do jack shit. Might have jacuzzi'd. Oh, yah, we did.

Saturday: Woke up at some point, Ellen made breakfast, and we headed out to Fairview to start on the house nightmare (nightmare being the part where we spend gobs of fucking money). Went with the intention of pricing out flooring options for the house. Found out that places make a damn killing on installation charges for installing laminate flooring. Found "the perfect" dark non-cheap-looking-kinda-almost-looks-like-real-wood laminate in "Brazilian Cherry" at Beckys. Obviously wasn't cheap. I've been pro-carpet for quite a while, until I saw what Ellen wanted in carpet if she didn't get her 'wood' floors. So now I'm on the wood wagon. Doh.

Went to Home Depot to check out some other options, wound up in the countertops. Sat down with a sales person, went over the options grabbed about 200 samples, came home, tried out samples, drove back to fairview, put in the order for the countertop. I managed to talk Ellen down from the Corian/stone stuff into a higher-end laminate, which saved us ungodly amounts of cash. Flush with stupidity, we left the confines of HD and headed to Chili's, where I had an out-fucking-standing Philly. Went home again.

I started in on the invisible dog fence installation, only to find out that we were only given enough wire to make it approximately 1/2 way down the shortest side of our lot. Drove BACK to Fairview/HD to get more wire and flags for the system. I cannot wait until the HD in C-ville is finally done.

Came back, got going proper on the initial layout, just stapling the wire down to the ground to test it all out. Got the layout done, then had to prep the fish tank setup for break-down since it finally got sold. Said a farewell to my aquatic friends, and loaded the whole shootin match up in some guys truck after recieving a wad o' cash.

Helen came over at some point, Ellen made pizza, and I started drinking. About 10 or so we decided to go watch Beerfest, on the recommendation of Lance. Since I was slightly buzzed at this point, I was all for it. Drove BACK to Fairview, Beerfest actually wasn't horrible, but given my not-completely-sober condition, I could see it sucking hard ass otherwise. So, see it drunk.

Came back to C-ville, helen was sick, so she left, and we hit the sack around 1 or so.

Sunday: With the fish tank out of the way, Ellen decided it was time to paint the living room (again). Went to Sears to buy massively-on-sale paint ($10/gallon, w00t). Wound up with some sort of greenish/yellow hue, which looked like baby vomit on the walls. Luckily this was figured out that it sucked about 10 minutes into painting. Ellen went back on her own and came back with some "Stonehedge something or other rock" color, which is basically a light bluestone color, really neat. She painted, and I proceeded to actually bury the wire for the invisible fence. Got the whole back lot done, went to Fairview Heights (AGAIN), to pick up the Lown's dogs since they were on their way back from WV. Got them in, went back home. Ellen finished up painting, we chilled out for a bit, then decided to try out Boris' car harness on him and take him for a spin in the 'vert since it was really nice out.

Thing actually works great, only took him a couple tugs before he figured out he couldn't go anywhere, and being a dog, he fuckign loved the open air of the vert. Took him over to play with the Lowns' dogs for a bit, then back out on an ice cream run. Ate, hit the sack around midnight.

Monday: Woke up, ate, and I finally finished running all the wire for the invisible dog fence. Our lot is laid out in such a screwball way, that I had to get really inventive with the wire placement; it actually runs underneath the house so the dog has full access to the back door. Sucks. Anyway, after that was done, I went around and tested it all out and tweaked things, set out the boundry flags, and started with the training. Felt bad for the dog, he jumped up and freaked the fuck out the first time the thing hit him. But, being a quick learner, he figured out what the flags meant, and we've only got 2 days of initial training left on him. He's already avoiding the boundrys even without the shock collar on, which is good. Spent the rest of the day re-arranging the living room, jacuzzi'ing, and watchin TV.

Looong weekend. Too much shit got done. Ready to drink.

I <3 drunken IMs still

Funny shit waiting on my desktop at work for me this morning:

[02:04] basler312: xfkgmb s;gjknsgdk;bj
[02:13] basler312: jk what would you doooooooooo for a klondike bar?
[02:14] basler312: i think you're sleeping so you can just let me know later.

Brilliant.

For my money..

The best way to look super-duper busy is to ensure the following things are up on your screen, all in overlapping windows:

• At least 1 Notepad with a stupidly huge log file in it
• Some browser window with a bunch of charts and shit in the background
• At least 1-3 DOS boxes
• Calculator running in expanded/hex mode

You'll look like a freaking genius. I don't even want to do any work, I just want to look at how productive my screens look while I blog.

Ow my music.

So, I'm going through my music collection and re-creating a batch of MP3 CDs for the car. I generally breaks stuff up by genre, which is hard enough sometimes (I wound up with Gnarls Barkley in Alternative, I think that's fair). But then it gets really stupid trying to group albums together on a disc in a coheret fashion, while filling up as much of the disc as possible w/o going over 700MB.

Obviously I attempt to group the same artist together...and get fancy, I've got a CD with every House of Pain CD, then every Everlast CD... Then I start to get desperate. There's a CD of rappers produced by Dre, but I didn't have room for NWA on there, which has Dre in it, so it wound up on the disc with all the Public Enemy stuff becuase they were big during the same period. My "White Jewish Rap" disc (Beastie Boys, Matisyahu) came up at like 500MB, so I'm trying to figure out wtf else to lump onto that disc. It's really a much bigger pain in the ass than it sounds. I've got southern rap on my midwest disc, but I didn't have room for my 5 Outkast CDs. So they're on their own disc now.

Really, I just need to nut up, and spend the $300+ on an iPod and iPod adapter for the car stereo, but as much Sirius as I listen to, I just can't bring myself to do that.

I'm so fucking conflicted.