1. Man mows lawn around the pond (home to several forms of wildlife) outside of my office park, riding on the back of a stand-up commercial mower.
   
   
2. Large goose decides that the man should not be mowing around the pond. Goose makes threatening head movements and rushes the man on the back of the mower. (Goose most likely has eggs in the nearby vicinity)
   
   
3. Man is frightened. He jumps off the back of the mower and runs away.
   
   
4. Mower falls into the pond.
   
   
5. Man picks up stick and looks warily at the goose. She stares at him and bobs her head in a threatening manner some more.
   
   
6. Man realizes that the mower has fallen into the pond. He cautiously approaches the mower, never taking an eye off the offending goose.
   
   
7. Man realizes the mower is too heavy for him alone. Another man joins him, as does my co-worker (who braves the muddy waters, climbing into the pond to get some leverage)
   
   
8. The mower is free, the duck is pissed, and the co-worker has wet pants. Man goes back to mowing, the goose protecting her area of lawn, never taking her eyes off of him.
   

Lesson: Don't piss off the mama goose.

Jesus. One of my referrals was "Buy *deleted name of popular prescription narcotic* Online".

Just when you thought Fox couldn't think of a worse show concept:
When Animals Invade Your Home

Wonders will never cease.

On an unrelated note, let me once again express my adoration of Ben Folds, and especially of his solo album, Rockin' the Suburbs.

I should really buy some more Fountains of Wayne stuff. I really like their music.

Semi-disappointing cd purchase of the month: Great Big Sea, Sea of No Cares. Logically, this should be my favorite album of theirs, since Chris Trapper of the Push Stars co-wrote about half of the songs. It's not a horrible album, but it doesn't make me feel the way the live cd does. I really like the title song, but the rest of it is kinda bland. However, Chris Trapper, the Push Stars, and Murray Foster all get thanked in the liner notes, which is neat.

10 days until Ani Difranco!

(and this time, we will be on time, instead of going out to eat beforehand. *cough* You know who you are. hehe. ;)

In other news.. there is no real other news. I got my teeth cleaned this morning. That was FUN! If by "fun" you mean "not fun."

The preceding paragraph sucks.

I've found a townhouse I want. Unfortunately, Lexington Board of Realtors doesn't allow you to link directly to it. So go to http://www.lbar.com/public/search_frame.asp , and in the blank towards the bottom marked "Listing Numbers", enter in 202385 .

Now check out the "Additional Pictures" and "Virtual Tour" in the listing. Very nice. And it's less than a mile from MaxWeb.

I've looked around, and there are about four or so of those same townhouses for sale, so hopefully one will be free next year when we're seriously looking. We've been driving through various neighborhoods, etc., and there's a bunch of stuff in our price range. (under $100k. Eat that, those of you who live in metro areas. hehe.)

Wow, I just bit down on a Jolly Rancher, and the way it broke made me very briefly think I'd broken a front tooth. Mental note: Jolly Ranchers are not for biting.

That's all for now. Tuesday is my day of rest. Soccer's too late tonight (10 pm, I wouldn't get in bed before 1 am), Jay's working, etc. So I'm going to the library and doing laundry. I suppose I should think about eating dinner, too. Maybe a salad. Hmm.

Ok, let me amend my statement down there (since Beth already commented, I feel guilty just editing it, for some weird reason.)

It should be, "And now, thanks to Beth, I will always think of her mother as Reba McEntire."

In other news, I saw Changing Lanes tonight. It was ok. I've seen better, and I've seen worse.

I'm very non-committal.

What's this? Reba has a sitcom on WB? So says TV Guide online. (yet I can find no sign of it on the WB website.)

Who knew? (Ok, Nicole probably knew.)

And now, thanks to Beth, I will always think of Reba McEntire.

No one ever comments anymore. This saddens me.

You know, I watch the Food Network indiscriminately.
Right now, I'm watching "The Best of" on vegetarian restaurants.

I'm not a vegetarian. I don't particularly care for vegetarian fare. I love and believe in the food chain. Yet I stare at the television, transfixed by vegetables.

However, I did clean my room tonight, while watching Dogma. I'd run the vacuum, but it's pretty late and Aimee's asleep. but you can see my floor again. I feel much better about my life now.

No, not Iron Chef. OK, I have to turn the channel.

Goodnight.

Hmm. My last post wasn't showing up. Maybe this will make it work.

I'm very very tired. I hate allergy season. Scott gave Aimee and I tacky thongs that were on sale for 77 cents apiece at JC Penney's. He also gave us really cute teddybears. Today was his birthday.

Ok, since I'm so tired, my writing isn't exactly up to par. I'll shut up now.

I had a dream last night that I was taking a last-minute trip to Europe, and was all packed before I remembered I didn't have a passport. I found some shortcut to getting one, but had to scramble to find my birth certificate and my old passport. This makes me ponder getting a new passport, just in case. Sometime in the next ten years I plan on leaving the country at least once.

You know, it's really just occurred to me what a crappy few weeks I've had. And most of it's stuff I can't talk about here, this being a public forum and not wanting to incriminate myself or anyone else. Let's just say that I've been frustrated over work, my personal life, and the occasional overlapping of the two. Sometimes, I just want to scream.

Instead, I will comment on last night. Last night Aimee, Jay, and I went to see Kevin Smith speak at UK. He was in Memorial Coliseum, which is hot and cramped (meaning the seats aren't very big and the rows are close together.) It started a bit after 7, and at 11:15 he was still going, but we had to leave. He was so great. Incredibly funny, insightful, and well-spoken. It's made me want to re-watch all the Jersey films. He was just such a nice guy, and humble. He was also taking 400 people to see Changing Lanes today at Lexington Green (I think he gave away what hotel he was staying in with that.) It's just the coolest thing ever. He did a Q&A, which was fine for the most part. However, towards the end it seemed like every question began with, "I'm an aspiring film maker..." Ok, so what? Sure, he can give you advice, but it's not going to be good advice for most people. Running up $30k in credit card debts to film a movie worked for him because he had the talent and drive behind it.. I doubt most of these people have either of those.

Another issue: Being blamed for SPAM. One of our (now former) clients had been spamming using an account at gte.net. We warned them the first time we did it. They did it again. We took down their site. But now we're on a "blacklist", which means that all email that comes from us or one of our clients (anyone in our IP range) will get bounced. Loveeellly...

That's all for now.

Sometimes I doubt my own wisdom.

I slept great this weekend. Went to bed late, got up late. So that doesn't put me in a very favorable position for last night. I took Jay home and got back at about 11:15. I started laundry, did some dishes, played online for a bit, had a bowl of cereal (Lucky Charms. They were magically delicious!), put my laundry in the dryer, started another load.. pretty soon it's 12:30. Ok, time for bed. No big deal. I start reading. Cut. A book about a girl that cuts herself (a friend's sister is currently in the hospital for this). I started it, and kept reading until I was done. By that time it was 2:30 am, and even the cat had stopped coming in to lay on me as I read, having gone to sleep herself on the couch. The book was pretty interesting, but I could have put it down. I then try to sleep. I was being visited by the spirit of Insomnias Past. Oh, well. I'm not terribly tired. We see Kevin Smith this evening. I brought alone my Dogma DVD, in case we stay for the signing.

And so now, I will imbibe in Mountain Dew and hope the kick keeps me awake.

I deleted this blogger entry and moved it to my new not-for-everybody blog.

Move along, nothing to see here.

You know the boss is out of town when three people are over top of his office trying to kickflip a skateboard.

(none of us could do it. I didn't even try, mind you.)

This is a test, to see if my archives return.

Friday night: Bogart's. They Might Be Giants (OKGO opening.)

Jay, Aimee, Kenji (my oldest friend... we've been friends since I was about 7), and I arrive at Bogart's at about 7:30. I was anxious to get inside, because I like to be up front. Less pushing, closer to the stage, etc. You know how it goes. When we bought our tickets to the show, and paid out the butt in Ticketbastard fees, Jay had said that he always just walked up to the window at Bogart's and bought his tickets then, and had never had a problem. (wow, that sentence is nominated for King of Run-On Sentences!) I digress.. however, when we got to Bogart's, we saw that the show was sold out. So our Ticketbastard fees were not in vain. (He's always lived outside of Cincinnati, about a 15 minute drive to Bogart's.. I think the concept of driving an hour plus and finding the show sold out didn't occur to him as much as it did Aimee and I.) Ok, I'm digressing again, on a digression. We head to the front of the venue, about two or three people back from the stage on the right side.

(and now, let me introduce a digression formally...) Since about 1996 I've been going to Bogart's to see TMBG. At every show, there has always been this blonde girl with pigtails (usually braided). She's always there. She's always annoying. Not so much with what she does... although that's been interesting to watch. There's just something about her that annoys me and grates on her nerves. Like.. one show she was there, and doing straight edge dances with big black Xs on her hands, with her little friends. The next show (maybe 6 months, a year later) she's smoking. It's interesting to watch, at the same time silently disliking her for really no good reason. I finally told Aimee about my irrational dislike for her. We took turns making faces at the back of her head all night. Ok, end of that.

So after a very quick dinner of 1.5 pieces of pizza and half a coke, we settle in to wait for the show to start. I was probably about 3 feet away from the stage left speakers (they're about 8 or 9 feet tall, I'd guess). OKGO did their set. They were quite entertaining. They did a piece Les Miserables which I really liked. It was very odd. But great.

After that, we waited for a million years for TMBG to come on stage. We were stage Linnell, of course (I think this throws Jay off, as he has always been a Flans fan.) They opened with "Dead" (my apologies to Beth, I accidentally told her they opened with "Letterbox". Right album, wrong song. Evidently all I remembered was that it was a slower song from Flood.) The show was pretty tame.. I saw no crowd surfing, didn't get shoved alot, and very few people were trying to cut into the crowd. TMBG did most of their "hits" before the encore, something I'm not use to seeing. Dan Weinkauf was absent, and in his place was a bassist that they seemed to barely acknowledge the existence of. I just found that odd. Dan Miller was excellent, as usual, and tore up "Istanbul". I wonder if they feel dead inside when they play "Particle Man"? It has to get old. I mean, I think Linnell could fall asleep at some point in the song, and he could go on singing and playing. (Odd memory: At some point in the show, I remember Linnell lying on the stage.) They did two encores (the first one was very long), and did "Fingertips". I'd wanted to hear this live for years. I finally did. I don't think I need to hear it live again. It was ok and all, but.. I would have rather heard something like "Don't Let's Start" in it's place.

Anyhow... the biggest problem with the show wasn't the show itself, but the sound system. Being as close to the speakers as we were, it was deafening. Aimee, Jay, and I (I can't speak for Kenji) have all been that close (or closer) to the speakers before, and it wasn't nearly that loud. I, of course, had an earplug with me, as standard concert procedure requires. (other requirements: hoody that can be tied around waist, one or two tubes of lip balm, money, sneakers.) I use one earplug on the side of my head closest to the speaker, if I'm in the front. Then after the concert, I at least have partial hearing in one ear. But this one was so loud.. Jay couldn't take it for the opening act, and headed towards the back for a bit. I wonder how much hearing I've lost to concerts.. oh, well.

Something that amazes me... for two guys that turn about 43 this year, they still have an amazing amount of energy onstage. The jumping, the hopping, the playing.. they do it all with such vigor. No signs of knee braces or the such. Impressive.

So that's all I have to say about Friday. Not much went on Saturday, I just went out with my friend Anne-Marie. Sunday Aimee and I saw Big Trouble, and got two free tickets because the projection was screwed up throughout the whole movie. It was doing some weird flickering thing. Aimee didn't notice it, but I did. I left for a minute and told the theatre staff. Anyhow, the movie is damn funny. I read the book by Dave Barry last year sometime, and the movie, while somewhat different, was as funny as the book. Everyone go see it.

Reason why I'm going to Hell, #194845:
On Thursday night before Good Friday, I look down, and my right hand is bleeding in two separate places, along my lower knuckles. I had no clue where they came from, and seeing as it was the holiday season, I decided to call it my stigmata (and this goes along nicely with the burning bush Jay saw last week outside of Ryan's on Red Mile Rd.) Well, my bleeping stigmata won't heal. I wasn't covering it up or anything, and it got infected (it's at a prime location to be scraped and get all sorts of germs on it). So I started putting bandaids on it, but they came right off. Finally, I bought this nifty Band Aid Finger Care product, which you leave on for days a time. It's great, it stays on and really protects the wound.

That was a one paragraph commercial.

Ok, that's it for now. Ben wants to read this. hehe.

TMBG in 5.5 hours!!!!

I had a dream last night which involved people dressing up for Halloween. That, and somehow I ended up with two sticks of lit dynamite in my hand. They were blue, and had printed sayings on them. I knew I had to get rid of the dynamite, so I ran and threw it where I thought it'd be far away enough to not hurt anyone. However, it ended up exploding early, and hurting people.

This was not a good dream.

Ohmygod, the Gin Blossoms have reunited. They're playing in Cincinnati in June. This will be a tough call. Do we go, or don't we? They're horrible live.. but.. the Gin Blossoms are back together!!!!

No more hoppy little bunnies.

Easter is over.

My Easter was pretty good. My mom came down for the weekend. Jay and I had decided we would make Easter dinner for our families. This was our first official Holiday Dinner Hosting. hehe. And my mom did a good deal of the work, essentially making the baked beans and potato salad. I made the devilled eggs, Jay made a devil's food cake (on Easter, even. We're evil.) We roasted two chickens, too. Not very much chicken got eaten. hehe. That's ok, whole chickens are really cheap (who knew?) Anastasia stepped in the cake before it was iced, though, when she was in pursuit of a fly. I scooped out the area around her footprint, and Jay filled it in with icing. (Shh. This never happened.) Jay's mom and sister ate with us (and brought me a wonderful Easter basket), and then my mom drove home, and then we played Boggle. Their family is very competitive.

(Yes, I realize the paragraph above is poorly structured. I felt like it, ok?)

See, that was my April Fool's joke, about North Platte. I think Ilya's the only person in the world with aspirations to live in North Platte, Nebraska.

I'm moving to North Platte, Nebraska!