bjciii: My twisted thoughts

Hey… WordPress (the background software upon which this BLOG is based) put out an upgrade / patch for their recent release. I installed it today and, to the best of my knowledge, things are working perfectly. If you see any problems with my BLOG (other than the content… that, you are just going to have to live with), please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fix it. Thanks.

Yes, people enjoy Christmas. Sure, people like the wanton tossing aside of responsibility on St. Patrick’s Day, but I’m speaking about today… the last day of February. Why am I extolling today?

The Phillies play their first Spring Training game today!

That’s right folks… baseball’s back! As a Philadelphia fan in the big 3 sports, I was mired in the last-place seat of The Flyers, praying for the baseball season to start up. Well here we are as my Phils go against Florida State in an exhibition game today before hitting the major league circuit tomorrow.

I’m still trying to get people to join me in taking a day off for The Phillies home opener in April, but it’s slow going right now. I’m just feeling really good about this season. I mean, when the athletes themselves feel that they’re gonna kick ass, I’m even more excited because the majority of them play the humble card to the media about their team’s chances. All the Phillies, when questioned, say that they’ll not only win the East, but they’re gonna win the Series as well!

Them’s happy days folks!

So I’m gonna have to dust off my old (and now outdated) Phillies jersies emblazoned with Billy Wagner & Jim Thome’s names and numbers so I can root for my team.

God, I love baseball.

After staying at my parents’ house for the past 48+ hours, I realized just how much I love my house. First, I have a couch I can stretch out on, not some dinky little “love seat” that isn’t very loving to the back. Next, I have a shower that I can stand under and get clean rather than squat under and be in constant motion so that the piddly spray can actually do some work.

Granted, I was out of TP last week (a fact that I rectified by hitting Costco and now I should be good for about a year), but at least I know where everything is. I lived in my parents’ house for over 13 years, but now it’s like a completely strange place to me! It’s all good though: I’m home again.

Other than all of that, I had a very busy weekend. I worked and volunteered and now I’m ready for the week to start. I was a little miffed that the snow died around 6pm last night and didn’t even amount to a delay this morning, but c’est la vie! There’s always next week, right?

Last night, as I returned from work, I went upstairs to my only bathroom, and sat to ponder the state of the world with The News Journal in my lap and, upon completing the thought process… as it were… I realized that something was lacking.

Stranded on the bowl with no TP.

Well that’s no good, thought I. Of course it’s all happened before to many of you reading it, so you duck walk to wherever you keep the spare rolls, right?

Oh crap (no pun intended)… no spare rolls. How in the hell am I missing TP when I shop at Costco?! Oh right… I haven’t bought TP in over a year.

So, after some quick thinking (thank you Kleenex… you were soft against my bum), I made sure to make a note to replenish the TP stock. I felt it was necessary to share.

Today is Ash Wednesday in the Christian calendar and that means I’m going to put up with a lot of assholes making jokes about the “smudge” on my forehead. That’s not why I’m writing however…

Ash Wednesday is marked by millions of Christians getting the sign of the cross made on their forehead in burnt palm ash (usually done by an old priest who doesn’t quite get the “sign of the cross” down and it looks more like a big, gray blob). Therefore, this sign is out there for the world to see. The Gospel today, from Matthew, tells of the best way to worship mentioning specifically Let not the right hand know what the left hand is doing (6:1-4).

Choosing that particular Gospel passage for a day where we wear a symbol of our faith, to me, is antithetical. I mean, why choose that chapter and verse which tells us not to trumpet our level of worship on a day where we are emblazoned with a pile of ash?

I guess one may not have anything to do with the other, but it just struck me as really odd.

I just got my first evaluation comments back and I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am. Yes, I know that I’ll get jaded eventually, but right now I’m riding the wave of happy. Needless to say, the comments from the students were all positive. Apparently my worries of being a jerk or unfunny or whatever were all in my head (as usual).

If I weren’t so sick right now, I’d go out and drink tonight!!

God, I’m such a sap

I fully expect to get a raft piled high with shit for this one, but I don’t care. Don’t read if you don’t want…

I am sooooo sick. My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, my right ear feels like the cotton is coming out there and is causing some really weird sounding music and computer alerts, and I think I’ve swallowed a ton of snot over the past few hours. I ache, I’m dizzy, I’m tired, and I’m grumpy. The kicker? I still went to work today. The really fun part is looking at the circles under my eyes which look like I went a few rounds with Roy Jones, Jr.

I have a doctor’s appointment at 4pm, so I’ll be getting out a bit early for that… I skipped lunch, so it’s not like I’m leaving early. Meh. On top of all that, I have to work tonight at the store. I wish I wasn’t so poor.

Thanks. We now rejoin our previously scheduled life already in progress…

I’ve been sick as a dog, flat on my back all day, so I had to do this before I missed the day itself:

That’s right folks… Wade “Lawyerman” Adams (a.k.a “Pimpy Smurf”) turns… what’s that? Is it really? Is he… 30? No way…

I guess that’s right! My boy Edaw, Wahday, Pimpy Smurf, or just: Wade turns the big 3-0. Looks like you’re an A-DULT now bitch!

Happy Birthday pal

I don’t know what it is about our culture that places such importance on the numbers “5″ and “0″ in terms of the age of things. I guess incriments of 5 are very easy to remember for whatever reason. In this case, I can remember exactly where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing 10 years ago today.

I think, right about the time I’m typing this, I was at Feby’s Fishery getting 2 huge tuna steaks so I could bring them back to the place I was house-sitting and marinate them for dinner. Of course, I remember that because I know exactly what I prepared for dinner that night: Tuna steaks in a honey-mustard glaze and some cauliflower.

Why on earth would I remember that? Easy… it’s not just the women who remember the details about the night they got engaged.

Right about now I can feel the vibes from a lot of people who are thinking “Am I reading the right BLOG right now?” Yes, you are. I did indeed get engaged at the tender age of 21 (and a half… give or take a couple of weeks), but as you may guess now, it didn’t work out.

But let’s not dwell on the negative aspects of the evening… the evening itself was tremendously wonderful. I brought my then girlfriend (who was both my future AND ex-fiancee) to the house where I was watching a gaggle of animals, cooked her dinner, proposed in a very sloppy way, and we just spent the rest of the night basking in the decision. I wish I could say that I got down on one knee with violins playing and roses falling all around us, but, if I remember correctly, I believe I walked up behind her while she was at the stove, put my arms around her and asked right there. Of course I had to start by saying “Nothing else has gone right tonight so far…”

What can I say? I’m a huge romantic dick.

10 years ago. February 14, 1997. I think that was one of the better nights of my life, actually. I had the girl I longed for, the answer I had hoped for, and a vision of a future that I always wanted.

It’s funny how things tend to progress

As far as I’m aware, that girl is married now to someone she met in college (well… later in college) and they have (from what I’m told) a beautiful little girl. Me? I’m not regretting anything… I’ve had a lot of experiences since then (good AND bad), and I’m usually pretty happy with who I’ve become. I will tell you this though: I cannot imagine how different I really was 10 years ago. If the 31 year old me met up and had drinks with the 21 year old me, I have a feeling the 31 year old me would have dragged the 21 year old me outside and whipped his/my ass! It’s not because of the decisions he/I made back then, but it’s the level of maturity I thought I had at 21 which I most certainly did not.

Still… it’s both a little funny and sad that I remember most every detail from a decade ago. To “that girl” who will probably never, ever, read this entry… Happy Valentine’s Day.

To the rest of you: Remember your surroundings… you never know what’s going to trigger a flashback in a year, 10, or 50 and you’ll want to remember every little bit.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

Yesterday, February the 8th, 2007, many men wept as Anna Nicole Smith was found dead in a Florida hotel.

I guess this death leaves a huge void in a lot of fond mastabatory memories (or should that be “mammaries”) for a lot of guys. Anna Nicole became larger than life in the mid 1990s and then became a joke thereafter. For those of us who remember that storybook rise to fame instead of the much maligned “reality” show, it’s kinda sad.

In all honesty, this woman led a really Job-like (Biblical reference people… long “O” in the pronounciation) existence over the past decade. She marries an old man, he dies, she is in a ton of litigation for his estate (which apparently will continue even though she is dead), the weight roller coaster, the constant daze she moves in, the ever-present jokes at her expense, the drugs and alcohol, her son dies, her daughter is born, but no one knows who the baby’s father is, and so on… and so on. I’m not saying that being a Playboy Playmate makes the world bow down and have everything go smoothly, but damn… ANS had a bitch of a time.