Let's Try An Experiment: A Politics-Free Discussion (Tell Us About Your Weekend, Things That Made You Smile, etc)

1. Well, this weekend I went to a really interesting party.  The local chapter of Phi Alpha Theta had a get together at someone's house.  Everyone there was either a grad student or a professor and everyone was smarter than me!   Oh well.  After about 30 minutes of awkward discussion about history and whatnot everyone grabbed a beer and it started to feel like a real college party.  I'm not sure I fit in but I'm going to try.
2. I dyed my hair this weekend (see profile photo)
3. I heard a pretty funny joke:  What's the difference between The Rolling Stones and a Scotsman?  The Rolling Stones say "Hey, you, get off my cloud!"  The Scotsman says, "Hey McCleod, get off my ewe!"

I had a pretty nice weekend also, I invited some work colleagues over for a good dinner of burgers and smashed potatoes. I have been trying to convince them for some time now that the burgers in the few restaurants in town that claim to be "American Style" are horribly misrepresenting this grand pillar of our culture.

I think the evening turned out well and I was able to enlighten them all to the appeal of the true American Burger, large, juicy, charred outside and pink inside. Next week I think I will try to explain the American appeal of baseball over soccer.

I was really happy this weekend because I watched the Caps/Bruins game on TV. I know it was only a preseason game, but it means hockey season is very close. Now if I could just find the money to afford Center Ice on Directv this year.

I know it's not much, but I enjoyed it.

I slept in on Saturday, woke up and had a good diner breakfast with a good man.
I attended a really boring wedding in another state, which meant a lot of driving.
I watched last the last Yankees game of the season : (

The Bills won!

I'm sad that I had to get up to go to work this morning.

It was a mixed weekend for me. Spent a grand replacing a dead washer and dryer (*cry*), then discovered Firefly for the first time (*cheer*) then found that it was canceled after a single season (*back to crying*).

I went to see Burn After Reading. Intelligence is relative. Note: The trailer doesn't live up to the movie. The movie is darkly much funnier.

The weather has been gorgeous out here in Utah. The fall colors (aspen, oak, etc.) are starting to change in the mountains. Took the dogs for walk up one of the canyons and it was awesome to watch them thoroughly enjoy themselves in their explorations and squirrel chasing.

Being up there also puts perspective back into the world. The trees being different colors don't care what color or type of tree is next to them. The gentle breeze carasses every blade of grass, flower, tree. It's not selective. The mountains could care less about the manical frenzy of the puny human species. They're ageless and have seen it all.

Regardless of what happens, the wild will still be up there.

Lay on your back, muse at the clouds, laugh with the babbling brook .... that's what's important!

namaste

On Saturday I was cooking up some fried eggs before going in to work. I was cracking the eggs against the side of the stove and plopping the contents into the hot pan and the shells into the trash can beside the stove in one swoop. The swoop failed on one of the eggs and the raw egg missed the pan completely and slid into the burner pan, and then down the hole into the tray under the whole stove top. It was a mess, but I had to eat and get to work. I worked both jobs that day, so I was gone 12.5 hours. The mess didn't get cleaned in a timely manner.

On Saturday night I found that there were 3 flies that congregated in my bedroom. I don't know where they came from, but they bugged me to no end. It's hard to sleep when filthy flies are zooming around you. I didn't feel up to running around the room swatting at them. I don't have any hairspray to tangle their wings. I turned my bedside fan on them and that kept them away from my bed. In fact, the fan kept them in a small huddle, unable to exit the area without being blown far off course. I noticed that cornered flies flyin the exact same pattern over and over and over. That was boring, but at the flies weren't zooming around my head and now I could sleep.

On Sunday I got up and went to the restaurant job and ended up working an extra hour because we suddenly got swamped. Usually I work front of house for an hour and then spend the 2nd hour washing dishes and cookware. We were so busy that I had to spend 2 hours hostessing, setting tables, cashiering, and bussing tables, and replenishing stuff that ran out. The more customers we have, the more dirty dishes and the more dirty cookware there are. So when I got back to the dishroom after the rush, there was a full cook bench stacked high with dirty cookware and five carts of 3 bus-tubs each of dirty dishes. We had actually run out of clean silverware and water glasses. I had one hour to do all that. I got it done, but the cooks and waitstaff helped me a lot by putting away the clean dishes and cookware. We all congratulated and thanked each other on wonderful, successful teamwork. I got $7 in tips Sunday from the waitstaff. I got a tuna jacket for my free dinner there. I love tuna jackets, especially dressed up with ranch dressing and bacon bits.

I had to get groceries and toilet paper on the way home, so I didn't get home until about 4:30.
I took a nap and then was playing with the computer and did not remember until about 8:30 p.m. that I still had not cleaned up the egg mess. So, I cleaned up the mess and the whole kitchen and was done with that by 9 p.m.

I played Alchemy game on computer for a while and won a couple times. I went to bed and wrote some genealogy pages to send to my brother. I wrote 30 pages before putting that away to get some sleep.

Now I'm up. My kitchen is spiffy. It's sunny and pretty out. Looks like a nice day.

My weekend would probably be considered boring by most...

Most of Friday night I spent playing the new Armored Core game. A healthy chunk of the night went into making a spiffy paint job for my AC, Type-00. The entire body is dark blue, with black detailing, while the left shoulder armor is wrapped in a trio of parallel white stripes. These white stripes also wrap around the left Overboost array attached to the AC's back. The right shoulder has my simple [00] emblem, and the right forearm is wrapped in the triple stripes. The stripes also cross the left, right, and middle sections of the AC's core, as well as the tail binders. The stripes also adorn the outer armor of the legs. Once the paint job was finished, I selected my standard weapons loadout: An arm-mounted gatling gun with a handgun backup for my right arm, with a Moonlight blade for my left. A rail gun took my left shoulder spot, while a close-range cluster missile launcher took my right.

Heh, I suppose it's pointless in hiding my infatuation for the Armored Core series' love for customization. :P

The rest of the night and most of the weekend was spent finishing out the remaining storylines that I hadn't explored in the game yet.

Yes,yes Scott...No politics, that fact only makes me smile........:). I had a quite, normal family weekend. Spoke to my mom and dad abroad. Told the children some historical facts between the Netherlands and America. Watched two movies ( you know where to find them). And now today I have my appointment with the spinal surgeon...Don't look forward to that but I hope they will tell me what my options are. Had some X rays and and a MRI made and they didn't look to good. It concerns my neck and shoulders.

Catch ya later.

Excellent Scott:

This week-end I went to the LA county fair, and this is what I saw. The incredible nine year old girl with crutches and the biggest smile in the winter wonderland building. Her dad not carrying her after she went on the slide, but rather held her two hands and help her walk out, what courage. The dumb SOB that saw a woman take a pretty bad fall and when his friends asked him to help her, he said, "I am off duty." He was a paramedic wearing a "we will not forget" t-shirt. WOW, what a chump. A the different types of people talking about everything and anything, just there to eat and have some fun. What a night to spend with my little girl!!!

Happy birthday, fugitive. Hope you have cake.

I know a joke.
Insomniac dyslexics lie awake at nite wondering if there is a dog.

Hey everybody - no politics sounds GREAT to me!

I had a nice weekend. Helped my kid with a school project building a model of the book "Ginger Pye" with a little scene inside. Lots lots of glue and colored paper.

My bro, SIL and nephews came over and helped me take all four dogs for a walk. The weather here has been GREAT. Highs in the 80's and sunny and beautiful!

Then on Sunday after a rocking church service my friend Lisa invited us over to watch a movie ("Rebound"...it was good!) and then I went out and did some training with my horse. Again - the weather was FANTASTIC and after many a 90 degree plus day it was great to be outside without feeling we were in a sauna.

MinnieApolis - that joke made me laugh!

Scott - thanks so much for having this idea!! I will totally join you on vowing to only seed fun stuff for awhile. In fact I think I'll delete any articles I might have hanging around on my column now that aren't in the spirit of fun...

Well I visited family in Murrell's Inlet SC this weekend. Had very nice time. My wife and I visited Georgetown and walked around the Rice Museum and the Kaminsky House. It was very interesting. I'll be posting pictures someday here.

Scoop, what an AWESOME idea! I am so sick of arguing with people!

This weekend I took a test to become a women's gymnastics judge (pretty sure I passed, will get results in 2-3 wks.)

I finally got around to catching up on my TiVo (didn't have time to watch much TV last week as I was studying for my test).

Watched the season premier of ER and bawled like a baby. Not just a couple of tears, but heaving sobs. It was SOOOOOOO sad. Did anybody else watch it?

I also spent some time playing the new Lego Batman game on the PS3. Love the Lego series, can't wait for another one. :-)

Great Idea!

Friday Night: Made Buttermilk Deep Fried Chicken for the debate party I held at my house. Soundtrack included much Pubic Enemy, Isley Bros, Funkadelic/ Bootys Rubber Band. Total zany fun, plus the chicken was outrageously crunchy. Slaw, greens, hoppin john, yummy. Later on watched Gosford Park, wonderful study on the corpulent and queer relationships between the latent aristocracy in the UK and their servants/ lovers/ ah giving too much away, a wonderful movie.

Saturday: My lady and I slept all day, I watched the University of Michigan game, bit of the Big Ten Football fan, I have deep family connects to the U o' M. Watched Real Madrid vs Real Betis, plus pieces of Barca vs Espanyol. Then went out to Home Depot and got a 12'*5" piece of white painted masonite to help my girl with her food photo-studio, white balance color problems abound. Did some homeworky reading/ Chinese practice. Ate leftover chickens and made up some simple chicken soup drank some Bass Ales and played video games the rest of the night into the early morn'.

Sunday: got up to make buttermilk pancakes, as per requests, helped clean the flat. Ended up chillen out watching the AC Milan game vs Inter, which was quite a nice one there Ronnie getting his 1st beauty goal. Checked the fantasy football team, stretched out. Around 5 went out to my friends to meet up with folks to go play some high quality pick up soccer. I had managed a team over the summer in a highly competitive Pro-Am league, also a board member, in the previous year one of the players hipped us to this great group of people that play great games and allow for their kids to get involved. Which I think is totally brilliant, and gets the kids toughened up for certain, I'd say that most of the chillins are now playing vastly beyond their age groups in the AYSO or travel leagues. I ran about 8 km, scored off a great post rebound, and had two assists, all from playing Right Back which I took care of quite nicely. Did I mention that I love to run? Final score 5-2...Got home and sought out some eats, ended up with fast food value meal extravaganza. Settled into the Simpsons and then Mad Men, a great show Im sure everyone's read the reviews etc, sort of a cliffhanger. All in all a fine piece of weekendiness, not much done but at the same time much was done.
Black Ark in Dub on Trojan would have been a good soundtrack, albeit my lady love doesnt really absolutely love dub reggae.

I wrote some on the Vine. I took my grandsons and went bike riding. Of course they picked the route with the steep hill. So many thoughts went through my head as I flew down that hill. "I forgot how much fun this could be!" "I must be crazy, what if I fall and break a few things" "Check the boys, what if they fall?" "Okay we're all down safe and sound but how in the world will I make it back up that hill?"

Took a three day weekend. Left on the scooter Thursday morning, weather was great but evenings a little cool. Scammed a couch each nite so didn't get back till Sunday afternoon. Didn't get any great distances covered but toodled around and got some nice albiet quick visits with a lot of friends. Stopped at a local performance shop, booked some time and made some impulse purchases. (the best kind) I now work another month straight so it's unlikely I'll get another real ride in. Oh well. Hockey season is upon us.
Threw a small pork roast in the slow cooker with the veggies and me and the girls had a late supper. Played a little X-Box with them, it amazes me how quickly they catch on to new games. Popped on the puter for a bit, read some of those unmentionable seeds and posts and had a restful night. Great idea this is for a change.
To one and all have a great fall season.

Another joke, this one from ArcaMax -----

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, "Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face."

"Yes," the class said.

"Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?"

A little fellow shouted, "Cause your feet ain't empty."

pah rum pum