An Untitled Mess

Me and Jamie Dog (..oh, and DTY also) I just noticed, as I posted this photo to my blog, how the image is reversed.  The writing on my sweatshirt is backwards and the steering wheel is on the British side of the car...very peculiar. Oh, so I bet you are just clamoring to know what the title of this post is all about.  What, a new girl friend?  Could it be?  Well, yeah.  It was hard not to fall for her.  We had a connection almost instantly.  The first date I took her for a walk on the beach on a crisp, cool evening last week.  The sky was clear and speckled with brightly shimmering stars.  Sounds of waves gently breaking on the sandy beach serenaded our evening.  It was the perfect night and we got to know each other very well. When I picked her up the other day, she was overflowing with joy and happiness.  It had been nearly a week since we last saw each other and her excitement was infectious.  There was no possible w...

It's been an insanely busy week for me.  My work schedule changed and that threw me completely off.  Instead of working only one morning shift this week, I had three in a row.  Don't get me wrong, I love working prep in the mornings...I just don't love waking up to get there on time. So I basically did nothing on my day off on Tuesday. Well, not "nothing", but definitely not what I wanted to get done.  I have not sewn in almost a week...no bueno.  I did a fresh re-install of my OS, which I felt just needed to be done to get the junk off it.  Honestly, there wasn't much "junk" on there, just my OCD kicked into gear and I just had to do it.  Hit the gym with the crew again Tuesday morning.  We had a big group, seven of us there.  So we hit the back exercise room, cranked up the tunes, and played dice.  I thought it was fun...I did both team's exercises so I got a good workout in.  Basically each team rolled dice for the other team's...

Yo, it's a What Up Wednesday! So what does a crappy day call for?  The beach, duh!  Had to check out the sunset today.  Talk about washing away all my stress and worries.  Things are just right when I get out here, breathe in that crisp, salty air and dig my toes into the warm sand.  I don't even get into the water...well, I'm physically unable to get into the water, but that doesn't matter.  Just being there, soaking in those vibes, feeling the waves pull and tug at me from the shore...heaven.  Getting dookied on by a sea gull couldn't even spoil a beach trip for me, I'm just that locked in. Today I told one of my managers that I was searching for a new job.  The entire restaurant probably knows by now, and I really don't give a crap.  I knew full well that saying anything to anyone would mean that it would spread like wildfire, which is just another reason why I need to leave that place.  I also asked if she could put me on mo...

Elmer's birthday is tomorrow (so he says...maybe I should verify this).  So, I work with Elmer at the restaurant and he is our day shift cook.  He and I goof off and joke around whenever I'm there in the mornings doing prep, which as been less and less the last few weeks, sadly.  Anyways, I had this pattern for an apron and oven mitts that I had not had an excuse to use yet so I figured an apron would be a good birthday gift for him.  I found some really good material at Wal-Mart and sewed him up a really rad apron.  Tomorrow I will swing by after church and give it to him.  Hopefully he will like it.  If not, I will definitely keep it for myself because I think it's an awesome apron.  But I'm sure he will like it...I guess I will just have to make myself one.  Football season is just around the corner so the plan is to make a Carolina Panthers apron that I can sport at work on Sundays!  Want one for yourself?  I'm taking orders, ge...

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 a...

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 t...

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 m...

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 ca...

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 sto...

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 ...

It's a What Up Wednesday!  I was in a spunky mood this morning.  Getting to bed a little early will do that for a guy.  In case you missed it, I just gave you my excuse for not posting yesterday...if you still missed it, I will whisper it in your ear (I fell asleep early and did not type). So this morning, being so full of energy and being in a generally good mood (I did help to save a baby alpaca the other day), I decided to play a little joke on Bumpers .  Here is a little back story.  I totally started working at the restaurant before she was even in kindergarten (I know, I'm old as a Moses fart).  However, I have not worked there since like 2007 so evidently my old parking spot is forfeit.  It just so happens that my old parking spot is Bumper's current parking spot.  On one of my first nights back to work a few months ago, I parked in what I believed to be my parking spot.  It was claimed decades ago...I even urinated in it to mark it...

 Here's how the first hour of my morning went... I guess Blogger won't let me upload a video...lame.  Here is a link for it then: Dunkin Donuts Fiasco Maybe this will be a new thing for me...part blog...part vlog?  I don't know...verbally stone me in the comments section if you would like to have a say in this. Work was a busy and boring day.  There was just a ton of stuff to do for this huge catering order we have for tomorrow.  We had to cut 250 chicken breasts, cook 13 cans of green beans, 250 chocolate chip cookies, 6 pounds of mashed potatoes.  We had all of that to do and we still had to do the prep work for the restaurant too so I was there a little past what I usually am. Morgan and Bumpers were not at work this morning, and I have to be honest...that sucked.  Morgan is my karaoke partner.  I swear, I can think of a song that I know for sure that he doesn't know the words to and sure enough, he can sing it better th...

What up?  It's Wednesday...let's hear it for Odin, the paganistic god of the Danes for whom this day is named.  Or if that offends you, let's here it for the Geico camel who turned Hump Day into an international sensation. Bumpers didn't post last night...just throwing that out there for no particular reason.  I just hope she has a good excuse and that's all I'm saying on the subject. Except, I don't think it's fair that she guilts me into posting every night, even when I don't feel like it or if I don't have anything to say and then she just up and skips without running it by me... Can someone please explain how a "cashless ATM" works?  Seems hypocritical. Cashless ATM? The password today was "pickles"...again.  I gotta remember to change that dang password before everyone finds out and tries to use it.  Work was rather fun today.  I like Wednesdays because I'm doing mostly prep work by my lonesome.  I also ge...

Saw this on my run today...I honestly don't know why I took a picture.  Maybe just because I could?  It is kind of cute.  Obviously a lot of love and effort was put into this.  Some heartless people might want to call this "ruffian graffiti".  But you have to look closer, see the motivation of the artist to express themselves this way. Today, Bumpers called herself an "art-teeste"...like, some fancy way of saying, "Hey, I'm a creative spirit and I channel that creativity through various mediums including drawing, painting and sketching with Sharpie (R) markers."  Of course, I gave her a hard time and told her she sounded like one of those hippies that hang out at Starbucks (R)...which she is and she does. So this was how she got back at me for pointing out an obvious fact about her life:  I had just cut, peeled and chopped fifty pounds of onions...FIFTY POUNDS OF ONIONS (without shedding a single tear...usually I'm an emotional mess when ...

I did not misspell that...Google it if you must.  The flea market was so dead today, it was very depressing.  I spent maybe twenty minutes there and saw a blue ray player that I was thinking about getting but then decided that without a refund policy in place I should probably skip that one. Then I shot to Wal-Mart to look for a case and screen protector for mom's tablet.  Dad got her a Galaxy Tab A 10.1 inch for Mother's Day and I've been spending the day setting it up for her.  The idea is that she can use it for the Barnyard and take it with her so she can always have her calendar, phone numbers and emails with her.  She honestly is not huge on the technology thing but maybe we can get her to like it.  I'm sort of jealous though.  I have a 9 inch Galaxy Tab E so mom's is slightly larger and a little more powerful than mine. I didn't find a suitable case or screen protector so I settled with buying some tea (Early Grey and Green) and shot to th...

Thanks to my b logging buddy (<--click to see her awesome blog), I only got four hours of sleep last night.  Totally blaming you.  I know, I'm grown enough to tell someone, "Hey, I love talking to you but I have to be up early in the morning and I have to work all day."  But, it's pass-the-buck Friday so...considered it passed to you. Amber's car was leaking oil worse than an Exxon rigger captained by Edward J. Smith in the frigid North Atlantic.  Add ten cool points if you know who Edward J. Smith is.  Subtract five cool points if you went and Googled his name.  So, they dropped the car off last night at the dealership and let sis take one of the trucks so she could get Oinkers to day care and then get to work.  Dad took the other truck into work this morning so that meant mom didn't have a way to get to the farm.  Being the super-awesome son that I am (that was number 6 on the survey ), I woke up at 6:30 to drive her out there.  Tha...

What am I going to do with this...THING...growing on the top of my head?  The plan is to let it go until the end of summer but...I don't know.  A little trim maybe?  I asked a woman for some advice and she told me to let it go.  Usually, when a woman gives that sort of advice, a man should not think twice about heeding it.  If a woman... any woman, tells you that they like your hair a certain way...even if they like it as a neon pink reverse mohawk...then you should totally go with the flow.  And that's what my hair is doing right now...going with the flow...any flow that happens to push it around, whether it be the wind, or the water from the shower nozzle, or the tongue of a baby calf licking it...Any.  Flow.  Period. I woke up at like 6:30 this morning so I did what any single guy with no one warm beside him to snuggle up with in the early morning hours of the day would do when he wakes up...I went back to sleep.  Duh.  I didn't st...

I wasn't going to post tonight but... Went to church this morning and met Amber there.  This guy that was in the chair behind the one Amber saved for me was like, "You can't sit there, I won't be able to see over you!"  Then he laughed, gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder like it was all just a joke.  Sad thing is that I believe that is really how he felt deep down inside...why else would he say it?  He doesn't know me, we're not pals so...I don't know.  I didn't try and hunch over for him either so I guess that makes me a jerk too.  Dad and mom had a big day out at the farm so they didn't go with us.  It was a pretty good service.  Still trying to figure out the analogy of "prayer shouldn't be your 911 call when things go bad...it should be like your spare tire in your trunk."  Umm....isn't the spare tire in the trunk in case things go badly?  Who thinks about the spare tire at any other moment other than when you get ...

Come on, don't pretend like you don't know who I'm talking about.  I know you're reading this right now.  There was a promise made tonight, and I'm keeping it...so here you go.  This post is yours. She drew this portrait of me...pretty  spot on. I was going to wake up at 7:00 a.m. this morning to go for a jog.  It's been about two weeks since I went running, mostly because my back has been bothering me.  The person I'm writing this post for kept me up until nearly 2:00 a.m.  This is not a complaint, it really was the highlight of my day and I would do it every night if that's what they want.  I actually woke up at 7:30 this morning, by some sort of miracle.  When I looked outside, I would have lost money betting that there was a hurricane out there.  It was insane.  It was raining sideways!  Bell got scared and was pacing out in front of my bedroom door so mom let her in.  She came over to me in bed, like she was mak...