Strange hankering...

I have always wanted an old skool Minnesota Fighting Saints (WHA) jersey with my name and number (13- go figure) on it. Not the cheezy Red and Gold, the kickass Blue and Gold. I had found a place once that would make one, but didn't do it, and now I can't find one anywhere. I don't know why, but I was reminded of that last night, and I have been sort of randomly searching every once in a while since. Odd. Pain in my ass. You all needed to know -- in case you find where I can get one.

Update: One of the places I asked about this said they may start making them because they confirmed NO ONE ELSE DOES. No shit. But I may be able to get one in a few weeks. That would be cooooooool.

OCD can be fun...

Felt the need to clarify my last two posts by adding some links and facts... Everyone should know about hockey. There is only one sport... everything else is just shades of hockey.

More insomnia. Bad timing.

Nothing sadder than a lonely blog. Say "hi."

Oh... my... whaaaa... ? This amuses. I'm a geek.

Came across a blog of naked asian women. Figured I wouldn't link to that, but ... it's out there...

Why are so many women's blogs about their crappy relationships?

This game is almost over... Go Turco! The rest of you cup-stealing stars can eat shit until you choke to death and die. Give that cup back to Hasek, you fuckers. Hull and his crease-violating skate... chop that damn leg OFF next time. Sorry... flashbacks.

I hate coming across what looks like an interesting blog in a language I can't read...

I get up in 4 hrs and 15 minutes. I need some sleep...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOBODY wanted a piece of this...

There is only one sport. Everything else is just shades of hockey.

How the hell do you pick a team with a cream of the crop keeper (and has won 11 straight) to lose a series in game 7 to a team that limped into the playoffs by losing 5 games and then their best player?

Martin Brodeur is the greatest goalie ever. He's going to re-write the records, despite being in the new "high scoring rules" period of the league. Bite me, Roy.

It is the rare team that returns from three games down to win a series. One was the devils in '04. Hard in any sport. REALLY hard in hockey, where you ram into each other at 30+ mph for hours at a time.

I like the Devils. Can you tell?

More from the reclusive compound in the woods...

Shorn alpacas are doofy looking. You almost have to feel sorry for them...


In the morning I go out to look at my fruit trees. I get to see cool things like this... DAMN FREELOADER KILLING MY CHERRIES!!!


Forget hay... roll in THIS:
All kidding aside, I actually ended up in the hospital because of the poison ivy. I was cutting the vines out a tree and didn't realize what it was. I swelled up everywhere and turned red and had to take 'roids and all. Should have used that as an opportunity to lift like a madman...

Got a SERIOUS infestation problem with this janks -- 40 year old vines like 5 inches in diameter. Insane. I'm on wellwater so I'm not a fan of chemicals, but notwithstanding that, these motherfuckers are about to get a nice genegineering bath. Buy stock in Roundup and Bush-B-Gone, kiddies...

Supermegalawfirm

Well, I responded to the formal offer with a formal non-mirror acceptance... I need a later start date. I may soon be a hired gun. Wheeeee... I still can't get over what they want to PAY me. Craziness.

They asked if I would consider doing federal appellate cases on Court appointment. I was like "You're going to pay me 5th-6th year salary to do pro-bono work? Are you on CRACK!?!?!?!"

Bugland

I mowed some of my lawn today. My lawn is about 1.75 acres. Imagine every lawn you ever mowed in your life all at once. With a push-mower. It's a lot of lawn.

The caterpillars are out. They eat my pear and cherry trees. They get in the tomatoes. They congregate on the front porch. The lazy, freeloading bastards. I try not to step on them, but they eat the welcome mat too, and they're hard to see there. Stupid bugs.

The slugs came out for the rain. They leave neat slime trails.

Paper wasps abound. They really seem to enjoy my company.

HOOOOOLY SHIT!!!

I can't believe anyone does that so avidly.

I can't believe anyone is interested in someone who does that so avidly.

I can't believe anyone wrote about anyone who does that so avidly.

I used to haunt her old blog, and I was dumbfounded when she started that site.

To each his... her... their own... pursuits. Clothing, not so much... apparently.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

No cancer. Now what? That is a heavily loaded question...

Happy Birthday to me...

My birthday was weeks ago BUT for some reason my friend's 4 year old demanded that he be able to call me and say "Happy Birthday" to me... today. I don't know why I'm so entertained by that, but I am highly entertained. I'm sort of the eldest brother in that family, and I was over there helping them move and playing with the kids yesterday, so that's probably where it came from, but still, it's sort of cool when kids think you're important.

Where the fuck IS everyone? I'm trying to procrastinate in preparation for a two day jury that I can't win as a matter of law, but I can't find anyone. My local friends are all awol, my far away friends are all awol. The online people I harass are all awol. WTF? I may have to actually do some work...

The interesting week continues.

If I could ever stop having interesting things happen to me, I could get to the older things I intended to get to. Alas:

Yesterday I gave blood. The first thing they tell me afterwards, because I nearly pass out every time is "Don't do any heavy lifting for the next three days or so." So today I helped a friend move. They don't bring me along for my stunning looks and sparkling personality, so I was the heavy lifter. These people own a lot of books...

On the way back I stopped to buy some gaming stuff (I'm a geek, and hordes just came out), and there was this single car accident (it was raining), at a really, really bad interchange ramp. The guy's truck hit the concrete wall in a slide and spun around, and it was halfway up the wall. I stopped to make sure things were alright. Cars come off that interchange at 70-80 miles per hour (it's a 45 mph ramp), and we were on the downhill, inside curve part, so we stepped a bit down the ramp. Cars were nearly crashing into the truck and each other, so I got a bag of trash from another truck that stopped and put it at the edge of the road farther up. Then someone hit the trash and it ended up in the middle of the road. Then people started to swerve TO THE LEFT of the trash. Then someone swerved, the guy behind them swerved too much, and we had a second accident. Finally, after 45 minutes, the state police showed up. The moron didn't park his car at the crest of the hill, but just behind the truck. He tried to lay flares, but it was raining and people were speeding, so they just all went out. I pointed this out to him, but he wouldn't move his car. Then he told me to leave, so I did (it was still raining and I was soaked). I'm waiting to find out they all got killed by some car careening at 80 miles per hour into one or another of the cars.

Moral of the story: drive safely, don't expect the police to save you, and always have flares in your car.

One quart low...

Gave blood today. Had a friend whose father was a hemophiliac and died of AIDS from a transfusion, and she got me started -- I hate needles. Then I got into a car accident and received blood products, so they wouldn't let me give. This scared the shit out of me, so I quit for a long time. I almost always get really sick or nearly pass out. I tell myself I'm never going to do it again, and then I do it.

It saves lives
Other people need it more than me
Humans are designed to bloodlet periodically. It's good for the system.
I quite probably will need some someday -- might as well be my own.
I've needed it several times before.
Like most things in my life, it scores brownie points
It makes it really easy to get caffeinated/drunk
Like a lot of things in my life, it's a habit that started with a girl

Everyone should give blood for at least some of those reasons right there.

A dangerous post

This may come dangerously close to costing me anonymity, but it's such a great story:

I am a defense attorney, in a REALLY REALLY bad, pro-prosecution jurisdiction. I had a case today involving a guy who was charged with, among other things, felony obstruction (involving force or threat) and felony a&b on a leo (law enforcement officer). The officer in question is this 6'7" 270 pound ape (not much exaggeration there either. Nice enough guy, but super-massive corn-fed midwesterner type). The "force" in this case came from a scuffle where ape grabbed my client's hand because it kept going into his pocket (there's a little more after that, but that's the gist of why the grabbing happened). During the scuffle, ape got some scratches on his hand (hence the a&b and felony obstruction). He kept using the term "assisted the defendant to the ground," which is cop-talk, for "I body slammed the mother-fucker."

Ape (I use "ape" as descriptive, not pejorative) and I danced for a while [non-literal re-enactment]:
Me: So you threw him on the ground?
Ape: No, I assisted him to the ground.
Me: You're saying you gently lay him on the ground?
Ape: No, I assisted him to the ground.
Me: Describe that.
Ape: I put my arms around him, brought him around to my side, over my leg and onto the ground.
Me: And then you fell on him?
Ape: No, I assisted him to the ground
[etc., repeat at least 4x]

I've taken martial arts for some time. I was a varsity wrestler. I know what happened here, so finally I got frustrated.

Me: Show me
Ape: What
Me: Demonstrate.
Prosecutor: objection, this is irrelevant.
Me: Judge, they're claiming my guy assaulted him. I'm entitled to show the injuries probably came from "assisting my client to the ground" on an asphalt road.
Judge: I find that it's relevant.

There were some other bits -- I said something like, "I didn't really intend you to use ME as the dummy..."

So, from behind, in the middle of the Courtroom, with a packed gallery, Ape grabbed my right wrist, locked his left arm around me, swung me violently 360 degrees around, levering me over his leg, and fell on top of me on the floor. I'm about 5'8" tall, about 186 pounds (I've lost a lot of muscle mass for lack of time to lift. That will change in a few weeks...)

After we hit the ground I said, "Thank you for proving my point." My client, the Courtroom, everyone, was either giggling uncontrollably, or shocked into silence. That officer will never get away with using the term "assisted to the ground" in that courtroom again.

I then argued that the stop was bad, but that even if that weren't the case, there was no indication of my client attempting to harmfully touch or place the officer in fear of a touch, and therefore no a&b. The prosecutor conceded the point and the a&b went away. There was some argument on the obstruction, which is a poorly written statute, but that one, and some other charges I didn't mention, got certified.

They will talk about that preliminary hearing in that County for decades.

It has begun...

Got my offer letter from supermegalawfirm. Haven't actually read it yet, but I did look at the dress code. I have to wear a suit every day. Gak. I'll be keeping those jeans and workboots in the car a lot...

They think I'm starting two weeks before my current job wants to let me go... Boy, will they be surprised. Which "they" I haven't decided yet...

Wow. It's a fairly significant raise... Then it hits me. Wow.

Into the unknown.

Did not hear from ms. prospective cancer, despite leaving messages. Not cool.

20some cases today, in court until after 5. Tomorrow has almost 30 cases. Gonna suck. Impending jury trials in huge numbers. Glad to be leaving that place already...

Tip the forty for my dead homies

RIP tres-chicas.blogspot.com

I used to have fun there. Good luck to them. I know lauri still does foundclothing.blogspot.com, the concept of which creeps me out. Ick.

I said it before, so I say again: the death of blogs is sad and depressing. It's like people outgrow them, only sometimes you know the people only through the blog, and you don't know what happened to them once they kill it. Or abandon it...

One happy egg...

I have friends with two small kids -- about four and about 2. I used to live in their house, so I am sort of like the older brother. On Easter, the grandparents, who were supposed to hide the eggs, were otherwise disposed, so the father and I had to go hunt plastic eggs at 11:30 so that we could hide them. Jewish guy looking for easter eggs on easter. We hid the eggs ("hiding" is a relative term for a 2 and 4 year old). Yay.

I told the 4 year old that if he took all the eggs he would be contributing to the extinction of the easter bunny. He looked at me blankly.

Where to start...?

Since everyone else is having their little crises right now:

A few weeks ago I had a life-altering event. So for three weeks after that I didn't do anything particularly strange, but felt better about a few things. Then, about 2 or 3 days before my birthday the woman featured prominently in that post called to say "happy birthday." First, I have a really easy to remember birthday, and I knew she knew when my birthday was, and this wasn't it. So I figured this was odd. Then, she was sort of distant and evasive, which would have been understandable after one conversation in 5 years, but she didn't hang up -- despite repeatedly indicating she was about to. So I did what any curious person would do... I pried. Not all at once, but slowly. Stick-and-move style. After a while she just sort of blurted out, "I had some tests and I may have cancer, I have to get biopsied next week."

Wow. remember all that stuff from that other post? I wavered on a few things. So that conversation lasted about 2.5 hours. The one the next day was more than an hour. As was the one the day after that. And the day after that. Then a few days after that, and about every two or three days there's been another fairly long conversation. And email.

You may not have noticed, but I'm not generally considered the most sensitive, compassionate guy. I could not imagine, and can barely believe, first that -I- got the phone call in this situation, and second, that I seem to have fielded it pretty well. I must have said "It will be ok," and "You'll be fine," and "You'll work it out" 300 times each. Beyond that, I was, and still am (though perhaps less so) comfortable with my conclusions from before. I feel a little bad about the "finding out she's a mess" bit, particularly because, at least for the first few days of crying, she was. I'm a little confused by the mixed messages; not that I've got expectations, but how much do you really want to hear about someone's sex life, relationships, relationship with ex-boyfriends, dating, co-workers, neighborhood, job, cats, mother, brother, etc. If I wanted all that I'd hang out at people's blogs. Even so, and despite myself, I care, so I'll quit whining and continue to take up the odd role of "shoulder to cry on."

... and I'm expecting a phone call...

So much... so little...

So much to blog about. So little ability to sleep.

I'm currently playing blogtag with someone, and I have some things I'd like to blog about, but I'm in a foul mood and it won't come out right.

SOOOO, expect pictures of the wierdness of my parents' home (there's a statue of kissing one's own but. No shit, really...), ranting about family... yeah, and hopefully I will have some closure and can tell you about a friend's (hopefully) negative cancer tests.

I can't make this shit up...

I went to my parents' house this week for pesach. No shit, here is an actual, unadulterated picture of part of the entertainment center video selection--nothing altered or moved at all:

Note the exercise video on the far left, with the disney movies and then, THE DEATH CAMPS, a documentary about Nazi Germany.

Oh, and just for S&G's, my sister's pajamas:For those who can't see it clearly, "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them".

I can't make this shit up...

Death of blogs = depressing

It's really depressing to see all of these blogs getting abandoned, deleted, ignored, etc. It's like the shiny new toy is not so shiny or new anymore, so it's being pushed to the back of the closet. Velveteen rabbit. It's also really depressing to see how many of the blogs out there just suck.

All this Grup crap going around

Everything in my life seems to happen in blocks... Everyone's talking about this "grups" thing. Meanwhile, a lot of my friends are having kids and getting married, and obviously, I'm not. However, I do sort of help raise the kids. I lived for two years with a friend of mine's family, and he has two small kids. Yesterday I was in their yard watching the four year old while the lawn was being mowed, etc. The four year old was being four years old, and he wanted to see bugs. Then he got bored of bugs, and I kept telling him to be patient. I found a small wood spider, and he jumped on it. I yelled at him for jumping on it, and then explained to him that he shouldn't kill things because once they're gone, they're gone. He told me that the spider was going to bite him, and I asked what made him think that. Having no answer, he told me the spider was a "bad guy" so I explained that there are no "bad guys" or "good guys," and that spiders do what spiders do, just like birds do what birds do, and people do what people do. Then we found an ant. He said the ant was cute. I was explaining to him that there were more bugs in his backyard than people who ever lived on the entire planet in all of history. At this point he got bored of bugs again and I was going to take him back around front.

That was the preamble. We were beside the fence, which is this sort of slatted picket thing, and I hadn't noticed, but my friend's neighbor's wife was sitting on the deck watching us. It was sort of like one of those things where you get walked in on doing something completely appropriate, but you get embarrased that people saw you doing it -- think taking a shit. So this lady, who is from Brazil or something, started telling me that I am very good with kids, and that I should have kids, and she told me that I am very patient, blah blah blah. I just kept giving monosyllabic grunt responses. It was sort of embarrassing to have someone catch me "parenting" without knowing they were there. I'm not generally considered the "parental" type.

See, in my head, I'm still 15 years old. That's why I avoid constant responsibility, drive too fast, wreck motorcycles, swear like a sailor, play fight with everyone. Getting caught not acting 15 years old is sort of embarrasing, because it feels disingenuous. That's why we're all grups. We all grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, which was such a screwed up time that everyone got damaged. So we all still see ourselves the way we were then. Which is why 20 somethings wear transformer t-shirts and jeans and don't shave. Or watch cartoons and read comic books. Or play games with tiny plastic people.

The crickets are back... Coooooool.

set spring to on -

I don't know if any of you people believe in a supreme being, but it's like one woke up this morning and said "SHIT, I overslept a week!" and flipped the "spring" switch to on.

I live in the middle of the woods, so there's all kinds of bugs and plants and things around here, and today was crazy. All of a sudden there were butterfiles, bees, birds, grasshoppers, dandelions. Literally, yesterday nothing, now BAM!! Bugs everywhere. I'm highly fascinated by the butterflies. See:

I planted a row of fruit trees, cherry and pear:


The butterflies really like the cherries:



They also like the dandelions:


The bees like the dandelions too:

I don't like the bees much. For some reason they LOOOOOVE me. I get stung and it takes me a few minutes to figure out what happened. I'm like, "What's that sensation...? Oh, yeah, THAT'S PAIN!!!! [shriek]"

Did you know that dandelions sort of close at night?
I think I knew, but I'm not sure.

The strangest thing is that you can actually see things changing. My pears have all sorts of different types of stages going on, and from one day to the next you can see the buds open, close, fall off, leaves open, etc. I am truly fascinated.