The evacuation of the OSU Foundation

Reason #345 why Oregon is cooler than other states: The first Friday with nice weather everyone begs off work, and usually has their request granted.


You'd think that a fire broke out in the building the way people flew out of here today. I'd say we're down at least 25% of our normal work force today, for no other reason than it's Friday and it's nice out. Sadly, as I haven't hit the six month mark yet, my PTO is worth diddly poo. So here I sit, writing a blog, and getting paid for it! I always thought a job where you didn't do much and got paid for it would be great, but it really makes the day drag. I'd much rather have a job that kept me busy and on my toes for 8 hours a day than this crap. It's so ridiculous. At this point I'm trying not to do any more work today so I have stuff to do on Monday.

Tonight is the annual OSU Spring Awards Banquet, where they honor alumni and what not. I go every year because one of the awards, The EB Lemon Distinguished Alumni Award, is given in honor of my great-grandpa. He was the dean of Administration here, and founded the almuni magazine The Oregon Stater. Kinda cool, although I feel kinda strange at this big fancy dinner with basically a who's who at OSU and then there's a table of my family. I'm going to buy a tie right after work for the event, because I realized this week that I don't even own a tie at this point in my life. Definitely time to get one.

The Quiznos Prime Rib sandwich is quite possibly the greatest assemblage of meat, bread and onions since....well ever. Enjoy your weekend

Is This for Real?

So during a particularly slow patch at work today, I stumbled across this article online. It's tips on how to "pick someone up who is out of your league" on the internet. Seriously? My favorite is the trick the guy who was a self proclaimed "6" on the looks scale landed a model by asking her about her trip to China. You're kidding, asking for a woman's opinions and conversing about common experiences is a good way to start a relationship? SHOCKING! Or this line: Once youve exchanged a couple of messages, swap phone numbers for the all-important call by saying, I get busy, so lets continue this over the phone. Wow.....I get busy. That'll impress her. Who wrote this crap?


By the way, I fully realize the irony in me criticizing online dating. I also feel there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

That'll Teach Me

So after I made some snide remarks towards my truck in the bulletin I posted this morning, Brown Sugar struck back. I should've known better than to diss my only method of transportation. B-Sug started alright....just like she does every morning. A few turns of the key, followed by a few pumps on the gas and she's off and running. I made it out of the parking lot, down the hill and onto Walnut. As soon as I got onto Walnut and tried to give it some gas, Ol' Sugar just started making noises like she was drowning in her own oil or something. Then the lights went out. Full power loss. Me, stuck in the middle of Walnut during rush hour. Granted, this isn't the middle of I-5 in L.A., but for Corvallis, it's pretty busy. There were a few honked horns and more than a few gawkers, but there I sat, hopelessly turning the key, only to get a feeble attempt from the engine. Then, I kind of got distracted, thinking about how I was possibly going to push Sugar anywhere safely, and turned the key while she was in gear and without my foot on the clutch. This led to a violent lurch forward and a loud, angry engine noise that sounded something like a baseball bat hitting a frying pan It also led to full power! Sug just wanted to let me know who was in charge. She's running like a Kenyan marathoner now. And I'll be sure to limit my negative comments around her from now on.

You learn something new every day.

So this weekend wasn't your typical weekend I guess you could say. Saturday was my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary party. 60 years is a long time. When you think about it, they've been married since WWII ended pretty much. That's a long ass time. I guess they went to church and the pastor made note of their anniversary in the announcements. My grandpa said that they felt pretty accomplished until the next announcement was about a couple celebrating their 70th. Talk about taking the wind out of your sails.


Anyways, the highlight of the party was a "how well do you know Butch and Dorrie" trivia contest. Questions like "what year did they meet?" "How many times have they vacationed in Hawaii?" and "where did they honeymoon?" were on the quiz. (1938, 25, and San Ysidro Ranch, California for those of you scoring at home.) The real big question was "what family secret did Dorrie's dad reveal to Butch a half an hour before the wedding?" Turns out that my grandma's aunt Helen had been a madam back in the day! How's about that.....one of my relatives was Heidi Fleiss way back in the 30's! Needless to say, all of us grandkids were amazed, and a little disappointed that none of the older generations had thought to tell us about that. That's when my grandpa shot back that he had written about it in the book he wrote and gave us all a copy of a few years back. Oops. Must've missed that part.

Another reason grandparents are cool.....they know stuff. A lot of stuff. Today we bbq'ed in my grandparents backyard for dinner. My grandma said something about "it might get chilly with that sea breeze blowing through pretty soon." I had no clue what she was talking about, since we are a good 50 miles from the coast. Well, she went on to explain that everyone who lives in Corvallis should know that in the late afternoon or early evening, a breeze blows in from the west that cools everything down. This is why most houses have their decks built on the east side of the house. Sure enough, my grandparents deck is on the east, shielding it from the "sea breeze." And sure enough....about 15 minutes later, a

Yeah I beat up on girls, so what?

So yet another basketball game against a team consisting of girls. This one had guys though, so that's good. When we were warming up, I looked over and there's this team with a few girls....two that looked pretty good, and a 6'5 girl that looked really good. Plus, the guys on this team were huge. If they were animals, I'd say they were rhinos. I thought we'd be in for a decent game, especially when on the first play, I took a forearm to the face and got my contact lens knocked out. Then I found out that not only did these guys look like rhinos, but they played like rhinos too. Lots of running around with their heads down and not getting their arms over their heads. It was a disaster. We beat them by 50. My teammates loved it. I was bored. For the life of me, I can't figure out why these guys enjoy playing against people so much worse than them. There's no joy in beating someone you're supposed to beat. It's not even fun. But they love it. There's two brothers on our team, and their parents come to the games. At one point, their mom said "wow, we've really improved since last season." I didn't have the heart to tell her that little Johnny only scored double digits because a girl 5 inches shorter than him is D-ing him up. Pretty much I wanted to say "we still suck, it's just we're playing against a bunch of rhinos and women." Not that women aren't good athletes, but let's be honest here.......basketball is not one of those sports where girls can play on an even level with guys. I can think of a few sports where girls are on the level with guys.....golf and curling come to mind. I'm done playing with these guys. I refuse to take part in this debacle anymore. I paid $60 to play, so I'll finish out the season, but then I'm finding a new team. I'd rather lose by 2 than win by 50, and I mean that.


All I can say is TGI freakin' F tomorrow. Enjoy your weekend. Snacks out.

A few random things

Somebody please please tell Stuart Scott that St. Louis is not called "St. Boogie." They are not the St. Boogie Cardinals. Charles Lindburgh did not fly the Spirit of St. Boogie across the Atlantic. I remember when Stu used to say things like "Boo-ya!" and that was as crazy as it got. I liked that Stuart Scott. This new one that says stuff like "LeBron got nutty with a crazy baduka dunk" and refers to having a great leaping ability as having "bunnies" drives me insane. Someone needs to clean house at ESPN.


I've always tried not to rip on people I know in my blog, partly because I don't think that's what blogging is about and partly because they might read it. But I'm really getting a little tired of my co-worker's work ethic. She called in sick again yesterday, and has a dr.'s appointment this morning. My guess is that she doesn't show up today at all. I'm not sure how she has any PTO at all. She gets 20 hrs a month, and she's already been gone for at least 40 this month. Granted she did take a vacation, but I think I'm going to start keeping track of this stuff. It's amazing.

I think my dad and his sisters need to go on Dr. Phil. My aunt Joan thinks we need to put my 93 (almost 94) year old grandpa under 24 hour care. My aunt Pam thinks he doesn't need hardly any care. My dad has to live with him and listen to his sisters tell him what he should be doing. I know they both mean well, but they also live out of the state and don't have to be there day to day. I don't think Dad gets the credit he deserves for doing what he's doing from them. Tough situation. I'm not sure what the solution is.

Happy anniversary to my mom, who celebrates her 13th wedding anniversary for the second time today. They say very few marriages make it to 10 years. Mom's done it twice! She's a trooper. Interesting note, it's also my grandparents 60th today. So happy anny to them too.

After watching Prison Break last night, I'm almost 100% certain they'll never break out. Too many people know what's going on. I've only watched the show twice, but both shows absolutely nothing went according to "the plan." How in the hell that's going to work out, I don't know. And I'm not sure why the work order on the toilet would be cancelled just because Michael got back into his cell. Wouldn't the work order be valid regardless? Or was the order never put through because of other stuff? Who knows.

I lifted weights for the first time in years on Saturday. My arms still hurt. I probably won't be doing that again for a while.

Finally a joke.

What do you call a girl with one foot on either side of the river?

Bridget.

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.

The week that wasn't

So I've neglected my blog all week. That in itself is a crime. I really don't know how many of you read this, but if you do and were hoping for an update, I apologize. I just didn't spend much time at the computer this week. Typically I post before heading to work, but for whatever reason, I woke up late most days this week and didn't have time. Either that, or I was trying to fix my completely f-ed up fantasy baseball team. Three guys hit the DL in one week? Are you kidding me?


Anyways....last weekend was Rachel and my trip to a Catholic retreat for Engaged couples. Basically all we did was write on a topic relating to some aspect of a relationship, then talk about it. We did this all weekend with hardly any breaks. Rachel did happen to walk through a candle display at one point. That was the highlight of the weekend. If I had a video of the event, it would be far funnier than I could ever convey in written words. The setting, the mood of everyone there, the reactions and the look of shock on her face as she tried to avoid crushing any of these candles by hopping around was priceless. I really wish you all could've seen it.

The other thing I need to comment on is the insanity of my aunt Pam. Now, I love Pam to death. But sometimes she does things that defy logic. She's never thrown anything away in her life. Because of this her life is crammed. Literally every aspect of her life is overfull. Her apartment is so full of stray cats she's taken in, stuffed animals and writable cds she got on sale at Costco that there is literally not room for a table. There aren't rooms, there's pathways. Picture an ant farm. That's what her apartment looks like. No spaces, just hallways. Her purse must weigh 20 pounds. Her freezer is full of berries from 1981. It's insanity.

Anyways, this week, she sent Easter Cards to everyone as she normally does. This time, however she sent one to Rachel. Not just me, but Rachel. Now for whatever reason, she sent us separate cards. We live at the same place, we're essentially the same person when dealing with family situations. But that wasn't the very strange part. The craziest thing was that she sent these cards in SEPARATE ENVELOPES! That means two cards, two envelopes, two stamps. My only thought as to why she'd do this is that she sent me a check for $25 (we won't even get into the fact that I'm gainfully employed and don't need 'kicker' checks from family members on my birthday or holidays anymore) and didn't want Rachel to feel bad that she didn't get a check. As if we were going to open our mail at different times, or that we don't share money anyways.

Like I said, I love Pam, but damn.

Are you kidding me?

Let's go over a few of the things that happened yesterday that made me happy:


-I started reading the DaVinci Code again.

-There was a stretch of time in the afternoon at work where I had nothing to do so I could listen to the Angels game on the radio.

-I had a basketball game at Timberhill.

-I saw Ice Age 2.

Ok, now let's go over a few things that pissed me off yesterday:

I'm sitting the break room reading my book, and this lady comes in and starts reading the paper, then proceeds to try to engage me in a conversation about one of the stories. Usually when someone has a book in front of them, they don't particularly want to talk about an attempted abduction, or anything else for that matter. They want to read their book.

I had nothing to do yesterday because my coworker vanished for a little while. I was going to open mail with her, but then all of a sudden she's nowhere to be found. And she came in an hour late again.

My basketball game ended up being against a high school girls team. Apparently the guy that signed us up to play put us in the worst possible league. So let's just say I didn't particularly enjoy scoring 20 and grabbing 15 boards last night. It's no fun playing against people who start screaming and backing away when you come out to guard them.

Invitation Blues

Invitations. You wouldn't think it'd be that big of an issue, but my goodness. I think Rachel's been working on the invitations since day one. First getting the right design. Then figuring out wording. Then you've got the problems of my parents being divorced and how to display their names. Do you put Dale Lasselle and Louise Runkle? Do you say Dale Lasselle and Mr. and Mrs. Runkle? Does anyone really care?


Well we decided we were going to print them off at Kinkos last weekend. That is, until we figured out that it costs 89 cents a copy! If you're printing off invitations, response cards, etc. You're looking at almost $200! How is that saving money over ordering them from a catalog? So we go to Staples. They offer 39 cent color copies. That is, unless you're printing on cardstock. Apparently it costs more money to print on a different style of paper. Why that is, I have no clue. You don't need to use a different printer, different ink, different anything. So the paper costs more, I get that, but why can't we supply our own paper? That doesn't make a difference in the price.

Speaking of Staples, you know the commercials with the "EASY" buttons? Well, they actually sell easy buttons now for $5. Basically it's just a button that you click and then it says "that was easy." That's it. Nothing really to it, just a gimmicky gift. Well, we are returning some stuff that we didn't need, and the guy is having a hell of time figuring out his own register. He called a manager for help, but the guy didn't come. He kept getting more and more frustrated, and I really almost handed the guy an easy button and said "here, you look like you could use this." I really wish I would've now, but the poor guy looked so distraught that I didn't want to make his day any worse.

Just heard on the radio that OSU has disbanded its cheerleading program. It will be replaced by "a spirit squad of students wearing khakis and polos." I think we just stepped into the 1940's ladies and gentlemen!

Weekend Recap

So this weekend was pretty entertaining. Saturday Rachel and I worked out then drove to Portland to select our wedding bands. Growing up listening to all those damn Tom Shane commercials on the radio, you vow to yourself you'll never go there. It gets so bad, you can recite the end of the commercials. "The Shane Company, on the west corner of highway 217 at Scholls Ferry Rd. Open Monday thru Friday til 8, Saturday and Sunday til 5."


And you know what? That place is pretty damn cool. The people are real nice, not pushy, and they give you free bottled water and fresh baked cookies. You can't beat that. Took us about 45 minutes to pick out the rings we liked. Rachel having such small fingers, had to special order a ring that will be here in 10 weeks. We get married in 12. Hope there's no delays. Her ring is really great, five little diamonds totalling a quarter carat. Accompanies her engagement ring real well. Mine is a plain old boring white gold band. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this little plain circle of metal costs $325. I guess since I'm going to have it for life, that's not too bad. Rachel felt bad that her ring was a little out of our budget, but I was able to convince her that she was going to have this thing on her finger for a long time, so she better like looking at it.

Sunday, I woke up and flipped on the TV around 9. I happened upon a show on the Sci-Fi channel called "The Triangle." Semi interesting show. After two hours, the show ended with no real resolution. I was like "That's it? What a rip!" Then I realized that it was a mini-series, with part 2 starting immediately after. So I watched part 2. Then came the utter shock and horror that there was a part 3. So basically I watched a six hour movie on the Bermuda Triangle on the Sci Fi channel. Pretty much the worst way to spend a Sunday morning. But I just couldn't justify watching the first 4 hours and then blowing off the last 2. This ever happen to any of you?