There may be hope for me yet. If this guy can get a gal to put up with his bulls*** there must be someone out there for a grouch like me.

To say I grew up in church would be a gross understatement. There were spans of my life where I literally spent more time at the Oak Ridge Church of God than I did at home and school combined. For the vast majority of my young life I didn’t do a single social thing that didn’t involve the church in some way.

So when I turned sixteen and started going out into the world on my own a bit, I was faced with a brand new social scene. I did not fit in. Seguir leyendo »

Now I am well aware that griping about government waste doesn’t do a bit of good. Our elected leaders really don’t care about their wasteful ways. But when I hear stories of government agencies actually working against each other, I’m more than a little annoyed.

A group of volunteers are in Arizona are fighting against a non-native grass called buffelgrass, going on foot plant to plant and manually uprooting the invasive species. It seems that back in the 1960s it was decided that to control erosion and to provide a hearty crop for cattle they brought some buffelgrass from Africa and set it up to thrive in the American southwest. Seguir leyendo »

I arrived at work early, wanting to be inside the building when Jill arrived at work to see her newly decorated office. She’s a dedicated little worker bee though, and she beat me.

So when I arrived this morning she met me at the door with a broad smile. She thought it was great. I went to her office and showed her a few of my favorites and warned her that there were many, many more than those she could actually see.

I went by her office just as she was trying to get a pen and found they all had post-its - this annoyed her. Apparently she’s pretty obsessive about her pens.

By three o’clock most of them were down. The leaf post-its are down to just one, all of the visible one are gone from her desk. The ceiling tiles are mostly still in place but are slowly coming down on their own.

There are many, many post its that she’ll not find for a long, long time. Its the gift that keeps on giving.

When I was out for a few days once, my friend Jill put a cardboard door up on my cubical at work. No big deal but just to keep the fun going I vowed revenge.On Monday I told her that the next time she went out of town I’d have my revenge. Later that day she announced that she’d be taking the next two days off.

I talked to another of the ladies up front and pitched my idea. She agreed to give me full access to not only Jill’s office, but the supply cabinet as well.We spent a few hours after work each night labling nearly everything in her office with post-it notes. Seguir leyendo »

There was this girl I went out with for a little while named Diana. Diana was cool as all get out, though I recall few details for some reason. We met at Pellissippi State in Knoxville in the spring of 97. It was an English Composition class, 201 maybe? But I digress.

At the time I was starting to see Diana I had a weird physically platonic, emotionally involved relationship with this girl named Heather. For some unknown reason I was driving up to Ohio to see this girl every few weeks, just to hang out and see the sites. Seguir leyendo »

USC Gabe Pruitt was having a great week. He was finishing up his college basketball regular season and was getting ready for the PAC-10 tournement. To top it all off he’d met a great girl, Victoria, who he spent the week chatting with via instant messenger. Boy-howdey things were going Gabe’s way.

So much in fact he gave Victoria his phone number and said they’d hook up when he got back to LA.

So when Gabe suited up to play Cal he was thinking he’d have a pretty good game and afterwards maybe get a little lovin. Things were going great until this 79reethrow shooter came to the line. Normally Gabe is able to block out the taunts coming from the Cal student section; the foam poles, the screams, the waving arms. What he could not ignore was the entire student section alternating between chanting ‘Victoria’ and Gabe’s actual cell phone number.

It turns out Victoria is a member of the Cal RallyCon, a school spirit organization responsible for much of the hype at basketball games.

Gabe made just 3 of 13 free throws that night helping his team lose to Cal 71-60.

Maybe Gabe should keep both heads in the game.

Here’s the thing. I am tired of being single. This isn’t anything new, I’ve been sick of it for quite some time. For some reason or another though, I didn’t know what to do about it until rather recently. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. Let me back up.

I used to have no trouble meeting people. In my Cleveland (TN) days there seemed to be a steady stream of girls I was interested in and no shortage of those who had an interest in me as well. I even dated a few of them. Things were great. In the immortal words of Breakfast with Amy; “Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.” Seguir leyendo »

The other day I was out with a friend for a day of art, history, music, beer and an all around great day.? We were waiting at a light when a car pulled up next to us.? In the passenger seat was a man with a broken foot; he had the casted leg propped up in the open window.

I can’t recall what started it but I started cracking jokes to my friend about the guy.? Well he heard us and asked if I wanted to trade legs.? I told him no thank you and the light changed.

It was at least two hours later when I came up with a great response.? I should have said: “I would but I don’t think you take very good care of mine.”? We talked about coming up with the great comeback hours or even days after the innital comment was made and I told my friend about a scene in one of my favorite movies where a similar thing happened.

So today I was stumbling and found a site called What I Should Have Said, a site devoted to the untimely retort.? Is there anything the web doesn’t offer?

“Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.”
–Paul Rodriguez