If Ya Smeeeeeeeeeeeeeell...

So they say that the sense of smell is the strongest of the five senses that ties you with memory. This is very true, as one whiff of a certain whatever will instantly take me back to whatever time it reminds me of. And not in just some vague way, but I mean really, really strong memories. Well, I have a confession today, readers.

I haven't had a cigarette in nine days.

Yeah, I'm quitting smoking, but doing it the exact opposite as I did last year when I tried. I was "live tweeting" the experience last year, and this year, I haven't even told anyone except my mom and wife and regular, everyday coworker lady. It's happening, for real this time. I am determined to do it.

Well, as I walked around outsider, I was taking in some deep breaths, and I was getting this vague feeling of something from ages ago. I could not pinpoint it, but I knew it just smelled like 1998, for some reason. Well folks, I realized that I was smelling what the outside smells like, which I hadn't smelled since then. See, in case you didn't know, when you smoke, it makes you sense of taste and smell go way down, so you don't get the full on effects of those senses. Well, after kicking the habit, I can smell stuff way better then ever. So when I walk outside in the fresh air, I smell the air. I knew my sense of smell would return, but I didn't know how quickly that would happen. Turns out, it's about nine days.

That is all the time I have today, people. If you need me, I'll be outside smelling the fresh air.

Should We Talk About The Weather?

As you could infer from my previous post, I was quickly running out of topics to write about. I'm still in that, and since I don't know what else to say, I'll just do what usually happens in conversations when people don't know what to talk about, but want to talk anyway. Talk about the weather.

It usually happens when I phone home, to check in on the happenings of the good ol' Upper Peninsula. More often than not, it's when I talk to my dad, or when my friendly local wife talks to her dad. Maybe it's a dad thing? I don't know, and I don't think so, because this happens all the time. You call, or maybe not even call, maybe you are just talking to whoever, and the weather comes up. Crazy, eh? This weather is something else, eh? (Note, not all people say "eh" after everything they say, but that's what I typed, so I guess that still comes natural.) A snowstorm, or Lightning storm, or perhaps some thick-ass fog. A flood, perhaps? The weather is just such a nice and easy topic to deal with, because unless you're a hermit, you know what's been up with the weather, generally. Not to say you know we're having such nice, pleasant weather lately because of a huge ridge of high pressure currently sitting comfortably over the middle Tennessee area, which is true, by the way, but you generally know that the heat has eased off and the sun has been shining and the breezes blowing. You know it's been nice lately. Everyone knows it's been nice lately. So you can have the conversation with anyone!

Comparing weather from one region to another is also popular, as I touched on above, because, it's been nice here, but it's been shitty there, or vice versa. It would be odd to call up dad and be like "did you hear what that retard Ron Ramsey said here in Tennessee in the Governor's race?" No, you say "It's been hotter than Hades here." Easy conversation, that is universally recognized and understood. I always take note when conversations turn to the weather. What a useless conversation unless it's with family. You're just killing time, at this point. No, you're wasting my time. I don't care if it's been a cold, shitty summer. I want to know how you are doing personally, not how you're region's weather system has been unfavorably affecting your volleyball league. Not that that happened, but if I ever call a friend, not just an acquaintance but a real friend from back home, and we start talking about the weather, then our friendship has surely fallen apart, or at least we just don't know where to begin, because it's possibly been too long since we last spoke. So if I call you and you start talking about the weather, just stop. I don't want to hear it. In fact, I probably already know how your weather has been, because I pay attention to that shit. Why? Because I care enough to look that shit up, occasionally. As noted by my knowledge of the current high pressure system we're enjoying right now, I clearly missed my calling. I'm a fucking amateur weatherman myself. I know what's up with everybody's weather. I just don't feel the need to have conversations about it with my best friends.

Again, not that this happened, but just giving a heads up.

Today, I didn't even have to use my A.K.

I just saw a guy take a leak behind a dumpster. This is a first for me. I watched him as he drove slowly around the building, and suddenly, I lost sight of his car. I looked a little closer and saw him between two dumpsters, draining the vein. I would have been better off not seeing that.

Anyhow, today is Thursday and all is well in my life. No hiccups today, and thats awesome. I worked out, drank my correct daily amount of water for the day. I ate fruit and vegetable. My lunch and dinner were both a form of Indian food, which I would have to say is a first for me. I would say that I never liked Indian food, but I guess I never really ate it before. I once looked at a menu for an Indian restaurant and had not a clue where to even start on what food was what. By the way, I'm talking about Indian with the dot, not with the feather. I started buying these masala burgers from Trader Joe's and they are amazing. Then, I bought some curried rice dish stuff that was awesome. Then today, I ate something I couldn't really pronounce, and it was awesome. I tried it because it said masala on it. So yeah, I think I like Indian food. Culture!

I did a good job today. I am a happy guy today. Hope your day is going as fine as mine is.

I gotta say it was a good day.

Just a Little Hiccup

I think of all the strange bodily functions we humans have to deal with throughout life, the hiccup has to be the strangest of them all.

Let's think about that, and see if I'm correct. There's the burp, fart, cough, sneeze and the hiccup. Well, that's at least the five things I wanted to do at the same time when I was a kid. I figured if I burped farted coughed hiccuped and sneezed at the same time, I would probably die laughing or my head would explode. Either way, I wanted to find out. Well, it never happened, but I still make a note of the times I do any combination of these things.

Like "oh I just burped and ripped one at the same time. Sweet."

Well, I bring this up because I have been getting the hiccups a lot lately. Now if anyone remembers the last time I was getting the hiccups all the time, something was going on, and I was very vocal about my experiences. This time around, I'm getting hiccups, and for the same reason, but deliberately keeping quiet about it. I just don't feel the need to announce it this time.

Anyway, the hiccup. From what I understand, it's when you're diaphram doesn't sync up with your breathing or something like that, and it makes you lurch and jump and look like a moron. So here I am, walking around work, hiccuping, apologizing. That's pretty much my life these days.

The sneeze is pretty neat, too. It's like you're nose says, "get the fuck outta here, irritants." And you expel whatever is bothering your nose. It's like your nose has a built in bouncer for things that are causing the other customers to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Your nose is like "86" and boom, out goes the hooligans. And you can't close your eyes when you sneeze, or else your eyes will pop out of your head like that guy in Mexico we all heard about as a kid.

Burping and farting? They're just expelling gas, but you can make those acts halarious with the right angles. The Cough? Not sure that really counts. That's sorta like a sneeze, how it's you trying to get rid of shit, but it's just not as spectacular as a sneeze. You can sorta feel a cough coming, and you can take medicine to suppress a cough. They make cough medicine, they don't make sneeze medicine. I mean specifically.

They also don't make hiccup medicine. At all. They make Gas-X for burps and farts. They make Buckley's for coughs. They make cold and allergy medicine for sneezes. But what is the cure for hiccups? I'll tell you, folks.

It's peanut butter. Works every fucking time.

I'm not a scientist, but I can tell you that the results in my life have been 100% success rate with peanut butter curing hiccups. Every fucking time, as I said above. Next time you get the hiccups, get a spoonful of peanut butter and eat it. I guarantee it'll work.

Anxious Monday

I'm having anxiety today, people. Couple reasons for this. Number one, I'm getting up to 5 teeth pulled today. I say "up to" because some teeth are on one side of my mouth while others are on the other, and I was told before that their policy was to only numb one side of the mouth at a time. Well, then that opens the door for the possibility of knocking me out and doing it all at the same time. This would be ideal, except that interferes with my other thing I'm having anxiety about, though not nearly as much. I have to lay down some drums today for our demo. I'm having anxiety about it because these songs are still pretty new and I don't know how much I love what I play. I'll probably change it and hate these recordings later, but what can I do? I want these recorded so you guys can hear it. I just hope it sounds alright.

But the big issue, the teeth pulling. Not really looking forward to what comes afterwards, probably more than the actual dental appointment. Taking precautions to prevent dry socket and other shit is a real inconvenience. So I plan on eating a lot of food before I go, because I know that eating for the rest of the day will be very difficult. I just ate some eggs and toast and next I'm going to eat some fried rice and egg rolls, just because I don't know when the next time I'll be able to eat solid food will be.

So that's what's going on in my life right now. I know blog posts about what I'm doing are not necessarily the most fun to read, but sometimes you just need to say what is bothering you in a typed or written form. It's just very therapeutic.

Man, Jobs Are Hard

So I was making some peanut butter toast this morning, keeping up the #pbtoast2010 trend amongst my friends. As I did so, I pulled out the trusty iPhone to take a pic and boast about eating peanut butter toast for breakfast. I decided to turn on the geotagging feature which shows everyone where you are tweeting from on earth. As I did this, I somehow accidentally clicked on the "see nearby tweets" thinger. What it showed was that there were a shit ton of tweets sent from right where I was standing. This could only mean one thing. Someone was tweeting from here. I often search the "nearby tweets" thing just to see if anyone here has been tweeting form here and no one tweets from here, or if they do, they don't geotag them, so I don't know if they do or not. Anyhow, when I clicked on the user, username Mizz_GA_Peachez, that was tweeting from here, I soon discovered Mizz_GA_Peachez was none other than the officer I had just relieved. I was immediately intrigued as to what Mizz_GA_Peachez tweets, and since her twitter is not set to private, I was able to read away at all her tweets. Well people, she obviously doesn't read this blog or else she would know that if you put something on the internet, someone will read it, and that someone this time was me. Well, it started inocent enough, talking about God and whatnot. I knew she likes to go to church. I get a bit further down and she's talking about "fuq it" and she's gonna work out in the gym here on the clock. Okay, fine, she works the graveyard shift, what else is there to do? There's no one here. I go a bit further back and read about how this "henn is making me warm." A bit further back she says "buildings empty time to finish off this henn from last night." I put quotes, even though I'm not really quoting her word for word, but that's basically it. A quick look at the callender confirms that she was in fact at work that night. And for those of you not on the up and up with the cool kids and their street lingo, "henn" refers to Hennessey, which is Cognac, which is Liquor, which YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK WHILE AT WORK.

Now, I will fully admit that I am the king of slacking off at work, hiding in closets and unused offices and generator rooms and conference rooms, playing with my phone while working, so I have not much room to talk, but there are certain things you just don't do at work. You won't get fired for slacking off, unless you do it ALL THE TIME I guess. It explicitly says in our post orders that leaving the post, I mean physically leaving the premises, like, in your car to go get some food or go back to your apartment, is grounds for immediate termination of employment. Now nice regular coworker lady, who works with this girl on Mondays and me the rest of the week told me that Mizz_GA_Peachez she goes to get food every Monday, but she's not going to say anything because she doesn't want to be a snitch, or whatever. Well, Mizz_GA_Peachez not only leaves the premises on Mondays when theres someone here to cover the post, she leaves just about every day she works, weather she's alone or not. Goes to Arby's or McDonald's or Taco Bell, which are all just around the corner, but still, man. You're not supposed to leave. You will get fired for that. She also mentioned heading back to her apartment to check on her dog once, and I know she doesn't live all that close to work. I mean, she also said she ate someone else's pizza on Friday night and that she ate it because "a nigga got hungray." Worst part of it all, she put it all on the INTERNET. Use common fucking sense, and keep all your irresponsible shit to yourself. Tweeting that you're breaking every rule and fucking DRINKING on the job? That takes a certain kind of special moron to pull that off.

I guess I just worked here long enough to know what you can and can't get away with. One day, she's going to get caught, and I'll laugh so fucking hard. I mean, this job is what it is, but by doing these things she'd done in one short month, you're just an obnoxious human being and you have very low level of responsibility. I didn't go to college and she did, and yet I know how to behave at a job and she has not a clue, apparently.

I understand doing things to help break up the day here because I know this job can get boring, and be boring for hours on end. But I don't tweet the specifics you fucking tard.

...But apparently I blog them...

*Written from the Security desk at work.

Football is Back!

So this morning, I'm streaming the season opener of the Barclays English Premier League which features a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. I'm able to stream it via ESPN3.com. It's a very nice site to watch sports from, depending on what they carry, which is usually something like Soccer or Tennis or Little League World Series or Darts or Aussie Football...So basically your non-traditional sports. It's sweet cuz it's free. Anyhow, I'm trying to enjoy soccer, and it's hard, folks. Number one, I have no vested interest in any particular club, so I just have to watch everyone and kinda pay attention. The only team I claim to root for at any level of soccer is Arsenal, only because I used to work with an Englishman and that was his club. So I root for them, even though I don't even really know why, or anything about them. I just know that soccer creates a buzz 'round the world, and I want to be a part of it.

I got caught up in the whole thing this past summer during the World Cup, as I do every 4 years. I usually say I want to keep up with the sport, but never do. I want this year to be different, and I have ESPN3 to help with that. I'll be able to easily watch games when they're played, so that should help. The only problem is I just don't know what the fuck is going on most of the time. As I tweeted before while watching Rugby or Aussie rules football, I don't remember which one it was, when watching one of these "non-traditional" "non-American" sports, I now know what women feel like when watching regular American sports. I see people running, and trying to score, but I don't understand strategy. So I like the enthusiasm, but I couldn't tell you why they are doing what they are doing. It helps me understand what they are thinking while watching. I want to understand soccer, I like it. I like how excited the fans are at the games. I just don't understand it at this point.

So I'm trying to be a soccer fan, and I hope I do really stick with the sport, because of it's global significance. I just think it's alright by me. Go Arsenal, for what it's worth, I guess.