Ballderdash

Ballderdash is the best game ever. Second only to Catch Phrase. And maybe Othello. And maybe Cut-throat Uno. Ok. So it may not be the best game, but it at least ranks in the top ten. Here are some great definitions from our game Tuesday night:

Peavey: Pee Wee Herman's nephew.

Wootz: The fing a pwant needs to gwo.

Theine: The middle name of my tallest midget.

An old favorite:

Futz: A boy with a speech problem tries to learn that dirty 4-letter word.

The best real definition in the movie catergory:

Who Took My Pants: A young man inherients a hotel in Europe and upon his arrival realizes it's a brothel.

Clean Again

I found my DESK!!!!

This is an monumental event because my desk has been gone for the last 4 months. Summer caused it to go missing. Slowly a a mass of random papers and bills that "I would get to later" covered my workspace. But that was ok, because I wasn't supposed to work during summer.

People thought that I was too busy this summer to return e-mails or sign on AIM but the reality was that I didn't want to sit at my desk. When I sat there I felt guilty for allowing such a mess to build up. Luckily I have a laptop and could pull it off my desk and sit on the floor with my back to the accusatory piece of furniture.

Last weekend I lost my credit card and I was sure it was in the mess. But the piles frightened and intimidated me so instead of looking for the credit card I cancelled it. (I later found the card in my baby-Bible I take to school. I think God is trying to tell me something.)

Well now school has started and I need my desk. Plus cleaning it was better than doing homework. So I tackled the piles with boldness and determination and won.

My desk is reclaimed and I now have no excuse not to do homework.

Maybe the piles weren't so bad.

Your Name is Mud

Several interesting things happened this weekend. It was a weekend of mud, new names and graduation.

Our mud volleyball team tore it up on Saturday and we all had a blast. Unfortunately we didn't do well enough to advance to the finals, but we were close. Kudos to all the people from work who played. There isn't anything much more enjoyable than watching Randy get a face full of mud as he dives for the ball or seeing Bob somersault out of the mud pit.

Saturday night I renamed two people. I have issues with remembering people's names, so I just call them by the name that I think they look like. Normally people are ok with this and eventually I remember their real name. I renamed Josh, Nick, on Saturday. He didn't respond to Nick very well so we settled on on Adam, his middle name. But I now feel the need to call him Josh, because he pointed out that Tamara and I introduced ourselves to him twice, with no clue that we had met him before. I felt so bad, but was soon put at ease when another Josh provided a valid excuse for Tamara and I - "It's not like they forgot you. It's just that they didn't think you were worth remembering." Thanks Josh. Thanks a lot.

I also dropped my statistics class and consequently my statistics minor this weekend. I now can graduate in June. I am so excited. World, here I come! Not that I feel like I've really learned anything in my years in college or have a clue as to what I want to do with my degree. But I will be a college graduate dang-it!

AHead of Everyone

Somehow, I have managed to avoid therapy. I have yet to visit a shrink, psychiatrist or a counselor. It is amazing really, considering all the abnormal things that have claimed a place of normalcy in my life.

Take for instance concussions. I had always thought concussions were akin to chicken pox; that they are a part of every kid's childhood. I always saw the journey of growing up marked with loose teeth, chicken pox, learning to ride a bike and getting concussions. Apparently I was wrong. Not everyone got a concussion as a child.

My confusion, in more ways than one, can be attributed to the fact that I have had a total of 4 possible concussions in my life. How, you ask? Let me tell you.

1. Slipped on the tile floor at church while playing tag. My dad's reaction: "Why didn't you put your hands down? Did you think your face was going to catch you?" Yes. My face did quite a nice job of catching me.

2. Clothes-lined myself while Playing Marco Polo in the basement in the dark. I discovered that we had forgotten to take the rope down that was hanging across the two support poles. Next thing I remember was laying on the couch giving back all the fortune cookies I had previously eaten in my glee of reading fortunes and learning Chinese.

3. Jr. High. We were all hanging out in the church gym - trying to not look like dorks. Joe Ewig I remember was doing a very good job of it...until he kicked the soccer ball into my head. But I couldn't see at that point, so it was all good.

4. Took on an air-bag with my face as Tamara's Jeep kissed a Silver Maple. Maintained enough awareness to tell the car behind us we were not moving the Jeep. JERKS.

So there you have it. I am either more prone to head injuries than most people, or my Dad's response for the first one created a need to prove that I can put my hands down and catch myself.

Maybe I do need therapy.

The Indy 500

I made it through the Thermoforming conference this weekend. It was ok. Although, I didn't meet anyone even remotely as interesting as the Boeing Engineer from Huntsville.

I'm pretty sure that I was the only person there who didn't drink. Not that I could have if I had wanted to anyway, considering the fact that the entire catering-staff at the Hyatt thought I was 14. And as much fun as it was to watch a bunch of manufactures get drunk, I had some statistics homework calling my name. Yeah I know. It's pathetic. I go to a fun city and all the middle-age men go out to karooke bars while I sit in my hotel room and try and figure out the probabilities of pipes bursting. I love my life.

I drove the boat to Indy. It's also known as my Mamaw's Oldsmobile Eighty-eight Royale. I affectionately refer to it as "that-huge-thing-that-I-hate-to-drive". Yeah it rides really nicely, but I am neither old, nor ghetto, so it just doesn't suit me. It also has a suicidal tendency. I managed to restrain it into just running into a post in the parking garage and not actually killing itself or me. It's a pretty tricky car too. Like Herby on crack. It made its move when I was in a really frustrated state. I didn't see it point its nose right into that pole as we went around that 90 degree turn in the parking garage from hell. I hate that car.

It's good to be home and back in my car.

From a handout in one of my classes:

"Bo hedberg described how once successful organizations he studied gradually got captured in their own self-sufficiency and stagnated into final crises with which they could not cope in the following story."

Does anyone see anything wrong with this sentence? Yeah. Me neither. Pure work of genius.

The Squirrel Game

Fact: Games that bored you as a child, will still be bore you as an adult.

Take for instance The Squirrel Game. I hate The Squirrel Game. Apparently this is because my attention span is less than that of a 5-year old. Tonight my mom dug out some old board games from when we were little. It should have been a fun time of playing mindless children's games. It should have been a relaxing evening and for everyone else who can focus on one thing for longer than 5 minutes, it was.

The Squirrel Game consists of moving your little squirrels around the board collecting pine cones. Simple enough. But if you get too many cones in one trip then you have to dump them all back into the cup. When my mom brought the game out I vaguely remembered it taking a really long time to play. Nate pointed out that when you are little everything takes a really long time so shut up and play.

Well I lasted about 15 minutes. We weren't anywhere close to being done. I resigned myself to starving over the winter and quit. I can't remember ever finishing that game and considering the fact that my attention span has yet to improve, I doubt I ever will.

I just can't get over the urge to stick those little pine cones up my nose.

No Real Point to This Post

Well my dresser is done. It turned out beautifully. If I had a digital camera I would post a picture of it up here. But I don't, so I won't.

I finally got all the clothes that had been lying on my floor into the dresser. There are always clothes on my floor but this was the first time I've had a good excuse for it. Now you would think that this would be a good time to organize my sock and underwear drawer. It would be. I started to organize everything (Although, I never planned on matching the socks. That's a bit extreme) but that just got too boring and I ended up dumping everything into the drawer. It's a comforting thing to have wrinkled P.J.s.

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I must give mad props to Scott for being the most random person I know. We had a 20 min conversation this weekend about Midgets and Oompa Loompas. It takes a truly unique person to do that. Hurray for Scott.

Props must also be given to Kyle for letting me rename him. He looks more like a Kyle than his original name anyway.

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Apparently, I used to be more harsh and blunt towards people. I've forgotten a lot of it - but I have friends who remind me. I guess I once told Phil that there were too many people dying and going to hell to waste time getting to know him one on one. And people wonder why we never dated. Sorry Phil.

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Today I managed to spill 55 cups of cold coffee on my foot. It also covered the fellowship hall floor. Thank goodness we have a super maintaince guy at my church. He was there like 2 sec after it happened and had it cleaned up in another 37. He's good. But my shoes still smell like a mix between coffee and feet. Kinda gross.

If you ever get a chance - go see Lost and Found in concert. They make me happy.

Floor It

I almost died today.

I didn't because I was speeding.

The moron driving in front of me thought it was acceptable to go the speed limit and almost got me killed. Fortunately, he moved over and I was able to accelerate to a more appropriate speed and quickly pass a semi.

Right after I passed that semi, that sucker blew a tire. Had I been going the speed limit I would have been right next to him when it happened. Granted, the driver maintained complete control during the whole thing, but there were pieces of rubber flying everywhere. If I had been next to him, I would have gotten hit with the rubber, lost control and DIED.

Yes. Died. But instead I was in a hurry to get home, eat and take a nap and therefore saved my life.

The media is so biased in its views on speeding. Don't speed - you could kill people. Don't speed - it's against the law. Whatever. They are so narrow minded. Do they ever report about how speeding saves people, like what happened to me today? No. This is why I don't read a newspaper. Too much bias in the press.

So moral of the story: Save lives. Speed.

Freshman Moment

How's my dresser going? Well let me tell you.

Horrible.

The drawers didn't turn out at all. I am so mad. All those burns and sore wrists for crappy looking dresser drawers. Stupid paint.

Anyway. Today was the first day of classes. I wasn't ready for classes to start at all. This morning I was scrambling around for paper and searching for a pencil. It didn't really feel like the first day of classes either. For my whole life, on the first day of school, it has rained. No rain today, cloudy, but no rain. They should have cancelled classes. It was really nice to see everyone at school though.

I had three classes today. All three of them have group projects. If you remember, I don't particularly like group projects. This quarter should be fun.

There are TONS of freshman at school. TONS. This should be a perfect way to tie into telling my best "freshman moment" but I can't think of a non-cheesy way to do that. So I'm just going to tell you.

My greatest freshman moment occurred when I was a sophomore. A freshman moment is defined as a time when I completely made a fool of myself on campus. There are many of these. This particular time happened in the tunnels of our school. I had missed my tunnel and had to turn around. When you turn around in the tunnels it is obvious that you are lost and people mutter things like "stupid freshman, get a map."

So I turn around and as I do, my traitorous backpack decides to come unzipped, sending all my things flying. Of course everyone found this extremely funny and laughed. I did not.

I didn't see any great freshman moments like that today. Too bad. I could have used the laugh.

Tonight I stripped the paint off of a dresser. No it's ok... I wanted the paint to come off. The cool part is that I used a blow torch to do it. I burned the paint right off. It worked pretty well except for a few spots that I'm gonna have to sand down. But that means I get to use a sander. More power tool fun!

I am still really excited about getting to use a blow torch. I hate using paint stripper. It's so caustic. Blow torches are a lot safer. I only burned myself 5 times and I still have feeling in 7 of my fingers.

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A guy I work with decided that our slogan should be "We are way more smarter than NASA." I like it.

I Want One Too

Yesterday was a very fun day. My family went to Hocking Hills for the day to hike and spend some quality family time together. My family is extremely goofy. For example the word of the day was "Crap House". Yeah. That's my family. So we had a good time throwing acorns at each other and convincing our dog to cross bridges.

On our way home we stopped for dinner and saw a guy who ridden his lawn mower to the restaurant. It was a pimped out lawn mower too. Complete with sideview mirrors and a swan hood ornament. I want one.

Later that night I went to go hang out with some people from the Bible study I go to. Around 1:30 am we got into a water fight with the hose. Good times until the neighbor came out with a gun. Yes a gun. He asked us what the *bleep* we were doing. We all got really quiet really fast. I explained that we were friends with his neighbor and were just having fun and we were sorry that we disturbed him. He grunted and walked back inside.

WHAT KIND OF A NEIGHBOR COMES OUT WITH A GUN??? Now I don't know if it was a real gun or like a paintball gun. It was too dark. But I don't think it really matters. If it was a real gun, it had a silencer on it. I guess he meant business. I want one of those too. Gun, not a neighbor like that.

So that was pretty exciting. It's a good thing we didn't turn the hose on him. We might have died.

Computers are the Devil

I almost lost my job today. The job that I love was almost taken from me. It would have been my fault too. Lemme explain.

I work with the Director of Business Development. He's the dude that goes out and finds new contracts for us - keepin the cash rollin in. I had a simple task: take all his contacts in Outlook and move them into an Excel spreadsheet.

I didn't exactly know what I was doing - but I was figuring it out. Or so I thought. But suddenly all his contacts are gone. All 1350 of them are gone. Those 1350 names represent all the business leads for the company.

I'm dead. At this point I wasn't sure whether it would be best to tell them I quit or just walk out and never come back. Suicide seemed like a viable choice as well.

Well I finally found them - and moved them back - saving my life and my job. I now officially hate Microsoft with all that I am.

Well that's all I got- my life's kind of boring. I may just start making up stories...

Off Days

You know those days that just seem off? Everything is going perfectly but something is wrong. You just can't be content. You're ansty. Your favorite clothes don't fit right. Good food is unsatisfying. The perfect weather is too hot or too cold. The color of your room annoys you. Something just isn't right and you can't put your finger on it.

I hate those days and I love them. I hate them because I can't get comfortable. I love them because they help me remember.

I'm not supposed to fit in this world.

This world is not my home. In fact, this world is supposed to hate me. I shouldn't get comfortable in a place that hates me. That's just common sense. But what if the world doesn't know it's supposed to hate me? That's no good.

So as much as I hate days like that, I am grateful for them. They remind me what is really important and where my focus should be. And that's more important than being comfortable.