Stinky (1996 - 2006)

Last night Maryann and I lost a good friend, our cat Stinky. Maryann got him when he was just a kitten. Someone had found him in the engine compartment of their car having driven to the movie theater where Maryann was working. At frist she thought he was a grey cat, until she took him home and realized he was black and white. He earned his name manily from the fact that when he farted, you knew it. He could stink it up with the best of the dogs.

Stinky, at least initially, was not much of a people cat. But in the past few years we would let you pet him and when people came over he would come out of a corner somewhere and greet the visitors with his infamous broken-squeeky-toy meow and a rattle-snake-like shake of his tail.

Last night we had to say goodbye to Stinky. He will be sorely missed by both Maryann and I, as well as his brother and sister Little Cat and Lisa.

Not felling well...

I woke up yesterday around 5am with my stomach not feeling quite right. For the next 7 hours, I was up every 1/2 to hour with dry heaves. Then the other fun stuff kicked in. I progressively got worse until every muscle in my body ached. Blech. This sucks. I'm a helluva lot better today, thank goodness, but I'm still a little sore and woozy. But I'll be fine. Here's to hoping a feel better tomorrow.

Foxtrot

FoxTrot, one of the comics I read everyday as part of my morning ritual, is going to a Sunday-only format. Makes me very sad. But I wish Bill Amend all the success and fun in the world. His comic has brought me happiness for quite a few years and I guess they all deserve a break after a while.

Mmmmm.... Turducken!

Today, I had a very delectable dish called Turducken. To be more exact, we had Tony Chachere's Cajun Stuffed Tur-Duc-Hen.

For those of you who don't feel like clicking on links, turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. Get it? Turkey + Duck + Chicken = Turducken.

Maryann's sister and husband picked us up a turducken after we all saw a Food Network special that featured it. We got it as a baby gift and since it needed to be made before it went bad, today was the day. So her sister, husband, their kid and Maryann's mom and dad came up to cook the feast.

The version we had was stuffed with rice based stuffing with shrimp and crawfish and it was.... TASTY! I mean TAAAAAASSSSSTTTTTY. Add to that some mashed potatoes, corn and a dessert of pumpkin layered cake with pumpkin/cool whip concoction with caramel drizzled on top that my wife made and ... mmmm mmm... it was a great meal. Man! Awesome!

The only misfire we had today was some exploding Achorware. Its glass bakeware and is freezer safe, oven safe, dishwasher safe, etc etc etc. The dish was a room temperature. We were making green bean casserole. The beans and cream of mushroom soup and crunchy onions... all room temp. We stuck it in the oven and though everything was fine. Then there was this clatter. We all though that Bart (the teenager) had run into the oven or something. He was all 'I didn't do anything'. Maryann's mom opened up the oven to find a glass all over the place and green bean casserole dripping all over the place. It had cracked and shattered into a quite a few pieces. So.... after getting all the glass cleaned up, it was corn, not green bean casserole for lunch. Needless to say, Anchorware will be getting a call from the wife tomorrow asking for an RMA so they can ship us some new, non-exploding stuff.

It was a wedding gift and we had already used one of the other dishes in the oven without a problem. I suspect that it was a manufacturing problem of some sort. As they say, glass is very strong... until it gives and then it just goes kablooey.

And again... turducken rules!

:09

Here's something that bugs me:

People who use the company microwave, but then leave the door open and the clock still sitting at :09.

If you're gonna use it, please, close the freakin' door and reset the timer. And if cheese from your sub sandwich spills inside the microwave (or butter from the microwave popcorn or soup that boiled over), please clean that up as well. Your mom doesn't work here (and if she does, she probably has better things to do than to go around to all the microwaves and clean them and close their doors and reset their timers for you.. and this should be the case even if she is part of the cleaning crew).

This also goes for you Mr. or Mrs. Missed Putting The Paper Towel Into The Garbage Can But I'll Just Leave It On The Floor For The Maintenance People To Pick Up.

Weird Dream - 11-18-2006

So, when I get really stressed, I tend to have really weird dreams. Here's the latestest installment which had 3 parts.

Part 1: Poor Kitty
The first part of my dream happened at 'my house' (ie, in my head it was my house, but it really wasn't my house). I remember looking as Lisa, our tabby cat who looks like this but a bit bigger, and was worreid because she was meowing weirdly. I told my wife this and she said we should probably have that looked at. Then I decided that I wanted to wash my hair, but i wanted to used a wash cloth, more specifically, a blue one. This was significant for some reason unknown to me. I went downstairs and found one in a pile clean laundry. I went upstairs and was happy that I found the wash cloth. And then that part ended.

Part 2: Trailer in the Woods
For some reason I was with my friend Brad at a trailer in the middle of the woods, but just off of a lake. We were yakking about somthing when he announced that he was going fishing. So he took out this cane fishing pole and just kinda threw the hook in the water, put the pole on the ground and then just walked away and started talking to me again. Wwe talked a while when i looked over and saw the bobber moving around so I said 'hey.. you have a bite I think'. So he picked up the pole and pulled out a huge bluegill that was about 2 feet in length. (Most of the ones I have ever caught were like 6 inches long.) He threw back then fish and put the hook back into the water and walked away again. And again, eventually the bobber would bounce around and I would tell him and he pulled out another large bluegill. At some point after this, I went into the trailer where Courtney Force was blabbing on and on about her boyfriend for whatever reason. I just sat there and looked at her funny for about 5 minutes wondering what she was talking about. And then that part ended.

Part 3: Bill Cosby is My Dad
The next part is pretty freakin' weird. I found myself in the middle of a warehouse, similar to a Sam's Club, with my daughter in two in her carrier. I was watching this big display of large plasma screen tvs when Bill Cosby approached me. In my dream, he was my dad. WTF? But it is what it is. So were watching these plasma screens which were showing what I would assume was one of those tv celeb gossip shows like Extra or Access Hollywood.

Two guys were next to the TVs and talking about a new moive that George Lucas had made. It was similar to the Star Wars franchise. Anyhoo, they were discussing how they were confused by Lucas' latest decision to release the movie on Super 8 film. They dicussed that there was no way that the nevel of detail that went into the movie could be seen in that format. They then discussed how Bill Cosby had 'supposedly' done the narration on the intro. The one looked at the other and said 'but you know he really didn't do it' meaning that he hadn't done the narration on the movie intro.

I looked at Bill and he seemed confused. I turned my attention to the stupid TV and there was a story about how Michael J. Fox had been part of this Lucas film, but he backed out when he found out that it wasn't going to premiere at a certain film festival. It then cut to him arriving at another film festival in a little red british polive car with the siren wailing. He was hanging out the the window holding a drawning he had done. On this drawing, was a picture of him hanging out of a british poilice car holding a B&W picture of a monster that looked simiar to the monster in the Bugs Bunny cartoon. He handed the drawing to a fan and then got out of the car and went somewhere.

At this point Bill Cosby got close to my ear and mumbled something "mmmmnn nu mmmmin n mm da mm", to which I said "What?". He then repeated it and this time, though still really muffled, he said, "Why don't you go ahead and get lunch. I don't know how long I'm gonna be. Go ahead and leave her here and I'll catch up with you at home". So I said, "Ok". So I handed him the carrier and walked away. As I was walking away, Bill said to make sure that I put the remote control on the stand when I left. At some point I had picked up a remote control of some sort. So I walked to the front of the building where, 30 feet back from the sliding door, there was a brown leather recliner and one of those round table / standing lamp combos right next to it. I carefully put the remote on the table and wondered for a second 'why the hell do I need to put the remote here' and then I left.

And then I woke up... obviously I was confused. I though that this was a decent dream so I quickly jotted down notes on a few post it notes before the haze of waking up had worn off.

The end.

Resurrection

I guess I am going to resurrect my blog here, for no particular reason other than a couple of my friends have blogs and they exist on the blogger.com farm.

Most of the time, my posts will be odd observations.

For example:
The other day I was driving to work when I saw a Dodge Neon. A plain-jane, off the lot, stock Neon. Why is this of any interest? Well, because this Dodge Neon had spinners. Just because you put spinners on your car, doesn't mean that it automatically makes your car cool. Actually, it just makes you look like a dork.

Yeah... ummm.. not much going on here.

But Devilcake still rocks!