Something must be fucked up with my senses or at least my sense of smell because for some reason the scent the lillies puts off kind of smells like lillies sometimes, but if I catch it just right, it kinda smells like hot dog water and it’s making me a little nauseous. Some serious wires getting crossed in my head – too many drugs. At least I’m not hearing colors…yet.

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*not to worry about the bouquet for my daughter, it’s not a boy – it’s a tradition from Aunt Rebecca

So the last two days we had snow…and ice.

People started calling off before it even began based solely on weather reports of it coming. More people after it started falling and even more today in the aftermath and cleanup phase.

So my wife and some of the managers are forced to do crazy shit like sleep at the hotel or work 16 hours or get up at 4am and head in to do stuff like serving food or cleaning rooms or taking reservations.

Big deal, they’re the bosses that’s why they get paid what they get paid, right?

Well, sort of. But a lot of people (mostly the kind of people that don’t make any extra effort – like showing up when they call for snow) don’t seem to put the whole process on the table.

Maybe that willingness to come in and pick up the slack is why these people became managers and achieved higher salaries? In fact, I’m 99% sure it is.

The kind of people who do things like that are the kind that become managers with big salaries. The kind who aren’t don’t.

And the funny thing is that those that don’t, don’t seem to get it at all. And when Friday rolls around and those people who came in an worked 16 hour days and slept at their place of employment to make sure they’d be there and things would be taken care of take a three day weekend, you know what the “people who don’t” are all going to say to each other?

“Must be nice to be the boss and take a three day weekend whenever you want.”

People are so predictable.

Note: “people that don’t” also usually complain about how they keep getting screwed in life and how they never get a break or a raise or recognition or anything and can’t understand why others do

Do you have to put a winkie face after your sentences in order to prove you are joking? Have you noticed how many times that occurs? I have been making it a point not to winkify my sentiments lately. I’ve decided that based on principle I shouldn’t have to add any level of winkness to my sentences in order to make a point.

Have you ever noticed how many people post really digging or sarcastic things, too, but make it all better by adding the winkie? It’s as if the winkie has some kind of pacifying power. “How can you take offense to me…didn’t you see my winkie?” How does that even work?

I don’t get it. I for one prefer to be winkless for the time being.

Good stuff. Except it’d have been 36% funnier to use “winkieless” instead of “winkless” at the end.

I’m guilty of winkie overuse. However, much of the time it’s not meant to smooth over a scathing comment, but rather reinforce the assholiness* of it…like an exclamation point that’s made of 100% cocky. Consider it almost ironic use of the winkie. A lot of times, if I’m ripping you and I end it with a winkie then I’m just being a dick at that point.

There are times when it is meant to signify a playfulness that might not be readily apparent by words alone. (I find that conversational communication via typed word is extremely limiting) Although, I find that I tend to use the smiley more for that.

The winkie also comes into play when something is blatantly meant to be a joke or silly. Just to let you know that I know I’m being a dork.

I find the winkie can be very versatile and I love to play with my winkie as much as possible. ;)

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*when the pope is an asshole you address him with this title (e.g. “Your Assholiness”)

1. Some kids piss their name in the snow. Lord Gonchar can piss his into concrete.

2. Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Lord Gonchar can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.

3. Lord Gonchar’s calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Lord Gonchar.

4. Lord Gonchar counted to infinity – twice.

5. Lord Gonchar’s tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

6. Lord Gonchar can do a wheelie on a unicycle.

7. Lord Gonchar was originally cast as the main character in 24, but was replaced by the producers when he managed to kill every terrorist and save the day in 12 minutes and 37 seconds.

8. Superman owns a pair of Lord Gonchar pajamas.

9. If it looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, and feels like chicken but Lord Gonchar says its beef, then it’s fucking beef.

10. Lord Gonchar once won a game of poker holding just a Joker, a Get Out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, a 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game Uno.

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*Not only do I still find great amusement in the old ‘Chuck Norris Facts’ thing, I find them even more amusing if I put Lord Gonchar in the place of Chuck Norris.

1. The HHR is averaging just shy of 30mpg up to this point.
2. I could’ve totally taken home the 60-something lady sitting beside me at the wedding reception…she wanted me.
3. Finally saw the Angus burger at McDonald’s – meh.
4. Stopping by Grandma’s.
5. Ring Bologna from Miller’s. Mmmm…old-school.
6. Driving by the house I grew up in and the whole neighborhood seeming smaller and crummier than I remember.
7. The unexplained light*
8. “You’ve been Skunked!”
9. Running over a squirrel. (I didn’t mean to…fucking suicidal squirrel)
10. Scoring karma points for hooking up the dude at the rest stop with directions.

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* Along this stretch of 38 at about 10:30 at night. I was driving and my mother was the only other one in the car. We’re blowing up that road at about 70 and I noticed a really bright light gaining on us quick. Mentioned it to mom as the 70 I was doing was too fast for that road and this catching up fast. We watched as a single rectangular light centered in the lane caught quickly up to us and stayed right on my ass. We spent a moment wondering what the hell it was as there were no other lights – just one very bright, white, rectangular light centered behind us – at first we thought it was a motor cycle, but it made no noise catching up to us and a bike winding out at that speed would’ve been loud. The light was so bright that I joked that I could’ve turned my lights off and still seen just fine. We wondered for another moment what it was. Truck with a headlight out, quiet motorcycle…

We pondered for a second whether it turned onto Hohn Rd (see map), but it was still right on the ass-end of the HHR when it disappeared. That turn is from a two-lane road to an even smaller two-lane road at more than a 90 degree angle – no way any vehicle could’ve taken that at 70mph and if it slowed and turned we’d have seen it. It was just gone. In that 1.5 mile span the weird-ass light caught up to me doing 70, rode our ass for like 30 seconds and fucking evaporated. It was weird.

Here’s what I wasted the last two hours of my life on:

Chocolate Rain (LG Redeux)

So should I sync it up to the video and add it as a reply on YouTube or just leave well enough alone and hope it’s finally out of my system?

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*This is the first music thing I’ve done in quite a while that wasn’t meant to eventually be a tune for some coaster video

For this year’s list we focused on smaller places that offered the best combination of economic opportunity, good schools, safe streets, things to do and a real sense of community.

So this year it’s official – we live in the 84th best place in the country.

Yup, I’m living it…

…sigh.

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*Note: this is a repost of one lost in the meltdown from last week.

When I die, I want it to be a happy occasion. Don’t feel bad for me. Feel bad for yourself if you like, but once I’m dead I’m not going to be sad about it…it’d be physically impossible for me to.

I’ve told my mother since I was something like 15 that when I die I want a funeral procession to ride around town like a wedding procession – everyone honking their horns and flashing their lights. I want to be in a hearse with streamers and cans tied to the bumper and a big “Just Deceased” sign on the back in colorful letters. How great would that be?

Celebrate for me – I win. I got out of the game. Yay for Gonch!

Another great idea* I came up with – kind of, half of the credit has to go to my mother (and yes, I have one of the coolest mothers in the world) – is to buy a huge hourglass and then as family members pass, have them cremated and their remains put into the hourglass. Pass the hourglass through the family from generation to generation with everyone being added as they die.

There’s something very symbolic about an hourglass filled with the ashes of family – the passing of time, eternity together, all that wackiness.

I’m generally cool with death.

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*Note: Do not feel free to rip off my ultra-cool postmortem ideas

One of the magazines I got was Smart Money. The cover story this month is titled, “How To Make $5 million.”

It’s an interesting read about the new wealth in America and the types of people that get there. (there’s a condensed version on their website, but it’s not nearly as good as the print version)

But the one thing that struck me in the whole article was this:

It also pays to consider what the rich are not: the proverbial frugal, steady, “Millionaire Next Door,” described in the 1996 bestseller of the same name. For one thing, a million bucks hardly ranks you among the elite these days; one in 12 U.S. households already has at least $1 million tucked away in home equity and other assets. You can’t swing a dead cat in a local Starbucks without hitting a half-dozen millionaires. To enter the nation’s top 1 percent, you need more than $5 million and even then you’ve got plenty of company.

Interesting stuff right there alone and that’s just a part of one paragraph of the ten page article. The thing is, I never had hard numbers laid out in front of me like this, but this is something I always sensed* – that there are a lot of people doing very well for themselves anymore. To me the old milestones don’t apply anymore and this article kind of says that.

A millionaire? Pfft. Call me when you have five.

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*On a completely unrelated note, it also reassures me that when another one of those cost, pricing or financial threads come around on CoasterBuzz that I’m indeed not the one out of touch with the way things are these days ;)

Jamie left work early on Friday with the news that the last ‘class’ she has to complete for work is available either in May in Chicago or June in Dallas. First thought was a chance to check out the Texas parks by piggybacking onto her work requirements. (a situation we’ve taken advantage of many times in the past) So I spent a bit of Friday trying to figure how viable it was to think I could get all four of us to Texas for a week. Two days later and we’re still pretty undecided, but I’m really liking the idea of a ‘surprise’ trip to Texas falling into my lap. At this point as I already have much of (ok, pretty much all of) our travel plans set through the first week of July and Texas would require both a restructuring of time and money. I might even be willing to give up the trip to Tennessee (Dollywood & Ghost Town) to make Texas happen. We’ll see, I guess.

Friday night no one felt like cooking so we did Chinese take-out. Mongolian Beef is good. Then my daughter and I ran out in search of a new Wii game for little man. He had to have a tooth pulled Saturday morning (long story) and a spacer put in. So being as this was his first ‘big’ dentist visit I wanted to be able to hook him up with a little sumpin-sumpin if he did well – and he did ridiculously well with the whole thing. Especially given that we had to be up and on the road by 7am to make his 8am appointment at the dentist 47 miles away. (another long story)

They didn’t put him under to pull the tooth, but rather gave him what I refer to as ‘silly juice’ when we got there and we had to sit in the waiting room for about 45 minutes for it to totally kick in. The kid rewarded me with 20 minutes of the funniest action I’d ever seen performed by a 5 year old in my life. I’d try to describe it but it won’t be nearly as funny in words, if you weren’t there and if you don’t know my kids. Three strikes there for almost everyone who’ll read this. But those few moments when he started getting silly until he got called back had us in tears from laughing.

So he was a champ and we left the office with his tooth and a plethora of ‘prizes’ fom the dentist and I gave him the game for doing so well. We ended up deciding on Wii Play just because it was the short, simple, multiple game type of title that we could all dig and it hooked us up with another Wiimote. We spent a little time playing when we got home. Good stuff. A little shallow. Ok, a lot shallow, but considering the $40 remote is included the other $10 for 9 mini games was an ok value. Nothing groundbreaking and it even feels more shallow than Wii Sports, but it’ll be fun to pop it in every once in a while and screw around. Plus, it includes a tank game that feels an awful lot like a 2007 version of the old Combat game on the Atari 2600. That alone makes it worth it to me.

I crashed for a couple of hours in the afternoon (I’m not a 6am kind of guy) and after dinner we watched “Stranger Than Fiction” – decent enough movie but with the obvious happy ending. Whatever. The kids crashed and the wife and I decided the catch up on a bunch of episodes of Desperate Houswives that had accumulated on the DVR. (no snide comments from the peanut gallery please)

So it turns out we haven’t seen it since before Thanksgiving. We had 7 unwatched shows. At 11:30 we started the first one and in typical lame-ass fashion got interested and kept saying, “Just one more” until…well…we finished the last one around 5:30am. Man, that’s so lame. But at least I’m caught up on my Housewives. (rolleyes here)

Late start for all on Sunday. We dragged our asses to Meijer around 1pm to pick up some things. Stupid crowded and the closest I’ve ever come to physically attacking morons in a store. We were glad to leave, but spent way too much on way too little.

On the way home as we turned into our little subdivision, we noticed a sign for an open house relatively close to our place. (why we’d be interested is another ‘too long’ story for this post, but we were) So on a whim we went to check it out. Decent enough place. Not something I’d buy in the end. A few things we liked a few things that wouldn’t work for us. Still our first hands-on look at what the money (this was listed at $225,000) buys you in this section of the world. I still have no idea of our long-term plans in regards to the area, so scoring another house isn’t exactly priority until we have a better idea. It blew a half hour, what can I say?

Spent the afternoon/evening getting some house stuff done. Everyone crashed in the living room watching TV, so around 9pm I got them all to bed. Did the podcast (just Jeff & myself this week) and headed on over here to finally add this entry. Plan on either catching some TV tonight before I get around to bed or hitting shuffle on Winamp and working on the website for a little while…or both.

That was pretty much my weekend*.

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*I hate telling stories like this because I either get too long winded and essentially too boring or I try to keep it short and leave out all the details that make reading something like this worth it and it becomes boring. I’d really love to find that balance between telling a good story and telling a short one. Clearly, I’m not there yet.

The worst part is that with my stupid spikey haircut (that’s right about maximum useable length in that pinball machine shot) when it gets even a little over-length, there’s nothing I can do. I slap my Pirates baseball cap on and head out.

Funny how thing change in life though and now I consider that ‘long’ hair. (I suppose for my situation it technically is, but still)

Here’s yours truly chillin’ at a friend’s house around X-mas 1995*:

I guess I’ve always had a thing for not shaving too. I rock! \m/

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*I loved that Sound Forge shirt. I lost it one year when a bunch of us went to Cedar Point. I was dismayed to return home and find in not in my stuff. No one had it and Sandcastle Suites claimed they didn’t find it either. Sigh.

I’ll probably just fill it with a handful of songs and a whole lot of porn.

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*My phone is a run of the mill silver RAZR. I wanted pink.

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Tonight I’m watching Scrubs and at the end of the intro when the lyrics, “I’m no Superman” happens, Little Man* walks by nonchalantly singing the song and he says, “I don’t know Superman.”

I dunno, it cracked me up.**

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* My son is 5 and I call him Little Man.

** Yes, becoming a dad makes you immediately lame. All your mojo is revoked before you even leave the delivery room. In fact, right now I’m wearing plaid pants pulled up to my nipples with my shirt tucked in.