Auld Lang Sinuses

I was perusing other blogs today and noticed a trend of people either regurgitating their New Year's resolutions or offering up their 2005 Year in Review. I say "regurgitating" because if you think about it our new resolutions are really just rehashed versions of those of auld lang syne . . . and the lang syne before that . . . and the one before that. While the year in review is no new idea, I think VH1 has driven it into the ground. I'd like to think I have better uses for my blog than competing with Mo Rocca. Besides I still think Martha Stewart was railroaded, but that's another story.

I spent the last workday of 2005 knee-deep in tissues soaked in my own snot. Some of my next-cube neighbors are either sick or well on their way. I guess I'm just another domino in the chain. I can't smell a thing which is probably for the better considering what this ailment has done to my gastrointestinal system. On every fifth Kleenex I had to excuse myself to the bathroom because I started my nose bleeding again. Once when I returned to the tiki cube I noticed a drop of dried blood on the tip of my nose. I licked my thumb and rubbed my alae nasi trying to get the blood off. When saliva didn't work, I came up with the ingenious idea of using Purell instead. Not smart. There is a reason they call this stuff hand sanitizer and not nose sanitizer. My nose was chaffed from multiple blowings and the alcohol in the Purell stung like hell. It was like dousing your face with cologne right after shaving, only the burning sensation is concentrated on the sensitive tip of your nose. Snorting sulfuric acid would probably not have burned half as much as this did.

To make matters worse I had a disengaged scab in my nose that wouldn't come out no matter how hard I blew. To my coworkers I must have sounded like the big bad wolf only congested. I used a Kleenex and tried to discreetly pull out the coagulated bloodsnot. It was still putting up a fight so I yanked it. Turns out it was attached to one my nose hairs. This hurt so bad my eyes started to tear up. It was then that I began to wonder why nasal grooming has to be such a painful endeavor. If in my old age my nostrils become hirsute, I think I will just settle for having an unkempt schnoz.

On a lighter note I treated myself to lunch today at Ledo's Pizza. I ordered the Buffalo chicken sandwich which was dumb. I had ordered this once before and didn't particularly care for it. Why I thought it would taste better this time I don't know. It didn't. The sauce tasted like it was made with a bit of ranch dressing, some tobasco and fourteen cups of salt. Still I ate this in record time.

Please note that when I eat lunch out I am not only trying to escape work, I am trying to escape humanity. If the restaurant is basically empty, kindly do not choose the booth adjacent to mine when making your seat selection. I do not care to listen to your conversation anymore than you care to watch me pull bloody boogers out of my nose. Today a family of four (mom, dad and two twenty-something sons) just had to sit as close to me as possible. The son facing me was a dead ringer for Shoney's big boy. I don't just mean in girth. I mean he had the look right down to the swoopy hairdo. It wouldn't surprise me if he owned a red and white checked apron.

The family was well behaved until the song Drift Away started playing. Actually they were still tolerable when the song started playing. It was when it reached the chorus that they got on my nerves. At that point, father and both sons began singing in three-part atonal unison:

Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul

I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

Skinny brother was going for a third refrain on this line when thankfully he was cut short by the lead singer singing the correct lyrics. Dad made some reference to how this song would be a good one to sing Karaoke. Yuck. Their conversation died down and I mistakenly thought I was through having to hear them sing. No such luck. When the chorus repeated so did they. It sounded like bellowing cats. The next song was by INXS. Thankfully the tone-deaf family didn't know the words and went back to their meat lover's pizza.

As for me, I took a cup o' kindness yet, for Auld Lang Syne

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Brush with scamsters in Bushnell, Florida

My wife and I pulled off the I-75 freeway to gas up and get a bite to eat in a small town called Bushnell, Florida. With still over three hours to go on a ten-hour trip to Naples, we had reached that point on the journey where getting there was no longer half the fun. What better way to cure travel crabbiness and curb the appetite, we thought, than with cholesterol on Texast toast? We headed for Waffle House.

Route 48 west of I-75 in Bushnell is a fairly secluded and desolate neck of the woods. A slightly dilapidated motel with a weedy parking lot sits next to a gas station with pumps that predate the '79 oil embargo. Our Waffle House was across the street from them. The town is midway down the state directly across from Orlando. Those who have visited the Sunshine State know that an imaginary line runs across it separating the two Floridas -- the northern section with its mobile homes and confederate flags and the southern half with its septuagenarians and gated golf communities. Judging from our surroundings, we were north of that line.

The restaurant was pretty empty, but there was a lone woman dining at the counter and a couple sitting in the corner booth. The man and woman in the corner had a large duffle bag and a pink bookbag sitting on the floor beside them. He was yammering on his cell phone at volume ten about being broken down and needing the rear half of a drive shaft for a 92 Dodge pickup with extended cab. The waitress, who was as big around as she was tall, was trying to cater to his dilemma. She offered him a phone book and told him she knew someone who would help install the part if he could find one. An older woman who looked like Polly Holliday on crack manned the grill. Elaine and I took the booth closest to the exit.

The waitress asked what we would have to drink and she brought us a coffee and cherry coke. As we perused the sticky menus/placemats we were treated to more of the stranded man's phone conversations. We're sitting at a Waffle House . . . We're right off the expressway . . . I just need the rear half. He interspersed his phone conversation with demands of the waitress. Where am I at? . . . What's the phone number here? . . . Do you have a pen? The woman with him looked like hard living, but she couldn't have been more than 20. Twice I think she caught me staring at her.

The waitress came back to our table and asked, "Have you two figured out what you want to drink?", then realizing she had already served our drinks she burst out laughing. I wish I could be as easily amused as this woman. We ordered our food and chowed down like there was no tomorrow. That frycook sure could make a mean patty melt. By the time I was half-way done with my sandwich, the stranded man approached my table.

"You look like a movie star," he said pointing at me. "I just haven't figured out who you look like." His woman motioned for him to return to his assigned table. "Me and this cat are gonna go sign autographs," he said. It was then that the smell in the air changed from griddle shortening to fish. I just gave the courtesy smile and went back to shoving meat and fried onions down my throat.

Before we got up to pay, I looked outside and saw two other men with duffel bags crossing the parking lot of the retro gas station. Meanwhile the woman from the counter was outside rummaging around under her car seats for the change she needed to pay for her meal. When we made our way to the register the man on the cell phone became agitated. He wanted his check and he wanted it right then. When the waitress couldn't find it quickly enough, he wanted to know quickly how much they owed. When she asked if he still needed the number for the would-be mechanic he said that his situation had been taken care of. In the short time it took us to pay our check a white van with spiked rims pulled up in front of the restaurant. Other men, all dressed alike, were unloading duffel bags onto the sidewalk. It was weird. I asked my wife if she wanted me to drive. "No, get in the car," she said. We did.

As my wife backed the car out of the parking space, I watched the van to make sure it wasn't attempting to pull forward. I don't know what was going on, but part of me wondered if we had been marked for an episode of bumper car insurance fraud. We made it out of the parking lot with little circumstance, but we did keep an eye on our rearview mirrors to make sure we weren't being tailed by the duffel bag gang. I don't know for sure that some scam was about to take place but Elaine and I both got that creeped out feeling. That alone was enough to make us weary. We opted to stop somewhere else for gas.

The whole kerfuffle raised certain questions. Was the woman at the counter going out to her car to signal the rest of the duffel bag gang? And what was with all those duffel bags anyway? Did the van have any connection to the chatty Charlie in the corner or was that mere supposition on my part? Was the couple part of a larger organized crime ring? Maybe a cult? Does a 97 Dodge pickup with extended cab really require a two-piece drive shaft? Explain your answer.

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Making the most of down time at work

Today a glitch in the inner-workings of our comany's phone system crippled my work productivity. Some of my coworkers relish these times, but I normally do not. One of the benefits of work is that it supplies you with tasks, however mundane, so as to occupy your time and alleviate boredom. Had I felt more productive I would have probably found something else to do. There are, after all, other aspects of my job description that do not involve the phone. I could have offered to help someone else, but this would have involved more effort on my part than I really wished to exert on a two-day work week. This time I opted to simply enjoy the hourly paid downtime that life sometimes affords us. I blogged.

I discussed blogs with my sister on our recent trip to Virginia. She said that short and blase blogs were often sub-par because they do not satiate the voyeuristic cravings of those who read them. Since I too prefer to read blogs of people who describe the daily debauchery and drudgery that is their workday, I'll throw in some of my own. I work in a maze of cubicles where people are glued to their monitors and their phones. When I first arrived I found the monotony of the setting outright funny. I knew if I was going to work there though something had to be done. So I decorated.

People now refer to my cube as the tiki hut. I covered the walls with reed fencing from Home Depot to give my cube that island cabana look. I brought in some plants. My supervisor gifted me a hula skirt that I hung up over the bookshelf. I have two inflatables in my cube, a monkey and a palm tree. I fashioned some artwork out of bamboo, box frames and borrowed graphics from the innerweb. On ebay I found some tchotchke that looks like a doll made out of two coconuts. I covered my monitor in leopard print. Two luau-style Chinese lanterns hang from the ceiling and a parrot sits on top of my CPU. Unlike the inflatables the parrot looks real. This is cool until he falls from his perch and it looks like there's a dead bird in my cube.

A coworker and I have decided to start walking to shed off some unwanted pounds. She visited me today and suggested we also keep food journals. I can't see this happening on my end. A food journal reminds me of when I was in elementary school and we had to write down what we ate for our three meals. This exercise was always prefaced by the old adage of breakfast being the most importabt meal of the day . . . blah blah blah. Having to do this always resulted in me lying about my eating habits and instead writing what I thought the teacher wanted me to say. Even as a kid I knew not to admit that I regularly feasted on Reese's peanut butter cups and fistfuls of Honeycomb cereal fresh out of the box. I'm no fool.

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Expando pants mean comfort and haute couture

I'm getting fat. I wasn't always fat. When I was in college, my drivers license claimed I weighed in at 142 pounds. This was a lie. Because I didn't want anyone who looked at my drivers license to know I really only weighed 135, I bumped it up to what I thought was a more suitable weight for a guy my height. Those were the days. By the time I hit my late 20s I made it to 175. Three years into my marriage I found ten more pounds, and since then, I've probably found close to ten more.

My waist size , as you might imagine, has only expanded with my poundage. I remember the days of the 29-inch waist but that was when I could down an entire box of Smurfberry Crunch while watching Moonlighting on tv. I now fit into size 36 pants but find this is more easily accomplished if I'm modeling britches with the Fatty McFat expandable waist band. One probably shouldn't rely on elastic when searching for clothes but these pants are so comfortable and they don't leave those chilblain train tracks on your hips the way less forgiving pants do.

As embarrassing as this is to admit, I went to two Target stores this weekend looking for just that style of pants. Target apparently is discontinuing them and had them marked down to the ridiculously low price of $14.98. That I consider Target a suitable outlet for men's fashion is probably not to my credit, but the less I spend on clothes the more I can spend on baby . . . and snacks. Sadly Target didn't have the Elasto-Pant in my size. The smallest they had was a size 40. I'm sure there's somebody out there who needs a faux-forty waist size but it's not me. I can still get through the bathroom door. I looked at them and suddenly felt better about myself.

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Gift exchange is the reason for the season

December is upon us once again. This means that along with pulling out the tangled string of lights and rusty tetanus-ridden ornament hooks, we wrestle with age-old holiday traditions. Some of them survive from year to year because we enjoy them. Others we observe but secretly wish they would disappear and find their way to the closet of the Ghost of Christmas Past next to the Yule log and door-to-door carolers.

One of these less desirable traditions for me is the office gift exchange, where there are suggested minimums and maximums for the dollar amount to be spent. Many times we purchase things for people we don't even like, or worse yet, grab some holiday recyclable from the “gift drawer”. If I'm told what I can and can’t spend on someone I only see at the water cooler, is this really a gift or is it just another checkmark on my to-do list? I have enough in my inbox without having to worry about buying something for the corporate brownnoser or the coworker who insists on being a chatty Charlie in the men’s room.

I'm not certain where holiday gift giving came from, but I'd guess it dates back to the wise men who brought gifts to Mary and Joseph. These guys showed up with frankincense and myrrh. If that’s not the ultimate re-gifter I don’t know what is. Were these wise men or just wiseacres? What smartass would bring scented herbs to a baby shower? Hopefully one of them had the courtesy to bring a receipt for Christ’s sake. Not that it would do the Holy Mother any good. You know those camel cruisers got that from some store in Persia, so unless it was from an international chain the Blessed Virgin doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of taking it back for a refund.

If you are reading this and contemplating getting me a gift for Christmas, consider this permission not to. If you are contemplating getting me a baby shower gift, just remember: swaddling clothes—yes; potpourri—no.

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Thanksgiving in Norfolk, VA

My lovely wife, Elaine, and I spent our Thanksgiving this year with my sister and her husband, Karen and Ron, in their turn-of-the-century home in downtown Norfolk. Also making the pilgrimage from Georgia to Virginia were my parents. Since they, unlike the aforementioned family members, did not request their names be specifically mentioned in my blog, I'll change them to protect the innocent. Let's just call them Tom and Barbara White. While I'm thankful to be home, I have to say that this past holiday weekend was one well spent.

Having decided to make the trip up in two days instead of one, Elaine and I stopped just short of Durham, North Carolina to rest our weary heads in a Microtel Inn. We checked in on Wednesday night around 11:30 PM, just in time to catch the tail end of Dolly Dearest, a B-rate horror movie showing on some equally B-rate cable channel. Creepy though it was, I won't be adding the flick to my 5-star movie list. Even creepier however were the the faint stains on the wall of our room. They were illuminated by the irridescent glow cast by the tv. At first glance I suspected they were perhaps the mark of a previous traveller who was watching something other than Dolly Dearest on tv, but on closer inspection I noticed that the spots on the left side of the wall extended out to the left while the spots on the right extended out to the right. I'm no crime scene investigator, but I couldn't help but wonder if I was looking at a poorly painted over blood stain from some unfortunate soul's gunshot wound. I know it sounds sensationalistic, but these things happen at roadside motels. I chose not to share my suspicion with my wife when she came out of the shower.

We arrived in Norfolk around noon on Thanksgiving Day. Karen and Ron greeted us along with their two Boston terriers, Pinky and Dinky. No, I haven't changed her pets' names at their request. Their names truly are Pinky and Dinky. No sooner than we could get our bags upstairs, they served us champagne and snacks. Let me just add here that nothing makes family gatherings more enjoyable than booze. Even Karen's olives were vodka infused. Ingenious! Karen and Ron are definitely members of the culinary cognoscenti. He's a sales rep for Waterside Fish & Produce, a major distributor of prime meats and cheeses. Many of his customers are those restaurants you find reviewed in the local newspaper's Food and Wine section or the pricy pages of Zagat. This skill set also makes him a damn fine chef. You've never had turkey until you've had Ron's turkey.

As for the Thanksgiving dinner, my sister's dessert took the cake. Actually it took the doughnut. She used Krispy Kreme doughnuts to make a bread pudding. I'll have to ask her for the exact recipe, but as I recall it used 16 dozen doughnuts, 42 eggs and 98.6 pi r squared bricks of Plugra® butter. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but it was one pan of sticky rich goodness. That's for damn sure!

On the Friday after Thanksgiving my dad met me and Elaine and walked with us from the Tazewell Hotel to MacArthur Park, Norfolk's downtown mall. I have to preface by saying that I enjoy seeing Christmas decorations in downtown areas. Wreaths, trees, stockings and ice skating rinks all have their place during the Chrismukah season. Norfolk had all that which was good, but it also had this never-ending chorus of recorded children's voices singing early traditional carols in high-pitched falsetto voices. It was being pumped over a vast outdoor sound system. You couldn't escape it. It was just plain eerie. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the theme song at the end of Poltergeist. You know the part where kids sing over and over, "la la laa ... la la laa ... la la laa laa laa?" That's what it sounded like, only they were singing The Holly and the Ivy and Bring us a Figgy Pudding or whatever that song's called. I'm sure it was supposed to be festive, but it just sounded like holiday badness.

While I'm on the topic of holiday badness, I have to bring up the Chronicles of Narnia exhibit at MacArthur Park Mall. Apparently this is something that Disney is sponsoring at a handful of malls around the country. I wish I could find a picture on the innerweb so you could see just how campy this is. As though going to the mall to tell Santa what you want for Christmas wasn't commercial enough, now at eight malls in the country a kid can step through a huge wardrobe and into a snowglobe that simulates what the characters in C.S. Lewis's Chonicles of Narnia experienced in his children's book series. Mall goers eventually make it to the line to see Father Christmas, where for $15 you can sit in his lap and he'll give you a snowglobe that doubles as an ad for the new Disney movie playing at the theater upstairs. Bizarre as this whole thing was, we enjoyed watching the usual array of picture posers, greed list holders and terrified crybabies line up for Santa.

This is a total non-sequitor, but according to a recent article in Norfolk's newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, 3 per cent of Virginia Beach's population is Filipino. They had an article about four thirty-something guys who sit around in a basement chewing the fat and then broadcast their discussion over the internet. They call themselves the Sini-Gang. I've never been overly concerned with Filipino-American issues, and before I read the article I might have told you that the Philipines was somewhere east of Pittsburgh, but I did visit their site and it's some pretty funny stuff. Check it out here.

Speaking of Virginia Beach, my sister invited me and Elaine to see her shop there. Karen runs a bridal boutique that specializes in gowns imported from across the pond. I promised her a plug on my blog. Clients typically make reservations for shopping and browsing so we had the place to ourselves. Of particular interest was the shop's portfolio complete with photos of local brides and debutantes. A hanger really doesn't do justice to a wedding dress.

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Click It or Ticket can stick it

Forcing motorists to wear seatbelts is one of the most innane laws ever concocted. It ranks up there with blue laws and profanity laws. It should not be the role of our government to tell us how to protect ourselves. If I'm not buckling in a child, that's one thing. I'd even go so far as to say if I fail to buckle myself up when I've got a kid in the car that's another thing. But if I as an adult make a conscious choice not to wear my seat belt, this should not infringe on any law. If I run a red light, I've created a traffic hazard. That merits a citation. Driving at night with no headlights is dangerous to others. That merits a citation. Who's rights have I stepped on by not wearing my seatbelt? No one's. What's next? The you're-eating-too-much-sodium law or how about the didn't-bundle-up-enough-for-the-cold law?

I'm ranting in response to the court invitation I got from the Duluth police department today. Coming back from the library and creeping along at a speed slower than a one-legged man can hobble, I was approached by a cop who was walking his motorcycle down the dividing line between lanes of people coming up on a red light. I presume his soul intention was to find people who don't buckle up in two-mile-per-hour traffic. Those daredevils! Alas, he found one as he pulled up next to my passenger side window and peered in. I returned his quisitive look with a smile and a wave. He gave the universal hand signal for roll down your window, Scofflaw. I did and he inquired as to why I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. I recognized this as the epitomy of all retorical questions. What possible answer could I have provided that would have persuaded him not to write me a ticket?

Having pulled over into the turn lane as instructed I waited shamefully as he pulled pad and pen out of his side compartment. "Man, why aren't you wearing your seatbelt? It's Click It or Ticket. Everybody knows that," he said.

"Well, I didn't know," I said smiling.

"You do now," he said smiling. He then proceded to write me a ticket for failing to wear my seatbelt.

I didn't see the benefit in sharing my disdain for this stupid law with him. His job isn't to make the laws; he just enforces them. And he was quite pleasant as far as cops go. What pissed me off was his comment as he had me sign the ticket.

"Yeh, you need to wear your seatbelt for the next two weeks," he said.

"What about after two weeks?" I asked, handing him back the signed ticket.

"Well, you're supposed to wear it all the time, but after two weeks Click It or Ticket will be over."

In other words, he openly admits that Click It or Ticket is merely a financial ruse of the Duluth Police Department designed to bring revenue into the city. I guess somebody's gotta pay for those Christmas lights and decorations around their downtown area. I don't know what a beat cop's salary is, much less how much it costs to maintain his motorcycle and the gas to power it, but surely it doesn't justify the fifty lousy dollars I'll have to pay for this harmless infraction. Take note, Duluth taxpayers. These are your tax dollars at waste.

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