Personal Update

I know I don't talk about myself a lot on here, I figure it's boring. But I needed a post, so I'll bore my dear reader(s?) with some crap that's happening in my life. Very stream of consciousness, if you will...

Need to get 3 more hours of work done today, not sure if that'll happen. I'm looking at pictures on facebook and getting sad. Softball is over and probably won't happen again. I guess I thought that when I stopped playing ball in high school, but then I got the chance to play again in like 2002, and then to play again this year, so maybe in a few years I'll play again, if anyone needs a sucky batter ;p. I find Facebook to be more depressing than anything else. Yeah, it's fun to play farmville, and interesting to see where people are at in their lives but it's terribly sad being "friends" with people on fb but not actually talking to any of them in real life. It's awkward even attempting to contact people on fb. It's like "Thanks for adding me as a friend, now let us never talk again" not like we were talking prior to the add but we definitely aren't talking after so is it like you've added me and I've added you just so we can feel better about the fact that we have so many fb friends even if we don't have friends in real life? There are two types of people on fb, that I run into, those that will ask to be your friend, and those who won't (but will accept your request). For me, I rarely ask anyone to be my friend on fb, assuming they'll say no, and so a lot of people I'm friends with are friends with a lot of people I could be friends with if I asked, but I don't ask, so then I assume people don't like me because they are friends with other people but not friends with me on FB. BUT, the aspect of "friends" on fb is just a joke anyways, so why do I even care? Most of the people on here, I haven't seen/spoken to in 10 years (roughly) so it's also sad for them to see and for me to see how unsuccessful we've all been in achieving the things we wanted to achieve by this point. FB is just one big depression train. I also have a cold in my throat, which doesn't help my current mood/outlook. I've got some antibiotics which took a less than 10 minute visit to the Dr, but 45 minutes at the pharmacist. Then I realized that I'm going to have to chug yogurt by the gallon for the next week, which isn't as fun as it sounds. Trust me. He also gave me some cough syrup with codeine. Pain medicine tends to make me vomit everywhere, so I asked if it would make me sick. He said no, especially since I'll be sleeping after I take it (I should be taking it before I got to bed at night), but hasn't he ever heard of someone getting sick while sleeping and waking up to puke everywhere? What about those people who puke everywhere while sleeping and then die because they suffocate on their own vomit? I know that they were binge drinking, but still, it could happen to me, right? I paid the 2 dollars for the cough syrup, so I guess I should use it, in theory. Maybe it'll be help and I'll love it, or maybe I'll have the worst night of sleep imaginable, with waking up several times to clean up my codeine explosions. We'll see.

Play That Piany For Me

Due to some unforeseen changes, I am housing a piano. Why do I care to mention it? Well, I'm quite the jingle maker. I wouldn't compare myself to the Gershwins, because the one time I did, George suffered from a stroke and I was blamed for his death, similar to the time that I told Gene Kelly that I was a better singer, dancer, choreographer and all-around-man than he was. I waited a bit too long to tell him it was a joke (you know I love you Gene) but hurt his ego so bad that it ruined our friendship and led to many years of drug abuse, drinking, womanizing and depression (all on my part).

Long story short, this piano will afford me more time to make jingles and to continue to write my musical:

It's a mixture between Joseph and the Amazing technicolor Dream Coat (Oh so many colors, and biblical tales), Gypsy (striptease anyone?), Fiddler on the Roof (religious oppression) and some various other musicals about people trying to succeed in life through song and dance. Look for it soon!

Two Indelible Truths

Dear person who potentially punched out a car window at the library,

We found the remains of the window early Monday morning but saw that the assaulted vehicle had found its way out of our lot. This is both good and bad. Good, because I didn't want to have to tow an abandoned vehicle, and bad because I had to sweep up the glass.

Perhaps the glass wasn't from a car you punched in our lot, but one you punched off-site and you then brought over the glass to our lot to dissuade people from parking at the library. If so, then the joke's on you because nothing deters our patrons from parking here. Even as the patrons claimed that the glass was blocking two spots, they still were parking in those spots.

I tried once, to do as you have done, not with punching cars, but with digging pits and lighting tires on fire. It was a Saturday afternoon, we were bored to tears and we wanted to go home. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but even a fiery pit did not allow us to close (Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor tornadoes, nor hurricanes, nor earthquakes, nor loss of electricity, nor unusable facilities, nor zombie attacks, nor apocalypse, nor raptor attacks, nor robot attacks, nor alien invasion, nor state issued weather advisories with "do not drive on the roads unless you absolutely have to" stipulations, nor fiery pits stays these library workers from the swift completion of their appointed service).

Since the fiery pit neither let us close, nor stopped people from parking in our lot, then your tiny-in-comparison glass fiasco obviously wouldn't do the trick. Perhaps you should have asked my advice first, before coming up with and executing this scheme.

While it's been quoted that there is nothing guaranteed in life but death and taxes, the truth is, there's nothing guaranteed in life except that people will always park at the library, and that the library never makes unscheduled closings.

Sincerely,

Local library worker

Wearing Sunglasses At Night

I need to stop taking backroads after dark. It wouldn't be so bad if nocturnal animals weren't on the loose, but I continuously have close calls with all sorts of night-time creatures.

The other day I was driving about 50mph on a backroad, it was dark (sky was a bit overcast and the sun was down) and as I came over a hill Inoticed something huge in the middle of the road. Sitting on the median was a large racoon. Or a baby in a racoon suit. Or this guy:

I noticed this creature as I was upon him, and missed him by inches. It's one thing if an animal runs across the road, but he was just sitting up and staring at the oncoming cars. I think he must have been swiped by another vehicle and was in a bit of shock, and was handing out that shock to everyone who passed him and yelled "OMG!" like I did.'

Now, I'm just left with the mystery. Was it a very large racoon in the road or something else. Let's see.

Hmmm...I still can't decide, maybe I should have stopped for a DNA sample instead of zooming past.

Delicious Dreams and Cake Realities

I always think cake decorating is easy, until it's hour 6, the kitchen is 80 degrees, the fondant is gooey, the frosting is melting and the 4-tier cake is leaning worse than that stupid tower in Pisa. At the end of all that crap, it looked like a kindergartner came over to decorate it.

The quest for this beautiful design turned monstrosity started last year. Before we signed up for who we would make birthday cakes for at work, I heard about the first year one of my co-workers worked at our branch. Apparently no one had signed up for her birthday treat and when someone finally did, instead of writing their name on the sign up form they wrote her name and for a moment she was under the impression that she would have to provide her own birthday treat. Hearing about this, and knowing what it's like to have people forget or not appreciate your birthday, I felt compelled to do something amazing this year for her treat.

The first concept was something simple, yet delicious but it soon blossomed into a 4 tiered cake (fun-fetti and strawberry) with Rainbow and Monkey as themes. I utilized basic frosting (vanilla), Runts (the fruit hard candies) and homemade marshmallow fondant.

Fondant quickly became Fondon't in my book. This was almost a complete disaster. I made a way too large batch which would not take to the color I wanted (brown for monkeys) and ultimately only made 1 pasty fat man with a tail who sweats when he gets too warm (the fondant gets gooey when the temperature is too high). After hours trying to make the fondant monkey I finally decided to still use it. I wanted to have a joyful monkey sliding down a rainbow but it kind of fell short.

I made a pretty successful rainbow with light and a prism but the conceptual design fell short of impressing the cake eaters, so my second design was made with colored sugar.

There's not a whole lot more I can say, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

So here's a good side shot of the cake. You can see the rainbow, which was pretty decent and the runts which sunk down the side of the frosting as it melted.

Here's the top of the cake, what's that? A fat and sweaty man with a tail?

I think it must be a fat and sweaty man with a tail sliding down that rainbow.

Yep, he's pretty fat and sweaty. Better luck next time.

Oh, but the inside is a rainbow as well, how delicious!

Still Workin' for a Livin'

So apparently, Huey Lewis doesn't have enough money to roll around in anymore and is back on the streets making a few dollars. Good thing music isn't the same thing as food, if someone tried to sell me a bologna sandwich from 1982 I wouldn't buy it, but if you try to sell me a ticket to a concert where I'm guaranteed to hear some 80s hits, I'd probably buy it, as long as it was cheap, and they were good 80s hits.

Back in the 80s, Huey went on his "Workin' for a Livin'" tour, because back then he was working for a living instead of living off record and merchandise sales and tell all books.

Now he's back with the "Still Workin' for a Livin'" tour. Unfortunately, he's not working too hard, since he cancelled his highly anticipated Australian visit (first time in more than 20 years). Guess he had better things to do like preparing his "Still Not Working Hard Enough For a Living to Go to Australia Tour: 2011".