"Are you gonna open your door again??"

My afternoon/early evening took a quick downward spiral; only to be saved by mowing the lawn.

Flashback to yesterday. I see my manager go into meeting with the HR guy. After the meeting as he walks by and I ask him to come over and approve a bid I had finished. He comes over and says, "Remind me, we need to talk". Great. "Uh oh", I reply. Nothing; no response.

So for almost 24 hours I'm trying to figure out what it is about. 'must be internet', I tell K. I'm a top producer and STILL have time on my hands. Got to fill it with something; and I can't have beer at my desk.

I decide to take the pro-active approach and find out this afternoon. It's WORSE than getting busted. I have to train an intern in June. SONOFA...

Yes, for two weeks I have to show an intern what we do, how we do it before they move to a different department for similar training. And I have to have a schedule put together by next Friday. It can't get any worse than this.

Yes it can.

I stop off at the gas station on the way home to fill up with liquid gold. There's a woman at the pump next to mine(imagine are cars are parked side by side and you get the idea). Then this sketchy guy comes up to me with amber contacts. 'great, now satan is going to bust my chops about work'. No, he's asking for change for the bus(carjack my car), and I honestly have no money on me. I'm paying by debit card. So he moves to the next guy in front of me. I open my door to get my lawnmower gas can to fill it. The lady is finishing her fill up and goes inside. I catch her and the employee looking out into the lot. I'm thinking they are watching the drifter walking around. Meanwhile, I'm observing my shoes wondering if beer really can make you smarter or if its just me.

Then I hear it, "Are you gonna open your door again?" WTF? It's that lady, who sounds like she's lived in a pack of Camel's and Boone's Farm for the past 45 years. "What?" I ask. "Yea are you gonna open that door again? Can't you read that sign?". I put my hands on my hips and give her a smirk, all the while thinking, I have no idea what the fk she's talking about. The smirk must have got her because the next thing she said was "You sonofabitch if you're gonna blow yourself up you're not taking us with you! It says to keep your door closed!" Then she mumbles something incoherently and drives off. All the while I'm thinking, that drunk is making me thirsty.

I look at the sign and she was referring to the static electricity warning while pumping gas, which stated not to re-enter your car. I felt vindicated by my ability to comprehend the English language and be a rule follower all at the same time.

I pull in to the driveway go directly to the fridge, do not pass without a frosty cold barley pop and....

No beer.

I had to settle for cutting the grass.

Open Wheel Wednesday

At IMS yesterday, the field was let loose for the first full practice. Topping the charts at 226.599 mph was Marco Andretti sporting the Indiana Jones livery (pretty sharp I must say). His speed was somewhat exaggerated as he had a draft from Castroneves. Rounding out the top five were Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, Ryan Briscoe and Dan Wheldon. My early pick for a 500 winner has to be Scott Dixon.

Crowd favorite, and sexpot, Danica Patrick was 9^th at 224.095.

How about the newbies? Will Power made the biggest splash by breaking the top 11 with a 223.550. Other notable first timers were Justin Wilson (12^th), EJ Viso (15^th), and Graham Rahal (19^th).

Davey Hamilton, who has been out of the car for a while came in at 22^nd. He’s part of a new team called Kingdom Racing, which is a Christian focused team hoping to spread the word through trackside events.

Formula 1 will be preparing to invade the streets of the principality of Monaco on the 25^th. It is THE place to be see and be seen in F1. It’s quite a rinky-dink course for today’s F1 cars but the setting is unbelievable.

I think it is STILL Monday

The alarm starts ringing about 5:45am each work (ugh) day and each work (ugh) day I roll out of bed at about 6:10am. K sleeps in and meets me downstairs for coffee before the kids get up.

I follow the same routine each day like a beat down dog; really, that’s the only way you can get me to work – beat me down.

I make the coffee; eat a piece of toast and wait for my conditioned response, the footsteps on the stairs. Nothing. This is the point where we reach the decision box on my Visio flow chart. Did K come down? Yes or No. If ‘No’ proceed to taking coffee to bedroom. Yes I am that good of a hubbie, and don’t you forget it. May I remind you, I threw the surprise party of a lifetime for K two weeks ago? That reminds me, I need to remind her.

But before I could even get to the coffee, children #1, #2, & #3 come trotting down for breakfast; every one of them in good moods ready to take on the day without a care in the world. Lucky turds. Time is now 7:00am. Child #2 asks if we have glasses that look like her teachers as it is ‘dress like your favorite teacher’ day at her school. I remember ‘sit in your seat, do your work and if you do anything remotely mischievous I will pull you by your hair to the chalkboard’ day. Whatever happened to that one? It went away with conservative values, morals, and ‘my kid is a winner ALL the time and should not be punished by YOU’ and now we will all pay for it. So I replied, “I don’t think we have any glasses like that”. She went to ask her mom and came down shortly thereafter. I asked what her mom said; to which child #2 replied, “She’s still in bed”. It’s now 7:05am.

I plod upstairs with the coffee in tow, “what are you doing? You need to get up”. K replies, “My head is killing me”. We’re all suffering through Spring allergies and our house sounds like a nose sniff on an audio loop.

My first thought, which rolls right off my tongue, as usual, is “Call in sick, I’ll take the kids to school and call in myself”

She says she can’t that she HAS to go to work.

I guess I’m going too.

Now it’s 8:20am and I can hear the CEO pissn’ and moanin’ in the morning meeting next door. I'm in Hell.

Monday Morning Musings

There was absolutely no open wheel racing to catch this weekend. However, NASCAR nation rolled into Richmond, VA for their annual Spring Saturday night shootout.

I had no interest in watching this, but ran across it as K and I were looking for something to watch late Saturday night. K made her disdain known as soon as we heard Darrell Waltrip's voice in the booth. I don't blame her; I don't watch NASCAR racing any more. Mainly because it's oval racing 98% of the time and I find the majority of those races as fun as going to the dentist.

But there were only about 10 laps left and Kyle Busch was inside Dayyyuhl Jr battling for first place. I said, "They are going to wreck" and sure enough Kyle gets a little loose being pinch down low in the turn and Dayyyuhl Jr looks to chop down a him slightly and a spinnin' they go. My next comment was "Sonofa.... now watch these fans go nuts". And like clockwork the Jr fans were on the catch fence five deep like flies on fly paper. You know, the gooey amber colored ribbons you pull out of the little canisters and hang up for all the summer bugs?

You see Jr hasn't won a race in 71 tries, I think. BUT he is THE most marketable driver in NASCAR since the death of his dad at Daytona. That along with his Budweiser sponsorship, up until this year, was a promoters' wet dream. And NASCAR, no dummies, to pimping out their drivers(not bad in my mind), capitalized on this to no end; sometimes with suspicious calls near the ends of races or a particular driver getting 'the call'. No proof of this just a hunch.

And you know what? Jr is a genuinely good guy. He's not a phony, he's not a whiner, but he's just not that great of a racer. I don't think he's got the talent that his dad had. That's not a bad thing but sometimes the yahoos in the booth act as if he's the second coming of Christ; and the borderline homo erotic fanaticism by the fans freaks me out to no end.

I'm sure Kyle Busch had to have a police escort to get out of Richmond in one piece after that accident. But that's all it was, a racing incident; no more no less. But it did provide a little bit of entertainment on a Saturday night.

LOST - Something Nice Back Home

Once again, Oklahoma spring weather has denied me of my favorite 1 ½ hours of television. The Office and LOST were shown (or not shown) with complete interrupted service. That is, if you chose, you spent that time watching every single local affiliate tracking storms as they passed through Green Country. So we resorted to cable channels, mainly Ace of Cakes on the Food Network.

Ok. On to LOST(which I watched online this morning before taking Child #1 to school).

What we know:

• Jack has an on-island appendectomy and is none the worse for wear; He’s sweeping wike a babeh
• Claire has gone of into the jungle, sans Aaron, with ‘her Dad’(is it Jack’s dad as well???)
• Sawyer has another zinger of a one-liner, “I hate Chinese first thing in the morning”. I darn near spit out my morning coffee on that one
• Juliette is just plain spacey at times
• Jin figures out that Charlotte can speak fluent Korean and threatens to break all of her colleague’s fingers if she doesn’t come clean. Jin is a bad A
• Hurley tells Jack that the Oceanic 6 are all…….DEAD! Could he be right??? In his words everything is too perfect

My thoughts:

• The Oceanic 6 may very well be dead
• Kate is fulfilling some wishes of Sawyer which pushes Jack over the edge. This must begin his downward spiral in the flash forwards
• How come the militia are still alive? Smokey didn’t off them like we thought
• Jack had no scar from the appendectomy in his flash forward; hmmmmm
• And why does Jack get sick, on the island, right before they are to be ‘rescued’?

Mr. Manatee

There’s this co-worker, not from our area, that is giving us part-time assistance on a daily basis.

This guy is huge. He is probably 6’4” and shaped like a pear. His head looks like a nugget compared to the rest of him.

His belly is so big that, it alone, could keep his jeans pinned up to his body without a belt. Every time I see him I think he has a manatee under his shirt.

Oklahoma in the Spring

Our season of flux has begun. Oklahoma in April can see an 85 degree day one day and 45 degrees the next. No joke; it is like a roller coaster of environmental proportions. Don’t let the tree huggers tell you its man-made global warming. It is Oklahoma, pure and simple.

Along with this consistent change come two (and probably a lot more) constants: seasonal allergies and poison ivy.

You name the tree and there is bound to be at least a 1 out of 5 chance that someone in our house is allergic to it pollinating. If it’s not a tree, it’s a weed. If it’s not a weed, as in my case, it’s my allergic reaction to work. I digress.

Along with these allergens there is another one that strikes only me. I can be in near proximity to it and it attacks me like a 5 lb Chihuahua attacks an area rug. I have succumbed to my first case of poison ivy. For a couple of days I have been itching; itching on my forearm, on my chin, near my lip and on my chest. I'm afraid they may have even hit my nether regions. I hit it with a concoction from a local compound pharmacy called George’s biker juice. It’s a wonderful blend of isopropyl alcohol, camphor, menthol and other things that I’m not sure of their origin. Whatever they are they help, and they help a lot.

For now, I have to ride the waves of itching until I’m no longer feeling like Ashley Judd in Bug.