Mid-west culture on the skids

Don't 'cha wish your grandma was hot like me? Don't 'cha wish your grandma could drink the malt liquor like me? Don't 'cha? Don't 'cha? Sorry Jason, I couldn't help it.

Uh... I don't even know. I think we have a "Pat" in Columbia.

One for the good guys AKA: Ah Hell Yeah! Kevin gets his bike back.

So about an hour ago I was driving down a street here in C-town that I had never driven down before. I even mentioned it to Leslie as we drove down the dark street in the rain. Suddenly, I noticed a bike laying in the yard in front of a dumpy duplex on my right. I slowed down and Leslie says, "What are you doing?" "Hold on," I say, "I need to go back and check out that bike." I turn the car around, and I can tell the bike is nice and shouldn't be laying out in the rain. I look closely and I can tell it's a Cannondale. Here's what's weird. Just yesterday I was talking to this guy, Kevin, whose bike had been stolen a few weeks ago. He was telling me the story of how it happened when he had his back turned for just a moment before heading out on a ride. I told him I'd keep an eye out and maybe it would still turn up even though it had been weeks and usually those bikes get sold off pretty quickly after being stolen. But you never know... So I know this is the bike. I call Kevin up at his work, Klunk Bike Shop. He's there and I talk to his boss Karl, who says they'll be right over to meet me. (I was parked up the street like a sting getting ready to go down) After waiting a few minutes and getting really psyched, Kevin shows up. We pull down the street to the place where the bike is. Kevin gets out, looks at the bike, nods that it's his, walks up in the yard and grabs the bike and throws it in the back of his truck. We drive off. That's some sweet action.
It was just crazy. I had never been on that street before, and I had just talked to Kevin the day before about the situation. It was just meant to be. I wish I had had a camera with me.
I can tell you what the kid will say when he comes out and sees his stolen bike gone. "Oh hell no! Well ain't that about a bitch? Someone stole my stolen bike. god damn!"

Strange Days

I'm a firm believer that good blogs have lots of pictures. Lately, I haven't had any good pictures and I think about that every time I have an entry. So here's a random:

This is Ziggy when he was just few weeks old. Here he is now:

He's a sweet boy and a pain in the ass! He's about seven months old (teenager). Yeah, he acts like one too. But things have been better since we got Olivia:

She's a miniature Schnauzer. Lot's of attitude but very sweet. She's about half Ziggy's size, but she handles him just fine. You know, not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog.

In other news, Folgers Coffee finally came out with something decent- Gourmet Supreme. It's actually good for cheap coffee. I'm a coffee snob and I wouldn't drink it if it was crap. Try it out.

In music news: check out Lotus if you haven't already. I downloaded "Germination" from Itunes and it's good stuff if you're into instrumental.

Drink Pyramid Thunderbolt IPA if you like hops- lots of hops. It has to be the hoppiest beer ever. 6.7%.

I think my next blog needs to just be about beer. I love beer. Only good beer though.

At the holidays, I find myself drinking beer and eating cookies. That's a personal choice.

Uh... This is from last Labor Day weekend. My first movie premier with none other than the fat man of cycling. Mr. Tim. Who's your daddy?

Just a couple more months and I'll be seeing this down in Mexico. Lesie is just about finished with her Masters in Counseling. She just got her Praxis test results back and she scored REALLY high. About 200 points above what she needed to. Very proud and happy for her. Your kid should be so lucky to have her for their counselor.

Until the time I am in Mexico, not much to do but wait for it to get warm again.

Did I mention it was 18 degrees last night? UG! This too will pass. Happy Easter! Whatever that means to you. To me it means I don't go back to work until Tuesday.

Ring the Alarm

Ooohhhhhhhh...Three hours and 10 minutes until Easter break and a four day weekend that should have been five if it had not been for Old Man Winter rapping on my head with a hickory stick. He's a bastard and he's trying to get back in the door at the moment with a big 'ole snap of cold again. Luckily, he'll be kicked to the curb by Monday and we'll be back to some reasonable temps.
Not that it's related to winter or spring or any other season, but I got an Ipod for Christmas. It sat for a long time and Leslie was beginning to wonder if I was going to use it. I finally started dumping CDs on it and last night I used my Itunes gift card that I also got for a gift(thanks Arnolds). It was actually really cool how obscure of songs you can find on Itunes. I'm pretty pleased with how fast the songs download too. The only thing I don't like about Ipods is all the extras you need to buy: The case, the cords, the headphones for those of us who don't have mammoth ear canals, the armband for the gym. So far I have bought one thing and it's a good one. You know how you can buy a dock for your Ipod that has speakers? If you buy the actual Ipod one, it's about $300.00. I just bought a cord that connects your Ipod to your home tuner/amp. It was only $30.00 and I'm sure I could have found one for even less, but I bought the Monster brand and it does have pretty heavy guage cable- so it's a good deal. My Element also has a port for plugging in Ipods and that been pretty useful lately. So now I can listen to the radio, CDs, XM radio, or the Ipod on my way to and from work. It's a pretty nice drive this time of year less the past couple of days of cold. Overall, it's been a nice spring. It was 80 on Monday. Today it's about 40. Someonesgottodoit

33

Days before summer break begins. Then I'll have about three months to do whatever comes to mind. Like using this:

The one I have looks a little different with the logos. Now we have two black SUVs and a black lawnmower. This is the lawnmower I talked about getting earlier. I don't know why I'm into lawn stuff but my lawn and yard has come a long way since the bought our house about 16 months ago. I should have taken more before and after pictures. I guess I'm into lawnmowers since I spent a lot of summers on the end of one. I used to push mow my parent's acre lawn. That was about three hours of calculating how many more passes it would take to finish the different sides. And of course there's the saga of the Lawn Cheif. That was about four years of do it yourself repairs and rigging. Wheels falling off, deck cracking, tinkering with the fuel/air mix. I was always kind of afraid that the blade was going to fly off and chop me right at the ankles. He's gone now and has either become parts or been reinvented to cut again. He disappeared on trash day before the trash got picked up. I thought I saw him the other day, but it couldn't have been. Now I have the Yard Man. The motto is: "Makes tall grass short" Great. That's pretty much what I was looking for.

Prankster

I recently saw a news report on our local news about a certain local news woman who is known at one of our local stations for pulling lots of pranks. She passed on some extremely valuable information I put to use the very next day. I can't tell you all I learned because you might use it on me, but I can and will tell you that putting scotch tape over the receiver button on a co-workers phone and then going to the other room and calling them is well worth the effort. You call them, they pick up the phone and say, "hello?" and the phone contiunes to ring. In my perticular situation this is even better because we have a brand new phone system and it makes the called person feel like they're doing something wrong. So they start pushing all kinds of buttons on the phone and generally getting really frustrated. The only drawback in my situation is that each phone has caller ID, so once they see the tape on the phone- I'm had.
The next prank I intend to use involves donuts and a certain pickling chemical that resembles powdered sugar. I'll let you know...

One thing leads to another

First I buy some running shoes- start running. Next thing I know- I'm the new head coach for cross-country at the high school. Actually, there's a lot more to it than that, but it did happen pretty fast once it got rolling. I can't remember if it was my first year here or my second, but another teacher and I were talking about the possibility of cross-country racing coming to the district. It was just kind of talk- no planning or asking. I always thought it would be cool to coach cross-country and more interesting to me than football had been. But I was a football coach and we didn't have cross-country. Then there was a track coach clinic in the winter and the possibility of bringing cross-country to our district came up. My name got dropped for the coaching position. More time passes and the position becomes a reality. I apply. I interview with others. I become the coach. I make the paper. I'm famous in a small town. Yeah! Now it's my job to grow the sport locally and start a tradition. Apparently we had cross-country here about 15 or 20 years ago and it just kind of died out. It's kind of exciting to be the guy in charge of trying to bring it back.

The rainbow returns- and I thought nothing was going on.

Last year sometime I posted about how diverse Columbia is as a town. On the day that prompted my post I was almost run over by a couple of redneck dicks in a monster truck. Later that day I got a flat tire on my ride and was offered help by none other than the mayor of our city. Columbia is a university city and that brings a lot of diversity. I'm glad to say it's a pretty progressive place to live.
Unfortunately, we have some not-so-progressive thinkers coming out to parade this weekend. The National Socialist Movement will be putting on a parade downtown this Saturday. The NSM is the largest neo-Nazi movement in the US today. I don't know how they came up with their name, but I've elected to give them the nickname, "butthole". I mean think about it, why go to the trouble of saying, "Hey dude, I'm in the National Socialist Party." Or you might confuse someone by saying, "I'm in the NSM." No, no, no. Just use the k.i.s.s. (keep it simple stupid) method and say, "I'm a butthole." Everyone will know what you mean. Nonetheless, here they come on Saturday. Not much to be done about it but ignore them I guess. Apparently a couple of years ago they were having a parade or rally in Toledo, OH and it started a four hour riot. I can only hope it doesn't come to that.
Well, whatever happens maybe it'd be swallowed a little easier with this .

Lawn Man to take over for Lawn Chief

There's really no point to this post. I just like getting on other blogs and seeing new stuff so I'll try to do the same. It's the last day of February- thank God, because that means spring is coming and winter is leaving. I question why I live in this state every winter- I hate it- and this was actually a pretty bad winter for around here. Soon though, things will green up and I'll have to buy a new lawn mower because the Lawn Chief finally kicked the bucket last fall. You might remember the Chief from earlier posts where I had repaired him at least half a dozen times. Finally, last fall, his pull-rope broke and I didn't have all the tools I needed to take him apart, put in the new rope, and then put him back together. I tired but he resisted so I kicked him to the curb on a chilly Sunday night. Monday is trash day and in the early morning light I could see that someone had taken pity on the cheif and taken him home before he became a citizen of the local land fill. It'd be funny to see him chopping down a yard out about town some day on one of my runs that I'm looking forward to when it gets warm enough to get a sunburn. But that's all fantasy and the reality is that right now I'm in ISS with four of my past students. A fight and two brothers who thought they could both skip school without anyone putting the coincidence together. It's grey out, chilly, and windy. Guess I'll just sit back and wait for spring and the thought of being here in June, after Leslie graduates with her Masters in Counseling.
P.S. Consumer Reports lists the "Lawn Man" as the best buy all around push mower. Gotta get mine yo.

The new game- running

Yesterday I went to the Starting Block. They are a running, triathlon outfitter next to the gym I go to. They put me on a treadmill and filmed me walking and running. Then they sold me these.

Notice the MU colors. I had become really frustrated the day before shopping at the mall for running shoes. First of all you can pretty much trust that the guy working at FootLocker doesn't know much about what you need. You know, "Try these on. Walk to the door and come back. "How do they feel?" "Uh, pretty good." "Good, meet me at the register." Well, enough of that. I actually got "fitted" for these shoes. Turns out there's a lot more to the different types of shoes than the colors and styling. I actually saved about $30.00 by getting the fitting done. If you are in the market for running shoes, you should find a place that does the fitting. It was free where I went.

Cute and Cuddley vs. Gross

Below are two pictures: One very nice, the other not. Can you tell which is which?

Ice fishing has been good.

More Dreams- More death and destruction

What the hell? Two nights ago I dreamed of a man being killed on power lines. Last night there was more death. I was walking down the street in a town I didn't recognize. It was warm and humid- perhaps New Orleans. I was with some guy and I'm not sure who he was, but I think it may have been Randy Jackson from American Idol. We were walking and talking. All of a sudden a man comes out of the dark, draws a large gun from his jacket, and starts shooting. Randy takes one in the gut and falls. I say I'll go get help and take off. The guy with the gun is after me, but luckily I can run fast in this dream. I somehow arrive at an apartment complex and turn to find him close behind me. I head upstairs and he starts shooting. He misses and I jump down to his floor and attack him. I put my thumbs in his eyes and poke out his eyes. I wake up... Not cool.

Winter Entertainment

When it's truly cold out to the point you really can have skin exposed, you need to find unusual things to do. Around here, ice fishing is not a popular sport. But it's truly cold out and the lake that the Conservation Dept. stocks with trout is frozen over with 6+ inches of ice. So ice fishing is popular right now. The last time I went ice fishing was about three winters ago. It's a blast and a good lesson in survival.
I went out this past Saturday and was on the ice before 7:00am. Only part of my face was exposed, so I was in good shape. The problem is you can't do much in the way of fine motor work with big gloves on- so you take them off to get the hook from the fish or bait the hook. There's a formula for how much time you can have skin exposed at different temps. before it starts to freeze. I passed that limit. It's not so much the cold and numb feeling that's a problem- it's the warming back up part that smarts. I honestly don't think I've ever been in so much pain with no way to stop it. You just have to wait. It's three days later now and my fingertips are still just a little sore. I did fill my limit of four trout though with one really nice fish. Pictures to follow.
I guess I need entertainment when I sleep too. Maybe that's why I had a dream last night that I saw a guy get electricuted on powerlines... His face melted off. That one woke me up.

A ghost is born.

Sometimes you can't get mad at kids for the weird things they do in class. When I looked up from my computer I saw a student holding up this little sign like he was advertising a new show coming to Broadway. "Bring that here!" He sat down and tore it in half and wadded it up. "No, no, no. Bring it here." He reluctantly brought it to me and waited as I ironed it out and pieced it back together. As I started laughing all I could say was, "Go sit down."

Finally...

I got a response. The teacher approached me and asked if I was the "prankster". "What do you mean?" "I mean are you the funny guy who keeps putting things on the door that fall in on me when I open it?" "Someone did that to you?" She was on to me, but I continued to play it off. Since then I have come clean on that. Speaking of clean, I also started messing with one of our custodians. He's a real nice guy and a lot of people give him a hard time. I knew he wouldn't mind if I took his plunger from his cleaning cart the other day while he was in one of the other bathrooms cleaning and stuck it to the inside of the opposing stall. That was a pretty spontaneous one that cracked me up pretty good. The next morning he asked me, "Did you have a good time playing with my plunger?"
I think winter needs to end...

Keeping Myself Entertained

It's really winter here and there's not much to do. It's cold and the ground is covered with ice and snow. It's not usually like that around here. It's been keeping me in more than I'm used to and more than I can take. So I'm finding new ways of entaining myself. Mostly by pulling pranks at work.
One of the other teachers here who works on the third floor like me has two doors that go into her room. One main enterance and one back door that is connected to a small supply room and another door leading to yet another classroom. I use that small room to cook stuff in the microwave that is in there. Always there is all kinds of stuff laying around- mostly stuff for projects and supplies for experiments. So everytime I go in the small room to use the microwave I take the two or three minutes it takes to heat my food or water to place something against the door that will fall on the first person who comes through the door of the other classroom. The first time I leaned two brooms against the door and never heard what happend. Then I started leaning other stuff against the door. I never heard anything about the result. No one complained. So I started placing items on the handle of the door opposite the side of the classroom- plastic jars that would make a bunch of noise, books, whatever I could find in there. Still no response. Yesterday, I placed this huge beachball thing hanging on a string right in front of the door so when the door opened it would swing in and attack the person opening the door. Finally this moring

Out In Space

It's cold. Probably back when I posted last it was still kind of warm- considering that was going on two months ago. A lot has happened. Nothing bad- all good. Let's see: Quit racing bikes (very happy about that), Got a puppy (also very good), Put on a surprise party for Leslie's 30th B-Day (Perfect), Bought a bunch of new hunting stuff (cool) Put up Christmas lights on my house for the first time while having a conversation with some witnesses of Jahova (ironic), Played in the snow until I was sick (you don't get the chance to play in that much snow around here every year). Lots of stuff and more. Quitting bike racing is great. I think a lot more people would do it if they had the balls. I think a lot of people are hanger-ons. You know, "I don't want to ride or race, but I can't seem to stop." I was just like, "I don't want to do this anymore, so I'm not going to." Racing and riding has been fun. Now I'm looking forward to other interests I've put on the back burner for years.

Ladies...

It doesn't matter if you can't read what it says. It's probably better if you don't read much fine print anyway.
Nothing like having the chance to sleep in to 7:00 and waking up at 5:00. Eh, who cares? I could be doing a lot of things right now. Sleeping would be good, but I have an easy day ahead. I have nothing else to say right now. Butthead's picture of prime rib is gross! I hate that photo and I'll be glad when it's archived.

Crap to write, crap to read

I've been writing blogs and saving them as drafts because I hate crap, and that's basically what I've been writing. I'd rather not write at all than write crap because you know- all the big time critics are reading this and I don't want to mess up my chance for a pro blog deal. Besides, I've been wanting to upload some pics, but I'm always writing from work and I don't have my camera with me.
Tonight is the last football game of the season. Last year we were undefeated going 11-0 between the 7th and 8th grades. This year we are probably going to finish up 11-1 if we win both games tonight. We lost one 7th grade game in the last couple of minutes of play. Not bad though considering before last season it had been over 20 years since the middle school had an undefeated season. I'm glad it's going to be over after tonight- I'm tired. That's all there is to it. It'll be weird to get home before 4:00pm now. The work day will seem very short.
Quite a bit going on actually, I've been buying tools: leaf blower, weedeater, chainsaw. Fun tools. The chainsaw is wicked. Stihl 290. I can really whip some ass with that thing. Tree ass that is. Never point a chainsaw at something you don't intend to cut. Or maybe that was pointing guns. Either way you have to be careful. If you need a tree cut up or cut down call me. You can't borrow my saw but you can watch me use it on your tree.
I've been looking at www.youtube.com a lot. There's good stuff on there.
Does Jimmy still live here?
Golf is going good. I made Meathead mad the last time we played because I had a couple of shots that were better than his. He can still kill it though.
I haven't ridden my bike in about six or seven weeks. I don't care really- it's just that time of year where football takes over for a short while.
We're getting a puppy in a few weeks. He's already picked out, but we can't have him until around Thanksgiving time. He should taste good with some gravy and stuffing. Looking forward to it.
Peeps are moving away, but I won't say who since peeps are posting about it themselves. Not my job to report the news of others. I'm not Geraldo.
Funny stuff at school...let's see...oh yeah. The other day I was telling the kids in one class how to do something on their homework. I said, "It should be pretty obvious what the answer is when you look at it." So a kid says (girl), "So, can just write, "it's obvious" for the answer on our paper?" "...no"
I think I mentioned before that I have breakfast duty this year. Or maybe that was just one of my drafts. It's turning out to be a good deal. It's cool to get free breakfast and actually seeing the kids before the actual day starts is a good thing. I just walk around while they eat and talk to them. I have to make sure they wipe down the tables and push in their chairs. Other than that it's way easy.
Jeff Buckley died way too early. His music is really good in the fall for some reason.
Should I build new tubular wheels for next year or just buy out of the box wheels?
The Mizzou game isn't on TV this coming weekend. What the hell? No. I won't buy a ticket and just go. I got too spoiled from getting free tickets for two years.
Five minutes to lunch. Frito chili pie?

We're all winners!

I did the MS 150 for the first time last weekend. You could also say I did the MS 150 for the last time. Overall, the experience was good. It was cool riding with Ozenpro and Morgan. It was not cool having some super choad roll his eyes at me and shake his head when I told him I didn't drink Gatorade. He was like, "But where do you get your calories from?" "Uh, not Gatorade." The eye rolling and head shaking really sent me over the edge. I was so pissed I had to drop everyone out there the rest of the day. So I cranked it up to 14MPH and put the hammer down. I dropped fat women and children first. Then dorks and tri-geeks spinning a cadence of 20rpms. Before that incident Ozenpro and I were waiting for Morgan at one of the stops on the side of the road. We were clearly off to the side and there was tons of room left in the lane. All of a sudden, some woman rides by and yells, "Don't just stop in the middle of the road!" She said it as if we had been riding in front of her and just threw on the brakes. But we had been sitting there for like two minutes. Luckily, my quick witted MS 150 poaching teammate, Ozenpro, says without missing a tick, "Screw you." It was so smooth. Like he was just waiting for her to say something. It was the pro move of the day and it stuck. She didn't want none of us.
Overall, I'd have to say I wish the MS 150 would go to another town. I think charity rides are great, but we're going to need some new charities for local racers who have been assulted by drivers when pissed off motorists take out on us their anger of how some of the MS 150 riders behave. The problem is that all these inexperienced riders come here from out of town and while most ride faily responsibily, some ride like they are immune to being hit by a car, or as if courtesy doesn't apply to you if you're on a charity ride. I saw a pair of guys make a left hand turn right in front of an oncoming car going about 50mph. So here in a couple of weeks I'll be out on that same road with that same guy driving his car. Do you think he'll be thinking, "Oh, that's not the guy who pissed me off and turned right in front of me a couple of weeks ago." Or do you think he'll be saying to himself, "I HATE CYCLISTS! ALL OF THEM!"
I'd have to say that the MS 150 is probably not good for local cycling or cyclists. I'm sure to the public the people who do the MS 150 represent "cycling" and "cyclists" as a whole. I don't think we want most of these people making the impression of cycling for us.
In a nutshell: Charity- good. Charity ride cyclists- not so good.