Infested

When I was just a wee young lad, I had quite a few Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars.

(Actually, I still have them...somewhere in mom's attic.)

I don't remember how exactly it came about that I now only collect one particular style of car, or why I decided that I was going to go with the Volkswagen beetle - but ever since my pre-teen years I've only collected that particular car, and only in the Johnny Lightning/Hot Wheels/Ertl/Matchbox size.

This was actually a good idea as far as collecting goes. It kept the interest going and it kept the cost down. And even though it's more difficult to find just one type of car, I've still managed to piece together a sizable collection. I have one that's a clock, two that transform into robots, several that have working lights and sirens, one that lifts off the frame, and some with opening hoods and some that change colors depending on the temperature.

Many of them are still in their original packaging.


I have most of them displayed at the Granite Falls Public Library in the display case they have. I had to build 3 additional shelves and still couldn't fit the entire collection in...but it was colorful and looked sweet!

(Val - the one that's actually yours is in there. If you can identify it I'll give it back.) :)

I then added a can of Raid and a can of Hot Shot bug fogger, and placed a sign inside the display with what info I felt like including about myself. (My name and city.)

On the sign, I also added the title for the display - Infested
(Hopefully a few people make the connection.) :)

I should have David swing down and take a picture.

The Fog of Winter

Isn't a nice fog in the middle of winter just fun?!

I spent a good part of Saturday shovelling the snow off my roof in case this next round dumps more on us.

I'm hearing it's supposed to start again by the end of the week, but I'm also hearing it'll most likely miss my area.

Whatever. I'll take either.

But anyway, the break from the cold was sure welcome. And I'm amused by the fog that rolled in over the last couple of day due to this extreme temperature change. (Or whatever it is that causes fog in January.)


As you already know, I do most of my driving at night. I finally switched to mornings at UPS - so now instead of showing up late to Schwan's I just leave early. A bonus to that is that while I'm on my way to Schwan's, many of the cars I meet are driven by people on their way to Intoxication instead of those who have already visited.

And then there was the fog.


I like fog. I like the way it rests in the valleys of the Granite Falls Scenic Overlook when I'm driving home in the mornings. I used to love it when it pooled on the playground back in grade school, causing my feet to disappear. I like it when it hovers just above my car as I'm driving down the road, or when it's all wispy and spread out. And I like how a thick fog can disorientate you and how oncoming cars look like ghostly blobs until the headlights pierce through.


But I really enjoy the unique qualities of a winter fog at night. I like the way the trees on a well lit street or parking lot seem to have extra character, and how the snow covered ground seems somehow beautiful and mysterious, and how the highway signs sort of look like creepy murderous hitchhikers waiting in the dark...

No, wait. Not that one so much. :)

And then, when the fog lifted, the trees and shrubs had a frost on them that made them look they'd been rolled in pure white cotton candy and powdered sugar. It would have made for many excellent pictures. So naturally, I didn't take any. (Sheila, I would have LOVED to have you drive up and take pictures of the kids to put on next years Christmas card. Just one. For me. Unless you'd also take care of sending them out if I bought a bunch of stamps.)


Although I must admit, even with all of the things I DO like about fog, I'll probably scream like a little girl if I ever come up on deer...or anything else that doesn't move...while driving in one of those thick fogs.


And maybe I've seen too many movies, but when I'm driving on a fogless night and I meet an oncoming car...there's many times where both the driver of that car and I will both switch to low-beam at what seems like the exact same time.

It makes me wonder if I'm driving toward a me from a parallel universe or alternate reality and if we'll cancel each other out by sharing the same space at the point where we meet.

That's some scary shit right there!

I don't have to worry about that on a foggy night because most of my doppelgangers will also have their low beams on, thus avoiding the simultaneous switch in beam brightness and bestowing the false sense of security offered by assuming it's yet another someone on their way home from Intoxication.

But now the fog is gone and it's cold again and the little person that lives inside my dashboard is telling me that there's freezing rain and snow coming.

The perfect frost is gone and may soon be replaced by ice, and while this also can look neat...it's hell on the trees, and then the street lights and power lines lob frozen projectiles in my general direction when I pass beneath them.

Oh! It's snowing now! I shall have to fill the Super Soaker with alcohol and anti-freeze in preparation for the upcoming confrontation with the snow gremlins on the power lines with their arsenal of ice missiles.

Little bastards.

Many are the paths of weirdness I let my mind travel upon. :)

Beef...It's What's for Dinner!

Just like the ad from the American Beef Council that you hear on the radio.

I made enough meat that we had it for 3 meals. I put it in the Crock-pot and let it do it's thing, and that's what we had.

David had a Knowledge Bowl Tournament on Saturday, and they stopped and ate at Culver's in Marshall before returning home. I didn't really think he'd be all that hungry when we ate.

He proved me wrong.

He ate 2 or 3 large plates full of 'Beef Commercials'.

He really seemed to like it, judging by the fact that he ate that much and that he was saying things like, "Oh, this is sooooo good!"

Todd didn't eat as much because it stung his chapped lips, but he did a good job of it as well.

They said we should have the same thing the next day.

I said, "I can make it close, but I'll have to use all roast. We just ate part of the roast and all of the tongue."

They didn't seem to be grossed out at all.

I was a little disappointed.

And David again had 3 huge servings. He eats more than I do. This is not a small feat.

Now to figure out a way to disguise the liver. :)

Damsel (?) in Distress

Yeah, I stopped for another stranded motorist.
I'll get to that soon enough.

But first - I need to vent a bit, as when I walked out to the Cadillac after work a couple days ago, I saw that someone had hit the front bumper on the passenger side and left a good sized hole in it.

I'm not going to lie. This annoys me. This is the 3rd front end this car has got in the last year.

So now I'm changing up my plans a bit. Instead of slowly going insane and buying a street sweeper to use as my personal vehicle, I now plan to become an assassin...and my street sweeper will be fully armored, have machine guns and bullet proof glass (magnetic...if that's possible), and have blades that swing out from beneath to "Take 'em out at the knees!".

I also plan to have the top of the cab custom built to hold about 8 inches of dirt, and to plant English Ivy and something flowery and viney that will hang down over the windows.

Yeah...That should look nice. :)

But anyway. Back to the topic. Eventually.

Before I get to that, I would like to say that it is VERYVERYVERYCOLD here in MN.

I had to chuckle when I was at Job 1 last night. My crew looked like a bunch of Eskimo Ninjas with their cold weather gear and parkas over their face masks and tightly drawn hoods. It's so cold that the loading bays at both jobs get bitterly cold when the doors are open for any length of time, and a pipe froze and burst at Job 1 while our pops were freezing INSIDE at Job 2.

Indeed...It was so cold this week that even the Buick pretended briefly that it wasn't going to start.

"Silly Buick...You had me going there!" (I might keep "slowly going insane" for a hobby. I'm working that angle here.)

OK. The background details have been established. I'm ready to get to the subject.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you do something, and right as you do it you think to yourself..."Oops. That was not a good idea. This will end badly."

Well, that's how I would have felt LAST week if I had driven to Job 2 in the Cadillac and the roads were as bad as they were yesterday.

Seriously. I don't think I have EVER driven on crappier roads. And like I said, it's COLD!!!

So I called my boss and asked if he had enough work left to make it worth my while to come down.

He said, "Probably not."

So I went down.

When we were done 2 hours later, I swung over to the Wally for a couple of movies.
(I also picked up 11 post-Christmas clearanced "Terry's Chocolate Oranges w/Toffee". These are very good and I recommend you try them if you have not already done so. This has nothing to do with the story, but it's so cold that Wal-Mart was closed overnight tonight so I was not able to buy out the rest.)

And then I drove home...ward. (Whoa! De-ja-vu!)

By Cottonwood, there was a truck in the ditch.
I stopped and offered a ride to the person no longer driving.
But this time, I can't tell you if it was a male or female as the person was actually dressed for driving in horrible weather and I couldn't see any part of them except for a small bit of face.

English was not this person's primary language, so there was a bit of a language barrier - which didn't make it any easier to identify the gender.

At any rate, as you've already figured out, the person accepted the ride.
They lived "4 miles down Highway 4". That was the extent of the conversation. From there, I got as close as I was allowed to through hand gestures pointing the direction to go.

And Highway 4 was not pretty. There would have certainly been some "This will end badly" thoughts if I had driven on the road last week if it had been in the same condition.

But it's not last week, and neither the road or the car are in the same condition. And since the front end needs to get replaced anyway, I pounded snow drifts that I wouldn't even consider TRYING with the Buick... and I have way more faith in the Buick!

I shit you not. The road looked like "An Ocean of Snow in High Winds" with waves over a foot high in places and with wave after wave after wave pummeling the front end of my trusty car.
However, there were no thoughts of "ohshitohshitohshit..." like last time. Instead, there was some..."Hello!"s, and some "Oh, there you are!"s as my wheels reclaimed paved road.

In fact, I was having such a good time that the person had me drop them off at one of their neighbor's houses.

I heard them say "YOU bring me home!!!"

Funny. THAT came out clear enough!
Ha! I taught him or her to speak English.
(I suspect they were as white as I am by the time they got out.)

Then I drove home and woke up the kids to watch movies. I figured school would be closed for the day, and it was.

Christmas - 2009

Well, sort of. Due to the snowstorm situation, we ended up getting the family together on New Year's Day - 2010. My sister-in-law, Tamsen, brought her 2 children down from The Cities a couple of day's ago and had already gone back - so it was the parents and my sister Sheila and family (minus Moriah due to a work conflict) who were here just for the day.

Tamsen stopped at my place on the way home from mom's place, and it was the first time she'd been there so I would have liked to have had it in better order than it was. Alas, one of my children must have thought it was too much work to bend over and pick up the straw the last time they used the vacuum hose, so there is now a big clog of crap inside the hose that I'm still trying to figure out how to remove. (The vacuum was made by whatever company made the original Electrolux - Aerus? - and has a power attachment on the hose. There's a hard, bent plastic piece upon which the power nozzle attaches - which prevents me from ramming the whole hose down the length of a broom handle to break the debris jam loose. Of course, that's way more detail than you need to know about any of this... but I could use some ideas. Or a really tiny dog - tied by a long and sturdy string to a bouncy ball just slightly smaller than the width of a vacuum hose - that I could place on one side of the hose and call him through from the other.)

So, since the house was in the usual state of disarray, I brought her outside and gave her a verbal description (as it was all under snow) of what I've been doing with the patio and landscaping. You can probably relate to how this worked as the only pictures of it have been on Sheila's blog, and those are already a couple years old.

Oh, I checked for any plants that were coming up. None so far. Only a few months... :)

Back to the topic but still on the patio subject... Mom got me an over sized toad statue thing that I've been wanting. We'd seen it at one of the local nurseries last summer so she knew it amused me. Alas, my paths and solar lights and shorter fairy statues and the other two toads are all under snow, so it'll be hanging out with Dangit (the cat) and me inside the house for the time being.

The statue thing was made by 'Toad Hollow', which probably has a website in case you want your own "pissy toad" (my name for it) to greet your garden guests.


The plan originally was to go to Sheila's for Christmas - but then the region was dumped on by one to two feet of snow and apparently snow plow crews prefer to not work on major holidays... or for a few days after... so we stayed home.

I had done no decorating so there wasn't much of a Christmas theme to the house, but we made it work. I invited the mechanic (the guy that deboned the deer David shot) to join us as the weather had also wrecked his Christmas plans.

We deep fried a bunch of stuff. And had a beer.

No beer for the kids as they are too young - and didn't want any... which is good because I only had 3 left - and who wants to share on Christmas, of all days! :)

On Christmas Day one of the kids' friends came over. He was still here on the 29th so I was starting to think I might need to Google a recipe for "figgy pudding" as it appeared he might actually not go until he got some. :)

I did, however, make them a pork roast and threw a pig heart in with it which I had them try before I told them what it was. I've been wanting to do this with the beef tongue but haven't had the opportunity yet. (This has worked with bear meat, elk, alligator jerky, etc. I'm surprised they never ask what it is until it's already in their mouths. I should find a rat and marinade it in squished cicada pulp.)

Satan sent her douchebag boyfriend to pick up the kids on Wednesday so they weren't here for the family gathering today. That in itself was annoying, but even more so as I kind of hoped to hit him up for a valid driver's license and proof of insurance as I'm thinking he might not have either as he also has no job. (She got him alcohol for his present. Her current husband, also still unemployed to my knowledge, is an alcoholic. I once again find myself struggling to understand her logic.)

She has a thing for losers. This does NOT help my self-esteem. :)

And then Douchebag picked them up early enough where the kids were gone before I got up, and I had put 3 packs of ribs in the Crock-pot and had no kids there to eat them. So the first kid that stopped by asking for them was invited in and he and I had barbecued ribs - and later when the mechanic mentioned he was taking his break and was off to find a place that was still open, I told him to swing by my place and grab the Crock-pot. And I still have some left!


But now it's 2010 and I should think happy 2010 thoughts and whip up some resolutions.

The cat and I haven't whipped any up yet.

I've had good luck with setting a few goals but haven't really worked the resolution angle.

I hope his is to eat less, shit less, and to stop pressing his cold, wet nose into my eye sockets when I'm trying to sleep.

And if he could stop using my testicles as stepping stones every time he walks across the couch, that would be okay, too.


Happy New Year!

Damsel in Distress

Well, I guess we'll be having a white Christmas. I have NOT been dreaming of a white Christmas - but since the ancestors saw it fit to settle here and I haven't taken the initiative to load up the Conestoga wagon and hitch up the oxen to settle somewhere warmer, I guess I can't complain.

It looks like I'll have to change my plans for Christmas as they're saying it's supposed to be the worst snow storm since the 1960's. I was not yet alive then, but I've seen a winter that left a house outside of Marshall under snow... so I guess this could be quite an impressive snow storm!

At least I live on a hill so I don't have to worry about flood insurance!

So yesterday morning I went to WalMart after work and did a few "test runs" with the Cadillac on the empty snow and ice covered parking lot. (It's much easier to get the rear end to swing than it is with the Buick... although the Buick is far better at "reverse cookies".)

And then I drove home...ward.

The snowplows had not gone by yet so there were a lot of drifts awaiting me. But we've had enough snow now where I've been able to practice my "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" style of winter driving, so I was merrily fish-tailing down the highway listening to Abba...loudly...(max volume, actually) when I saw a car up ahead that had its headlights situated at such an angle as to announce that it was in the ditch.

So I stopped and offered a ride to the person no longer driving.

I couldn't see the person until she was at the passenger door, and it ended up being this petite young college girl who was on her way to her grandparents place in Willmar from where she attends school in Iowa. She was dressed in shorts and had no proper attire for winter driving, so apparently when I do get around to pioneering off to somewhere warm, I only need to move one state farther South. It must be MUCH warmer there in December!

I was actually really surprised that she accepted the ride as readily as she did as I'd been at work and I'm sure I had some pretty good static electricity hat-hair going on. I figured she was either overly trusting or had a knife and some mad ninja skills. But she did accept the ride, so I moved my bag of frozen blueberries and my 4 boxes of Apple Flautas to the back seat, she got in, and off we went.

She said she'd been there for about half an hour and that 2 other cars and a snow plow had stopped. The two cars were people on the way to work that couldn't really do anything to help. I'm not sure what the snow plow guy was doing 'cuz he sure didn't seem to have plowed anything. (Although he DID give her the number to a towing service - that wasn't open yet.)

I prefer driving on bad roads by myself. With the Buick, as I come up on snow drifts I'd be thinking, "Ooooh! Here comes a BIG one!!", and fishtailing through the slop would get a "Wheeeee!!!!" With the Cadillac and a passenger it was more like "ohshitohshitohshitohshit..."

And of course the roads were extra sloppy whenever I met a semi.

I was also really, really tired. But for obvious reasons I wasn't going to let HER drive. :)

But I'm afraid that's really all there is to my tale. Through the combined efforts of my incredible winter driving skills and her ability to have a non-stop hour long exchange of text messages with someone at 4:30 am, we arrived safely at her grandparents place. She offered me $20 (I declined) for the help. I wished her a "Merry Christmas!" and a "Good luck with your car." and left.

So that was my Good Deed for the day.

I stopped at SA for a refill of the 64 oz pop and once again I was by myself and merrily slopping through the slush at speeds just a hair faster than the posted speed limit with the radio volume set back to the loudest setting. I got myself home safely, chatted briefly with the kids, and went to bed.

So then we fast forward to the afternoon. The kids are back home from school.

Something stirs in the back of my mind...
it's coming into focus...
Yes! There it is!
"David...Run out to the car and bring in the 4 boxes of Apple Flautas and and the bag of blueberries. Be careful with the blueberries so they don't drip all over."

I guess we'll be having blueberries with whatever I throw together to eat on Christmas Eve. I would have preferred to go to Sheila's and join the family in having our usual Bohemian meal.

Sheila and Rachel - thanks for the cards. They just showed up today! :)

Merry Christmas!!!

Trampoline...no longer.

Yup. That's what I've accomplished this weekend. I took down the trampoline. And I'm using the bouncy black mesh stuff to cover my utility trailer because it still has both my new push mower and one of the riders in it. And tomorrow I'll have to hook it up to the car and try to back it up to where the trampoline used to be so it's out of my driveway when the snowstorm hits.

I just love winter. It makes my life so much less complicated.

I would have gotten more done if I would have gotten up earlier. But I didn't. And then one of the kid's friends stopped and asked if I could run his family to Willmar because the driver that was lined up to take them had a family emergency. And so I did.

When I picked them up I thought they might be getting their pictures taken because they were dressed up very nicely and the mom (who I am just officially meeting for the first time) is fighting with her little person trying to get his hair combed just right.

It turned out that they were going to a Christmas party that was apparently sponsored by a women's shelter or something... so I felt a little stupid dropping them off as they are a black family and I was driving the Cadillac and I had my cap on backwards like some homey wannabe and now looked like a wife beater.

And then I went shopping (bought notta) until the party was done, picked them up and brought them back to Granite. She said she also felt a bit stupid as she had seriously overdressed the 3 of them for the occasion and felt that everyone was staring at them.

I couldn't help but chuckle to myself as she was talking about the meal that was served. She specifically stated that she appreciated it and that I wasn't to take it that she didn't, but she felt they should have included corn bread and a couple other items that I've never even considered to be part of a traditional Christmas meal. (My family has always done a very simple meal of a sweet bread in molasses with ring bologna and prunes. I think it's something that came from the Bohemian part of mom's side of the family, and I have no idea how to spell the word for the bread stuff. It sounds like "bush-ta-keys" - and people who are not directly from the blood line seem to enjoy it even more than our own family.)

So then we talked about whatever came to mind. It's always interesting to see how similar and different you can be to someone at the same time. But I do give this lady credit because she wouldn't let her son stay overnight at my place the one time he'd been over...while I was home, anyway...because she hadn't met me yet. And now she has, so I think he's good to go.
(She gave me gas money and a tray of homemade cookies. Score!)

But anyway, I do like the Christmas part of winter. I think people generally are more friendly during the month than they normally are. I'm not sure why the people who decided what day to celebrate The Birth picked the middle of winter for that day, because to me it seems like it would be a lot more handy to put up Christmas lights in May through October rather than in one of those months where the weather forecast includes chances of flurries.

Maybe it's because they didn't have electricity and therefore didn't put up strands of lights.
But still. Plan ahead a little bit, OK?

And at Job2, like we have for the last few years, we listen to 94.7 FM - which plays nothing but Christmas music for the entire time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's amazing how many times we hear the same classic songs during a night that are sung by different artists.

And when you hear them often enough, you question the lyrics.

For example..."There's marshmallows for roasting..." Do people do this somewhere during December? Is this really part of someones holiday tradition? Cuz' I sure ain't about to bundle up in my freezer suit from Job2 and huddle up against the fire pit to burn a marshmallow.
And from the same song there's the line..."There'll be scary ghost stories..." Really? I'm thinking you're running a couple of holidays together there, Tim Burton. (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

Not that I have anything against these songs. I sing along even if I think the lyrics could use tweaking. I even do some tweaking. Like so...

"A Child, a Child, shivers in the cold. Let us bring Him silver and gold. And an electric blanket."

See? Now here again we run into the problem created by having no electricity during this time period. At least He could use the blanket. Not sure what the silver and gold would've done. Unless they also hadn't created wrought iron and needed silver and gold to make a headboard for the cradle in the manger.

Whatever. I'm sure December 25th was an important day for some pagan ritual or something so Christianity used it to detract the significance from the pagan beliefs. (I don't know if "pagan" gets capitalized. I hope "spell-check" corrects that if it's not right.)

Time to move on. Pretend that the "electric" part of electric blanket, wrought iron, silver, and gold somehow ties the first part of this in with the second part. Although none of this really ties in with the title...

So anyway, I mentioned yesterday that I had talked to David's science teachers. Blah blah blah David has good grades but is missing assignment whatever so write that down and get it turned in there David or I'll have to pummel you love dad.

I asked them about the Table of Elements and if there were only the 4 or 5 metals that were non magnetic. Turns out I had it backwards and that there's something like 88 metals and only 4 or 5 ARE magnetic. So then I asked them if there was a way to bend magnetism. But before they could answer I asked how to make metal magnetic as I'm thinking that you can do so by pounding two of the right metals together. They said to run an electromagnetic current through the metal.

Oh, sure. Let me just strike my MacGyver pose and I'll use this piece of chewed gum and the foil wrapper it came in to rewire my vacuum cleaner (now that the lice problem is taken care of) to make me an electromagnetic current producing thingy.

So by then I knew that it was time to move on to the next teacher, which just happened to be Todd's cute English teacher. But that was across the gym so I had time to think a bit.

If there are 88 metals and only 4 are magnetic, what are the chances that some don't conduct electricity? How about some that store electricity but can't run it through from side to side? How about something like that that doesn't start on fire when you accidentally microwave it?

Just think! The people at Arby's could wrap their ham sandwiches and beef-n-cheddars in this electricity storing metal instead of the fire hazard foil they currently use, (which burns in approximately 5/8 of a second with the microwave set on "high" - by my accidental experimentation.) and then, when you are done warming a sandwich on your lunch break, you can cram the sandwich's nuclear charged wrapper into your Ipod's battery compartment and let it run on that!

Or how about a portable microwave? Just run the non sparking, electrical current conducting wire from inside the microwave to the power cord in the back and the thing'll run on it's own nuke power! (Probably will have to have a nuke charged Arby's wrapper compartment installed to get the power to kick in.)

No more peanuts on long air flights! "No, ma'am. Won't be needing those peanuts today! Got me my portable microwave and my Arby's sandwiches here! Hey. What's this mile-high club thing I hear tell of?" *wink wink*

Or better yet, just wire a couple portable microwaves to the engine of one of those ugly-ass Toyotas that run on part electrical, nuke a bowel of water and convert the vapor into steam power for other half of the hybrid power, and thereby eliminate the need for foreign fuel? (If not the ugly-ass foreign car.)

Yes. I am a genius. And this is why I stand in a freezer or load boxes on a truck for my money. :)

And while I'm on the subject of magnetics again... have you ever put a magnet over sand and found that some of it will "stick" to the magnet? Well, glass is made of sand. If this same glass were to be made of all magnetic sand, would the glass then be magnetic as well?

The speakers in a car all have magnets behind the cones. They could then be stuck to your windows wherever you want them instead of producing "clear and accurate" sounds...to your knees!

"True Surround Sound" has already been used. Probably has a trademark on it.
False advertising. :)