July 25, 2005
Upon arriving there was only four other people at the bar. The two guys, and only other males to show up, where playing pool while the other two were sitting at a table drinking. Shortly after more people arrived. Around 8:00, I realized that I was going to be only one of three males at this little gathering. The reason they went to this particular bar was so they could sing karaoke. My singing voice is horrible, but I loves to sing the karaoke! Watching people cringe in pain from the sound of my voice amuses me. The karaoke didn’t start until after 9:00. By this time I was feeling pretty socially lubricated. My plans failed miserably. This was only the second work-sponsored function I’ve attended. The last one was a Christmas party last year. People where buying drinks for me, to be more precise they were buying me shots. There was still $12.00 in my wallet at 9:00 PM. When the singing started, I couldn’t help but to get into the mood. Picking a song I’ve sung many times before I entered my name into the list. Now some of you may have heard about my legendary performance of Bette Midlar’s Wind Beneath my Wings. That is not the song I performed; I performed Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby as sung by Sean Connery. I do a passable Sean Connery impersonation. Now I had the bar laughing at me, which is what I was wanting. It was meant to be amusing. I started really getting into my performance. In the heat of the moment, I started dancing… like Vanilla Ice. No good comes from that. Let’s just say there is a table and chair that will never be the same again. As for the rest of the singers, they where all pretty damn good, one of the trainers from my office that was there sang “Son of a Preacher Man”. Her voice was really good; I think she may have missed her calling.
Not long after that, the only other guys left to go to a different bar. They said they wanted to go check out some of the meat markets to find girls they didnÂ’t work with. Personally, I think I embarrassed the hell out of them! Then most of the people from work that I actually knew left. That left me as the only guy with a bunch of females that not only worked with me, but where minions in training. Deciding I needed to get the hell out of there, I did the ultra-fast sobering technique. AKA I drank lots and lots of water, swallowing the ice cubes whole. You sober up real fast doing that. Around 11:15, I tore out of there to head home. Fortunately, I drive a big truck with four-wheel drive; cops donÂ’t patrol peopleÂ’s back yards! IÂ’m kidding; I probably would have blown over a .08 blood alcohol level. But I was fine to drive the ten blocks to get home. Hell I could probably blow over a .08 right now. Of course, I tried my hand at not-quite sober posting in practice for the Blogcrawl. IÂ’m going to have to get much more inebriated for that little shindig.
Saturday my wife and I were invited to a party at a co-workers house in Janesville, WI. It was my wife’s turn to drink. That made me the driver. Before we left, we had to stop at the store to pick up some foodstuffs to bring with to the party. When we got home from the store, there was a message on our answering machine. It was a desperate plea for help. Apparently, the host and hostess picked up a half barrel of beer. They had a tapper and didn't rent one. They hadn’t checked theirs and it wasn’t working properly. There was a leak in it and it made lots and lots of foam. What I found amusing was the fact that they called me for a tapper. They had a drinking emergency and the first thought that popped into their heads was, “Call Contagion, he’ll have what we need.” Even before checking with the store that they bought the keg from, they called me. Not that I blame them, I do own quite an impressive collection of drinking supplies, including a pub grade tapper. After getting my machine, and fearing I had left already, they called the liquor store only to find out they where out anyway. Being the exemplar asshole that I am, I let them stew for a couple of hours prior to my telling them I would bring it. . In fact, we told them we were going to be late arriving because of Clone. When we arrived about an hour and a half after the party started, I was about mugged by guys wanting a beer. Pulling the taper out of the truck and holding it over my head, the sun glinting off the chrome spigot, they all stopped in the tracks. A collective “AH!” was issued by the mass and I was treated like a messenger of god. Walking briskly to the keg, with a one handed move that most only get to witness in movies, I taped the keg and started pouring liquid gold to all my new disciples.
For the first time ever, I played Texas HoldÂ’em against live people. IÂ’ve only played in the past online or against a computer. Figuring I was just going to have some fun and be the first one out, I bought my way in. After 54 hands, I ended up winning the entire competition. Feeling obligated to play in the second round since I won, I invested part of my winnings back in. Now I was the first one out. However, I was sure I had the best hand. When it came down to showing cards, I was beaten by my opponentÂ’s kicker card. I had a Jack, he had a Queen. ItÂ’s okay, I was still up on my winnings and I was able to drink more.
It was a fun party. The details get a little fuzzy because of the alcohol. I know there were shots again, even though these were nasty fruity shots, but I remember doing one or twenty. At one point, I know women where flashing people; my wife was included in participating in the flashing. The host was walking around showing any female that asked his sloppyrod. It was the hostessÂ’ birthday on Sunday; her husband rented her a stripper. I donÂ’t know if he was good or not, I stayed out on the garage drinking beer and playing cards. My wife seemed to enjoy it though. Which is fine by me, he did all the work and later I got to have the fun. I donÂ’t care if she was fantasizing I was some stripper dressed up as a soldier, I was fantasizing she was Adriana Lima.
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July 07, 2005
LittleJoe and I talked it over and decided we were going to crash the party anyways. Bully on them! We arrived separately, LittleJoe about 45 minutes before me; we were the only ones there. At first we thought we had fallen for a clever decoy and after waiting for 30 minutes past the scheduled time we were getting ready to go home when there was a loud noise, a bright flash and smoke filled the entrance way. Over the bodies, blocking the front door, in steps BlackFive wearing full tactical gear and a gas mask. Not knowing who we were he ignored us and went to the far side of the bar to wait. We just kept our eye on him trying to figure out if that really was BlackFive or if someone else, who dresses like that, would show up here at that time.
As soon as the employees had the mess cleaned up from BlackFive’s entrance, in walked Teresa. It’s hard not to recognize her. Her regal presence upon entering was unmistakable. She glanced around with that cheery, “I’m slumming it with the commoners” look. We could tell from the pained look in her eye she recognized us from the last blogmeet we did two months ago. She greeted us with a fake smile and, “Oh, you two are here. How quant.” It was at that point BlackFive used an asp to move me out of the way so he could talk with Teresa.
I don’t remember who arrived next, Aneth or Harvey and TNT, but they arrived at about the same time. When Harvey entered, he immediately tried to get the staff to start a blog. I can’t count how many times in the first five minutes I heard, “So if you started a blog, what would the name be?” TNT immediately went into “looking for prey” mode. I swear that if it weren’t for LittleJoe as my back up, she would have added my head to her duffle bag full of “trophies”. When Harvey saw LittleJoe and me, he said, “How the hell did you two…. DAMN THAT GRAUMAGUS! I should have known better then to entrust him with a secret.” Upon Aneth’s arrival she attempted to pull me out of my bar stool so she could use me as a stepping stool to rest her feet on. Fortunately, my ample mass prevented that from happening. She did start hollering for Pina Colada’s as soon as she sat down in compensation.
Grau arrived next. He saw me, came over and said, “Uh, I see you got my message about the change in date and time. Yea, that’s what happened.” Harvey walked over and backhanded Grau. Growling, Harvey said, “I thought I specifically told you not to mention this gathering to the unwanted stump. We did not want the spawn of the GrauHarveBou here!” Grau, whipping some spittle off his face grabbed Harvey by the shirt. Hoisting him about a foot off the ground, Grau calmly warned Harvey, “I am not one of your blog children, if you ever do that again I will knock your Michael Gross looking arse back into the 80’s!” At that point, Grau and Harvey started laughing and hugging. It made me wonder even more about Bou’s, TIG’s and my blog-procreation.
Finally, Tammi and TIG arrived. Tammi came waltzing in all dressed up and looking as if she were heading to a formal event. While twirling she yelled out, “I’m the prettiest girl at the ball!” She went on to explain how she had spent most of the day in a salon having her hair and nails done just so she could look her best. I thought we were going to have a problem when BlackFive used his model 1911 Colt to shoot the cap off a bottle. The cap almost landed in Tammy’s hair. Fortunately, his aim was very good and instead it missed her by a quarter of an inch and landed in a trashcan.
TIG just pushed his way to the bar, slapped his hand down and yelled, “Bartender… Burrito, Beer… NOW!” I tried to say hello to him, but all I could understand from his low mumble was, “….. need beer…” and “…no beer yet…” However once he was able to drink his first couple of bottles he started coming to. This time when I attempted to say hello he responded with, “Umm, have we met before?” I explained that we had indeed met twice before. Scratching his head as he walked away, I heard him ask Tammy, “Is he the asshole I spent all that time talking to at the April Blogmeet?”
We were shown to a table; LittleJoe and I were relinquished to one end away from the more civilized and larger bloggers. Aneth decided to take pity on us and sat at the end to. It was either pity or the fact she was sucking down Pina Coladas. I had been drinking diet coke up to this point, but I needed something to help me overcome my shyness. I started ordering Jack and Diet cokes. The food was good, but after the meal, they seemed in a hurry to get us out of the place. I think some of it had to do with topics of conversation. Such as BlackFive telling stories of how he has a blister on his hand from knife fighting, TNT talking about the proper way to sever a human head, Harvey explaining about dogs eating cat poop, Aneth talking about putting cats into dryers, my going into details about the sewage explosion in my basement and TIGÂ’s constant screaming for beer.
After we left the restaurant, we went to a bar nearby for drinks. It was pretty much more of the same; we all were sitting and talking about various topics. Then a vile plot was hatched by my BlogFathers to do a 7 month after birth abortion. They decided that we should all do prairie fire shots. For those of you that donÂ’t know, a prairie fire is half Tequila and half Tabasco sauce. The Tabasco doesnÂ’t bother me, itsÂ’ the tequila. I donÂ’t really like the taste of tequila to begin with; itÂ’s the fact that it causes me intense bodily pain that I hate it. Tequila tends to interact with my ulcers and causes me pain for days. In fact, as IÂ’m writing this IÂ’m drinking a pepto/prevacid milkshake. I can still taste the Tequila. Grau, knowing me for years, knew this was going to cause me much pain and discomfort. What he didnÂ’t count on was my buddy Jack Daniels being able to subdue Jose from killing me.
It was a good evening, BlackFive only really tried to kill me once when he found out I donÂ’t read his blog on a regular basis. I explained his blog scares meÂ… not because of content but because too many people read it. He seemed to be appeased by that answer and let me live. It was easy to distract him however, all I had to do was get him to start telling stories and he seemed happy enough to tell him.
In all honesty I did have a good time, I was glad I went and it was nice to see everyone.
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July 06, 2005
Routine: I set off fireworks in my back yard after watching the professional display every Fourth of July.
Routine Failure: Due to Clone being sick all weekend, my wife and I being tired, and having to work on the Fifth; we did not set off fireworks after the show.
Now I know this seems like a harmless little break in routine. This example however makes for the incident that occurred last night. It was this break in my routine that caused my brain to override the “Good better” judgment controls. To tell this story properly I am going to start at the beginning.
Last Fourth of July I traveled by myself to Wisconsin to buy fireworks. Every year I go to the same place, I’ve gone there since I was 10 years old and I will continue to go every year, it is part of my routine. When I walked last year I was like a kid in a candy store, I went nuts buying many different items. What I hadn’t realized was the fact they where having a two for one sale. I ended up buying twice as much as I reasonably needed. (Notice I didn’t say wanted… I can never have too many fireworks). When I returned home with a Ford Ranger full of rockets and fountains, my wife told me I was no longer allowed to go firework shopping on my own again. That brings us to this year. The whole family comes with while I buy fireworks and again there is a two for one sale. Now this year I remembered it was a two for one sale and was going to curb my spending. However, my wife was with me to keep me in check. (Break in routine) I just kept buying waiting for her to say “DEAR GOD NO! YOU DO NOT NEED ANOTHER FIREWORK!” Instead she asked me to pick up a couple of fountains she liked thus encouraging my impulsive behavior. I ended up coming home with more fireworks this year then last year. (Consequence)
In 2004 when we were setting off fireworks in our back yard, Grau brought over this one called the weeping willow or something like that. It looked just like a bunch of fountains I had. Unfortunately, this was actually a bundle of mini-mortars that shot exploding balls into the air one right after the other. It was like a homing beacon for the cops to come and arrest us. The cops never came and we vowed not to do that again. So when we where buying fireworks I made sure that I only bought ones from the “Fountain” section for lighting off in the back yard. I know this is a little off topic, but keep this in mind for later, it is a VERY important detail.
Every Fourth of July we leave early to set off rockets in the field we sit in. This year we were shut down by the man. (Break in routine.) My need to set things on fire or blow them up was not satisfied. Normally this wouldnÂ’t have been that big of a deal, however mix that with my original example and we have the formula for disaster.
Yesterday, upon arriving home, I saw the stack of fireworks sitting in my office. I turn to the oldest boy and say, “We are setting those off tonight.” After I finish cleaning up from the previous day’s party, making dinner and updating the Spoon and Blade, I grabbed the fireworks and the family. We went into the back yard for big explosion fun.
I had two different types of giant fountains among all the other assorted fountains I bought. I thought I would start the show with one of the big ones. I’m anxious to get my firework fix; I didn’t get to set many off the previous day. I was hurting bad. I didn’t read the label on this “Fountain” before I lit it as I normally do. Setting down on the ground a safe distance from the house and garage, I lit it and ran. The next thing I know there is a muffled explosion quickly followed by a much louder one and a shower of sparks about 100 feet over my head. I’m having flashbacks to last year. Only this time it was worse. Last year there were maybe 12-15 mini-mortars. This bundle of joy I set off had 36. It would set one off every 5 seconds. For three minutes, this “fountain” was shooting exploding flairs into the evening sky. That was a long three minutes. After it was finished, I waited to see if there where any sirens… Nope, not a one. Back to the fun at hand.
We are lighting all the other fountains when I have a break in routing failure. I have this other large “fountain” that was on the shelf right next to the big one I had let off earlier. Ironically, it was named “Big Trouble”. The label said, “Shoots flaming balls into the air with report.” My brain not having the fun that was so badly needed in setting off skyrockets and fireworks the night before starts justifying lighting this. I swear by all that is right and good in the world that my brain convinces me “That’s just the flaming balls that come out of regular fountains that crackle really loudly. It’s okay to set this one off.” My “better” judgment center screamed “NO, FOR THE LOVE OF LIFE, DO. NOT. DO. THIS!” The mischievous part of my brain says, “C’mon it’s just a fountain. We bought it in the “Fountain” section. The last one was a fluke. What are the chances of anyone making that mistake twice? Just set it off.” The rest of my brain then says in the dopey sounding rube voice, “Oh… all right, you’ve never gotten me into trouble before!”
I set the fountain on top of the cooled off remnants of the previous large fountain. I light it and run back. My wife notices what I did right as the fuse ignited. She screams, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!” Too late, the fuse was lit. The fuse was quick to get into the tube, but then there was nothing. I thought I had a dud. That was when it happened. A louder muffled explosion, then a high-pitch scream as (to quote my wife) “A screaming sperm of sparks heads into the night sky”. It explodes loudly about 150 feet up in a large star. This is followed about 15 seconds later by another. Every 15 seconds it would send up another one. Did I mention they exploded loudly? I did, good because when I say loud I’m talking really damn LOUD! Its bad enough they screamed in a high pitch whistle from the time they leave the tube until they reached their peak, but the explosion was enough to rattle my molars. I have neighbors climbing out of their houses convinced my house had finally caught fire and the cans of black powder where exploding. This inch and half diameter, ¼ inch- thick tubes that held the charges come falling back to the ground. They pelted everything around them with enough force to cause a noticeable noise on impact. It took one of these tubes hitting me in the head to make my brain admit, “This was a mistake.”
After the fifth one went off, I could hear sirens. They are getting closer and closer. People are gathering around the street to watch. I’m standing there just chanting, “Please stop, please stop, please stop” If finally quits after 20 of the flaming sperms have exploded. I can see the reflection of the emergency lights off trees. I’m sure I’m going to jail or one of the falling tubes hurt someone.
The sirens are about a block away and they keep going… it was an ambulance on its way to the hospital. There were no other emergency vehicles responding to my neighborhood. My wife looks at me with her arms across her chest. I say, “I guess that was a bad idea.” She makes a tsking noise and says, “Ya think?” I sent the older boy to go around and pick up as many of the fallen tubes as possible. There where tubes five houses in every direction. After the quick clean up we finish setting off all the ground fireworks. We had some pretty impressive fountains. I’m sure that if I had been able to set off the fireworks the night before this wouldn’t have happened. I would have not been so desperate to blow something up that I almost took out my neighborhood.
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July 05, 2005
Most of the people there were from Clan Chattan. Honestly after I left the group, I thought there was going to be a lot of bad blood. Fortunately, I was wrong, as everyone seems to have overcome their issues. We all sat and talked, swapped stories, reminisced about past activities and shared our hopes for the future. It was nice. I wasnÂ’t involved in any gossip or politics. It made me start to rethink leaving. Then I realized the reason I didnÂ’t catch any of that was that I was no longer a member. It still was good to see everyone together againÂ… and happy.
Both Chastity and Virtue brought their boyfriends with to the party. You would think that after being members of this group for as long as they have been, they would know better. All the guys in the group are like over protective uncles. We were relentlessly ruthless to the boys, especially Maelduin and I. It was great fun making these boys squirm.
We had a lot of good food. One of the guests brought this cheese bread recipe. It was excellent. It tasted like cheesecake, only better. I braved the rain to grill burgers and hot dogs for everyone. Cooking in the rain doesnÂ’t bother me, especially on the Fourth of July. If you donÂ’t grill on the Fourth then there is something seriously wrong with you. I donÂ’t care if itÂ’s a vegetarian Kabob or the best steak money can buy, you grill on the Fourth of July!
We left the house around 7:30PM to go watch the Fireworks in Neighboring Cherry Valley. They have a nice display and itÂ’s much easier to get in and out of with all the traffic. I have a spot that IÂ’ve gone to for many years now. There is usually not a lot of other people there so we can play around. ItÂ’s on the backside of the display, therefore we donÂ’t get to see any of the ground fireworks, but who wants those anyway? The other attraction of this spot is we would light off our own fireworks waiting for the show. There are usually some kinds of rockets of various sizes. This year I had a couple gross of bottle rockets and four packets of larger rockets.
We had just finished setting out the blankets and spraying the kids down when I drove the pipes into the ground. I tested them with some bottle rockets. As I did, one of the people that owns the property adjacent to where we were warned us that the cops where there. Not wanting to have our fun ruined, I quickly hid the big rockets under the blanket and left a bunch of the bottle rockets out in plain site. Why? Because if he knows we were lighting off fireworks and comes down they will only confiscate what they see, they wonÂ’t search. If you hide everything, they will do a quick probable cause search. The cop ended up driving off and after about 10 minutes, I started firing them off. Being in the Fourth of July spirit, I started tossing packets of bottle rockets to my friends so they could have some fun. We were all having a great time playing with bottle rockets, which apparently are the most dangerous of all fireworks. How are they dangerous? Just read on.
After setting them off for about a total of 15 minutes I turned around to grab another packet of bottle rockets and I see a cop walking down to us. He tells us that he is shutting us down and confiscating the fireworks. He goes on to explain that the property we are on is owned by ComEd, the power company, and they didn’t want people shooting off fireworks by their power lines. Then he states, “They want us to make an arrest, who shall it be.” Everyone was quiet, I was thinking I should take the blame since it was my party and my fireworks, but then the cop points to LittleJoe and says, “I saw you shooting them off, I need to see your ID and information.”
LittleJoe in a rage that “The Man” has shut down our fun says, “Fuck you copper! Why aren’t you out taking guns from little kids or confiscating fireworks that are a bit more dangerous then bottle rockets?” The cop responded by pulling out his asp and saying “Don’t get my face boy I’ll beat you like an unwanted step child. Besides there are no fireworks more deadly then the whistling bottle rocket! Per shot fired, more people are injured with the `Harmless’ bottle rocket. Anyway no one else is shooting them off” He says this as sub-professional grade mortars and large skyrockets are going off around us.
LittleJoe is in such a rage that his pants have turned purple; he moves to take the cop. In his blinding rage, he forgets that we are on a hillside filled with holes. He steps in one, loosing his balance and falls to the ground hitting his head. The cop jumps on his back and handcuffs him before he can come to. Putting away his asp, he pulls his side arm to make sure the rest of us donÂ’t decide to assist our friend. Using his radio, he attempts to call for back up. The power lines and towers prevent a signal from being transponded.
The rest of us just sit back and watch. Since children were present we didn’t want them to get hurt incase Barney Fife gets scared. After about 5 minutes of trying to raise backup he finally gets through to a dispatcher. She advises the cop that there is no back up. All the other Cherry Valley Units are out setting off bottle Rockets they had confiscated from the public. Realizing that he was missing the fun, he gently wakes LittleJoe up and says, “If you promise not to fight I’ll just take your information and the bottle rockets and be on my way.” LittleJoe told the cop he wouldn’t fight. He gave him his name and information. I gave the cop all the bottle rockets that where left in plain sight. He asked me, “Is this all of them?” I responded with, “Of course officer.” He takes a quick look over the area spies some fountains that where sitting out. He walks over toward them.
GrauÂ’s eldest spawn is freaking out that the cop is going to take his fireworks. Grau assures the cop that those are legal fireworks bought here in Illinois. They where just smoke bombs and fountains. The cop looks them over and decides he doesnÂ’t want to light those off and leaves them as he departs the area. After the cop leaves, we are all joking about the entire incident and I pointed out to my friends that laughed at me about not hiding all the fireworks that it worked. He took about $5.00 worth of bottle rockets and left the $70.00 worth of skyrockets, and he still did a quick search.
This all happened by 8:50. They didnÂ’t start the main display until almost 9:45. For the first time in many years, I wasnÂ’t too impressed with the display. They seemed to do all of the same style of fireworks together instead of spreading them out. I thought it would look better if they broke them up more. Clone really enjoyed the fireworks. This is his first year that he actually cared to pay attention to them. IÂ’m glad he enjoyed it, because he had spent most of the weekend being sick. He had been puking Saturday, Sunday and Monday. (No, it had nothing to do with this incident! He didnÂ’t drink any alcohol! People please!) He finally snapped out of his funk around 6:00 and was really into playing and having fun by the time we left for the show.
*Some of the details regarding the cop have been exaggerated and may not be 100% accurate.
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