No Way This Waits Until the Weekend!

OK, I checked my myspace page last night, and my sister Heidi emailed me this video. There is no way that I could wait until Friday to post it as my weekend video. It had to make an appearance now. So feel free to keep the comments flowing about Lisa slowly killing my car's battery, but you must watch this video.

If I ever have the pleasure of visiting Japan, I would love to sit as an audience member on one of their game shows. They are all about humiliating the contestants, which in turn makes for very funny television. I would have never guessed that sliding doors together could be turned into a game show, but for some strange reason it works. Happy hump day!

Not Even More Cowbell Can Cure This Disease

There is a disease in the Sorenson household. Actually, if I had to compare it to something I would say it is like a case of Herpes. You know, how there is no medication to cure it, and you never know when it might flare up again. Well, this morning it flared up.

Here is what went down. I was running late this morning for work. I didn’t have too much of a sense of urgency to get out there, since I did not have anything pressing to get done until the afternoon. When I did finally get all ready to go, I headed out to the garage, and hopped in my trusty 1996 Honda Accord. This is the car that I have owned for the past 7 years, and I have spent many an hour in it driving back and forth between work and home. It had been, and still is a very good little car for commuting. There is just one teensy weensy feature I wish it had.
It is a feature that our van has. It is one that the average person might not find to be that big of a deal. That is, until they drive a car without said feature, but don’t remember that the car they are driving doesn’t have it. And this is what brings me to what happened last night.

Lisa had to work, and we had been invited to our friends the Shannon’s house for a BBQ/Swim party. Since I can’t fit all three car seats into my car, Lisa took it to work, and I drove the van. Everything sounds hunky dory right? Uh, Wrong!

Now I love my wife. I could not ask for a better one, nor would I want to ask for a better one. She is the apple of my eye, and I will love her for eternity. With that being said, there is something that she does about every 3 months that wreaks havoc on me.

You see, the feature that I am talking about that my car is lacking is the one that automatically turns off your headlights after 15 seconds. I must admit, it is a great feature. Well, if you have a car that does it anyways. But like I already said, my car doesn’t have it. So, Lisa gets home from work, usually around 9:30, and pulls into the garage. She turns off the ignition. She closes the door of the car. And then heads into the house, closing the garage door behind her, and settles in for a night of relaxation with a wonderful and caring husband that has the house already cleaned up and kids off to bed. (OK, 4 out of 5 times the clean house and kids to bed are true. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.)

Then we have the next morning. I roll out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, and get my lunch ready. I go back into our bedroom, kiss Lisa goodbye, and head out to the garage. Before I get in my car I feed the dogs. I then hop in the car, put my key in the ignition……and nothing happens. It is at this exact moment when I find out that Lisa forgot to turn off my headlights, and my battery is so dead that even the automatic door locks don’t work.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I then have to back my car down the driveway in neutral. And since both of our vehicles are Honda’s, the batteries are on the same side. Of course that means I then have to back the van out, flip it to the other side of my car, and get the cables hooked up. I wait the 5 minutes it takes for my car to realize that its version of those shocking paddles they use in the ER are sending voltage their way before the engine springs to life in all its 4 banger glory. After putting the van back in the garage, I am finally ready to start the drive to work. Oh ya, and hope that the latest episode of draining the battery doesn’t kill it off.

So there you have it, my morning routine about every three months or so. If any of you out there in blog land have a cure for this debilitating disease, please pass it along. My cure is to buy a newer Accord with those fancy turning off headlights, but Lisa doesn’t seem too jazzed about my fix.

Another Installment of Weekend Video

I know a few of you saw this via the email I sent out, but since it is pretty funny, I decided to use it for my weekend video. Enjoy!

Good Old Fashioned Rant Fest

I feel like ranting tonight. And since this my blog, I can rant away all I want. Whether you bother to read it is up to you. So here goes. My rants for this week. (Going back to last Thursday)

Rant #1. I have been trying this year (and so far w/o much luck) to get into good shape like I did last year. Last year, I started to run. At first I could barely make it a 1/2 mile. That really upset me, because in my mind I thought that I could still run the way I used to. You know, before I was married, and did nothing but wax my car and play basketball. But I kept at it, and before I knew it I was regularly doing 3 miles at a time. And I think that I was going at a pretty good clip too. Usually around 28-29 minutes for the three miles.

I also mowed lawns for some extra moola. Between the lawn mowing and the running, my weight was coming off great. I started around 195, and after about 6 weeks I was down to 180. I don't remember the last time I was 180. Needless to say I was very happy.

Then the winter came. Lawn mowing season had come to an end, Elisabeth had been born, and running in cold weather was not appealing to me. Sure enough, the weight started to come back. It came slow at first, but the closer the holidays were, the more junk I would consume. Before I knew it I was stepping on the scale, and it was back up to the mid 190's.

Then came this year. I told myself as soon as it warmed up, I was going to get back out running. But since it didn't warm up until about 3 weeks ago, had a very late start. Long story short. I am now mowing again. I am now running again...but the weight doesn't want to leave me.

So this week I was planning on kicking it up a notch. I was going to run every day out at work. And I was going to start eating less junk. (I am doing good at the eating less junk) But all week I have had a sinus headache. I don't know about you, but when I have one of those bad boys I do not feel like doing anything. It feels like getting hit in the side of the head with a rubber mallet. So I have not ran at all this week. Maybe next week will be better. We will see.

Rant #2. I am sick and tired of hearing on the radio, the TV, and seeing pop up ads on the Internet about starting a green lifestyle. Every time I see one of these moronic adds it make me want to throw up. Memo to you green people. Buying those horrible spiral shaped light bulbs is not going to do anything but give you crappy light. If they are so great, why hasn't NBC, which in my mind is one of the biggest pimps in the going green campaign, (WOW! Big surprise there! Who are they owned by?? G.E? Don't they make all of these crappy green electrical products? The only green from these stupid bulbs is the green in their pockets.) started to use those mercury filled spirals on their sets?

What is that NBC? The incandescent bulbs look better?

OF COURSE THEY DO!!! THAT IS WHY YOU (AND I) USE THEM!!

The ad that really makes the blood shoot out of my eyes is the one for the organic bug spray. It says some baloney about how we have health smart organic food, and how all of those hippies drive those ugly Priuses (Meatch, you left those eyesores off of your ugly car list. How could you?) so why shouldn't you have bug spray that little Mary over there can eat? I say give me chemicals. If you want the job done right the first time, you gotta have the chemicals. Disagree if you must, but if you do its because you have drank the kool aid the environmentalists have been handing out.

I could go on and on about all things green, but I won't. Well, just one more thing about it. Anyone out there hear about carbon credits? It is where you can use a gulf stream jet to fly 2 blocks to 7-11 and pick up a Slurpee, and then fly up the street to Chicos to get a BBQ Burrito, and then back home, and all you have to do to make it not hurt the environment is to buy some carbon credits. WHAT KIND OF BULL SHIZZLE IS THAT?? Pretty much you can do whatever you want, as long as someone plants a tree somewhere in Africa to offset it. Dumbest thing I have ever heard.

My prediction is that 10-20 years from now the Global Warming hysteria will rank right up there with all the other things that science had a "consensus" on. Things such as Alar in Apple Juice will give you cancer (sha...right...if you drink 5000 gallons a day) Red M and M's will kill you, living under power lines will fry your brain, the hole in the ozone layer, (that's right the ozone is just fine thank you) the population bomb, and the other end of the spectrum, Global Cooling. I am sure there are more, but that should be enough to prove my point.

Before I start rant number 3, may I recommend a great book? It is called "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. I am almost done, and I highly recommend it. It is about the kooks who believe in the junk science mentioned above.

OK, rant #3. I take pride in my yard. Once in awhile I will get comments on how nice and green it looks. Sometimes I will stare at it through my upstairs window. And then last Thursday, my sprinklers did not come on. I placed a call to the KID the next day, and was told that a pipe was broken, and that they might be able to fix it that day. Which everyone knows means that they don't have any plans to take care of it before the weekend. And I must say, that this was perfect timing with the warming weather we finally are getting.

Before I know it, I am seeing the beginning of huge dry spots in my backyard. Someone might as well of egged my house or spray painted my car. Try as I might, using the hose to water was not cutting it. I couldn't wait until Monday, when the canal jockeys would resolve this problem.

I get home from work on Monday, and the first thing I do is flip the switch for my sprinklers. Nothing. Same thing on Tuesday. Nada. Zilch. Zero water. By this point I am starting to lose my faith in irrigation. Thoughts of turning my whole yard into rock are running through my head. That, or buying some green spray paint.

About 7ish, we decide to head over to Sonic for some dinner. And even though I know that it is useless, I go and flip the sprinkler switch. And to my amazement, the water came on!!! WOOHOO!!! I started to sing and dance. Alexandra joined in on the merriment. I then proceeded to set all the zones to get some water. But when I got home, my excitement was gone. The sprinkler gods had been teasing me, because somehow the water was gone again.

I was so bummed. I was going to head to Lowe's to pick out what shade of green I would want for my yard. But I decided to give them another day. Which of course, they didn't care about. That is right. Wednesday came and went with no aqua for my hierba. Maybe today will be my lucky day for some wetness. I sure hope so. The more I think about spray painting my yard, the more I dislike the idea.

Well, that is about all I've got. Dead grass, blood shooting out of my eyeballs dues to crappy light bulbs, and a round mid section. I hope you are happy KID. Thanks for nothing. And thank you for reading my rant.



(editors note: My water finally came on today, but I felt that this post would sound more dramatic if I left that part out. Kind of like how environmental wackos leave out key parts. It makes for a better story.)

Video Friday!

Since it seems as if the blogging world goes to sleep starting sometime on Friday until around sometime Sunday afternoon, I decided that it isn't worth my time to write some wordy blog. So Fridays are the perfect day to post a funny video.

I was emailed this video earlier this week at work, and even though it is not a real story, it is a great parody of how politicians can (and will) react when something goes wrong. Like the video says politicians are the same everywhere! Have a nice warm weekend...I know the lucky ones in the Tri-Cities FINALLY WILL!

When (And How) Donald Met Lisa

For those of you out there who are following along, I mentioned at the end of my last WftM! post that the best part of working at B&B was that I met a wonderful girl. But before I get to the story of her, I must fill you in on the background of how I met her.

Back when AOL was king of the internet world is when I really started to utilize the World Wide Web. I would use it to read sports stories and check up on sports scores. I would use email to receive and forward jokes. But most of all I used it to chat to people. It was a great way to meet other people, and learn what they were interested in. And when I say “other people” I mostly mean girls. OK, I only mean girls. I had enough guy friends, I didn’t have to cruise the net to find more of them

For those of you who were internet savvy back then, if you wanted to meet girls online, you only had one real option, and it was the AOL chat rooms. AOL had a chat room set up for everything. You want to connect with others who have an Elmer Fudd fetish? There would be a chat room for that. Or maybe chatting with others who were interested in the National Horseshoe Throwers Tour was your thing. Pretty much whatever you wanted to chat about you could. My two favorite chat rooms were the sports chat rooms, and the Mormon chat room.

Another thing you could do on AOL is do a member search. You could search by city, and see what kind of profiles you would come up with. You could almost say that it was an early version of Myspace or Facebook.

So there I would be, in a chat room, checking the profiles of the girls that I would be chatting to, to see if I saw anyone interesting. Believe it or not, I had fairly good luck finding girls this way. Or you could say bad luck. While there were a handful of girls that I ended up meeting in person, and had a good time hanging out with them, there were two in particular that ended in disaster.

I must admit that they were both my fault for not checking into them a little further before I became interested. The first girl was Heather. I met her in a chat room, and checking out her profile, she seemed like a nice down to earth person. The only problem that I saw was that she didn’t have a picture on her profile.

Now, I want to make it clear right now. Looks might not be everything, but they are something. You could have everything in common with somebody, but if you aren’t attracted to them, then it just isn’t going to work. There has to be some level of attraction. You can agree with me or not, that is your right. But you would be wrong.

OK, back to Heather. At first Heather seemed like a good one. She claimed that she was an athlete, which at the time I was convinced that the only kind of girl that I could see myself with was one that could play basketball. We had the same interest in music and food. We even watched the same TV shows. The only downside was that Heather lived in Bellingham, and I was in the Tri-Cities. Oh, and she didn’t have a car, so if I wanted to meet her in person, I would have to drive up there.

And drive up there I almost did. I have my Mom to thank for talking some sense into me. The plan was that I would drive up to see her for the weekend, and see how we hit it off. My Mother decided to play the concerned parent part, and let me know what she thought about it. First off, she told me that I haven’t even seen a picture of this girl yet. Also the girl didn’t sound very stable. And the more I thought about it, she was right on both counts.

Heather from very early on wanted to refer to us as Ross and Rachel from the TV show Friends. She would even send me emails that said to Ross from Rachel. I did find this very strange, and was apprehensive about going along with it. And yes, I really had no clue what this girl looked like. So even though I felt a little bit bad at first about demanding a picture, I did it anyways. Heather explained that she didn’t have a scanner, so she would go to the Library to scan one to email me. A couple weeks passed, and when I received the picture, I instantly understood what my Mom was trying to explain to me.

Now I wouldn’t say that Heather was an ugly girl. But I was in no way attracted to her. I didn’t want to upset her right away, so I waited a couple days to email her and let her know I wasn’t going to be coming up. When I did, she was none too happy about it. In fact, she told me that I had broken her heart, and that Ross wasn’t supposed to do that. I think this girl had totally forgotten that my real name was Donald, and not Ross. And after two weeks or so of emails from her saying how I ruined her life, she started to leave me alone.

After that whole episode I decided to be a little choosier about who I met online. From that point on a picture was required before I went any further. But my friends, even a picture is not enough sometimes. And Melissa is living proof of this.

I met Melissa in the Mormon chat room one day. Kind of like Heather, looking at her profile and chatting to her she seemed like a great person. The difference separating the two was that this girl had a picture. I soon started chatting with her every day. Not just on the internet, but on the phone too. She lived all the way in Utah, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I slowly started to fall in love with a girl that I had never met face to face. Her birthday came, and I sent her flowers. For my birthday she sent me cologne and a CD. It was starting to move pretty fast.

I was coming up on my first year of employment at B&B, which meant that I was going to get my first ever week of paid vacation. I decided that I was going to use it to drive to Utah and meet the girl that I was going to possibly marry. Once again, my good ol’ Mom didn’t think that it was a good idea. But this time I was not going to let her talk me out of meeting my dream girl. So I hopped in my Ford Probe, and started the trek to Utah. I had never up to that point in my life been that far away from home. Driving to Seattle was the furthest I had ever been. I loved the drive there. From the feeling of being out on the open road, to the feeling of excitement that was brewing inside me, I couldn’t have asked for a better time. Well, right up to the point of me pulling into the gas station parking lot where we had decided to meet.

I got there first, and gave Mel a call on my cell to let her know I was here. She told me that she would be there in 5 minutes. While I was waiting, I had emotions sweep over the top of me. It was going to be a crowning point in my life. It is hard to explain all the things running through my head. Then all of a sudden, her red 1998 Chevy Cavalier pulled into the parking lot. My heart was pounding with excitement. Her car came to a halt, and the door opened. Mel stepped out of the car. And at that exact moment, I went from the sweet feeling euphoria of being in love, to the feeling someone must get when they see their family car hit by a semi, and it topples over a cliff with everyone inside it but them.

Remember what I said about needing to be attracted to someone? There wasn’t any thought running through my head that resembled attraction. The reason is that this girl misrepresented herself grossly. She was a big girl…big with a capital “B”. I had made a huge mistake. Looking back on it the signs were all there. The picture I had seen of her was from the shoulders up. When Mel had mailed me some additional pictures, they had all been scrapbooked to only show her from the shoulders up. There was even the time when I found a shirt in a store that she wanted, and when I had asked her what shirt size she was so I could buy it for her, she responded that she didn’t know what size of shirt she wore. She wouldn’t even give me a ballpark measurement to go by.

Even though I had been lied too, I decided to give this thing a chance anyways. But after two days, I knew in my heart that I could not honestly go along with it. It was the night of her Brother’s wedding reception when I decided enough was enough, and I was going to go home. I told crop face (which in Sorenson Family history she is now known) that I wasn’t feeling well, and that I was going to go back to her parent’s house to lie down. As soon as I got in the front door, I called up my Mom in tears. I told her how it all went down, and that I just couldn’t do it. She told me that the best thing for me to do was to come home right away. After hanging up with her, I started to feel better, and was preparing to tell crop face that I was leaving.

A few minutes after I hung up the phone, crop face showed up at the house. She knew something was wrong, but she wasn’t ready for what I was going to tell her. I laid it all out on the line, and told her that I was going to head out that night, and that I was sorry that it had gone this far. This is when she broke out crying. She gave me the “I prayed about you” line and that “She knew I was the one” line. Then she begged that I stay for the rest of the week. This kind of caught me off guard. I thought for sure she would want me out right then and there. I told her that I would stay.

For the next four days I was miserable. Crop face was trying her hardest to get me to change my mind. But I knew deep down that this wasn’t right, and that it never would be. When the time came to head home, she gave one last push to make me her man. No amount of sway was going to change my mind though. When I made it back home, she emailed me once or twice more before we cut off all contact. The funny thing about her is that I came across her Myspace page about six months ago, and she is still cropping all of her pictures. Some things never change.

When I got home I was pretty depressed about the whole situation. I went from a date with destiny to being back in the single rider line again. I was ready to settle down with a nice girl. I just didn’t feel like trying to meet her anymore. I had even planned on taking a break away from the internet so I could clear my head. But of course I didn’t. Good thing I didn’t too, I would have missed out on meeting the girl I would end up marrying.

It was June of 1999. One night I was back in the Mormon chat room, to see if there was anyone in there that I had talked to before. There wasn’t anyone that I happen to recognize. There was someone with the screen name “Aldrin002” though. This person kept on wanting to talk about baseball. Well, mainly about the Yankees. She had a thing for the Yankees. Yankees this, Yankees that. I did a quick profile check to see their info. It was a girl. Hmmm…I decided to join in with her baseball talk. Soon the other people in the room started to get angry. One person typed, “This is not baseball chat, this is MORMON CHAT!!!” I replied with, “OK, why don’t you strike up a dialogue about the Book of Mormon then buddy?” Before I knew it, everyone in the room had put me and Aldrin002 on ignore. Aldrin002 and I chatted a while longer, and when it was time to go, I said I was going to send her an email. She was OK with that. I logged out of the chat, and wrote an “All about me” email.

Every day I would check my email to see if she had responded yet. Almost a week later, I got my response. I then emailed her back, and received another email in return. Before I knew it, we were emailing back and forth and chatting for hours each day. Even though I had learned my lesson about meeting girls online, I had a feeling that it was going to be different this time. I got her phone number and started talking to her on the phone. We talked so much that she actually maxed out a credit card paying for long distance calls. We would talk until the wee hours of the morning. I would sing to her on the phone. I could not get this girl out of my head.

I found out her name was Lisa, and that she was from Southern California, and was going to BYU. She was in the music program, where she played the violin. And while she was not an athlete, she did enjoy sports. I figured that was good enough. In one of our earlier phone conversations, I asked her to mail me some pictures. And they had to be full body shot pictures. I told her that I had just gone through a bad experience with another girl, and I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what she looked like, from head to toe. Not having a problem with this, Lisa mailed me some pictures.

Receiving that envelope in the mail was one of the best moments in my life. I opened it up, and saw the most stunning girl that I had ever laid eyes on staring back at me. I had to meet this girl in person. She was the one. No doubt about it.

With a stroke of luck, we were able to meet sooner rather than later. Lisa had a classmate who just happened to be going home for a few days that summer. She told Lisa that she lived in a town called Yakima, and that Kennewick was on the way there. Lisa hitched a ride with her, and made the trip here. I remember looking out the window for her car to drive down my street. Then, after hours of waiting, a car pulled up. I ran outside to meet her, and kissed her just like we had planned out on the phone. We went into the house and I introduced her to everyone.

My mother knew right off the bat that I had met “the one.” No doubts were coming from her this time. That week in August was absolutely amazing. I was with Lisa every waking minute of the day. When we would go out, I felt like I was the luckiest man in the whole world. Higher than cloud 9…more like cloud 99. She was supposed to get picked up on Thursday, but it was decided that I would drive her back to school so she could stay a couple extra days. When Saturday rolled around, we hopped into my car with my good friend Brad Butherus to drive her back to Utah. I remember dropping her back off at school, and feeling like a part of me was being ripped away. Lisa felt the same way too.

But we were not apart for very long. While talking on the phone the next week, Lisa had an idea. She wanted to move up here to be closer to me. I was more than happy to oblige her. So the very next weekend, I headed back to Utah to pick up this wonderful woman. Like I said earlier, the car that I had at the time was a Ford Probe. Not exactly the kind of car you would think to use to load up all of someone’s’ belongings into. But that is what we did, and somehow, everything fit.

Looking back on it, I cannot believe that Lisa did what she did. She is not the kind of person to make irrational decisions like that. I am willing to bet that it is the only time in her life that she has ever done something like that. Needless to say, her mom was not a happy camper about it. Lisa had always done exactly was her mother wanted, and exactly what was expected from her. She had worked so hard since the time she was 6 years old to learn how to play the violin. Her mom found a world class violinist to teach her, and every week would drive her an hour south down to San Diego for lessons. And when her teacher moved to Utah, she would fly Lisa up there for instruction. And according to Lisa, getting into the BYU music program isn’t a walk in the park. She gave up so much just to be by me. And I couldn’t be more grateful towards her for that. Luckily, around Christmas time things started to get patched up with her mom. Good thing too, since I had just asked her to marry me.

Well, that about wraps it up. We were married at the Moore Mansion in Pasco, WA on August 19, 2000, and were sealed a year later in the Seattle Temple on August 24. She has given me three stunningly beautiful daughters, a taste for classical music, (something that I never would have thought possible) and a house that could pass the white glove test any time or day of the week. And she made me happier than I ever thought possible.

And now you know the rest of the story.

Toppin' the Charts

I must say, it is kind of a relief to be done with Workin' for the Man! While it was fun to write, and fun to see people's comments, being done with it finally gives me a chance to blog about something else. Yes, I know, I still have a blog to write about the stunning girl that I met while working at B&B, (As if you can't guess who I am going to write about) but there is something that I have been wanting to write about now ever since my cousin Jennifer introduced me to it.

How many of you out there have to go to meetings at work where they utilize different kind of charts? Or maybe you might remember studying pie charts in school. One thing that I have come to find about charts, (and numbers too) and the information contained in them, is that they can be construed any way that the chart author wants them to be.

A good example of this would be the speeding crackdown that they are doing out at my work. Since our safety record is very good, they (upper management) always have to find something that they can complain about, and turn into a big deal. So they decided to turn their attention to how fast people are driving out on the Hanford site. They have mainly been concentrating on the areas where the posted speed limit is 55. They did traffic monitoring with both radar stations, and the little rubber lines that they place over the roadway. After they compiled their data, they released a report about the speeds people drive. There are several different stretches of road out at Hanford where the speed is 55, so I will just narrow it down to the section that I drive on every day.

The groups were lumped together like this: 55 and under, 56-65, 66-75, and 75 and above. According to their numbers, only 35% of people were driving the speed limit and under. On the high side, 1% of people were going more than 75 miles an hour. It was the middle numbers though where they tried to make it look worse than it is. The 56-65 category had about 55% in it, and the 66-75 had 9 percent. I was sitting in a safety meeting, and the heads of the meeting were saying how disgraceful the numbers were, that only 35% of the workers were obeying the law, and how the others who weren't should be getting tickets, or even worse, be fired.

Now this struck a nerve with me, and I will tell you why. The average driver does about 5 over the posted speed limit. In fact, this is so commonplace that even policemen do it. Yes, I know that there are people out there like my sweet wife, who usually go UNDER the speed limit, but people like her are few and far between. If you notice the numbers above, they lumped the 5 over crowd along with the 10 over crowd. I was willing to bet that if those numbers were broken down further, you would see that the majority of people were going at the most 5 over the limit. So me being the kind of person that doesn't like to be accused of doing something that I am not completely guilty of, I stood up and said to the group how slanted the numbers were, and that if they wanted their little "study" to be taken seriously, they needed to re group the numbers.

Sure enough, they decided to re group them. When the new finding came out, you still had 35% at the limit or below. But the new group, the 55-60 group, had 50 percent of the people fall into it. So I choose to look at it this way: 85% of the people on site were driving in the accepted range of speed. And I have always heard that there is 15% of the population that gets most of the tickets issued. When I saw the new numbers, I felt really good that I (Well, other people probably mentioned it too, but not in the meeting I was in) threw a wrench in their plans to slam the workforce.

OK, that was a REALLY long way to go just to set up this post. As I was saying, my cousin Jennifer broke me off an email with a link to a fun site. The site is called GraphJam, and is loaded with easy to read charts. What kind of charts you may ask? Well, I am planning on showing you a few. Here goes.



As this chart clearly shows, the population of Alderaan shows a sharp decrease in people from Darth Vader blowing it up.



Elvis fans already know not to step on his Blue Suede Shoes, but now that engineer in your office who always wears the soup stained tie will be able to figure it out too.



Now the women will not understand this type of chart. It isn't something they could have possibly learned in school. But the guys, even guys under the age of 5, can read this chart with little or no difficulty.



To the Pain? As you wish.



Freddy Mercury nailed this one right on the head. Blue Eyed Floozys are so last year.



Hey, it pays to build up an immunity to iocane powder. You never know when it will help you out of a jam.



No, Family Guy DID NOT invent the Peanut Butter Jelly song, you who knows nothing about Internet entertainment history!!



Other things to do before you Go Go? Pull up your pants before the cops come into the public restroom.



You can't touch this. (That means you too George Michael!)



Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful.

And the best pie chart made in the history of man kind, one that is 100 percent accurate, the kind of accuracy that the scientists who preach about global warming wish they could pull out is..........



Creed 2.0 That is all I have to say.


I hope you enjoyed the charts, and if you want to find more, in case you have some office meeting that needs to be spiced up, you can find them at GraphJam.

See you next time!

Workin' for the Man! Part 4 The Bindery Boy Years

Well, I am back from the basement, and am ready to start back up my blog. So without further ado, here is Workin’ for the Man! Part 4: The Bindery Boy Years.

It was the summer of 1997, and I was about to start my 6th different job in the year. The year started at Eddie Bauer, followed by a short 1 month stint back at BK, which was followed by my employment at The Gap, the information booth in the mall, and Sunglass Hut. But all of those jobs were different from the one I was about to start.

I had been working at the mall for over a year, and it was starting to not be as fun. Like I said in the last post, it seemed like I could not get away from the place. On my days off, I usually ended up back there to do shopping of some sort. The allure of being a mall employee had worn off. I wanted to get a full time job that was more in the 9-5 with weekends off mould. Something more along the lines of what I considered a “real” job. And that is what drew me to B and B Printing.

Now B&B Printing is owned by two of my relatives. One is my Uncle Bill. His wife Caroline is my Grandma’s youngest sister, so he is really my Great Uncle I guess. The other B in the name belongs to my Cousin Bruce. His mother Virgie is also my Grandma’s sister, therefore making him my 1st cousin once removed. Don’t ask me how that is. I have a huge family, and if I have to explain any more, this post will become a connect the dots to all of my relatives instead of about my extensive youth work history.

To tell you the truth, I can’t remember for sure how exactly I went about getting hired at B&B. I remember one time when I happened to be in the store with my Mother, and she had asked Bruce if they were hiring, and if they were that he needed to throw a little nepotism my way, and get me a job. But I guess how I was hired doesn’t really matter that much now.

I started there in July of 1997. I was told by Bill that I would be doing bindery work. I had no clue what he meant. Was I going to be putting books together, and binding them up? I really didn’t know. And even after working there for over 2 1/2 years, I still don’t know how I would describe it to someone who wasn’t familiar with a print shop.

First, let me tell you what kind of printing and copying we did there. Everything! We did business cards. We did all of the football and basketball programs for the Tri City high schools. We did brochures. We did newsletters for lodges and gun clubs. We did the Stake Directories for Kennewick and Pasco. We even did mailings for people. In fact, back then, if you gave me ANY zip code in the state of Washington, I could tell you what city it corresponded too. If there was something that you needed printed up, we could do it.

My work location was in the back room. After the items had been printed and dried, I would put whatever finishing touches were needed onto them. Have some brochures that you want folded in half or three way? I was your man. Need Business Cards? Check. Need some 3 part NCR paper for invoices for your business? I could slap the glue on the end, and cut them up for you. What’s that? You want the invoices numbered? You are in luck! I could do that too! Much like being able to print up just about anything, we could finish it any way you liked. And that is what I did, day in and day out.

Now, that might sound kind of boring to some of you out there, but I am here to tell you that it was the best job that I had ever had at the time. I would get to work, and look forward to the day. Maybe it was the ginormous paper cutter that made it possible to cut a 6 inch stack of paper like it was a hot knife through butter. Or the old radio that was in the back, which I am pretty sure had been on 105.3 for many years before I came along and started changing it up. But I think what it really made it a fun place to work were the people I had the pleasure of working with. Here is a rundown of the co-workers I enjoyed while I was working my first real job.

I will start with the person that I spent the majority of my time with, since we were both banished to working in the back room. Sue, or Sooz for short, was the printing press operator. I don’t know for sure how many years she has been there, but I know that it was a lot. She was a pro at what she did. She was also fun to talk to, and if you crossed her or pissed her off, she wasn’t afraid to tell you.

One of the funniest stories that Sooz ever told me was about the guy who showed her the ropes of printing. He was one of those guys that always thought that songs had different lyrics than they did. If you want some good examples of misheard lyrics guy, check out these two old posts. One of the songs that he was confused on was the Deep Purple hit, “Smoke on the Water.” Sooz told me that whenever this song would come on the radio, he would sing along with the chorus these words, “SMOOOOKIN’ WAAAALTER! THE FIREFIGHTING GUY!” (Of course I had to do that in all caps. Who doesn’t sing that song at the top of their lungs?) Try as she might, he did not believe her that those were not the words.

Sooz is also the biggest Beatles fan that I have ever met. I didn’t realize how much she liked them until we had the company Christmas party at her house. Everywhere I looked, there was something Beatles around. You name it, she had it. Posters, spoons, table cloths, gold records, some of Paul’s hair follicles in a vial, the list could go on and on.

After I had worked at the shop for about a year in a half, Bill hired another bindery technician. (This is what I had started referring to my job title as. Sounded more important) He was some kid who was still in high school, and would come work in the afternoons. His name was Joel Brink, and he quickly became a great friend of mine.

When Joel first started, I didn’t know what to think of him. He seemed quiet and reserved, and I didn’t know if he was going to be fun to work with at all. He soon proved to be a worthy co-worker.

I started to look forward to when Joel was going to get to work. As much as I enjoyed working and talking to Sooz, there is something about having a guy around your age to work with that can make the day even better. Joel and I had a great ability to be able to joke around, and talk as much as we wanted, and still get the job done.

In fact, Joel and I are still remembered at B&B. On the back wall is a picture of us that appeared in the Tri City Herald of us loading up Bill’s truck with a delivery. It has now been up on the wall for almost 10 years. Although Joel and I are both married, and I don’t see him around very often, I still consider him a good friend. He is one of those people that you could run into 5 years later, and it would seem like you had just talked together yesterday.

There is one more bindery tech that I need to mention, and that is my cousin Matt Spurgeon. He started working there when I was in the twilight of my bindery boy career. Matt was a great example of how big my family is. Although he is my first cousin once removed, I hardly knew him. He wasn’t close enough in age at the time to hang out with the group of my cousins that I hung out with. And when he started working at B&B, he would not say a word. That was hard for a loud mouth like me to deal with. When I would talk to him, I was lucky if I got three words out of him.

Now don’t think I am trying to bag on Cousin Matt, because I am not. It seems like now that we both are married, and are fathers of beautiful little girls; I feel more on the same level with him. I had a good conversation at our family Christmas party last with him, and he wasn’t the shy kid that I used to know. He seemed to have a confidence about him that wasn’t there before. When I look back on it, I think that when we used to work together, he might have looked at me the same way I looked at people who were a few years older than me. And when I come to the part about working with my other cousin Rachel, you will see what I mean by that.

Next, we come to James, or as I liked to call him, Mr. Iwilltakecareofitevenifittakesmetill2a.m. And I am in no way exaggerating about that. One time I came into work early so I could skate out early, and I see James loading the copier up with paper. Come to find out he did not go home that night. Going home would have meant the customer wouldn’t have received it on time. I have never seen anyone at any of the many jobs I have worked in my life that was more dedicated to serving not only the customer, but the company he worked for.

Another thing about James that I thought was cool is that he uses a Flowbee to cut his hair. Yes that is right, a Flowbee. I didn’t know that those even worked, but he proved me wrong. The first time he told me, I couldn’t get that scene from Wayne’s World out of my head when they had the inventor of the Suck Cut on, and he tried to cut Garth’s lettuce.

Over the 2 ½ years I worked there, James had several different people work with him up in the front of the store. The first one was my cousin Rachel, Bill’s daughter. Now other than saying hello to Rachel at family functions, I didn’t know her too well. One of the reasons behind that (And I realize now that my thinking was off, so forgive me) was I thought that she was old. Yes that is right, OLD! She was a senior when I was a freshman. Now people, think back to your freshman year......and now picture the seniors in your head.....got it? They looked like grownups! Some of the guys had goatees! They could drive! I still look back at my freshman yearbook, and think that the class of 93 looks more grown up than I did in the class of 96. But working with her changed that. She was fun to joke around with, and I soon thought of her as a peer instead of someone who was old.

After Rachel decided to quit, Danyelle started working there. I had gotten to know Danyelle while she was dating my cousin Marshall. She had just been married to my other cousin Ryan. It is funny, because I distinctly remember working with Danyelle at B&B, but I have no stories about her. Maybe it is because a few months after she started, she quit since she was expecting Easton.

The next front desk companion to James was none other than Mrs. Funtime herself, Kristi Gibb. I had a feeling during her very first day of work that she was going to be a riot to work with. I could tell from the look in her eyes. Or maybe it was the second or third day of her employment, when she came into the back room, threw both hands up to the heavens with her fingers set to the rock n roll sign, and yelled out, “4:20!!! International smoke out time!!! WOOOOHOOO!!! Then she walked back up front like nothing had happened. It was things like that, the unexpected, that made having someone like that up front worthwhile to go up front.

And what would a print shop be without a graphics department? While there were several different graphics people while I was there, only one sticks out in my mind. His name was Mark Johnson.

When Mark would get an idea, no matter what it was, he couldn’t get it out of his head. One time, I brought in some of my mother’s freezer jam, and when Mark got to work the next day, he told me that it was the best tasting jam he ever had. He had thought up a plan to sell it to the masses. That night he even designed a label that we could put on the jam. It took me over a week to calm him down from that.

Another thing that Mark was always doing was being on the lookout for diet food that tasted good. One Monday, he came into work with a bag of chocolate fudge cookies that he wanted me to try. Now I had tried a few of his diet things, and the majority of them I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. These were no different. I should have known not to take a bite when the front of the bag said, “No Fat! No Sugar! No Problem!” But to humour him, I took a bite. To this day, I wish I hadn’t, because I can still taste what can only be described as cardboard dipped in chocolate flavoured water that has the texture of bleached flour.

Every once in a while, Bill or Bruce would bring donuts to work. Since I am a donut connoisseur, I would always have one. Donuts are one of my weaknesses. But Mark, who never wanted to spoil whatever diet he was trying at the time, would not eat the donuts. He would however, hover over them for about a minute, and waft the smell up so he could simulate the enjoyment of eating one. Every ten minutes or so he would come back to the box of donuts, and smell them. He was such a quirky guy, and the day would have gone by a lot slower without him around.

As you can see, everyone I had the pleasure of working with at this job made it enjoyable to come to work. Not once do I remember any backstabbing or drama come from B&B Printing. It was a great atmosphere with great people. But the best thing to happen to me while at B&B had nothing to do with paper or glue or numbering machines. It was the most stunning woman that I have ever met in my life. If you want to find out who I am talking about, you will have to wait for my next post.

This now concludes the workin’ part of my Workin’ for the Man! Series. I decided not to write about my current job, since it is with a government contractor. I mean, if I told you, I would have to kill you. And I don’t what to do that. Well, I also already wrote about it here. Once again, thank you for stopping by my very long winded blog. I appreciate it very much. And if you happen to have missed any part of this series, here they are: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 3c.

Thanks again. I’m out.

Off the air

I am currently in the basement for the next 10 days or so. When I get back, or if I feel like breaking out the keyboard next week, I will finish up the Workin' for the Man! series. Until then...have a good hot weekend! (If you don't know what the basement is, you aren't listening to enough Jim Rome.) Im out.

Happy Mothers Day!

To all of the women who read my blog that are Moms, I wish each and every one of your a Happy Mothers Day!

Especially to my dear Mother, who I put through a lot in my 30 years and 9 months on this planet. Thanks for everything Mom!

In fact, my Mom decided to write a blog about each of her children. I encourage you to go and read her blogs about me! You can find them here and here. Feel free to tell her what a pain it sounds like I was! :o)

Once again, Happy Mothers Day!