proceed with caution: flying liquids ahead It has come to my attention that this site may be hazardous to your health. There have been several reports of instances where various liquids have been expelled through the nose by persons reading the commentary on this site. I sincerely apologize for this unforeseen side effect. It was completely unintended by the author. Please take the most prudent course of action and swallow all liquids before proceeding with the rest of the blog. Again, please accept my sincerest apologies for any inconvenience or discomfort.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/29/2004 1 comments

  obligatory blog explosion post If there’s one thing I’ve noticed from spending mind-numbing hours on Blog Explosion, it’s that people love to talk about Blog Explosion. So, not to be outdone by my “blog buddies” (if no one else has used this term yet, I hereby claim it as my own), this post is dedicated to that wonder of all wonders, Blog Explosion.

From informal research I’ve conducted, it seems that somewhere between 90% and “holy cow that’s a lot!” of blogs talk about Blog Explosion. And they don’t just post about it, it’s always the most recent post. I guess that’s the only way to get the attention of Blog Explosion readers, who only look at the most recent post anyway. And only 30 seconds worth of the first post, at that.

But here’s what I don’t get. Why do people waste time singing the praises of Blog Explosion when 99.9% of their readers come from Blog Explosion? We can’t even sign up, we’re already signed up!

So, contrarian that I am, I give you the following reasons not to join Blog Explosion. Hey, we're all Blog Explosion members anyway, might as well have a laugh or two at BE’s expense.

1) That empty feeling of going through your stats and seeing “http://www.blogexplosion.com/members/surf.php” as the referrer for every single visitor.

2) The people who go through and give “1” ratings to everyone. I mean, really, there’s only one blog that deserves a “1” rating, and it’s that guy who peddles all the get rich quick schemes.

3) When you click the number to get to the next page and it still says “wrong click.” I mean, really, did I miss by 1 pixel or what? Another 30 seconds of my life wasted, and I don’t even have the 0.125 unused credits + 0.375 credits to show for it.

4) The incredible amount of knitting blogs. One time I got like eighteen knitting blogs in a row. Maybe it should be called “Knitting Explosion.” Knitting explosions, hmm, that might not be such a bad thing. Uh oh, I might be offending the people who give out the “1” ratings - they might be the knitters...Uh, just kidding, I love knitting! I’m knitting right now. Yay!

5) The number of blogs whose most recent post is about Blog Explosion.

I hope you enjoy my list. I better get cracking on my next post. Wouldn’t want to be “one of those people.”
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/28/2004 0 comments

  please don't adjust your sets Yes, I have a new template. Yes, I think it's cool. Yes, I spent all day working on it, even though I started with a pre-made template. Yes, it is true that I suck at HTML, and that any one of you could have done better in 15 minutes. I am well aware of this. Well, it was hard for me so BACK OFF!! I welcome both compliments and complaints, but please be nice. I am very sensitive when I am sleep deprived...
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/27/2004 0 comments

  lone star showdown

Well, today is the big day. The day after Thanksgiving. I’m not talking about the first shopping day of the Christmas season. No, for Texans the day after Thanksgiving means so much more. It’s what’s now known as the State Farm Lone Star Showdown. For those of you who don’t speak corporate sponsor-ese, that’s the Texas vs. Texas A&M game. Football, that is. It’s a sport.

Most people in Texas have solidly chosen one side or the other to root for, but I’m in a peculiar spot. I have degrees from both schools. Yeah I know, how could I do such a thing? Well, if someone had told Texas to reduce their MBA tuition by about $7,000, offer me a Graduate Assistantship, and cut their class sizes in half, I would have gone to Texas. But nobody told them. Or they didn’t listen. And Texas A&M did. So I went there. No big deal. Call me a traitor, or disloyal if you will. But I have a degree with the same three letters on it, plus thousands of dollars more in my pocket. Well okay, student loan debt that’s only up to my ears, not up to my eyeballs (it’s a subtle difference).

I’ll be wearing burnt orange today. After all, I went to Texas first. And for twice as long. And at Texas I actually had time to get into the whole school spirit thing. I cared about the rivalry. I still do, but it’s harder to pick sides now, because I respect both schools. They are both great places to go to school, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. I’m glad I’ve experienced both. So now I root for both schools. I just root for Texas more fervently. I know the players’ names. I tape the game if I can’t be home to watch it. I wish I had season tickets. Texas A&M games I watch if I’m home and it’s on.

So for Texas people I’m a traitor Aggie convert, and for A&M people I’m a Longhorn tea-sip (I’m not sure what this means either). But for one day I’m a winner no matter what.

  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/26/2004 0 comments

  why i haven't blogged in three days

Well, this has been quite the interesting week. Let's recap:

Monday morning: found out that previously genderless baby #2 is shaping up to be boy #2.

Monday evening: Spent the evening at the emergency room, where we found out that boy #1, who is now 2 ½, has developed a case of pneumonia, mixed with a dose of strep throat, with a little ear infection on the side for good measure.

Monday night: slept a little.

Tuesday: called in sick to take care of boy #1. Yay, no work!

Wednesday: everyone is feeling better, had to go back to work. Yuck!

Thursday: ate leftovers for lunch and Whataburger for Thanksgiving dinner. We canceled plans to visit family in Austin to avoid exposing them to various illnesses. This is not as tragic as it seems. I think I would really prefer eating Whataburger and lounging around all day than driving all day and doing the typical Thanksgiving thing.

Thursday night: wrote blog post. Um, I guess that brings us to the present. The boy is doing fine now. Does this seem like a modern miracle to anyone else? Monday evening he has a 105 degree fever and is diagnosed with three fairly serious medical conditions, and three days later he is bouncing off the walls, eating three bowls of oatmeal like he does every night, and demanding 300 stories, all of which are about a train...named James...who has a red balloon?

Friday morning: still writing blog. Need to go to sleep. Good night.

  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/26/2004 0 comments

  i smell a rat Okay, this is starting to get scary. I took my car in to the trusty Saab dealer the other day. Again. All you regular readers are surely familiar with this process. It's become a pretty regular thing. This time I have been having some problems with the automatic doorlocks and some squeaking in the brakes. Not a big deal, probably nothing curse-related. These problems are covered by warranty. The curse only affects things that will cost me a lot of money. This is just good old fashioned poor General Motors craftmanship.

As usual, I got excellent service from the local Saab dealer. But when the service guy looked under the hood we both noticed something out of the ordinary. There was a clump of fuzzy, lint-like material piled up in the engine bay. What the heck is this? Now this is more like the kind of thing that happens to me and my car. The service guy went on to tell me that, from the looks of it, I had a rat or a mouse living in my engine bay. Yes, the curse has sunk to a new low. Bravo! Turns out that my friendly neighborhood rat likes to use the inside of my engine bay as shelter from the brutal Texas winter. As of today, the rat hasn't done too much damage, just removed some insulation from various parts of the engine bay, and attempted to chew through a hose of some sort. But rats that live in car engine bays don't have a reputation for leaving well enough alone in there. I don't think. They like to bite stuff and chew through electrical cords and generally cause trouble. And this is no ordinary rat. This is a cursed rat.

It's obvious what has happened: Babe Ruth's spirit has become trapped inside the body of this rat. If this doesn't make any sense to you please read here about my car and its curse.

Once my car comes back from the Saab dealer, with fully functioning doorlocks and brakes that don't announce to everyone within a three mile radius that I'm slowing down, I'll have to start keeping an eye on the rat and his various quirky activities. The last thing I need is a Cynical Tyrant style rodent battle.

Wish me luck in my newest war with the neighborhood animals. It started with the ants, and now it has escalated to the rats. I can only assume that the bunnies will be next. Better watch where you hop, bunnies. I'm watching you.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/22/2004 0 comments

  it's just me against the ants Last night I went to refill Bailey's food. This was a preemptive strike on my part. He still had food, but not much. If his food bowl ever gets low enough that you can see the bottom of the bowl, Bailey starts getting very testy. And the way he shows his testiness is by meowing constantly until the situation is remedied. Apparently Bailey is under the impression that cat food bowls have no bottom, and when he is reminded that cat food bowls actually do have bottoms, it is very upsetting to him. Thus, the meowing.

It was kind of late, maybe 12:30, but I had not been asleep yet, and I am sure I was not dreaming. Also, I didn't take any kind of drugs or alcohol. It's not really my thing. But how else could I explain the hallucination? You see, Bailey's food was...moving.

When I opened the bag to pour out Bailey's food, I found that there were the usual bits of Purina goodness. Cat food triangles, cat food squares, cat food tetrahedrons, but what's this? Purina is now including ant-shaped cat food bits. And they move? After examining this for several minutes, I realized that this was not cat food at all. It was the real thing. Real ants!

Perhaps there are those of you who are only familiar with ants from the movie Antz. Therefore, you might be under the impression that ants are creepy, disturbing, neurotic, talking, alien things. Well, that's only half the story. They also bite and are extremely hard to get out of cat food.

I figured that I now had two missions: 1) get enough food in Bailey's bowl that he would not meow all night long, and 2) inflict ant Armageddon on any ants within Raid-spraying distance.

Goal number 1 was about as difficult as it sounds. Going through individual pieces of cat food, separating delicious cat food from disgusting insects, takes some serious concentration, and is actually rather time consuming. I had to pick through every single piece of cat food until I got enough to line the bottom of the bowl, thus creating the illusion that the bowl is bottomless.

But now for Goal number 2, the fun part: ant vengeance. I found that Raid ant spray is really rather effective when sprayed directly on an ant. The ant death is almost instantaneous. So when you have a swarm of ants busily scurrying around on your floor, one spraying motion is true hell for the unfortunate ants who made it out of the bag. But the real nightmare was reserved for the ants left in the bag. Their fate was not so pleasant. I sprayed about half the can of Raid into the bag, then closed the cat food bag, put it into a Target bag, and tied everything up, leaving the ants to suffocate. Hey, don't mess with my cat food.

At one point, one of the ants managed to get in a cheap shot and bit me on the toe. And it still itches. Ant war is not without its casualties.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/19/2004 0 comments

  my final jeopardy question You know that part of Jeopardy where Alex comes over and chats with the guests? Me neither. That’s what the fast forward button is for. But occasionally I hit the button too soon and I have to listen to a few seconds of this blather. These people have fifteen seconds to tell the most intriguing story of their entire existence, and it always ends up coming out like this:

Alex: “It says here that you once spent over two hours in an airport?”

Jeopardy Contestant: “Yes, that’s right, Alex. My plane was supposed to show up in gate 15, but it ended up landing in gate 19 due to a scheduling change. I had to walk all the way to gate 19.”

Alex: “Fascinating. Now pick up your signaling button.”

It’s easy to sit here and make fun of these people and say how boring their lives must be. But then I start to wonder, “What would it say on my card?” I mean, honestly, how many of our lives feature moments that are interesting when told in fifteen second summaries? There are only a few people who have mastered the fifteen second life accomplishment:

Sir Edmund Hillary: “I was the first person to climb Mount Everest.”

Albert Einstein: “I devised the Theory of Relativity.”

Mike Tyson: “One time I bit a guy’s ear off.”

Imagine how hard it is for Ken Jennings, the guy who has won like 385 times in a row, and counting. It’s gotten to the point that he is now interviewing Alex. “Alex, it says here that you get all the answers off the card and belittle the contestants by pretending to actually know the answers.” “Pick up the damn signaling button, KenJen.”

So now I challenge all of you loyal blog readers and other various visitors. Come up with a sentence, fifteen seconds or less, that completes the following: “(Jeopardy Contestant), it says here that you _________.” Post a comment with your answer. The winner will not be determined by anyone, and will therefore get nothing but the joy of having participated in something great. One day you might be on Jeopardy and have to fill out the card. You’ll thank me for preparing you.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/17/2004 0 comments

  mayhem at the parking garage entrance Of all the posts I've written, this is probably the last one I thought I'd have to update. But it turns out that the parking garage saga continues. As you certainly recall from my original parking garage post, employees of my building have cards that we stick on our windshield. Card reader reads the card from inside windshield, gate goes up, car goes through, gate goes down. Whee! Guests have the big flashing button, which, upon further review, does not flash. Nor is it lit. My mistake. It's still pretty easy to figure out, though. Push button, take ticket, gate goes up, car goes through, gate goes down.

Apparently the building people were not content allowing employees to get off so easy with the parking garage gate. So they changed it. And they took away our cards! Now we have to use our ID card/badge thingy. This doesn't seem so bad at first, but consider this process: 1) locate card that is attached to pants, 2) unhook alligator clip from belt loop, 3) worry that belt loop has been destroyed by alligator clip, 4) look up at road and realize that time taken to worry about belt loop has caused you to forget that there is a car in front of you, 5) turn down stereo, 6) roll down window, 7) stick arm out window with card in hand, 8) wave card around for a while until card reader is satisfied that you have made a fool out of yourself in front of security guard, 9) gate goes up, 10) fling card toward passenger seat, accidentally throwing card in between seat and door, 11) close window, 12) turn stereo back up, 13) drive away, 14) gate goes down. Imagine this process repeated ad nauseum. Now you have lines to the parking garage that snake around the block and extend all the way to Fort Worth (that's quite a distance, for you non-Metroplex people).

I think people will eventually get used to this new process, just as they did with the old one. Maybe that will decrease the time it takes to perform the 14 steps. But who’s going to repair my belt loops?
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/15/2004 0 comments

  folder shortage How difficult is it to run an office these days? I don't mean run a business, I'm just talking about an office. No really, I don't know. My chief role is that of chair-sitter and occasional-phone-answerer, not office-supply-getter and copier-fixer. I'm pretty sure there are people whose jobs are solely to stock office supplies and keep printers, fax machines, and copiers running. I'd guess that the person at my office must be even lazier than I am, because I cannot recall a single day when I have not had a run-in of some sort with a piece of office machinery. My biggest enemy is the printer. I have two printers for when I need to transform a document from computer image to ink-on-paper. I default to one, but I can choose either. Why is it then that at least half the time I can't get either one of them to print my stuff?

I can understand the printer problems. Printers are complicated pieces of machinery that are prone to breaking, as are all things computer-related. What I can't understand is the folder problem. I'm not talking computer folders, I'm talking about pieces of folded yellow cardboard. Yes, it's totally old fashioned to actually use these things, but we all use them here. It's part of the job. We're a big group of old fashioned 22 year-olds here. What of it?! Anyway, in a desperate attempt to actually become more organized (this is no small feat), I have tried to keep all the files I've been working on in nice yellow cardboard folders. But about two weeks ago the nice yellow folders disappeared. No big deal I guess, I'll just staple the papers together until they get more folders tomorrow. But tomorrow came and went. Still no folders. Now it's been weeks and there are still no folders. My drawer is now stacked with unorganized piles of stapled papers. I can't tell which ones belong to whom without sorting through them. There are no tabs nicely labeled with homeowners' names and loan numbers. I can't pull out one file without pulling out everything.

I'm frustrated and scared. What if I have to buy my own folders? That's just not done. That's why we work for these horrible, evil corporations instead of starting our own mortgage companies. It's because of the free staplers and folders. And possibly the GM discount. All I know is that one of these days I need some frickin' folders.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/12/2004 0 comments

  post-work happy hour, oh how i hate thee I don't particularly get along with the people I work with. It's not really that I don't like them, I just don't relate to them. For one, the average age in my department is about 22. For most of them, this is their first post-college job. Most are not married and have no kids. Most are still clinging desperately to their college years, which included binge drinking, fraternity-belonging, and expensive-private-school-attending. Maybe I just missed out on the whole college experience, but I was never into the whole get-drunk-every-other-night-and-wake-up-in-strange-locations-and-don't-know-how-I-got-there thing even when I was in college. Now that I'm more then six years out of college, I certainly have no interest in those things (okay, technically I was in graduate school as recent as eleven months ago, but when you're 27 years old, raising a baby, working, and studying eighty hours a week, I don't think it counts).

I have really tried to get along with the people I work with. But conversations I like to participate in don't generally revolve around drinking, throwing up, and hazing. And to make matters worse, I'm the "new guy," having just started on this team about two months ago. So people have probably formed one or more of the following opinions of me at this point: a) I'm a prude, b) I'm a snob, or c) I'm incredibly shy. I'm sorry if I don't contribute to your conversation, but I really do have nothing to add. When the conversation comes down to how certain fraternities' hazing rituals compare to those of competing fraternities, what am I supposed to say? My true feelings? That I think hazing is silly and that fraternities are basically just a way for rich kids to buy friends? And when talk shifts to preferred drinks, can I tell them that I like Pepsi and iced tea?

This all brings me to yesterday, the day of the "team happy hour," when all members of my team get together and do the same thing, only this time with alcohol directly involved, as opposed to just as the main topic of conversation. As you can imagine, I had absolutely zero interest in spending real money and real time to go to this, but there was this tremendous peer pressure. "Come on, it'll be fun." So I ran through all the potential excuses in my mind: "I don't want to go." This would never work. It only leads to more whining about how much fun it will be. "I don't drink." Then I'm destined to be completely alcohol-free for my working life. "I don't like you people." No comment. "I'm a recovering alcoholic." That would make them feel guilty for pushing all the alcohol on me, but it would also lead to lots of gossip. "My wife and kid have been sick and I need to go home and take care of them." This is the one I went with, and it's even kind of true. They were sick over the last couple of weeks. We all were. It was miserable. We're all pretty much better now. But I can still go home and take care of them, right? You'd think this would be good enough. You'd be wrong, though. They just told me, in so many words, to ditch the fam, come out and have fun.

I chuckled politely and went on my way. How funny, you're telling me to desert my family to go get drunk with people I don't like. Good one. I just think if I don't want to participate in their drinking activities, that's my decision. What if I was a recovering alcoholic? They don't know me. For all they know I am a recovering alcoholic. Do you really want to be responsible for my falling off the wagon? Well, do you?!
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/10/2004 0 comments

  laser zapping update Okay, I just heard back from the good doctor today. I would post his email reply, but I think that would probably break all sorts of ethical, legal, and regulatory statutes. The gist of it is this (paraphrased): "Don't worry, you'll get better as you continue to heal, it takes 3-6 months to fully recover from LASIK. You were at 20/15 (left) and 20/20 (right) a month ago, so long term results should be good."

I'm reminded of some of the ads that tell you how LASIK patients heal almost immediately. I think the marketing of LASIK needs some serious attention. I still hear ads on the radio and on TV that make it seem like: a) you are guaranteed to see better than you could ever see with glasses or contacts, b) you will recover from the surgery almost instantaneously, in a day or two tops, c) with your new eyes you will be able to see through walls and women's clothing, and shoot lasers out of your eyes at bad guys. Okay, that last one is a bit exaggerated, but the other two get thrown around all the time.

"Throw away your glasses," they all say. While it's true that I no longer need glasses, I have not yet thrown them away. I really don't know why. They will do me no good, unless I feel nostalgic for that warm, "fuzzy" (get it?) feeling of being nearly blind. I threw away my contacts, but they were disposable. I never really wore glasses, only on my way from the bathroom to bed and back. Do I still get to symbolically throw them away? As for recovery, it's important to note that there are different levels of "recovery." Yes, in a sense, you recover very quickly. You can open your eyes the same day, light rays will enter your eyes, your brain will interpret those light rays into images of some sort. But when you really consider that your vision will fluctuate, your night vision might be awful, your eyes might be very dry, and you might be very sensitive to light, all for a period of 3-6 months or more, well, their definition of "recovery" doesn't really make sense, now does it?

As you know, it's been two months and one day. Things are indeed getting better for me. I can now "rub my eyes vigorously." Ahhhh...But I realize now that recovery is still incomplete. I specifically chose Dr. G because his office did not have those crazy ad campaigns with all the unsubstantiated claims. And I did enough homework beforehand to at least have an idea about what the next few months would hold. But there are countless others out there, spending thousands of dollars to get their eyes zapped every day, whose expectations will never be met. As Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool."
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/09/2004 0 comments

  2 months + 1 day post laser zapping Time for my monthly update on the zapping of my eyes by lasers. Actually it was time yesterday, but I forgot. So in order to give you my 2 months post-op vision, I will have to think way back to yesterday. Actually, I think I'll post the text of an email I wrote to the doctor's office on November 3:

Dear (LASIK consultant lady),

I have an appointment with Dr. G on November 30, but there are a few issues that have been bothering me that I wanted to try to address before then if possible. The night vision issues I've had do not seem to have improved at all since surgery, even though I am about two months post-op. I still have rather large starbursts and haloes that begin to emerge in low light, and in my right eye lights seem to "smear" to the left somewhat under low light conditions. These problems make night driving rather difficult. Is there a legitimate chance for improvement with either of these problems, given my particular situation? Since I have not had improvement at this point, I am concerned that the gradual improvement I had hoped for will not happen. I have heard of two types of drops, Pilocarpine or Alphagan, which restrict the size of the pupil in low light (I am not certain what my low-light pupil size is currently). Is this something that Dr. G would consider prescribing for me to help with my night-time vision, either for the short term or the long term? Are there any other options I should consider at this point or in the future?

Also, the vision in my right eye seems to be consistently blurrier than my left eye. Earlier on, the vision would go in and out, but lately seems to be more "out" than "in." Is this normal, and should I make any assumptions about my long-term results at this point? I was hoping Dr. G could take a look at my chart and either email me or give me a call (xxx-xxx-xxxx day, xxx-xxx-xxxx evening) with his opinions. I appreciate all of your help with this!

Thanks,

monger187

At this point I have not heard back from the doctor about this. I guess I should note that the night time vision does seem to have improved a bit after all. I think it may have been worse last week because I was sick and on NyQuil, cough syrup, and other assorted stuff. So there probably is hope that the crazy starburst stuff will go away. I'm not so sure about the right eye blurriness, but I'm willing to go back in for more laser zappage if necessary. It's kind of frustrating to see how great the left eye is and not have it in both eyes. Seriously, it's pretty good. My right eye is very jealous.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/09/2004 0 comments

  html programmer i ain't When I first saw the Blogger template I am currently using, I thought it looked pretty cool. It's got a nice little star, some pretty colors, all that crap. But then I started reading other Blogger blogs, and I realized something disturbing. There were about 10,000 other blogs out there that also had nice little stars and pretty colors. And that's cool with me, the more people with pretty colors and nice little stars, the better. But they were the same pretty colors I had. And the same star. They even all said "897" on them. Can't I at least have a different number? Like 894? Or 899? This just can't be. It goes up there with the realization that there are other web sites called "mindless drivel." Really, I had no idea that I was dooming my site to be forever called "mindless drivel." I was just fiddling around with Blogger and it was the only thing I could think of at the time. And now the name has stuck. It's out there. It on Google and Yahoo! and soon even The Weblog Review, where I'm told I am destined to get a glowing review! It's in the TTLB Ecosystem, where I am currently an "Insignificant Microbe." Ain't that an ego boost! But I digress.

The bottom line is that I would like to change the colors/fonts/whatever on this site, and tinker a bit with the design, but I can't seem to figure out how. I don't really want to choose another template and go through the same thing in another month. And the "Blogger Help" has not exactly lived up to its name. If anyone has any grand ideas, let me have 'em. Otherwise I'll keep trying to experiment with some things myself. And if you come back and things are much, much different, don't get scared. The mindless drivel within will still remain.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/08/2004 0 comments

 
bailey on the refrigerator   ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/07/2004 0 comments

  when's my cat going to die? One can't help but wonder why God made the world exactly the way He did. There are countless mysteries in the world. Like why does light travel so much faster than sound? Why does our hair stop growing, but not our ears? What's the deal with the appendix anyway? But most of all, I want to know why cats' lifespans are so much longer than the time it takes for us to get sick of them?

Rachel and I got Bailey in 1999, not long after we got married. Rachel decided that she wanted a cat. I didn't, but we were newlyweds, and I still wanted to get her everything she wanted. We had nothing better to do one day, so we went looking for a kitten. Have you ever realized how hard it is to get a kitten these days? Seems like you used to be able to go to a pet store, plunk down some cash, and walk out with a cute little fluffy kitten. Well, thanks to Bob Barker, cats no longer reproduce, so we've now resorted to cloning as the primary way of making cats. So for whatever reason, the "pet stores" I remember don't seem to exist anymore. Don't you remember going to the mall and playing with the bunnies in the little round Plexiglas ring, trying to get the birds to say something, anything, watching the helpless barking puppies piled on top of each other in that room with all the cages that only pet store employees are allowed to go into. At some point these pet stores seem to have disappeared completely. You can't find them. Anywhere. Apparently if you want a dog you have to either: a) go to a breeder who is going to charge you an arm and a leg, or b) pay only an arm to "adopt" a dog. The leg you save on the dog will soon be bitten off anyway. But for cats, you have only one option: adoption. So we went to the adoption areas at every PetCo and PetSmart (is it just me, or are these the same exact store?) all over Austin and found nothing but ugly, full-grown cats. Yuck! Finally, the day was just about over and we found one last place that was about to close up shop. They had one kitten, a mangy little black thing with a white "poof" on his chest and an ugly sore on his head where some other animal had bitten him. His pre-adoption name was Star. He wasn't our top choice, but we took him home anyway. Adoption fee: $70. Welcome to the family, Bailey.

Bailey was a pretty good cat for several years. He slept on our pillows, slept on the couch, slept on top of the refrigerator. Sometimes he even woke up. He was pretty cute and not too much trouble. What else can you ask of a cat? We were okay with him and he was okay with us. But we have a real kid now, not one of those pretend kids that pets become for husbands and wives who don't have children. We are Bailey's owner now, not his Mommy and Daddy. Bailey still sleeps most of the day, but now it's done exclusively under the bed. He does come out, but only to meow relentlessly whenever his food bowl is not overflowing with food. Or to deposit massive amounts of hair on our pillows, sheets, clothes, curtains, furniture, and everything else within a three mile radius. In either case, it's usually in the middle of the night, the only time he doesn't sleep.

As hard as it is to get kittens these days, it is a thousand times harder to get rid of cats. The only options are: a) open the door and let nature run its course, or b) pawn them off on unsuspecting friends, neighbors, and family members. Notice that I did not say c) give them away to a loving family. These loving families want kittens, not cats. Then in five years they will stop loving them, get tired of them, and will then be in the same boat we are.

So Bailey is now five years old, which in cat years is like 35, I guess. But Bailey is not like a typical 35 year old. He doesn't have a job, or a family, or a life. He doesn't do anything to make us proud. He can't do tricks. He doesn't have a 401(k). He's mangy and ugly and fat. Somehow we raised one of those loser 35 year olds who lives in his parents' basement and only comes out to complain that he's out of Big Red and Cheetos. But he still has so many cat years left.

Anybody want a cat?
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/05/2004 0 comments

  i voted, and i have the sticker to prove it Well, I did it. I voted. I guess I'm not going to die after all. Now I'm invincible! I waited a mere thirty minutes at 7:00 am at Barksdale Elementary School, across the street from my apartment. Hooray for voting day!

I finally made up my mind for certain about who to vote for. Here's what tipped me over the edge. Kerry goes around wearing Red Sox caps and celebrating the Red Sox World Series victory as if he actually played in the Series himself. Yet his favorite Red Sox players, "Manny Ortez" and Eddie Yost, either don't exist or never even played for the Sox. Come on, did you think we wouldn't notice? How pathetic. No wonder Curt Schilling is campaigning for Bush. At first I was surprised that Kerry was willing to take sides in the World Series at all, politician that he is. Then I realized that neither Missouri nor Massachusetts was really "up for grabs," so it was safe. But here's the real kicker. The Red Sox don't just represent Massachusetts, a state that will almost certainly vote for Kerry anyway. The Sox are the home team for all of New England, so Kerry probably felt he had a chance to pick up good will in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and all their 34 combined electoral votes, at the expense of Missouri, which is leaning solidly toward Bush, and its paltry 11 electoral votes. A sound political move, but I'm not buying it.

Before you come down on me for voting because of baseball, let me assure you it has nothing to do with baseball. It has everything to do with a man pretending to be something he's not solely for political gain. Kerry, you are not everyman, you are not the sports fan you say you are, and you do not understand what it's like to be "middle class." Please don't tell us that you do.

Bush tried to tell us in the Arizona debate that the way to keep American jobs from heading overseas was to provide government assistance for community college. Oh please! The jobs we're losing are not performed by the uneducated. They are middle class jobs held by college educated employees. You're telling me that a software engineer with a Masters Degree is supposed to file for government assistance to get an Associates Degree to become a medical assistant? What better opportunity for Kerry to step in to defend the middle class, the group he says he cares so much for and associates so closely with. So how does he respond? By changing the subject and talking about budget deficits - again. Neither candidate has a clue what it's like to be a typical American. But at least Bush doesn't go around telling us that he does every chance he gets.

So Kerry, you lost my potential vote when you got caught trying to tell me you knew what it was like to be me. You don't. Only I do, nobody else. Don't try to tell me that you of privileged upbringing and heir to Heinz Ketchup fortune can somehow understand what it's like to be a regular guy who lived on credit cards for five months while desperately looking for a job, who can only buy a decent car because he works for the company that makes them, who can only fix the hideous dent in that decent car because he owns a plunger, who chose to apply at Texas A&M over Yale, not because of lack of intelligence, but because of lack of funds.

So, John Kerry, unless you want to come down here with your plunger and fix my car yourself, you do not get my vote. And, oh yeah, my favorite Sox players are Mike Greenwell, Roger Clemens, Johnny Damon, and Pedro Martinez. Manny Ortez? He exists only in your jumbled mind. And Eddie Yost? Well, John Kerry, much like yourself, he was a Washington Senator whose career can be described as mediocre at best.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/02/2004 0 comments

  i've been disenfranchised I made my final decision and cast my vote on Friday. I have carefully weighed all the alternatives and voted amongst my three alternatives: 1) George W. Bush - head of economic recovery mismanagement and ill-conceived war-starter, 2) John Kerry - chief Bush-criticizer, decision-dodger and political game-player, and 3) let everyone else decide, save myself two hours of waiting in line at the library and spend the evening with my family instead.

Can you believe that we are expected to wait in line for two hours to vote? If this isn't being "disenfranchised" (whatever that means), I don't know what is! I mean, let's face it, not all of us are so politically motivated that we are willing to sacrifice an entire evening after a long day at work to cast a meaningless vote. We all know Bush is going to win Texas anyway. Neither candidate even bothers to campaign here, even though there are 22 million people living in Texas. Every other word out of Kerry's mouth is either Ohio or Wisconsin (he even mentioned the Green Bay Packers' storied "Lambert" Field by "name"), but Texas? Never a word.

But the worst part about this is that it changes the dynamic of the entire election. No longer should political polls be concerned with "registered voters who intend to vote." They should only count "registered voters who intend to vote, who are willing to waste an entire evening standing in line, who don't work and can therefore vote during off-hours, or who have so much free time that they have no problem standing in two-hour-long lines at the library."

I realize that election day is not yet here. Sure, I missed early voting, but I can still actually vote on election day if I decide I want to brave the four-hour lines on November 2. Maybe I can even utilize that rule that says your employer has to let you leave to vote. Or maybe if the Texas race ends up being close, I'll just contact one of the tens of thousands of lawyers hired by both candidates with the sole purpose of contesting the election. This is going to be a fun election year.

So I'm sorry to say that it looks like my Presidential election voting streak is coming to an end. Now, according to P. Diddy, I am going to die.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/01/2004 0 comments

  me 2/3, hideous dent 0 Yes, okay, I can't really declare this to be a complete victory, since there is still a hideous dent in the side of my Saab. But the dent is now approximately 66% less hideous due to my own cheapness/lack of money/love of home remedies.

Thursday after work I took the car to my trusty Saab dealer to see if they had any ideas about how to fix the thing. The woman who works there didn't know, but she took some digital photos of my nicely damaged Saab and sent them off to the lab for processing. Okay, she emailed them to the dent guy at their other location. Still pretty cool, this modern technology of ours.

The next day I got a call from the dent guy. He told me that he couldn't get a good idea how serious the dent was from the pictures, and that I'd have to take it in to get it checked out in person (so much for the modern technology). Unwilling to accept this explanation, I pressed him for more information, describing the dent in full gory detail, only to find out that his thinking is that I needed to replace the entire body panel for around $600 (!). However, there is still a chance that they can fix the dent and it would only cost around $165. And this is the cheap method! I promptly had a cow (man, I haven't heard that expression in a while!). The people at the Saab dealer seem pretty nice, but I think they might just assume that all people who buy Saabs are made of money. Haven't they ever heard of GM employee discounts?

I just graduated from business school in December. Already broke and hugely in debt, I had the joy of being unemployed for 5 months, then I got a job paying far less than the "average" pay MBAs are "supposed" to bring in (I'm sure that MBA career centers inflate their numbers heavily, but I'll rant about this in a future post - it deserves its own post). I could barely afford to treat myself to this nice car, but I surely can't afford to shell out hundreds of bucks just because Babe Ruth decided to move in. One of the ways I justified buying this car is that it has a nice fresh warranty and free maintenance for three years. Is it a coincidence that all of the symptoms of the curse are things that are not covered by warranty and are not part of any maintenance schedule? I think not.

It was at this point that Rachel and I decided to take the law into our own hands, using a, gulp, plunger to pull the dent out. And why not? The plunger can unclog a toilet about once out of every 25 tries, why shouldn't it be able to undent a fine automobile with one try? This was my mom's idea, and I can't say that I was really excited about taking a bathroom appliance to my new car. But neither was I excited about paying $600 to a "professional" who was probably going to do the same thing. We waited until late at night for a few reasons: 1) Carter will be sleeping, and will not be running around in circles while we plunge the car (2 year olds like to run around in circles, you ever notice that?), 2) it gave us more time to talk ourselves out of this crazy idea, and 3) there was less chance of being spotted by the neighbors. Let's face it, I am not proud of fixing my car with a plunger, and being caught in the middle of this process would not be my proudest moment in life, especially if I got the results I expected and the dent ended up worse than before. "Oh hey, neighbor, I saw you plunging your car yesterday, pity about the results. Did you ever think about maybe taking the car to a professional?"

So we waited until nightfall, retrieved the plunger, and headed for the car, nervous with anticipation. We grabbed the flashlight, which amazingly had relatively fresh batteries (Why is it that flashlight batteries are always dead?). We sprayed the plungy part (forgive me for not knowing proper plunger terminology) with water and I carefully applied said plungy part to the dent. After assuring a proper suction, I began to pull with all my might. To this day, I cannot believe what happened. I heard a "pop!" and the dent came out. Rachel and I were equally shocked. We froze, looking at each other in amazement. Our ugly dent was now reduced to a mere ugly ding. Now I look more like I am a victim of a careless, humongous-doored Ford F-350 owner, and less like Jackie Chan decided to use my car for kick-boxing practice.

Do I dare claim success? Yes and no. Sure, the dent is vanquished, another victory for plungers everywhere, but the ding lives on. I'll call it a two-thirds victory. But the plunger may have just saved me hundreds of dollars.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 11/01/2004 0 comments