Blog Number 162

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I am trying very hard to act more professional at work.  The key word here is "act".  I fear it is just that, an act.  Just when I think I am getting it together (e.g. wearing a tie to work) something happens to remind me that I still have a ways to go.

I park in a huge parking garage.  There are probably 4 levels and I usually park just as you get to level 2.  There is a spot that is usually open at around 8 AM when I arrive and it is pretty close to the stairs to the third level (which corresponds to the first floor of the actual building I work in).  Given that I usually listen to music on the way to work and given that there are great acoustics in the garage, I tend to sing a song (that I was listening to on the way to work) on the way to the building.  It does not matter the genre really (pop, rock, metal, 80's, etc.) I am "singing" it.  Yesterday I was listening to an artist knows as Klank.  Klank is industrial dance metal (or something like that).  At any rate, it is not suitable to be "singing" Klank on your way into work.

As I left the acoustics of the garage and walked the last 100 yards or so to the building I heard a noise behind me.  I must first tell you that for the last 100 yards, the path is made up of red brick.  Since there are many people that have laptop carrying cases with wheels, it is not uncommon to see people coming into work pulling these things behind them.  As with anything on wheels that is being pulled over brick, it makes a particular noise.  I have heard this noise 100 times at least and it is particularly annoying to tell you the truth.  I mean, Come On!  Pick up the carrying case when you are making a racket like this!  You can carry your 7 lbs laptop for 100 yards, I know you can.

Anyway, I hear this "lazy person dragging laptop over brick" noise behind me but when I first heard it I did not think it was a laptop case making the sound.  Nope, me in all my professionalism, as I am walking into my professional job, going to my professional cube am thinking only one thing, "Who is riding a skateboard to work?"  I spin around quickly to see who would be doing this and there is this lady simply pulling her laptop case behind her.  She was looking down at the moment so she did not see the quickness of my turning nor the look on my face as I realized how silly it was of me to think such a thing.

So I turned back around and headed into work, attempting to "act" professional the rest of the day.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 161

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

As some of you know, in a previous life (it seems anyway) I was a professional bowler.  For 3 years I bowled in PBA events and had a great time doing it.  Truth be told, my PBA career was probably not profitable but I bet I came close to breaking even.  Over the years I also bowled in many leagues in Kokomo, IN.  And, in about 2 years, I will be eligible for nomination into the Kokomo Bowling Hall of Fame.  If I am remembering right, I will become eligible once I have reached the 20 year anniversary of my first year of adult league bowling.  For me, that was the 1988-89 season.

Now, I am assuming a lot in saying I am eligible.  First, someone has to nominate me.  Given that I quit league bowling a few years ago and given that I moved away from Kokomo, I doubt anyone will remember me let alone remember that I was a good bowler.  This little fact has not stopped me from writing my acceptance speech for when I do get accepted in the the Kokomo Bowling Hall of Fame.  I actually attended one Hall of Fame banquet and so I know that not much is expected in the way of speeches so mine should be one to remember (I hope).  Over the years (like 10 or so years ago when I was young and cocky) I imagined that I would not even need to have a speech.  My bowling career would simply speak for itself.  Well, that did not happen so here is what I decided to focus on: My Greatest Bowling Shot.

Now this shot did not occur during a PBA event, at a tournament, in a bowling league or even at a bowling center.  No, my greatest bowling shot occurred at my best friend's house in his living room.  While in out teens and in the youth leagues, he and I would spend the night at each other's house every Friday night (alternating weekly).  The youth leagues were on Saturday mornings and since we were both really into bowling we spent a lot of time doing 2 things: playing Atari Bowling and rolling a slightly underinflated soccer ball at half filled shampoo bottles.  We once had a contest where we bowled 100 games each on Atari Bowling in one night.  Try as we might, we never shot a 300 on the blasted game!  I am not sure how we came up with the soccer ball / shampoo bottle game but usually we took 4 bottles, set them up in a diamond pattern and took turns throwing the soccer ball at them.  After a while this got a little boring so we would set up trick shots for each other.  The only rule was that the shampoo bottles had to be visible and that the person setting up the pins could sit on his knees behind the "pins" and stop the ball from rebounding back toward the pins and knocking more of them down.

So, let me set up the shot for you.  Basically my friend took 3 of the shampoo bottles and stuck them up against the couch on the left side of the room and then 8 or so foot to the right he set up the other bottle.  This shot was impossible really.  For those of you having difficulty, I have created this high tech drawing to recreate the scene...

So basically I was located at Xi and my friend was at Xii (ready to stop the ball from rebounding back into the "lane".  The shampoo bottles are the red circles and the larger black circle is actually an 8 pound (normal) bowling ball that happened to be behind the (broken) TV set.  This is not exactly drawn to scale and during my Hall of Fame acceptance speech there will be a better slide show (and maybe some animation).  Ok, so my plan of attack at converting this very difficult split was to throw the ball very hard at the 3 shampoo bottles on my left and hope I got lucky and something knocked the other one over.

It all happened so fast and the years have embellished the story in my own mind but here is basically what happened (and my friend can attest to this).  I did indeed aim, hit and knock down the 3 pins on the left.  After that the ball hit my friend's knee and then angled over toward the last pin.  It just missed it actually but the ball landed between the wall and the real bowling ball (behind the [broken] TV set).  The ball was travelling at a high rate of speed and actually was ricocheting back and forth between the wall and the bowling ball.  It had to have landed between the wall and the other ball just perfectly.  Every time it would bounce and hit the (real) bowling ball, it would inch it ever closer to the last pin.  This all happened so fast but it seemed that the soccer ball bounced back and forth at an extremely high rate of speed for a few seconds.  Contrast that with the extremely minute movement of the (real) bowling ball and the even slower (but increasing) angle that the last pin was leaning over and you basically have the scene.  We just stood there watching this pin getting closer and closer to its fulcrum point.  At any time my friend (according to rules) could jump in and stop the ball from moving but he was mesmerized at what was happening before him.  After what seemed like a few minutes, the pin finally fell over (and so did we).  We were rolling on the floor laughing for what seemed like 15 minutes.  It was truly incredible!

So anyway, that is the subject of my Hall of Fame speech.  I will probably never get to make that speech but I know I will never have a greater experience in bowling that that one shot in my friend's living room.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 160

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Last night during the drive home an idea hit me.  First, some background: my son is constantly playing with legos but he would rather build something and then play with it while I would rather build, tear down and then rebuild.  Anyway, I had this idea for a Lego building and really could not wait for supper to get over so I could sit down and show this to the son.  I tried to explain the concept to him but i wasn't very clear I guess.  Anyway, here it is...

_____

This took a few hours and I just finished the roof this afternoon after we got home from the soccer game.  The building was not the time consuming part, it was searching and sorting the right shape and size pieces.  There are many more yellow and white pieces in the shapes that I needed so there are a few solid rows at the bottom of the structure.  The roof had a few false starts (I should have built the roof first really and build downward).  Anyway, this week at work has been crazy and other than taking off at the normal time on Thursday (my 10 year wedding anniversary), I pretty much worked late each night.  So the kids were more than happy to help me dig out all the right pieces.

As I mentioned before, Thursday was my 10 year wedding anniversary.  I have never done anything for 10 years straight before so this was a big deal (I guess).  The wife and I had actually gone out to dinner the week before to celebrate so we did not do anything special.  Actually, we went to Chick-fil-A and had a very unhealthy dinner.

So, you have my excuse for not blogging this week.  I have been working a lot of extra hours with no end in sight.  It is what it is.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 159

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today is a great day to be a sports fan.  Day 1 of March Madness is great.  One of these years I am just going to take the Thursday / Friday off for the first weekend of March Madness.  Not this year though (sigh).

I brought leftovers to work for lunch today.  They have microwave ovens in the cafeteria at my work so I made use of them today.  I had a $1 bill and a $5 bill in my wallet and the soft drinks in the cafeteria are $1.08 with tax.  I did not feel like breaking my $5 bill so after I was done heating my food I headed back upstairs to my cube.  There is a Pepsi machine in the same room where the coffee is located and it is only $1 so I decided to buy my drink there.  I put in my $1 and pressed the button for my selection.  It was sold out so I tried another choice and it was sold out too.  The only other choices were water or diet so I hit the return button and it spit out 4 coins.  No problem I think, I will just find another machine.  But, the 4 coins were actually 3 quarters and a nickel.  So I was down a net 20 cents.

I was not particularly upset.  Over the years I think I am ahead money on these kind of machines.  Though I am not keeping track (OK, I am), I think I am "up" overall.  I have gotten more than the correct amount of change more often than I was "short changed" over the years.  I do remember once in 7th grade paying for lunch and the change machine tied to the cash register spit out more than a dollar's worth of change.  As I recall, I did not discover this until I was through the line and not able to get back to the cashier due to the lunch time crowd.  I have no idea why I remember this, it is an insignificant moment in my life, but I still remember it.  Video games, coke machines, snack machines, you name it, I think I get the better end of the deal when it comes to incorrect change more often than not.  I probably do better with coke machines than most people do on slot machines.

So anyway, I just went back to the cubicle  and got my coffee mug and poured some free coffee.  Well I am going to go back to watching college basketball.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 158

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Saturday, finally!  This week was rough.  I won't give you the boring details of my day to day job but suffice to say, this week was very intense .  But all of that is behind me now (though Monday is lurking around the corner) and I can enjoy my Saturday.  Based on the average distance between my children and me today (note: the average distance between me and a child at any given time was about 3 inches), it is also safe to say that they missed their dad this week.  So this week was rough on all of us in different ways.

The wife took the daughter shopping this morning so the son and I got to play some basketball, chess and then (of course) Sonic the Hedgehog on our Nintendo GameCube.  The second controller that I bought is a piece of junk.  It either constantly vibrates or it constantly moves you in some random direction no matter what button you push.  So, we are still waiting to play a game together.  We are longing for the day that we can click on "Players: 2" as our choice.  I am sure that will make the blog list.

After we had some lunch (leftovers), we headed out to a local park and took in some sun.  It was about 80° today and just a gorgeous day overall.  We spent about 30 minutes there and toward the end the son and I had a "who can jump the farthest off the swing" contest.  I am proud to say I won, but not by much.  It helps to have legs that are about 1 foot longer which (by the way) was about the distance I won the contest by (give or take).

Then we went to Target as the son needed some new summer clothes (especially pajamas).  Since I was not really needed to help pick out his clothes, the daughter and I were told to go find some popcorn.  Our Target is not a Super Target but it is a rather large sized one.  We found the popcorn aisle but try as I might I could not find any plain popping corn.  There were 21 different varieties of microwave pop corn (trust me, I counted them), but no good ol' kernel popping corn.  I really could not believe that a store with this much variety of microwave popcorn would not have at least one bag of standard popcorn.  Once I was convinced I was not overlooking it, I headed back to the wife empty handed.  She (of course) did not believe me.

Somewhere along the line in our family we started a saying, "If I am lying, you can slap me in the face."  I don't know where this started, but it sounds like something I would say and of course the kids have picked up on it (my son in particular).  So I say to my wife, 'If you can find any plain popcorn, you can slap me in the face."  So I held my breath as she went back to the popcorn row to look.  I was very happy when I saw her walking toward me about 3 minutes later with empty hands.

Right now we are cleaning up the house a little in anticipation of my mother arriving tomorrow night.  Well, I say "we" but "I" am really blogging and the wife is vacuuming.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 157

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I was discussing the subject of pants with my pastor about 10 years ago (I can read your thoughts now, "Oh great, how can a blog that starts with that sentence possibly be interesting?").  One thing that I have found I can do is to discuss almost any subject with almost anyone.  Anyway, we were talking about pants.  Specifically, we were talking about how to make them last longer.  Both of us were on a tight clothing budget at the time and so we were sharing our good ideas.  We both agreed that it is not the wearing of the pants that makes them not last, it is the washing of them.  And we both typically wore a pair of Docker's for 2 days before throwing them in the laundry hamper (unless of course you spilled something on them - spilling something on your pants on day 1 of the wearing cycle was very frustrating to both of us).

Fast forward to August and us moving to our apartment here in Texas.  I had a very sophisticated method of keeping track of how many days I had worn a pair of pants but since I now had to share a closet with my wife here, I had to think of a new method.  Ultimately I ended up keeping the "fresh" pants on one side of my closet and the "used" pants on the other.  This works fine...until the wife gets involved.  For some reason she does not adhere to my methods.  Freshly washed pants end up on the wrong side of things all the time.  Also, if I take a fresh pair of pants from the hanger, I move the hanger to the used side so that when I get home at night I can remember if the pants I am wearing need to go to the used side or to the hamper.  If I am wearing pants in day 2 of the cycle, I move the hanger back to the fresh side.  My wife likes to steal my hangers for laundry so when I come home and all my hangers are gone, I have to try to remember what side of the closet I pulled the pants from that morning.  I have asked her many times not to mess with my hanger method.  I usually get the rolling of the eyes and a pat on the shoulder, "I am sure you will be fine, honey."

I'm telling you, my life is rough and it appears even the wife is out to throw me off.  It is too much for a man to bear sometimes.  I hope I made this entry starting with a sentence about pants exciting for you.  Or perhaps you only enjoy my blog in order to read about my frustrations.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 156

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today I put on a tie for the first time in about 15 years.  There was no special occasion but there was a reason.  First a little background on me and ties and why it has been 15 years since I have worn one.  Technically, I wore a tie for my wedding (which will be 10 years ago in a few weeks - but that was a clip on bow tie so I am not counting that as actually wearing a tie).  It is not that I don't like ties nor that I think they are not worth wearing.  Ties are very professional looking and they are not uncommon at my workplace.  I was really paying attention today in the cafeteria on how many ties I saw.  I would estimate about 5% of the men were wearing ties and another 5% or so were wearing suit jackets.  By and large though most folks were just wearing long sleeve dress shirts.  If I had to pinpoint a real reason why I don't wear ties it is probably because I don't own any shirts that "go" with ties.  Until recently that is.

Last week I took my 5 year old daughter with me to shop at Kohl's for some long sleeve dress shirts.  I really feel out of place at the office wearing short sleeves as they are in the minority (long sleeves being the majority).  I have a real problem with the way dress shirts are sized.  I mean, come on!  Who uses the neck size as a measure for what the rest of your body is shaped like?  Anyway, I need about a 16 1/2 neck and a 36/37 sleeve.  Finding a 16 1/2 and 36/37 sized shirt is about as easy as finding a size 11 1/2 shoe (that is a story for another blog).  At any rate, I did find some 17 and 17 1/2 shirts with the needed 36/37 sleeve and since they were on sale (80% off) I decided I could live with a slightly large neck hole.

This is where I was wrong.  Once I got the shirts home (I bought 2) and took out the cardboard, plastic and pins and actually tried the shirts on, I discovered that the collars just did not look right with the top button left unbuttoned nor did it look right buttoned.  It just needed something (like a tie perhaps).  So yesterday the whole family headed back to Kohl's and as luck would have it we found a rack of ties that were also marked down 80%.  I let the 5 year old pick out my ties and bought a few more shirts.  Overall I bought 4 shirts, 4 ties and a belt for about $70 total.

And today I wore a tie for the first time in 15 years.  One other thing I should note, as you may have guessed, I have not TIED a tie in 15 years either and my wife has NEVER tied a tie.  So I had to allow a few more minutes of preparation time this morning for a few false starts.  Anyway, below is a picture of me in a tie.  If you don't like the tie, blame my 5 year old daughter (plus it only cost me $4).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 155

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

My 5 year old was looking forward to today all week long.  She was at the post office earlier this week and saw some stamps with the Disney Princesses on them and she was told (by me) that we would go buy them on Saturday.  As she rolled out of bed this morning (still half asleep) she notified me that this was indeed Saturday and reminded me that we were buying Princess stamps today.  We arrived at the USPS around 11 AM and she ran over to where she found the stamps earlier in the week.  Only, they were not there!  She had this look on her face (only parent's of 5 year old girls would know what this look looks like).  I assured her that we could get in line and ask the clerk.  This pacified her but she was skeptical that this would work.  As her father, I assured her that they had the stamps behind the counter.

My father retired from the post office and so I enjoy going there.  I don't really even mind waiting in line.  Once we got to the front of the line and explained to the lady what we wanted, she went on a hunt.  She checked drawers and files and no luck.  Then she headed to the back and I peered around the corner and saw her digging deep into a big safe.  Finally she came out of the safe with the sheet of stamps.  This made the 5 year old very happy (and me too as I was a little afraid that my promise [that the stamps were actually there] would be broken).  The stamps are not really princess stamps but Disney Romance stamps (but there are two princesses on them).

Anyway, everything turned out OK.  Then we headed to the library.  The son is pumped about having his own library card and could not wait to check some more items out.  I still do not have a library card since I have not gotten my Texas driver's license yet and that is a requirement (for an adult) to have a library card.  The wife has one so I just have her check things out for me.  After heading home and having some lunch (and I did my Federal Tax Return online as well) we headed to the cheap movie theatre and watched "Happily N'Ever After."  This was worth every bit of the $4 total that we spent on tickets (but not much more).  This was a Shrek wannabe for sure but we did kill a few hours on a Saturday and the kids had a good time.

So my Saturday is over.  Nothing very exciting really (although I am getting a nice return on the taxes this year - shhhh, don't tell the wife).  Well, it is time to tuck the kids in, until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon