Ok, time for an update. Not much has happened around here except for Thursday when I played smacky mouth with a guard rail. Not to much damage to my truck, none to me, just my pride. Imagine me at clutching my stearing wheel, vainly trying to bring my little truck to a stop with out hiting anybody. Yeah riggghhhht.... the truck goes "I think I'll slide to the right.... no... make that left.. no right.. no left... did I say left? I meant right... oops was that the guard rail????" as I slip and slide into a guardrail, then spin across traffic to the center turn lane and stop with a flat tire, and pieces of the plastic air dam from the front bumper scattered across the road. Called the boss at home to let him know I would be a little late to work. He drove by a little later and yelled out the window "You bum... learn how to drive". Nothing like changing a flat tire in three inches of slush to start the day. All told the damage was a cut tire, not repairable, a bent rim, good for apare only now, a bent inner tie rod, replaced, and a 1/4 of the air dam missing from the bumper. Gauuud I love Chicago winters...... will somebody please remind me of why I stay here.... Oh yeah, I hate Southern summers, and winters that are just miserible, too warm for snow, too cold for rain... so you get crap that none of the locals can drive in. And I can not afford to live in Alaska.... sigh... maybe one day again.

Hmmmm..... were to start..... hmmmmm...... Well Annie is now just friends and will remain so till the end of time and possibly longer, stubourn girl.... not that there was much happening romaticly anyway, but I was hoping.... alas it was not meant to be.

Went to the "Featival of Maidens" this last weekend, watched a lot of fighting in the lists, Duke Palamar won the tourney.... again.... most of my friends did well and were happy with how the fights went.

Spent much time discusing what is wrong with the Midlands Army with Duncan and Sir Gunther. And much time on how to fix the problem, we are going to start drilling as a unit, and are going to fight to stay together as a unit at Pensic.

Well this weekend went well, Annie is not mad at me, she just brain farted and forgot to let me know she couldn't make it to the seminar. She does have her priorities straight, family, school, money for school, then me some where after that. Good thing she didn't go, only nine people showed up. not quite what I had expected. I did get a lot of good references for Viking studies though, and an ivitation to join Regia Anglorum. Hmmmm.... how hard will it for me to portray a tenth century wood crafter???

Here I sit at 9:30 at night wondering if I should get off my lazy butt and make Annie some fudge to take down to her when I pass through her neighborhood tomorow. Normaly this would not be a question, but right now I'm just a little anoyed with her. There is a seminar on period garb in Champaign tomorow and she was thinking of going to it with me, unless of course she had to work.... well she's working and forgot to let me know that she couldn't make it. I don't think that I am very high on her priority list today, unless of course I did something to make her mad at me.... can't think of anything off hand... and if she is mad at me it'll be a while before she tells me why.

Just found out that one of my mentors in the SCA may no longer be able to fight in heavy weapons, it seems he may have had a minor heart attack, well we will find out more next week when he goes in for more testing. Hope he gets good news, we need his skill in the Pensic Wars.

Last night I spent some time cruising through the world of blogs and ran across some blogs that were heartbreakers. I read one by a 14 year old girl, who is in a lot of emotional pain, talking about how ugly she was and wondering how she could stop hurting herself. What she said that got me thinking was that her family seemed to think that if she tried hard enough she could just be normal and just rise above her pain and despair. I spent most of today wondering how can I give her encouragement with out everyone thinking that I am a perv setting her up. I have seen where this kind of pain, and lack of family understanding can lead. My exwife went through some of the same things and it nearly destroyed me trying to save her. To watch someone in that much pain and be completly powerless to help them is almost more than I can bear. After I got divorced I swore off playing knight in shining armour rescuing damsels in distress, but I cant help but think there has to something that I can do to help, even if just a little, but what??

It is a good day (almost)

Today went well, all of my service call went smoothly, trafic wasn't bad inspite of the snow. The only thing that went wrong was some numbnut shit for brains asshat took a magic marker to the back of my truck. Just the letter M, no gang sign that I recognize, or even part of a gang sign that I recognize. Not a dent, not a scratch, just a little twist in the bumper from towing my brother, and some moron has to go and do this. I know with all that is going in in the world today, it is a petty thing, but come on, if this was an old beater I would laugh about it, but a new truck??? If I got hit by somebody in a parking lot or on the street and they appologized, it would be hey its ok, things happen but this is different.

Nothing of note

Not much to write about today, not a lot of hard work, we saved that for tomorow. I get to fix twenty seven loose spindles on a curved banister... fun.. fun.. fun. The real fun will be driving in the "big" snow storm that we are suposed to get tonight, four to twelve inches, depending on which forecaster you listen to..... ooohhhhh joooy... every moron driver with out a clue will try to drive in it just to prove that they can... in the Chicago area... during rush hour... just to prove that they can. I think I'll call in dead tomorow...

New pet peeves

I have just found two new pet peeves to rant about,

1) the morons who post a blog and remove the navbar so you have to back track to get to the next blog. What is with that?? Do they honestly think I want to spend the rest of my evening looking at their blog??? How about the morons who use public domain for free advertising??

2) fellow employes who brag about their skill in the trade but refuse to do any work that pushes the limits of their abillities. Come on give me a break... how else do improve your skill if you don't push the bounderies every chance you get. This is an example of what I'm talking about, today I had to meet one of the other service techs I work with to do a repair to a table top in a customers home. This tech had told the customer that this could not be repaired in the home and the entire table would have to go into the shop for repair. The damage to the table was two small (grain of rice sized) dents in one table leaf, just dents. Total actual (not counting drying time) time spent on the repair and touch up was 30 - 40 minutes, and the customer couldn't find the repair even after I pointed it out to him. I have been doing this type of work for twenty years now and I have seen just about every thing that can be done to a piece of furniture. Now I admit there are some things I can not fix in a acustomers home but very little in comparison to the amount of work that I do. If I'm not sure it can be done I try anyway, and most of the time I can make it work, if not the customer is warned before hand and has the option of letting me try or going straight for the more expensive shop repair, their choice. There is one good thing about his incompitence I suppose, i will never be out of a job...

Just after 7 in the morning and wondering what to put here, the cats are begging loudly to be fed, just read my cousin Liz's blog DoctorLizardo. Over nine hours for the refernce section on her proposal?? poor girl... as I said in the comment on her page... people wonder why I skipped "Higher Education". Just thinking about that much writing makes my brain hurt. Give me something simple to do... like resetting all one hundred pieces of veneer for the inlayed top of an early 18th lamp stand. My poor girlfriend will be suffering from brain cramps next semester, five sociology classes at once, FIVE of them... Oh my aching head, the things people do to them selves to get the little piece of paper that says "I just spent the last four to ten years of my life(depending on the degree) not having one so someone can tell me I'm now overqualified to do the job I was doing to pay for the degree for the job that I wanted, but can't get because I don't have enough real work experience in my chosen field." Ohhhhh my aching head... makes me glad to be a skilled tradesman/artisan.

A new day, a new year

Gray skies, and a chill breeze... most of the peasants will be huddled in their hovels, the lords in their manors sleeping off the nights revel, the guards at their posts will be more interested in keeping warm than what is coming over the horizon... it is a good day to go a viking. Oh wait.... wrong time period. Gray skies and a chill breeze... most of the peasants will be trudging off to the the last of the holiday sales, the lords sleeping off their hangovers, and what guards??... drinking coffee and eating doughnuts I suppose.

Yesterday was a good day, spent most of it building a computer for Annie. It would of gone faster, much faster if we hadn't tried to save what was on her old computer. It took two hours of ME refusing to ugrade to XP before she agreed to just reformat the old drive. After reformating the drive we were done installing all of the software in about 45 miniutes, just in time for her to go back home to Mahomet. I almost feel sorry for her brother, he gets the old computer, with a wiped drive, and gets to reinstall the os by himself. So if you hear a history geek weeping quietly in a corner cursing my name, that will be him trying to get Windows ME to work. Oh well he needs to learn about computers anyway and what a better way to learn than best two out of three falls.... right?? At least he doesn't have to install any harware, just software.... poor bastard. Do we go to hell for setting up computer illiterates with Herculean tasks???