As I pull into my driveway after work tonight, I notice a bright red note on my front door. At first I thought it was just another advertisement some local small business. Then I wondered if it was another flier from the church up the street inviting me to some Saturday neighborhood bar-b-que and sermon session. They like to do that a lot. Either way I thought it was nothing important. I own my own property (In theory) so I know itÂ’s not an eviction notice. IÂ’m not behind on any bills, so I know itÂ’s not a foreclosure notice. I havenÂ’t had any complaints from neighbors, my property is in order, and there was absolutely nothing that I could think of to make me consider it being anything more then a waste of paper.

Until I pulled it off of the door and read it:

City of Rockford
Water Division

Your water will be shut off in 5 days unless proper action is taken by you and then notify this office at ###-### accordingly due to:

No Access to Change Meter.

Previous attempts have been made to change your meter unsuccessfully

WHAT?!?!?!?!?! This is the first time IÂ’ve heard anything about this. There has been no previous notes, no calls, no letters, no anything! How the hell am I supposed to know they are coming if they donÂ’t tell me? Wait, maybe they figure that IÂ’m just another leech off of the government and sit around all day collecting funds and watching my stories.

I call the number on the warning. They advise me that they want to install a new water meter on my house. They asked if I would be home tomorrow between 12:30 and 4:00PM. Sure! I just didnÂ’t happen to be home today, or the other times they came, because I was out playing golf. Hell no, I have a job. You know, that thing that people do in order to pay their water bills. They wanted to know when in the next 5 days I would be home. Well that would be tomorrow night AFTER 4:30PM. Oh no, that wonÂ’t work; itÂ’s after their business hours.

They need to get in and get this done; it’s long over due they tell me. I explain to the City of Rockford Water Division girl, who although very nice and polite doesn’t seem to have a full grasp that people beside her work between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:00PM, that I work during the times they want, and I just can’t magically take the day off tomorrow with out notice and I’m going to be busy over the weekend. “Oh no! We don’t work on the weekend either, it has to be during the week.”

Fortunately I had Monday off already as a recovery day, so I was able to get an appointment that day. I just wish they would tell me this stuff in advance instead of leaving a bright red scary notice on the door.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:13 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Well the highlight of Friday night was definitely the Midget Kickboxing. Bruce, our friend J-man and I went to the Rockford Rumble Friday night. Normally I donÂ’t go to these types of things, but they were advertising a fight between Beetlejuice from the Howard Stern show and Big Poppa the Midwest Midget Kickboxing Champion. Folks I tried for hours to find a link to Big Poppa, but I couldnÂ’t find anything about him on the net.

Now I know these were amateur fighters, but they where pretty awful. They would charge into the ring with their arms wind milling as fast as they could. YouÂ’d see these guys get tired after 30 seconds and the force of their blows and the frequency of them started to decrease. IÂ’m not a trained fighter, but these fights looked horrible. Except for a couple of the heavy weights, most of these guys didnÂ’t look that tough. Most of the fights looked like kids fighting with the techniques. In fact at one point I swear that one of the fights was doing that girl paw fighting style. It was pretty lame.

The ring girls they had came from a local gentlemenÂ’s club. There were five of them. 2 were pretty damn good, but the other three were kind of scary. One of the girls looked like an anorexic Paris Hilton. Yea, she was that skinny. She looked like a walking skeleton with no curves at all. But she thought she looked good. To be honest she made crack whores look meaty. At one point in the night as she walked by where we were sitting, she made eye contact with me. She smiled and gave me a wink. At that point I about threw up. My gag reflex kicked in. Not even with BruceÂ’s dick and J-man pushing would I jump into that cesspool of disease.

The only real highlight of the night was the Midget Kickboxing. It was the only fight that actually looked good. They landed hard punches, there was blocking and dodging. Folks, this was just the coolest thing. I had heard of it before, but never seen it. If you ever get the chance to watch midget kickboxing, DO IT! And it was just fun to watch. Beetlejuice won, but I think itÂ’s only because his arms were twice as long as Big PoppaÂ’s. Big Poppa had the better skill and technique. After the fight Big Poppa even came over to our seats and talked with us for a while. He seemed like a really cool guy. Unfortunately he didnÂ’t stay too long, because he had a chance to go sit on some pretty girls lap. Not that I blamed him. The fight only lasted for 3 one-minute rounds. It was way too short. They should have let them fight for a much longer time.

The only way IÂ’d go back to the Rockford Rumble is if I knew someone fighting or if they did the midget kickboxing again.

Posted by: Contagion at 09:22 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 505 words, total size 3 kb.

I have just two words for all of you: Midget Kickboxing.

In just over twelve hours I'm going to be watching Midget Kickboxing. I bet you wish you were as lucky as I am.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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After a nice long day at work, because they couldn't help but schedule non-stop meetings for me from 8:00 AM to 4:00PM with a 20 minute break and I had to stay until 7:00 tonight to make up for the lost time, I've finally arrived home in time to do my beer review. Folks, I'm so glad it's Wednesday. I always get a beer on Wednesday. But I have a question for everyone.

If you worked in an office where you have 6 peers that are supposed to share the duties and responsibilities for the entire department, but you find yourself carrying on more of the workload then the others because it's constantly assigned to you and not them, what would you do?

What if you where constantly singled out in meetings and memos regarding new duties and tasks?

Now what if the others all had something in common like race, religion or sexual orientation and you were in the minority?

Yea, I know I'm screwed.

But at least I got noticed today for not calling anyone in a meeting a Farking Idiot in almost a year!

Posted by: Contagion at 08:05 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 "others all had something in common like race, religion or sexual orientation"
I new it!!! You are a Canadian, Wiccian, Gay man!!

Posted by: Bruce Wayne at April 19, 2007 05:18 AM (Muh/v)

2 You could always just join your peers in being incompetant - maybe the work would get spread more evenly if you all appeared to have equal ability

BTW - I love this "meetings all day" example. One of the things I bitched about on my way out was the company's seemingly ingrained requirement to have meetings, not to actually achieve something productive, but just to say they had a meeting. Forcing people to come in on their off hours to listen to somebody talk to them for 1.5 hours about something that could be expressed in 3 minutes through an email does not make a happy employee

Posted by: Shadoglare at April 19, 2007 08:40 AM (Volhe)

3 Heh - that sensitivity training is really paying off!

Posted by: Richmond at April 19, 2007 11:40 AM (e8QFP)

4 Two words: Document everything!

I'm in a similar situation & considered a star where I work because I make sure my work is reasonably documented. I let people swing or hang on their own merits & I'm as well respected (not very much) as possible in the business world.

Posted by: Hapkido at April 21, 2007 10:39 PM (ugegk)

5 Like Hapkido says - document.

Then mention the extensive documentation to your bosses on occasion and suggest that you're due for a raise.

Nothing to lose.

Posted by: Harvey at April 23, 2007 04:25 AM (L7a63)

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Saturday was probably one of the most fun days IÂ’ve had in a long, long time. First, I was able to satisfy my love of bad cheesy movies by watching Mulva, Zombie Ass Kicker and Filthy McNasty. ItÂ’s actually two short movies, about 45 minutes each, on the same DVD. Low Budget Pictures, which folks is not a misnomer, made the movies. I swear to god it looks like these movies were made on a circa 1993 camcorder. The writing was horrible, the cinematography was craptacular and it was filled with so many inside jokes that only someone who was friends with the company could possibly get half of them. This of course means that I loved it and must get a copy of it, much to my wifeÂ’s chagrin. I didnÂ’t force her to watch the movies, but she was listening to it while playing on the computer. She was sure I was not going to like this movie at all, she was wrong.

Not long after I finished watching the movie, Shadoglare came over. He was going with me to the Raptor’s game. Of course I made him come over at 3:30 so we could hit the local Brew Pub before hand. For those of you that are in the Rockford area, Carlisle has a couple of new beers on the menu, a couple of them are really good and a couple are horrible. Banana and Clover flavored beer shall never pass my lips knowingly again. We waited there for Bruce (Of the still missing sidebar) and some mutual friends. We like to get our drink on at Carlisle before the game. Better beer that is cheaper then at the “official tailgate”.

The game was great. We smacked the Evanston Blue Cats around 67-28. Two of the Blue CatÂ’s scores came from kick returns ala Hester from the Bears. I brought my camera with to the game and took some great pictures, well 326 to be exact. But now I can give you an idea of how good my seats are. Here is a picture from where I was sitting

uh, oops, I meant this picture.

After the game we went to Backyard Bar and Grill to meet up with the coaches and players. It was great. We sat down, had drinks and even bought Jeremiah Thompson a drink for his birthday. The coaches, GM and players actually pretended to listen to our opinions and input. I canÂ’t wait for May 5 game, itÂ’s the next home game I can make it to. The one on April 28 falls on a re-enactment.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Holy cow, itÂ’s like a dream come true!

‘Twas the week after Easter, and all through the state
the snow was falling, and I was thinking itÂ’s great!

However, I appear to be the only one. There are people out there that think that we should not have snow this time of year. IÂ’m telling you we should have snow all year round. When they announced that we were going to get hit with snow, I was ecstatic! I love the snow, IÂ’m pissed we didnÂ’t get more this winter. I spent the last day and a half walking around hoping for feet of snow. Yes, not inches, but feet. I wanted to be able to measure the amount of snow we received by the foot.

Depending on which inaccurate weather report you watched they predicted everything from 2-4 to 6-12 inches of snow accumulation. They also said it was going to snow all day. Well the snow had pretty much stopped at noon, and at best we received an inch of accumulation. Here is a picture of my front porch of my neighborhood.

I was greatly disappointed.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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For Easter most parents that observe the holiday, and even some that donÂ’t, abort chicken embryos by boiling them in water hard boil eggs. Then they dip the hardened remains into cups of dye. If you have a four year-old you also get to wipe spilled dye up off the floor and table a couple of times. When you are done you have a carton or twelve of multi-colored hard-boiled eggs. Now this is where parents differ.

Some hide the eggs while the kids are sleeping so they can find them on Easter. After the lost egg incident of 2000, I donÂ’t do that anymore. Sure we, and I mean me, hid the egg in an easy to find spot. It was so easy to find that when Boopie was done looking for the eggs, I counted one short. We searched and searched and were not able to find it. Finally I figured that I had miscounted how many eggs I had hid. Since I didnÂ’t hide all the eggs, and one or two were eaten already, I figured that I just counted wrong. The egg finally showed up some months laterÂ… in August. There was a vile stench in the house and I couldnÂ’t quite place it. I searched and I searched and I searched. Finally after looking long and hard enough I found it.

It was in plain sight under the air hockey tableÂ… but some moron put a dark blue egg up against a dark blue background, and after months of cooking in a house without AC, the egg wanted out and let off a stench so that everyone could find it. I no longer hide Easter eggs.

This year I made the largest batch of Egg Salad that I ever made. WeÂ’ve been eating on it for two days for lunch and dinner. Hell I even had some for breakfast this morning. ThereÂ’s probably still more then half left. Already I do not like the gaseous emanations that are wafting off of me. Yet, I just canÂ’t throw it out.

Maybe if I us beer to wash it down it wonÂ’t stink so badly when I blow arse.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:06 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Ahh yes, home for the day. I’m not sick, I’m not on “administrative leave”, and I didn’t even take the day off because I wanted to do something. Today I’m home because we are having new windows installed. They are supposed to be here between ten and noon. Well considering it’s 20 to noon, they better hurry up and get here.

Now, I have to ask you readers. Am I the only one that gets antsy when IÂ’m given a window for any contractor or serviceman to show up? Around nine this morning I was up and had everything out of the way for the new windows. By 10:30 AM I was wondering where the hell they were. Now IÂ’m starting to wonder if they are ever going to show up. Sure they arenÂ’t late, but damn, IÂ’m starting to wonder if I have the wrong day. I donÂ’t want to call and seem like a fool, because they arenÂ’t technically lateÂ… but IÂ’m still wondering.

UPDATE: 12:26 PM: I called the contractor, today is the day they are supposed to be here, they don't know why they are running late. They are going to check and get back with me.

UPDATE: 1:58 PM: The contractor arrived! They were very sincere about being late. They explained that their last job they ran into a problem with one of the large windows they where installing on the second story of a house. Since this is the first time in 5 years I've had a problem with them, I am going to cut them some slack. Plus they are going to fix a problem I'm having with some molding for free.

Posted by: Contagion at 10:41 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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IÂ’ve been an amateur hobbyist photographer for years. I love to take pictures and to be a little bit on the artistic side at times. IÂ’ve used the same camera for almost 20 years now, a Pentax K1000. IÂ’m telling you folks, this is a great camera. It doesnÂ’t have all of the bells and whistles that most cameras had, everything had to be done manually, but it was nice. I loved it; it did everything I wanted it to. I used this camera for anything I wanted to take real pictures of. The great photos from last yearÂ’s vacation all came off of this camera.

But then it broke. It wouldnÂ’t function properly and the picture quality started to suffer. I took it to a local camera place to see if it could be repaired, and they told me that what was broken on it, could not be fixed. They donÂ’t make the parts anymore. So I asked them what they had in the line of replacement cameras. They started off showing me all of these digital cameras, that were niceÂ… but they are digital. IÂ’m not a fan of digital cameras. IÂ’ve always been able to tell the difference between a digital and a film photo.
When I asked to see the film cameras, I found out they have completely stopped making them. If I wanted a camera that still used film, I would have to find a place that sold used cameras.

The guy behind the counter and I had an argument over the quality of digital cameras. The quick version goes like this:

Me: Digital photos suck, I can always tell the difference.

Salesman: With the new cameras you canÂ’t tell the difference.

Me: I saw pictures just last week taken on a new camera, and I could tell they where digital.

Salesman: Then the place that printed them out didnÂ’t know what they where doing.

Me: Well my father had them put onto paper here.

Salesman: Â…uhÂ… It must have been set on a lower quality.

Me: My father is technologically stupid; itÂ’s on the factory basic settings that always put it at the highest possible quality. He doesnÂ’t know how to change it, and wouldnÂ’t in fear that the camera would break by him doing something to it.

Salesman: Â…

Me: So there are no film cameraÂ’s here at all?

Salesman: Only point and clicks.

Me: Sorry to have wasted your time.

That was 6 months ago. After doing a lot of research I verified everything the guy had said. They donÂ’t make anything short of point and clicks anymore that still take film. Which is a shame. Finally I got around to coming with the terms that if I wanted a new camera, it was going to have to be digital.

Finally on Tuesday I went out and bought me a new camera. I stuck with Pentax because their last camera was a great camera, and served me well. I ended up getting a Pentax K10D. To be honest it has a ton more features then not only am I not used to, but I probably wonÂ’t use. Since then IÂ’ve been taking pictures of everything, just trying to get use to the way it handles. Which is the nice thing about digital, it doesnÂ’t cost you an arm and a leg in film to do thatÂ… and you can instantly see what you did wrong. On the other hand it also has a fast drive motor on it, so you can take a rapid series of pictures. IÂ’ve always wanted a camera that could do that.

So IÂ’ve been following Ktreva and the boys around the house taking their pictures over and over. ItÂ’s starting to drive them nuts. I think they are getting the feeling for what itÂ’s like to be followed by the paparazzi. So expect to see a lot more photos of the family and stuff over the next couple of months while I break it in.

Posted by: Contagion at 08:16 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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