The Ramblings of the Village Idiot

I have been somewhat behind in my TV viewing this year. Even though we are supposed to be preparing for baby, I find my self either really busy or really tired. Neither of which is conducive to productivity at home. Here are some of the shows I'm distracting myself with.

Chuck - I've really enjoyed this season thus far... up until the last 2 minutes of the last episode. Well, I should say last week's episode since I haven't watched last night's episode yet. When Chuck was walking down the hall with his white dinner jacket and rose, I said aloud, "I hope Bryce isn't going to be in her room". Well, spank my ass and call me Judy, there he was. I shouldn't be able to call TV shows like that. If they're going for the big reveal, maybe they should think a little harder before going with the obvious every time.

Life - I'm worried that this show is on its last legs. They've banished it to Friday night, so it doesn't stand much of a chance at this point. The makeup artist on the show should really watch some of it before designing for the next episode. Maybe its the hallmark of HD, but the makeup was horribly noticeable on this last episode - especially on the male characters. The female characters were better, but I still have to wonder about how ladies can look so polished while supposedly working out. I thought sweating was more than just glowing. At least whenever I've been to the gym... yeah whatever.

Pushing Daisies - The only show we watch without HD, thanks to Dish Network who have decided that ABC does not need to be in HD. The CW isn't in HD either, but we don't watch much on that. We did watch Reaper last season, so I need to make sure I'm not missing it. Anyway, we've both thoroughly enjoyed the season thus far. I hope the show continues to do well.

True Blood - Probably going to cancel HBO sometime soon. We like the show thus far, but can't justify the price when we could just wait for a while and get the whole season on Netflix. The accents are a bit uneven and I haven't quite figured out what they're going for here. I haven't watched the creator's other show, "Six Feet Under" yet. Maybe if I was familiar with that show, I'd appreciate this one more...?

We have Sanctuary recorded, but we haven't watched any of it yet. Any thoughts on this one?

Well, it has finally happened... Facebook has been blocked by my work network. So much for keeping up with anyone since I am not real keen on using a computer at home. I type enough at work that I have no desire to sit in front of a computer at home. That's prime TV time. Or sleeping. Or house work... wait - that one didn't fit in too well. Anyway... now I have just about nothing to do during the 6-7 minute down time between coding and testing. They won't buy new machines for us to reduce that compile/link time - so that reduces them to a bunch of scrotum licking thunder cunts.

I go to comics.com quite often during the course of my meaningless day at work. dilbert, get fuzzy, rubes, etc. I'm getting really tired of their pop-ups there. I have pop-up blockers installed, but somehow this site always gets through them. Whenever they pop up, they always to go a site that is blocked - causing my computer name to be logged in some government database. I'm sure that doesn't look too good for me.

So, I was asked to sing at a funeral recently. It was a friend of my dad's who he (luckily) got a chance to visit with while he was in town over the holidays. Having only sung at a grand total of two (including this one) funerals, I was a bit nervous. The fact that it was 10 in the morning did nothing but add to my trepidation. The family (actually, somehow the deceased) had requested me to sing the Shubert "Ave Maria" - a piece, I'm sure, everyone is at least somewhat familiar with.

Well, the only key they had was Ab. I like to do it in G - only a half step, I know... but an important damned half step at 10 in the morning. I should also note that I haven't actually performed this piece in public before - only at a lesson - 15 years ago. So, anyway... I thought I sucked. As usual, some might have presupposed.

A couple of days later, my dad forwarded an email received from the family which had the line, "His rendition of the 'Ava Maria' brought tears to all of us. "

So, the raison d'être of my post is this... wouldn't a "normal" person take this as a compliment and move on? The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. However, I (in my not right-ness) read that statement and thought, "Tears? I knew it was bad". I immediately realized my neurosis and decided to take it as the complement it was meant to be. I just found it odd that my first reaction was to read it as criticism - even from someone who, I think, would never have emailed my dad with criticism.

Stupid brain. Must drink more beer to kill off the parts that are obviously not working.

So, it's been a week since I've last updated this journal - something that I was attempting to do a whole lot more often.

Anyway, we've had a somewhat productive week. We finished moving the sprinkler heads and loading 6 truck fulls of gravel into the newly created rock bed. It looks nice. It needs some decoration in the form of tiki torches, solar lights, other big rocks - maybe in the form of a bench, and possibly some succulents or palms. Not sure about the palms since we do tend to get rather chilly during the winter around here. There is a store here called "Cold Palms" that is supposed to sell cold hardy palm trees that are proven to survive the winters here. Our winters are not severe in any shape or form, but probably too cold for your average palm.

On cat news, we took all 5 of them into the vet for their annual checkup. I really need to find another vet. It was over $700 for the visit. One of the reasons we went early (the annual was due in November) is that there is a phantom pee-er in the group. Someone has been peeing all over the back hallway. We thoroughly cleaned the hallway with the steam cleaner just to be hit the next day with a fresh puddle. Turns out that Oscar does in fact have some sort of urinary infection - so we have to tackle him twice a day to give him anti-biotics. Fun. He decided to pee all over the pet carrier (and his sister, Annie) on the way home from the vet. So, I had to further traumatize him by trying to give him a bath. The bath was unsuccessful, but the tramatization was stunningly triumphant.

Another item on the original to-do list was buy a hot-tub. Well, we did just that the other day. I swear, tent sales will be the death of me. We bought a Honda Odyssey at a tent sale last month - now we bought a hot tub at another tent sale. It's a nice enough one. Not as large as I would have liked, but 95% of the time it will be just Susie and I.

Susie has made a master to-do list that we have hung on the refrigerator. Her goal is to work on at least one of the items on that list every day. Tonight will be steam cleaning the hallway (again) along with the living room because before we caught Oscar, he had walked around the living room with sodden paws for a while. I don't want the other kitties getting any ideas about peeing, so we'll take out all the furniture and steam clean tonight. When the carpet is dry, we're going to try out my sister's rug. We've spent so much time cleaning that thing, if it still smells tomorrow, it's going to the curb.

Someday, I'll have to post from home so I can upload some pictures of the various projects in progress at the French abode.

So close on the rock project. I had a little melt down this weekend while I was trying to move a sprinkler head out of the rock "area". The drought has made the ground so hard it is almost impossible to dig. And digging was required to move the sprinkler. After almost an hour, I had the first sprinkler head dug up. Another hour and I had the new location dug. Not fun. I still have to move another sprinkler before this is all over with.

I need to dig a TRENCH in this impossible soil to run power from the house out to the proposed hot-tub location. I don't know how I'm going to do that. I can't rent a trenching machine because the trench is going really near my septic tank. I can't risk hitting it or one of the pipes with the trencher. I'm hoping for some rain. Hoping is all it is since there is no rain in the forecast.

Which leads me to believe that the grass seed I spread last Friday will be dead soon if it isn't already.

Susie and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary yesterday by going to work all day and going to chorus rehearsal right after. I was in favor of us playing hookie for the day, but her work ethic won out. I would like to think I have a work ethic, but lately I wonder. I'm all about calling in sick or staying home. Just think - I only have to do this job for another 30 more years or so. That's just depressing. By the time I'll have enough money to retire, I'll be too old to really enjoy it all. I'll have the time to finally hike the AT, but I'll probably be too feeble to attempt it. I can't see my dad trying the AT at his age. Ick. There has to be a better way. It probably consists of not whining and just accept where I am.

So, with the new bishop installed - I wonder if he is going to put the call out for new deacons.

Tonight ( I hope ) will be the conclusion of the rock moving. We need 2-3 more truck loads of gravel to finish out the project. We're going to pick up 2 loads worth tonight ( with the help of the in-law's truck ) and I'm going to move that last sprinkler. I may not be able to move tomorrow, but it will be worth it if we finish!

So, it's the weekend already. I sort of spread grass seed and fertilizer on the front lawn this morning before work. I don't know where the extra energy came from, but I try not to question these things too much. I say "sort of" because I didn't have a proper seed broadcasting device. My broadcaster is still living with the in-laws, so I used a small hand-held one I had in the shed. Amazing what you find back there.

The other option for the weekend is to take a small trip. The next 3-4 weekends are booked with church or concerts, so this would be the time to go if we didn't have so much work to do at home. We thought a trip would be nice, but we don't know where to go and we really can't afford too much anyway. We've spend way too much money lately.

BTW. It will be our 2 year anniversay on Monday.

Between rehearsals and such, we haven't gotten too much done on the ol' stone project. I think we're going to drop of the van (we got a new van two weeks ago) to get it iPod-able. Then head to Across The Pond to get more rocks to finish out the wall.

On another unrelated topic, I find it rather amusing that there is so much graffiti on in the bathroom stalls here. Rather profane stuff, actually. Normally this wouldn't amount to much, but this is a secure facility. Everyone in the building holds a security clearance and yet, we have high-school level graffiti in the bathrooms. Strange.

As the title sounds, I spent yesterday in Birmingham for the Installation of our new Bishop. It was kewl. There were over 100 priests, probably 30 bishops, even a cardinal. Odd to see such Catholic activity this far south. I assume they're all getting behind the new bishop because they know how hard of a time he's going to have it down here.

While the music was great (I was in one of the choirs), we didn't make it onto EWTN. The bulk of our singing occurred before the service. Out of the two pieces we did during the service, my TiVo only caught one of them because the service ran long and TiVo didn't compensate. Ah well. Nothing to show my boss to prove that I wasn't just dicking around for the day.

I have bell rehearsal tonight, so there will probably not be any progress on the dreaded list of chores. Thursday is community chorus rehearsal, so again... no progress. Maybe this weekend we will make some headway.

On my list of projects is the ominous one to finish the rock wall around the pool. I think it was in early May that we bought two pallets of rocks (3 feet long each) to make a rock garden all around the pool. We were getting tired of grass clippings flooding the pool every time we cut the grass. This seemed (at the time) a reasonably simple effort. Cut the sod, install rocks, back fill with gravel, and decorate. Simple?

So, that was back in May. We cut the sod out and installed one rock. One. Then "42nd Street" hit. We were so worn out by all the dancing and late nights, we didn't touch the rocks again with any fervor until this past Saturday. We started after lunch Saturday afternoon and continued after church yesterday. We have both pallets installed with only a half-dozen or so left to buy to finish the installation part. Next comes the re-grading of the space between the pool deck and the rock wall. Then weed paper, followed by a shit-ton of gravel. Maybe we'll have this project finished by next summer.

Moving the rocks had to happen before calling the concrete guy to install the pad for our new hot-tub (which has yet to be purchased). I think I need to at least know exactly which hot-tub we're buying before we have the pad poured in order to get the dimensions right.

Other fun events this weekend included a chamber chorus rehearsal Saturday morning, steam-cleaning the back hallway where one of the cats has decided to pee repeatedly, and steam-cleaning my sister's stinky rug. For the 4th time. If this doesn't get the smell out - it's going on the curb.

The project list probably won't get any love this week. We're driving down to b'ham tonight for the Bishop's installation Mass tomorrow and dress rehearsal tonight. Wednesday is bell rehearsal followed by bbq potato. Thursday will be the first night back to the project list. We have a "slight" chance of rain on Thursday, so maybe I should fertilize and over-seed the front yard. Over-seed may be a bit of an exaggeration since the term assumes some grass coverage in place in which to over-seed. Our front yard is completely dead, so this will be more like "seeding", I guess. My in-laws have my broadcast spreader, so I may have to go buy a better one :)

This week at work is another week filled with just about nothing. Getting the cockpit up and running again after months of down-time and architectural changes is about all we have to look forward to. Yip-ee.

Last night was entirely consumed by driving back and forth to Birmingham. The rehearsal went pretty well. I don't know what I am expecting out of this choir exactly, but I always seem to be a bit disappointed in it. It is just a group of non-auditioned people from various churches in the area that are getting together to sing. Not all super-star choir singers, but people willing to put in the effort to do some more challenging music than what would be the normal week-to-week fare in most of the churches. Maybe I'm just spoiled. Singing with the main HCCA is fun, but it isn't what I really enjoy. Luckily they have started a chamber choir that is right up my alley. We're only doing a couple of pieces a concert, but it is challenging music with a group of very talented people.

I guess I just really miss singing with Dr. Sneed.

Anyway - we didn't get back from Birmingham until almost 11, so it was right to bed. Even the cats were pissed off that we were out for so long. The fish didn't seem to care.