Ugh!

Well, week before last, it was decided that my gut was too big, and I needed to lose weight. The only diet I have ever had work was the Adkins diet. I spent about 6 months on it about 2 and 1/2 years ago and dropped 60 lbs. I lost it come the Christmas holidays and never geared back up to it, despite a couple of false starts. I have several weaknesses when it comes to food. I love sweet stuff, pasta, rice all personana-non-grata in low-carb land.

If you have never had to pleasure of low carb dieting, a couple of things you might want to know. There are several out there. Atkins, South Beach, The Zone, and Sugar Busters are the most popular, and they all start out about the same. The first two weeks, you eat almost no carbohydrates of any kind. You can have about 1 cup of green vegetables per day, otherwise it is mainly protein (meat) with some cheese thrown in to try to keep you from getting bored. Now you had better drink a ton of water for 2 reasons. Reason one is the diet is a diaretic and you'll piss your brains out and reason 2 is that if you don't pour the water in and take a mild laxative, you'll feel like you've crammed a beaver dam up your butt. You'll only shit once a week and feel like you're passing lead bricks.

Also, if you try this, read the book all the way through. One thing about the Adkins, day one is okay, day two isn't bad. Day three, four, and maybe five, you feel like crap. I can't describe it, you just feel bad, like early stages of flu maybe. You have no energy, you have a mild headache, you feel weak. Then all of a sudden you feel great. You get a rush that last several days and you start preaching the low-carb gospel. Then you kind of balance out.

Now, I don't know the medical validity of the diet. Some doctor's like it and some hate it. Mine likes the South Beach Diet. What I do know is, I loose weight on it, and if I can survive the first week, I will feel good. I had excellent blood work when I was on the Adkins too. Now if I can just stick to the diet and the treadmill.

Fake Penises -- Gosh!!!!!

Today I narrowly missed encountering a fake penis. It was taken off a parolee during a drug test. He was taken to jail. In this state, attempting to tamper with a drug screen while on parole or probation is a misdemeanor and can result in a jail sentence of up to 11 months 29 days. Not to mention being a violation of parole or probation which can result in even more or the above mentioned lock-up time. This is about the 4 th fake penis this year. I haven't found one yet, but I did find one gentleman with a condom full of urine stuffed down his pants. All that glamour and they still pay me, can you believe it?

The thing that was different about this fake penis was that it was home made. Yes, instead of spending his hard-earned money on a fake penis off the internet, this guy used what appeared to be pvc pipe, ice maker tubing, a turkey baster, gauze and the tip off of a sex toy. I hope it wasn't his wife or girl friend's only toy. With him locked up and her best alternative butchered, she might have to resort to finding one somewhere else.

Bachelorhood

Well, I am a temporary bachelor. My wife decided to respond to her younger brother's emotional crisis by going to New York to visit him. She left last night. The house felt empty and the bed even more so. I didn't sleep well. The cats also act different when she is gone. I won't get any piece when I get home from work either. They will demand attention non-stop from their one human. Work is driving my nuts. My people seem to have gone nuts. Never the most stable, once the weather warmed and they started stirring, they have misbehaved most horribly. Truthfully, it is only about 20% of my case load, the other 80% seem to be trying at least a little, but the 20 or so percent make over 60% of my work. With the wife gone, I might put in a couple of late nights at the office and try to catch the paperwork up.

Of course, I have to fix her computer. It's old and been giving her some issues, so we decided to update it. Of course, I figured on doing it while she's gone, but she insisted on starting it Saturday night. Of course the new motherboard was defective and wouldn't even post, but the place I bought it wasn't open on Sunday. I was in court all Monday. So I took it in today for them to test. It was defective and it looks like I will pick up another on the way home, yay me.

Stupid!!!!

People are stupid. That's got to be it. I have a guy on probation looking at a 4 year stretch. He has over 2 years done, and suddenly he starts creating some minor problems. I try to work through them and get him by without filing a violation report. Then, bam, he gets arrested for domestic assault. This requires an automatic violation report. The deputy makes a point of looking me up and asking for a warrant. This deputy is cool and laid back, so the guy must have some major issues. Well I file my report and warrant request, meanwhile, the guy bonds out. He starts in calling my cell phone and calls about 6 times that night, obviously blitzed, he gets me the next morning at work and wants to reschedule his meeting, so I do so. Then an hour later he starts calling again. He calls 4 more times, never remembering he has already called. I need to get up there and do a drug screen, but I don't have the time. I am blitzed at work. If the warrant is back tomorrow, I will hand deliver with a deputy and do a screen. The wonderful thing about probation in this state is no matter how much of it you do, if you screw up, the judge has the option of making you serve the whole thing.

Gripe, gripe, gripe

Okay, today I gripe about my wife.

Don't get me wrong, I love her to death. I don't know what I did that comes close to me deserving such a great woman, but there are a few things she does that piss me off.

For one thing, she has no concept of time or any ability to plan. I blame this on her family, because every single one of them is this way. It doesn't occur to her that if you have ten things to do that require 2 hours each, you can't do them all in 8 hours, especially if you spend 4 hours on the first thing, and wait an hour to start.

She also has a nasty habit of waiting to the last minute to do things. She knows I go to work everyday, and she knows what time I go to bed, but she will wait until 5 minutes before I go to bed, then want to start some project that will take 30-40 minutes to do. She also has a habit of announcing she is going to do something, then not doing it for awhile. An example, she says, "Let's go to Lowes." Thirty minutes later she is still on her computer. An hour later we go to Lowes.

Where ever she finishes with something, that's where she leaves it. She never cleans up after a job. If she vacuums the front room, the middle of the front room is where she leaves the vacuum. If she nails a board up on the barn, that's where you find the box of nails and the hammer. If she builds a dog house, all the unused boards, cut ends of boards, extension cords, tools, ect. that she needed or thought she needed will still be there. Where ever she takes off her clothes that is where they stay until she does laundery. If she takes her socks off sitting on the couch, her socks stay on the couch.

The thing that bothers me the most though is her lack of consideration. This hit me last night and pissed me off again. Neither of us have felt good, both fighting colds for at least 2 weeks. I haven't felt like cooking much, and she has griped about that, so yesterday I decided to cook supper. I had to work about 90 minutes over, and when I called she said she was going to the sale (every Tuesday night they have a farm auction locally) but she wouldn't be staying long. I got home around 6:30 PM. I fed the dogs, then started supper. I decided to do black beans and rice. My wife comes from Florida and loves the stuff. She introduced me to Cuban cooking on our honeymoon and I have embraced it whole-hearted. I used canned beans to speed things up and cooked on a lower heat to compensate some. I called her again around 7:00 to let her know I was cooking and she assured me she was almost ready to leave. At 7:50 PM I called to let her know we were almost ready to eat and she told me she was leaving the place. At 8:30 the beans started burning and I got mad and ate alone. At 9:15 she finally showed up. This is persistant behavior. There have been many times when she will be out with her father and he will take her to supper, and she won't even call to let me know. I cook a meal for 2 people, and try to keep it warm only to find out she has already ate. When I confront her with this I usually get a lame excuse, well there wasn't time to call. Not time between finding out your being fed, getting to the resturaunt, ordering your food, getting your food, eating, talking afterward, then driving home? How long does it take to dial a cell phone and say, don't cook for me, Dad is feeding me supper? It's not like I haven't cooked supper for her damn near every evening between 6 and 7 PM for the last 5 years.

Things Change

Sometimes, just sometimes mind you, I find myself thinking about how much my life has changed in the past 5 years. I've changed jobs 4 times. Keep in mind I'm nearing 40 and only had 12 jobs since I was 16 and 3 of those were at the same time, so roughly 14 jobs. I started in high school with a fast food joint for about 6 months, went on to a busboy job at a hell hole for 3 weeks, cashier at a stop-and-rob, then a shift manager at a truck stop for the same company. I stayed there over a year and got laid off. Next I went to work part time at a swimming pool construction company. I started off washing and painting pools and doing shovel and wheelbarrow work, then ended as general manager over 3 pool supply stores. I was there almost 11 years. When the company sold, I became an insurance agent for about 9 months, then managed a rent-to-own company for about 9 more until I couldn't take it and found a computer operator's job. That job lasted 6 years and ended a year after I met the lady that would be my wife. Next I taught math and computer skills at a medical technology school. I stayed about 18 months, it started good, but managment changed and it became a private hell. Then I went to work for a small company that manufactured bathtubs. I was supposed to be a manager and run things, but everytime I made a decision or tried to change things, the other employees would go over my head or just refuse to accept the changes. It was stupid. I was hired because I knew people and new how to figure the costs and the savings on things. I could have easily cut parts expenses by a third and improved delivery time, and had backup suppliers set up in 90 days, but I couldn't accomplish anything. That lasted about 2 months, then I went to work for the state. Oh, yeah while I was with the rent-to-ripoff people, I also delivered newspapers and babyset a store for a few hours a day.

Anyway, I guess getting married made me get ambitious and start trying to better myself. The nice thing about this job is it is stable, benefits are excellent, and truthfully, I would have to move to a more urban environment to make more money in the private sector and the hours would be killer. I've been at this for 2 and 1/2 years now and it's cool so far.

Other than growing ambitions, I have noticed other changes. First I always slept on the right side of the bed. She wanted the right side, so I got used to sleeping on the left side of the bed. Then she wanted the left side, so now I sleep on the right side of the bed again. WTF?

Formerly, if I wanted a big ticket item, I saved my money for it. I am not the most patient person, so I would become a hermit, no going out, no eating out, no buying anything not absolutely necessary, until I could buy whatever it was, usually a gun or a computer whatsis. Other items like books, movies, small ticket things, I would buy then do without whatever that money would have gone for until payday. It don't work that way now. A single man can live off peanut butter and noodle to buy the fancy video card or the new stainless steel .45. The married man can't seem to do that. Also, why does it cost 3 times as much for twice the people to live. I could see doubling food, detergent, soap, stuff like that, but man, the laundrey alone has at least tripled. And toilet paper, seriously, what do women do with the stuff, 4 little rolls would do me 2 weeks, now I buy 9 triple rolls and I'm lucky to get through the week.

I do the cooking, I was well-trained and I like to cook, most of the time. Sometimes I am tired though. When this happened before marriage, I would just eat cheese and crackers or something simple, unwind with internet or tv then go to bed. Now there has to be a meal. My wife can and sometimes does cook a little. She can make meatloaf, pancakes, and fried eggs, you don't want to push her much beyond that. It's usually safer if I do it. I like to cook and my mother and grandmother taught me how. My juijitsu sensei approved. He claimed that food was too important to be dependant on someone who would spend half her time mad at you anyway.

Also, when you marry, you gain a second family. This has benefits, but also expenses. My family lives near us and seldom asks for much and it is usually not that bad. Her family lives across the county from us and check previous posts for what they expect. Anyway, they reacted like Tasha hit the motherload when we married. Of course, I am bragging, but compared to what the other 2 sisters drag home, I understand. Older sis has been married twice now, and has 3 kids, none with the same father. He first was a lazy worthless bum, who is still a lazy worthless bum but now he draws a ssi check so his kid gets a monthly sum. She accused the second child's father of rape, because she was married to worthless when she got knocked up, but the baby was a little dark-of-complexion to be his. And hubby number 2 was much younger than her, and not old enough to even drink when she hooked up with him. He was pretty much lazy and worthless. His big ambition was to become a drug dealer only he would use up all the merchandise. His kid came out with the attention span of the average tweaker and doesn't seem to be all there, but she is young yet. She divourced him too. Periodicly she makes the rounds and gives them all another try. I think she likes keeping them on a line, in case she has a dry spell on men. Currently she has a semi-live-in boy toy and 2 guys on the side. They just found out about each other and the tire-slashing and window breaking has started.

Sister 2 has a hubby of less than a year. He is the baby daddy of both children. He had a job when they made baby 1, but lost it when the plant closed. He hasn't made any effort to find another one. I actually tried to help him get a job. He is content to do odd jobs and sell some pot on the side. It frustrates me. She seems happy though. It's strange, she was an a student, gymnastics and cheerleading, had scholarship offers out the wazoo, and she gets knocked up.
I guess her life probably is different now than she expected.

I now have stuff in the house I've never had before. Stuff live tampons, pads, makeup, conditioner, dainty underclothes, perfume, ect. I don't ask what some of the stuff is, as I am afraid of too much information.

My Space?

Okay, I don't get it. What the hell are you really supposed to do on My Space? Why is it supposed to be so damn much fun? I was a little slow getting to the internet. I was a little poor back then and working hard, so when I finally bought a pc and hit the information superhighway I was hooked. I've been an internet junky ever since, but I am slow to jump onto every new band wagon. I had heard of My Space a few times, but I wasn't interested in it. I actual first visited My Space because of work. A few of our clients with higher ich factors aren't allowed internet access by law. Someone reported a couple of Yahoo personal ads and a My Space account, so I started trying to see if any of my sex offenders were on either site. I haven't found any of mine yet, but these people tend to be very sneaky, and we did catch a couple on other caseloads.

Anyway, my wife went nuts again. This is how I refer to her new hobbies. Everytime she gets a hobbie, she dives in headfirst and thinks of nothing else until it starts boring her. This time it was chickens. We now raise chickens. This isn't a bad thing as I like eggs. However, it is probably cheaper to buy the eggs, than feed the chickens. Also, baby chickens are very cute, and since I grew up in the county, I like hearing the roosters. Anyway she joined several chicken raising groups, and there are a lot of kids on those groups and every single one of them had an account on My Space. So she had to have a page on My Space. I offered to let her have mine, after all I just wanted the signon to look for probation violations, but when she found out why I had it, she didn't want it. So she built a page, then she built another page, then she fancied up my page. This is funny. As near as I can tell, that's what you do. You try to make your page as outrageous and fancy as you can within the prebuilt limits and try to get people to visit it.

I started with the internet many moons ago. I built my first two websites using note pad and html code. Then I discover Frontpage and used it until Dreamweaver came my way. I've played a little with Javascript and Flash. I am no expert, but I have my feet wet. I like building sites, and I don't get My Space. You are very constricted in what you can do. Maybe that's the challenge, to work within and around the built-in limits.

If you haven't been, basically My Space was designed to let users customize a single webpage. You are encouraged to find and borrow or steal backgrounds, templates, music, videos, from different areas of My Space or related support sites and put them on your page. Animated GIF's are very big, they have a sort of weak blog area on every page. You can make this public or restrict it to your friends list. You can upload pictures and some video. Then you try to get people to put you on their friends list and/or request to be on yours. The main part of your page is your profile.

My Space was designed as a virtual meeting place for Teens, I think. It became popular with slightly older people and some other sites are targeting the preteen/teen set harder now. My Space gained a lot of publicity because of some pedofiles being caught on it. Maybe I'm too old, but I don't get it. For one thing, it doesn't work that well, or it doesn't for us. It often takes 3 or 4 tries to sign in, and when we get in, it is often very slow, or pages won't even load. All kinds of errors pop up often.

The internet has launched many phenomena. Ebay, Yahoo, Google, AOL are all good examples. AOL and Yahoo provide some services, but offer a community as well and have been very successful. Ebay and Google rely more on services although Google is try to branch out and Ebay does have some community type features. I have also seen some attempts fail miserably or do well for a while and fade after the luster of new is gone. Will My Space survive like Ebay or is it a fad? Will one of the imitators out there undercut it, or will something replace it? Second Life seems to be the next big grab for people's time and attention, but it costs money to really get going on Second Life and My Space is free.

It's a Conspiracy!!

Hiho Kermit the Frog here.

Well, somehow the in-laws-formerly-known-as-missing conned my wife into promising to go to an after-church cook-out. Not a good thing. I generally like my mother-in-law, however things have been strained since they returned. I think they realize I think the whole run off and be idiots for 3 months was stupid, childish and irresponsible.

Let me give you a quick cast of characters:

Mom-in-Law: generally a sweet and lovely woman, very religious in a weird end-of-the-world way, weird ideas, if you have a conspiracy theory to sell, she's buying.

Dad-in-Law: very enthusiastic, likes to be in charge, not a lot of follow through, not a long-term planner.

Sister-in-Law #1: Older than my wife, intelligent, slutty, self-centered, amoral, dishonest, manipulative. Wife calls her the Cow. Has conjured 3 demons that pose as children.

Sister-in-Law #2: Younger than my wife, intelligent, lazy, somewhat less slutty, self-centered, working on amoral, cute. Wife calls her Stuckup. Two sons, very young.

Sister-in-Law #3: Youngest child, spoiled, lazy, could be intelligent if she turned on her brain, wants to be slutty, too lazy to be amoral, whiny, self-centered. Wife calls her the Whiner.

Sister-in-Law #4: Not actually related, but adopted, a year older than the wife, sweet lady, hard worker, 4 well-behaved little girls as cute as buttons and 1 boy who isn't a pain to be around. (from a people hater like me, that is high praise.)

Brother-in-Law #1: Wife calls him Lazy Ass, he won't get a job. Married to Stuck Up. Drug dealer I suspect. I know his brothers are local thugs.

Annoying Asshole: Friend of family, I call him Fat Bastard. Annoys hell out of me, likes to stir stuff up and watch people fight. Tends to be sneaky. Probably a border-line pedafile. Has a thing for all the sisters.

I think that covers the whole crowd. I did not include the little ones, but stuck up had her 2 boys, cow had her three monsters who all ran around being disruptive with whiner's help, SIL4 had her 4 girls there, but they behaved themselves and were polite. Cow is sucking up to her parents for some reason and has been all summer. She has problems. Boyfriend number one just found out that she is seeing old boyfriend who just got out of prison and a guy who is friends with her ex-husband #1. Redneck love rectangle, how trailer-park is that? Anyway she is watching a 911 video stream on the computer and gets her mother started on how our government demolished the world trade center from inside and faked the plane crashes and blamed it on terrorist. Now, I am aware that some people believe this. I am also aware that some people will believe anything. My problem with conspiracies are that I don't believe our bloated, corrupt, and greedy government is capable of organizing the conspiracy, much less the coverup. And if they were good enough to do it, then why would we even suspect it? And what would they really gain. I mean if they wanted an excuse to invade Iraq, they could have come up with a thousand less expensive ways to stir up the public. Plus, there wasn't any buildup to it. There should have been a noticable increase in anti-Iraq propaganda in the media and public sement. I don't remember any of that. Of course, I tend to disbelieve a large amount of what is in the media, especially tv news. I consider it more entertaining than informative. I also try to realize that what I get is an interpretation of events rather than an impartial collect of facts. Anyway, my MIL suscribes to EVERY conspiracy theory. She is convinced that George W. is going to gather up the Christians and put them in concentration camps. I never understood this one, but she belongs to some prophecy group that feeds off the fears of people and I think it came from them.

Conspiracies can be a lot of fun. They make good movies anyway, but I have trouble buying into them. My take on human nature is that it is pretty much every man for himself and "I want it now!" I don't see anyone being able to put together a group that would stick together and work toward a long-range goal unrelentingly. And face it, any conspiracy has to be big, high level, well-organized, well-planned, nimble, able to think on its feet and react quickly, decisive, ect. Does that sound like our government? Hell, the state government here can't get me a working cell phone.

Anyway, I don't discuss politics or religion with people very much. I don't like either subject and have unpopular views. This is a very conservative area, although they tend to vote for liberals, which is just screwed up. This is also a very fundamentalist church area. We have a lot of Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, ect. I tend to veiw fundamentalism as another form of extremism and extremist are usually dangerous in any form. I don't belittle anyone's beliefs and I think you are free to believe anything you want as long as your beliefs don't interfere with my freedoms or present a danger to me or mine. I expect the same courtesy from you.

I try to be polite, listen to peoples views, and then decide whether or not to dismiss them. Sometimes I learn something, mostly I don't. I don't get into shouting matches with people over whether our goverment blew up the Trade Center. I don't think they did personally, but I can't know for sure. I haven't seen any evidence they did. I have heard of some evidience that perhaps our intelligence services had warning that shit was coming down, but did nothing. The only reason that people will give me for doing it, is that it gave the US an excuse to invade Iraq so we could take over the oil production. Well, that's gone well. Everytime I pull up to the pump to put in some of the cheap, cheap gas, I think, "Damn, I'm glad we invaded Iraq. " Shit, Iraq is a poor choice if you want oil.

I am probably more conservative than liberal, but my politics tends to vary according to the individual issue. I don't completely agree with any party. I believe that a lot of things are way more complicated than the average person can understand and that our information on things is incomplete. I also believe that there is a right and a wrong, and if you have to convince yourself something is right, then it is probably wrong.

Not Good

This is just a short post. Things are not well. First, neither my wife nor I can shake these stupid colds. We get better, but we can't get over them. Second, my dog is dying. Apparently the sudden onset limp is the result of a big tumor on her upper leg. She has cancer and the vet doubts she will make it to Christmas. Saint Bernard's don't have a long life span. Few of the giant breeds do. If they make it 10 years, it is considerred good. She is 5 1/2 years old. Doesn't seem fair. To make it worse, she is the only one of the three dogs that is mine and that really loves me. I feel like shit. Some time in the near future, I am going to have to decide if she is in pain and if the quality of her life is such that it is time to put her down. I've had to make the decision a couple of times before, but it was always in a case where the animal was old (my rottie Angel) and very sick, or where I found an injured animal that was obviously in distress and not going to get better and I didn't know them. This seems different, but I can't push it off on anyone else, she is my dog. It sucks.

For the Hellavit.

Okay, I started out griping about about my inlaws, then about work. Now for a few stupid updates.

Inlaws are back from Kentucky. There horses did not win anything. They sold most of them and made about what they would have made in 6 weeks at their real jobs. My mother-in-law, who is generally the nicest mother-in-law a man could ask for, broke her arm. My wife and I were both pretty sick over the holiday weekend. My wife had some major stomach problems last week and I took her to the emergency room last Wednesday Morning. Naturally they found nothing unusual in the tests they run or the x-rays, so they pumped her full of morphine and sent her home. Anyway, I was getting a headcold. Of course, I gave it to her on top of the stomach issue. So we had a miserable weekend. To top it off, one of the dogs seems to have hurt her shoulder, either dislocated it or broke it. Saint Bernard, big dog, it will be a big vet bill. One of the cats is sick too. She just seems really off, not herself.

TV is starting back. I didn't use to watch anything on TV but Buffy the Vampire Slayer, South Park, and the History Channel. Then I got married and introduced to many shows. My wife won't miss Gilmore Girls for instance. (P.S. Don't tell my wife, but I may have a case of the hots for Laura Graham.) Anyway, we tape a lot of stuff and watch on weekends too. Haven't invested in Tivo yet. Anyway, House is starting back tonight. Got to love the cranky Doc. Hugh Laurie is the man!!! Loved him in Wooster and Jeeves and Blackadder. Never understood the Stewart Little thing though. Veronica Mars, watch it, period, no excuses. It is the hands down best show on the tube. Stuff Lost. It was crap last season and really started annoying me. Veronica Mars is well written, well acted, and well directed. Kristen Bell is cute as a button, and the rest of the cast is amazing. I have been hooked since the first episode. My wife loves Medium, Grey's Anatomy, Smallville, Supernatural, CSI, Numbers, ect. I like NCIS, I know it is kind of stupid, but I love me some Ziva and some Abby. Plus you have to admire any show where one of the main characters makes fun of the fact that he was once engaged to Jessica Alba. Bones is a good show, glad Angel is back working. Many of the Buffy people are back on TV. Spike is guesting on Smallville, Xander has his on sitcom starting up, Willow is on a sitcom that doesn't completely suck, Cordie is guesting on Veronica. I heard that James Marsters was offered the starring role in the SCI-FI channels series based on the Dresden Files books, but turned it down because he doesn't want to have to film in Toronto if it gets picked up.

Anyway, I'll probably end up watching way too much TV, especially when the weather gets cold. It's cooling off a lot lately, quicker than I expected. I like fall weather. I have a high internal thermostat, so I sweat a lot in hot weather and am really uncomfortable. Cold weather is easier on me, but I only like it in short segments. I find fall weather the most comfortable personally and Tennessee is beautiful in Autumn. Spring is my second favorite season.