The musings of a madman...

       Another Thursday morning, another instance of me explaining where the hell I have been for the previous couple of weeks. The short answer, here, is “in Japan.”      The long answer is the one you’re getting though, and it perfectly aligns with the “menagerie of shit that could only happen to me” that you’ve become accustomed to. This all started back in late April with a phone call… Me: “Hello?” Caller: “Hi, this is [redacted] from the USOC, and--…” Me: “United…   States…   Olympic…   Commission?” Caller: “Correct, sir and we’re calling in reference to--…” Me: “And you’re aware that the last time I participated in any organized sport was 80 pounds ago, right?” Caller: “Well we’ve been recently advised of your RECENT prowess, and this is in an event that doesn’t necessarily require athletic acumen.” Me: “This should be good.   Which event?” Caller: “Skeet shooting.” Me: “HA!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Caller: “Did I say something wrong?” Me: “I don’t thi

       Ever told a joke so good that they wanted you to come down to HR and tell it?      Have I ever told y’all how much I hate smalltalk?      Is ANYONE wondering where the hell I have been for the last two weeks? No, Stephanie did not follow me home and accost me on my front lawn and cause me to assault her or otherwise not be able to leave the house.      The answer is actually a bit more entertaining.   With everything else happening in my life these days (more on that later – WAY later) , I’ve not spent my normal time out having adventures like I normally do.   At least not the kind that cost me much money. I did , however, indulge myself in my normal paid time off for the most of two weeks as I always do in the summer.   Rather than go off and spend money I will need later, I did that thing I mentioned some months ago where I get a job I don’t intend to keep.      In order to n ot let anyone in on anything they don’t need to know about me, the company will remain un

       Thursday of last week was my birthday… I say that to say that I was off celebrating.      Next week is my daughter’s birthday.   For the first time in her whole life, she will not be with me on her birthday.   She will be with my ex wife a woman I had a wedding with once.   I say that to say that we are celebrating this week/end instead.      Wife person came up with the idea that we jump over to Sweet Valley Ranch in Fayetteville for the dinosaur thing today, I can report back on my findings when we’ve done it.      The point of this story is yesterday though… We had to clear the front room of the house before we left to prepare it for some contractors to come through and do their thing on our floors, then take the dogs to the sitter’s place, then grab one more niece and hit the road.   Only a 90ish minute trip to the destination and there we are. This is where the shit gets crazy.      We arrive to the hotel and I am unloading the back of the wagon and the kids wh

       Despite roughly a year of shooting my shot, I am unfortunately still not rich…      The closest I have come was with my crypto bets, which if I had trusted more at the time, would have been more lucrative.  Who can forget when I was curb serving the city all the available Plan B back at Valentine's Day?  Beyond that, my lawn hustle is doing me pretty well. Live and learn, I know. I have been accosted by several police officers over the course of the ‘Rona year and I can only be thankful that the wife person was around to talk me out of an arrest or – more likely – roadside execution.      It’s been fun though.   I have been places (sort of) and met people (from six feet away) and somehow have come off with more money than I might have under other conditions.   Wait…   “somehow”?   There is no mystery involved.   I work from home, I am buying literally a third of the gas I would otherwise and I literally can’t go spending on outside the house things as I would if

       I have been contiguously employed since a week after my 16 th birthday and can count on one hand the number of times I have called in sick. I lost a whole-ass week of work (and True Story©) last week due to a damned misunderstanding behind my apparent myriad of side hustles and get-money schemes. Wait…      Y’all remember a few months ago when I tried to collect manholes and get the money for recycling?   If not, go read and come back. [ link ] Welcome back…      Now that we have established that it is absolutely NOT beneath me to employ crackhead labor to save a few bucks and/or maintain my own convenience in a situation, we can talk about what I have been up to.   This all started back when my stimmy checks finally started to hit (I was late AF filing my taxes) .   Following a surprise two-week hospital stay three years ago this past Monday, I was not in physical shape to continue to maintain my own lawn.   Coinciding with the fact that my own mower had just died, i

       For all of my discussion of how much I hate talking on the phone, there still remains a precious few people who I will actually call.   Usually it is because I know that person will be in a car and a text conversation will be disjointed as fuck or take longer than the time I have to deal with whatever needs to be discussed.   Or it is more business than can be conveyed via text. Worry not, though…   I can still only be counted on to make one or two calls a week to people I know.   Otherwise, it will be a text message or one of a constant barrage of memes on Facebook between my bouts with the FB filters.      So following last week’s kidnapping fiasco , I simply sat on my couch and spun through mid-afternoon on my lunch break instead of wandering outside back into danger.   Needless to say, I found this painfully boring.   When I get bored, I will either do something incredibly creative or something INCREDIBLY stupid. I grabbed up my phone, turned the TV off and prayed the do

       I love dogs…   To be completely honest, I enjoy doggies more than I do most people.   When out and about in the world, if I encounter someone with a dog I ask the owner if I can pet it, unless of course the dog decides to get close to me and be buddies. It drives my wife nuts when I do this, but she knows I live to make new four-legged friends.   Our own dogs here at the house are spoiled rotten because of it.      This isn’t (directly) about that though. This honestly starts about six weeks ago in early April.   The guy we’ve been paying to handle our lawn has been going through some things and had not yet gotten with us to start in on the yard and was already three weeks late, in addition to not having done the winter maintenance on the yard.   Wife person looks to me and asks “you think we should get a lawn mower again?” to which I excitedly exclaimed “fuuuck yeah!” See, in 2018 I had a big little heart health scare that sat me in the hospital for a week and a half, co

       There is a special level of shenanigous dipshittery to be gleaned from a proper lack of context in an all-of-a-sudden non sequitur element that was not non sequitur until you got involved. That was big (or big-in-nature) words…   Relax, it will all come up on the final test.      So I have been working from home since March 19, 2020 and the number of miles I have put on one car and the number of wrench time I have put on the one that hasn’t moved further than three feet in seven years serves it that I don’t even WANT to go back to the office. But I am bored. Apart from spending a week at a time cooking up 1k-3k words a week to grip five people in my mania here, I find myself looking for ways to entertain myself in my daily motions, even when those “motions” don’t involve venturing further than the driveway.      Although vaccines are slowly opening outside, we’re still healthily scared of the stupidity of people because we’ve been paying attention to America since someone w