After attending a seminar yesterday with 80 other socially inept structural engineers, I thought the next multimedia edition of Suburban Rogue might be in order. If you think that spending a beautiful fall day trapped in a windowless meeting room with a bunch of structural engineers is a violation of the 8th Amendment you would be correct.
If you think spending any time, regardless of weather or location, with any structural engineer(s) is cruel and unusual punishment you would also be correct…
Speaking of the Constitution, one of the benefits of being an old fart who is a card-carrying member of AARP is that they make personalized videos for you, whether you request one or not. I recently received this unsolicited e-mail:
A Strange Video
In an interesting coincidence, I have a physical scheduled for next Tuesday. For me, being asked to turn my head and cough on Election Day seems rather symbolic of the current state of affairs…
The holiday catalogs have started to show up and I received an LL Bean catalog in the mail today. One of the items listed in the catalog is a “Snowball Maker Set.” Lest you think I’m making this up:
Snowball Maker
Yikes… We sure don’t want junior to get his hands cold, or wet, or to have any fun or to grow up with hair on his chest now do we?
A few days ago I was watching an interview with a country music singer/songwriter whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyway she was plugging her new album and told the interviewer that she “co-wrote that song by myself.” This must be the new definition for ghost-writer…
Alright, enough of this nonsense. Here’s some good music to help us all relax…
The Wilson sisters cover Elton John:
Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters
Kenny gets back to his roots:
In A Small Town
JT re-works a Drifters classic:
Up On the Roof
So I’ve been away from blogging for awhile, I’ve had some other stuff going on. Plus my cousin, who is a very brave person, is putting together a family history and asked me to write my autobiography, and I spent a lot of time working on that. I might’ve finished sooner, but I kept nodding off while I was working on it…
Anyway, now that my autobiography is finished, it’s back to blogging. Here’s the latest snooze…
I recently helped Son Rogue and his buddy move some furniture. They lured me into helping by offering me free food. (Note to reader: I can easily be tricked into lifting heavy things and other unpleasant tasks by being offered free food). Anyway, after the heavy work was done, the guys took me to a barbecue joint in the northwestern suburbs. We ordered our food, and soon some piping hot plates of delicious barbecue were brought to our table.
Within about 10 seconds of receiving our food an elderly couple was being seated in the booth next to ours. The gentleman stopped at our table, looked at our food, and began rubbing his sizable tummy (and I know from sizable tummies). He then muttered something along the lines of “Fellers, ‘at looks like some kinda eatin’ rye-chare.”
I consulted the same linguistics experts I have used in the past (re: Suburban Rogue September 30 2007 ) for a translation. As best as can be determined, what our hungry friend was saying was: “Gentlemen, you have been served a delicious variety of barbecue dishes. Bon Appétit’!”
Staying with the food theme for a moment, Mrs. R and I were recently enjoying lunch al fresco at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. The couple seated next to us was served their food and began to eat. A few moments later, the Mrs. asked the Mr. “Would you like to try one of these tortillas? They’re very interesting.”
I started to laugh and almost spit my drink out of my nose. Fortunately Mrs. R, who was also laughing, kicked me in the shins a couple five or six times until I regained my composure…
Speaking of Mrs. R, she has decided to make some Christmas gifts for a few people and needed some yarn from the local “Yarnery.” I brazenly threw caution to the wind and decided to enter the “No Unaccompanied Males Zone” with her.
We browsed through about 8 million different skeins of yarn. Surprisingly, I became a little impatient. Anyway, as she was deciding what kind/how much yarn to purchase, she wasn’t exactly sure on the how much part. She said “Wait a second; I need to check the pattern.”
I naively thought she would pull a paper out of her purse. Instead she pulled a book out of her purse. And this wasn’t your normal paperback sized book; this was a giant, hard-bound, limited edition, coffee-table size, 18.5 pound book of knitting patterns. I again started to laugh, and was again kicked in the shins…
Imagine a well-written transition paragraph right here…
A few days ago I drove past a lovely suburban home where the owners were proudly displaying an American flag, right next to their Denver Broncos flag. That’s when it hit me – nothing says America like showing your allegiance to your favorite sports team…
And finally, I thought you might be interested in this story. One of the six bureaucracies in charge of the bureaucracy I work for decided we needed new “smart-card” ID badges, you know, “for improved security.”
These new, high-tech, badges have a computer chip in them. Embedded in this chip is some personal information, including my SSN and fingerprints. I have to keep the new badge in a spiffy plastic case with some kind of special shielding “to keep people with wireless devices from stealing your personal information.”
I think it’s important to point out that the badge I surrendered for “improved security” had only my photograph and name on it. It did not have my SSN or my fingerprints or a computer chip. It was a “dumb-card,” and it would’ve been impossible to steal my identity from it. But now, I have a smart card and “improved security.”
And to think I was feeling insecure…
After attending a seminar yesterday with 80 other socially inept structural engineers, I thought the next multimedia edition of Suburban Rogue might be in order. If you think that spending a beautiful fall day trapped in a windowless meeting room with a bunch of structural engineers is a violation of the 8th Amendment you would be correct.
