An Untitled Mess

We spent nearly thirty minutes in the hay loft this evening.  I don't usually have the stamina to last that long but I was determined not to disappoint again by pulling out early.  I pushed, I pulled, I lifted and shifted and maneuvered.  I was finding ways to fill that space that no one had ever done before.  I got creative, and it paid off...big time.  By the time we were done, I was exhausted, hot, sweaty, covered in hay from head to toes and satisfied.  Very, VERY satisfied.  It's hard not to feel satisfied after you unload 100 bales of hay into a barn.  Come on, what did you think I was talking about?  Get your mind out of the gutter. My day off from work was not quite as productive as I hoped it would be.  I had to drive down to Beaufort this morning, which was not fun because the traffic was just insane.  Then I spent a while helping my mom update the Barnyard website with new information about our fresh pork for sale and our summer horse camps in August.  After that,

*Stands from plastic fold-out chair* *Clears throat nervously* *Fidgets with hands while staring at feet* Hello, my name is Dan, and I'm a pyromaniac.  Whew, there, I said it.  Boy, I really do feel better now.  A lot better...like, so much better that I really want to go blow something up! This is my first Independence Day that I've gotten to celebrate in ten years.  My luck, I'll probably have to work that night.  I'm usually off on Tuesdays so there is a slight chance that I will not have to work.  Anyways, I did like any normal American male would do...I stopped by one of those big white tents and purchased some cardboard tubes filled with pretty colored gun powder. See that look on my face?  That's the look of pure joy.  Honestly, the tent I got the fireworks from was a non-profit who was selling the fireworks as a fund raiser.  Oh, and I was literally their first sale, so that was awesome.  Not only did I get to purchase explosives, I got to help a g

That's right, I'm not ashamed to admit it.  I'm in love.  I want to get on top of a mountain and shout it to the entire world!  I want to vandalize the side of a million year old rock in a national park.  I want to spray paint it on the side of a moving train or on an overpass.  I want to buy the rights to a star in the sky and name it after her.  I want to get extremely drunk and have her name tattooed onto a very private part of my body.  I love you Stacy! For those of you that regularly read this blog, all three of you, then you know that Stacy is a baby alpaca.  Bumpers sent me this cute photo of Stacy today to update me on how well she was doing.  Since I pretty much saved Stacy's life , Bumpers owes me at least that much.  My afternoon was pretty much wide open, so I asked if I could come see her.  She was hesitant because it wasn't my week to see Stacy...I have every third week of the month plus holidays and two weeks of summer vacation.  However, Bumpers

I have the day off from work and it's been raining pretty much all day.  So, here are some GIFs to cheer me...erhm, I mean you, cheer YOU up! Awww...silly puppy rolled himself up in a blanket! Stranger Pugs...Can't wait for season two of Stranger Things to return to Netflix...come on, Halloween!

So, happy Father's Day to all of you dads, pops, fathers, baby's daddies, pa's and the like.  Wish I would have been able to spend the entire day with my pops, but I had to go into work at 12:30 and I didn't leave until about 10:30.  It was a long day, but at least they ordered pizza for us for lunch.  There was enough left over that I had pizza for dinner too.  Totally know what it's like to be a ninja turtle now...and it rocks. Planning on getting dad his Father's Day gift tomorrow.  I know, it's late, but better late than never.  Right?  Well, that's what I'm telling myself.  We did not get to spend much time today, but at least we got to hang out a little bit on Friday. Next week, I'm not scheduled for very many hours at work.  This may be a good thing.  It will not be very kind to my bank account but maybe I need a little bit of a break.  Is God telling me to take it easy next week?  I spoke to the manager today about it but since i

Today was a busy day for me, which is good.  Woke up and went out to the farm this morning to feed and let the animals out.  That was kind of fun.  Got to play around with my little buddy some...he's not so little any more.  He's gotta be close to 300 pounds by now.  It's cool because I can be rough with him and it won't hurt him.  He is definitely not worried about hurting me.  TJ used my back to get his rub on for a good five minutes.  Love that old fart.  The triplets (baby piggies) let met pet them today without spazing out.  Sweet potato tried to run me over to get out the field with the goats.  Sadly, I found one of our baby turkeys dead in the straw.  Poor little guy. After I got home from the barn, dad got in from work.  He took an early day to get ready for a party out at the farm this evening.  We had a great Bojangles lunch and watched Young Frankenstein together.  Classic.  Then it was off to that dreaded place, the Carteret County Mall and Shopping Comple

Nope, not a drug reference.  Though my dad did confess to having eating shrooms before.  It was the 70's and he lived in the middle of nowhere central Florida where there was nothing but cow pastures and orange groves for miles around.  Can't blame him.  Naw, this is a Super Mario Brothers reference, which has come up quite a bit lately at work.  Funny story, actually. So, last week, when we had the high school graduations come in to eat, we had more people than usual working the kitchen to help handle the onslaught.  When usually I'm on the fryers by my lonesome, I had another dude over there to help out.  What's great is that he is about five and a half feet tall and kind of chunky.  I'm six-three and lean (yea, some call it skinny but I refuse to accept that).  In the middle of the rush, one of the other guys looks over at us and says, "Hey, it's Mario and Luigi!"  We all just die laughing.  If you put him in red overalls and me in green overalls,

Last night at work, Jeff and I closed and were tasked with pulling the entire line away from the wall and cleaning behind it.  This really did not bother us all that much except for the fact that we had some late tables come in to eat so we didn't get to start cleaning until after 10 P.M.  That made for a long night and it would have been even longer if Morgan wouldn't have hung around to help us.  Off the clock, nonetheless.  So I didn't get home until like 1 A.M. and after a shower, eating and charging, I didn't get to bed until nearly 2:30 A.M.  Needless to say, I slept in this morning.  Big time. So it was a slow start to my day, but it ended up being a pretty good day.  I did some cleaning and organizing in my room and in the house.  Had to clean the rabbit cages because it had been a few days and they need constant attention or else they will get too bad.  Helped mom out with catching up on her Barnyard accounts and making sure the calendar was in sync.  Then it

For those of you who subscribe by e-mail, I'm sure you have appreciated me not blowing up your mailbox for the last few days.  I've been working like whoa...like, Friday night I didn't leave work until 1:15 A.M. and by the time I got home, showered and charged, I didn't hit the mattress until 2:30.  I appreciate the hours, I hit 45 last week and I'm gonna push 40 this week, but it has worn me out.  I'm up so late that I usually sleep until 9 or 10 the next morning.  I don't like this schedule too much because it's messing up my sleep patterns.  Plus, by the time I get up and get going, I can't really get out to the farm to help mom with chores because she is nearly done by then. I made it out to the flea market today.  Sadly, everyone else's junk was just that...junk.  No gems or diamonds in the rough today.  The weather was beautiful though and there were a lot of vendors and lookers too.  Since I hadn't been to the Beaufort Farmer's M

Avast, there be a traitor amongst us!  For the last like few weeks, I've been opening on Wednesday mornings at work.  Bumpers heard about how much fun it is to be at work with me early on a Wednesday morning and practically begged our manager Kim to put her on to open on Wednesdays too.  I mean, tears the size of beach balls, lips quivering, on her knees begging Kim to let her work in the mornings with me.  It was a sad sight to see...flattering, yet still very undignified.  But Kim saw just how important it was to her and she relented. Well, you can image my face when the back door buzzer sounded this morning and I lifted the flap and saw not Bumper's smiling face, but Jasmine.  I gasped in shock and choked back a sob.  I shut the flap, pressed my back flat against the door and took a few seconds to compose myself.  My Wednesday morning opening partner bailed on me.  This just can't be, she would never betray me in this manner.  I stormed over to the schedule board and s

Today I finally had a day off.  Whew, thank goodness.  I got to sleep in.  That wasn't the plan.  The plan was actually to wake up early and drive to the beach to go for a run.  Yeah, right.  Wishful thinking full of good intentions.  What actually happened was I couldn't get out of bed so I just kept going back to sleep until I didn't feel exhausted any more. I did a small amount of cleaning then I headed into town with a Yeti full of hot coffee.  I stopped at a shoe store, because I really need new shoes.  I was going to get some about 6 or 7 months ago but didn't find a pair that I liked in my size.  I gave it another shot today.  Found some white Vans that were pretty fly but I had some reservations about buying white shoes.  Also, I knew if I got white Vans, I would never hear the end of, "Damn, Daniel." Bumpers told me that Rack Room Shoes was having a BOGO sale so I shot over there to peep the lick.  It would have been Gucci if the Rainbows would

Hater Blockers : noun.  Accessories used to block out the hate from other people.  Examples include sunglasses, and ear buds connected to a music playing device. As you can see, I had my hater blockers on today.  They sure do come in handy at work.  I'm not able to wear them all the time and I can't have both buds in my ears.  When I work prep in the mornings, they are a necessity.  It's sad when you feel like there is so much hate and negativity around you that you have to literally have something to block it out.  Case in point, a waitress at work today decided that I offended her to the point that she had to talk shit to me.  This chick isn't even on my radar, she barely exists to me and I don't talk to her.  So why did she tell me to shut up when I was not even speaking to her?  Why tell me, "Why are you up here, go back to the back."?  You have no reason to be mean to me, let alone to even strike up a conversation of any kind with me. What, I

Just when you think that you know someone, they prove you wrong.  This is what I have been pondering all day today and it had put me in a kind of sour mood.  I want to expound on it, but I'm afraid to.  Yup, that's right.  I'm afraid.  Is it okay for a guy to be afraid?  Darn tootin' it is. I hate losing friends or thinking that I lost a friend.  Two such people are on my mind.  One is a friend I've known for nearly my entire life.  She supported me through my worst years when she had no business to do so.  I never really understood why she did it, why she stuck with me for all that time.  As I was about ready to come back home, we had developed such a strong bond that we decided that since we were such good friends, maybe we should try to "date".  I didn't want to ruin our friendship over it...maybe it wouldn't work out and then how would things be?  Well, we gave it a shot and it didn't work out.  I wasn't ready for a relationship so so

Work was uneventful today.  Okay, that was sort of a lie.  I was irritated the entire day because of one unnecessary remark that was made.  But hey, that's my own fault for letting it live in my head without paying any rent.  Nope, can't think of a single thing worth typing about work today. So, I get off of work, get into my car and start the engine.  Holy crap, there is an indicator light on!  Oh come on, I just bought this thing six months ago!  I pulled out the owner's manual and see that I have a low tire pressure indicator light aglow on my panel.  Wonderful...so I swing into Wal-Mart.  I needed to get some groceries anyways so I also picked up an air pressure gauge and a Febreeze fresh car scent thingy (yes, that's the official term for it) for my air vent.  Milk, check.  Fruit, check.  Honey buns, check.  Granola bars, check.  Double stuffed Oreos, nope.  Talk about will power. My rear drivers side tire was down to 15 psi when it should have been 38 psi.  Th

If you recognize the title of this post, then you're a nerd.  But that's cool because I'm a nerd also and we can share in our nerdness while everyone else is scratching their heads as they pull up a Google search.  Of course they would use Google, if they knew what the title meant, they would probably be using DuckDuckGo for searches. I run Linux, specifically Ubuntu Linux.  I'm no master at it, and most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing as I search message boards and documentation trying to figure things out.  However, I bought a cheap computer that suits my current needs and quite honestly could not afford to put Windows on it.  So, this free, open source Linux distribution was the obvious choice.  It is a pain in the butt some days, but it pretty much does everything a Windows box can do and I've yet to spend a penny on any sort of software.  Email, Net, calendars, spread sheets, word documents and everything else, it handles quite nicely. I was

That's me.  Most of my friends just call me The Studster.  The ladies, well, they call me a lot of different stuff - Baby, Honey, Hott Stuff, Fabio, Mr. Wiggles.  So, I totally got hit on by a car full of chicks last night.  I mean, obviously this happens to me quite often and the only reason I'm even typing this "non-event" is because there is nothing else to talk about.  Please forgive me for telling you another one of my many, may stories of beautiful woman throwing themselves at me. Work didn't let me out until well after 4:00.  We had a pretty big catering order to get done first thing in the morning so we really didn't get to start our actual prep work until 11:30 instead of the usual 9:00.  No big deal though.  Afterwards, I shot down town to drop off some paper work and then to Wal-Mart to do some price hunting for my sister.  Her FFA chapter is doing their end of the year awards banquet this Friday and she needed me to see how much groceries were c