Ktreva found the perfect Halloween decoration for me. It combines two of my most favorite things in the world together. According to her she was just walking through the store when she found it. As soon as she laid eyes on it she said she thought of me, it was something "I had to have".

Want to know what it is?

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Posted by: Contagion at 01:11 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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It's almost here! Tomorrow is Halloween! Which for those of you that don't remember is one of my favorite holidays. It and the Fourth of July are are so close that I really can't decide between the two of them. Tonight we are preparing for the fright fest that is my front yard!

Every year I decorate the house with all kinds of ghouls, zombies, skeletons, ghosts and other scary things. Then I hand out a ton of good candy. No, we don't use the cheap stuff, I'm talking Kit Kats, Baby Ruth, Reese's, Snickers etc. I even dress up like a demon to hand it out to all the boils and ghouls that come to my door. Of corpse I always get a scare or two into some of the older ones. I have a rule that I don't scare the kids that appear to be under the age of 10.

This year the weather is supposed to be warm and nice and it would be an almost perfect Halloween... if the Government hadn't gone and screwed things up. Remember last spring when they changed daylight savings time? Well the clocks don't turn back until next weekend, so tomorrow night it'll still be light out when the kids come trick or treating. That is really going to screw up a lot of the decorations. Hell some of my effects only work in the dark. Since the official start time of 5:30 PM and ending at 7:30. That will give the kids about an hour of darkness to trick or treat in.

Owell, I'll just have to make the best of the situation.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Most people have one. Either it is one of their own or one that involves a friend. Some people have a lot of drinking stories, me personally I have a 39 volume encyclopedia of drinking stories. And there are two different types of drinking stories. You have the “drank too much” variety, which seems to be the most common.

For example: The summer before my junior year of college I worked as a welderÂ’s assistant. The company I worked for let me keep some of the equipment including a really good pair of welding gloves. When I returned to college I brought them with me, I donÂ’t know why, but I did. Some friends of mine and I went to a big party bonfire party and for reasons beyond reasonable explanation I brought with the welders gloves. Hey, there was fire and the gloves may come in handy. Well they did, but not for reasons expected. There were about a hundred or so people at this party, we were all drinking very heavily. There were multiple kegs and bottles of hard liquor going around.

At some pint one of the other party goers brought out some bottle rockets and started setting them off. Now I was pretty drunk at that time and remembered I had my welder’s gloves with me. Putting them on I said “You want to see fireworks, watch this” and I grabbed a burning log out of the fire and started swinging it around. Of course the drunks all thought this was cool and funny. And then I did something that normally I wouldn’t do, but I was young and drunk. I threw the burning log up in the air as hard as I could. Sparks flew everywhere. Then the log came back down to earth… in the middle of a corn field. A very dry corn field in October at the end of a draught. The next thing I know flames started leaping up out of the corn field.

Party goers are running in every direction, in the end about a quarter acre of corn was destroyed by fire, I think about a half acre was destroyed in trying to contain and put out the fire. It made the local news and I lived in fear for months that someone was going to turn me in. Needless to say IÂ’ve never brought wielding gloves to a bonfire party again.

On the other hand you have the “You didn’t get drunk, but alcohol was involved” variety. These tend to be more just on the quantity or quality of alcohol. A good example of that is many years ago we attended a re-enactment and I had brought two cases of beer, Bucktooth Billy brought a couple of cases of beer and Maelduin brought a couple of cases of beer. We arrived at the event on Thursday. Late Friday night we ran out of beer. Bucktooth Billy and Maelduin made a beer run on Saturday, while wearing kilts. Ktreva had asked them to pick her up a bottle of wine while they were there. Just after picking the wine from the shelf a female patron made a comment to Maelduin. He turns and filled with anger howls, “IT’S NOT A DRESS!” The lady gets scarred and runs off. Bucktooth Billy comes over to Maelduin and says, “She didn’t say anything about your kilt, but commented on the choice of wine.”

Now these aren’t my best drinking stories, but to hear those you need to buy me a drink or two. So why am I talking about drinking stories? It’s because CNN did an article on “Drinking Stories That Put Yours To Shame.” Now I’ve heard many of them before, and there are some really good ones in there. I don’t know if they are the greatest, but damn! They really do have some that make you laugh or cringe.

So tell me, what one of your favorite drinking stories is. Let me know either in the comments or post on it and let me know.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:19 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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IÂ’ve been in a funk for the last couple of days and I couldnÂ’t figure out why. Last weekend was great. I spent four days hanging out with a lot of good people, having a lot of fun and just having a good time overall. There was no reason for me to be in a funk over anything.

Then it dawned on me about ten minutes ago what a big part of my problem is, my job.

I donÂ’t fit in at my company. In my office I am one of two supervising management positions that are male. IÂ’m one of four overall male management. The office itself is 87% female. Not that being one of the few guys in the building is difficult, itÂ’s that I think differently than my female counterparts. Thus in this office my opinion doesnÂ’t matter. Management in my office is a good olÂ’ girls club and I just donÂ’t belong.

I get the crap assignments and when things go wrong in my department, I catch the blame for it, even if it was another Supervisor and teamÂ’s responsibility. IÂ’ve been singled out in meetings, IÂ’ve been harassed and when I try to voice my issues they sweep them under the rug. IÂ’ve even been retaliated against.

The only reason I havenÂ’t left is because of the stability. Yet if certain politicians get their wishes, that stability will be gone. Eh, maybe things will get better.

Posted by: Contagion at 10:56 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 It's really hard to give up that stability when you have kids at home. Especially when one is nearing college age. There are tons of bills and everything else to worry about. Much as many people make changing jobs seem easy - it's a HUGE undertaking. And (if you're at all like my husband) it divides your mind between the job you're supposed to be doing and the "looking" for something else mindset... something that is VERY difficult to do if you want to do your current job to the best of your ability. Of course there are 2 options and I know you know what they are. *grin* I'm sure you'll figure out what's best for you and what you can tolerate. Luckily you have all this wonderful bloggy goodness to make the day not so bad. ;-)

Posted by: Teresa at October 03, 2007 12:09 PM (rVIv9)

2 Being unhappy at a job, or in the funk of feeling you don't fit in sucks. I spent almost 8 months working in a place that I dreaded going to every day. When I started with the company, I loved what I did, then they moved me to Cedar Rapids. At that point, life began to suck. I couldn't wait to hit the road Friday afternoon and go HOME. Finally, it took a less than favorable performance review to push me over the edge. I started looking for another job. 3 weeks later, the company and I parted ways, I spent another 3 months looking for work, and finally something found me (thru monster) that is making me happy. The lessons of my story, it doesn't hurt to look, (monster and careerbuilder are good), sometimes it takes that extra push to get us off the cliff. I am lucky, I was 24 and single when it happened (along with it being planting season on the farm to help me get by). If you feel you need to, take a look around. It may even be possible to use this as an opportunity to move up or manufacture a raise for yourself. Just remember, you have family and friends who support you.

Posted by: Petey at October 03, 2007 12:52 PM (tmnSV)

3 Ever listen to Hank Williams Jr? "C'mon over to the country...." Missouri is always lookin for a few good people

Posted by: BloodSpite at October 03, 2007 08:19 PM (xUF9P)

4 Preach on brother... (not that I know anything about what happens there)

Posted by: Bruce at October 03, 2007 09:57 PM (PA6oE)

5 I would start documenting everything and get stuff in writing about what they are doing then when they fire you (which it sounds like they are trying to do, they are building a case against you so they can fire you or harrass you into quiting, been there, done that) and then you can sue their ass.

Posted by: Quality Weenie at October 05, 2007 08:19 AM (BksWB)

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