Waste Managment

I just applied on-line for Waste Management. According to their website they are hiring equipment operators on Wixom. They are looking for people who can run bulldozers, back-hoes and Articulated Dump-trucks. Which is exactly the experience I got working for Metro for 5 years.

I need to call them in the morning to finish the application process. After submitting the forms on the net you need to call, between 8-10 am eastern time. With any luck I can get a job there.

According to the website they have good benefits. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I also applied for a labor position with them in Whitmore lake. I have to call about that too.

Awake...

It's 4:30 in the Morning and both Jen and I are awake. We fell asleep pretty early last night, duing to the fact that neither of us felt okay, I started getting a migraine yesterday about 6:30 am and it lasted all day. No matter how much sleep I got it just wouldn't go away. And pain killers didn't help. Not a big deal, it's a hereditary thing, my whole family gets them. This one happened to be bad enough to make me want to vomit any time I moved. I have heard that they can last up to 3 days, luckily mine have never last more then 24 hours.

At any rate, Jen and I fell a sleep before 11:00 and are now awake again. We are attempting to stay up all day so that we can sleep a normal sleep schedule. Jen has some errands she needs to run today, and my Mom is supposed to be over, Jen is going to help her write a letter to someone about her disability. My Mom has been out of work a very long time, and is supposed to be getting disability from the state. But they are dicking her around, I guess with all the posts Jen did about Mike's death on the LCP my family found out she is literate, which is more then I can say for my family. Most of us can't spell worth a damn, and have horrible grammar. If you need proof, just read one of my blogs. If it wasn't for firefox checking spelling as I typed I wouldn't spell anything right.

At any rate, the idea is to stay up all day. Jen is going to make pancakes and maybe sasuage for breakfast. It'll be a yummy treat for Mike in the morning.

Raingutter Regatta

Mike and I just returned from the Raingutter Regatta for the cub scouts. Mike had fun for most of it, mostly the building of the boat. Unfortunity because of the water levels of the gutter Mike's boat hung up and he ended up getting last place. The crappy part was that they couldn't get the ribbons, so the people that didn't get trophies didn't get anything.

At any rate, here are some pictures from the Regatta.

This is Mike, waiting in line to register his boat. It's kinda burly.


This is Mike starting off his first race, where his boat hung up the first time:


Mike in the third set, the one he did the best in. Though his boat still hung up:


A side view of Mikes boat:

Nighty Nighty...

Jen has been slipping in and out of sleep all night. The pain killers that she was given for her neck make her sick to her stomach. To counter this she goes to sleep right after taking them.

We've spent most of the night in bed, I watched Smallville while she slept. It's now morning she is still a bit woozy. It doesn't help that she can't eat, or keep anything she eats down.

At any rate, just got in from putting Mike on the bus. It's cold out side, have to remember to thank Dad for the coat. It's nice and warm. Off to lay back down with Jen, maybe she'll feel better later tonight.

6 year old + Spray Paint = Bad

Mike and I started on his Raingutter Regatta boat today. As the Regatta is tomorrow it doesn't leave us much time to finish. I had Cameron run me to Meijers last night so I could pick up some model paint and wood glue to finish projects. Thanks to the Michigan scan law, and a mismarked can of Testors spray paint the $3.00 bottle of paint and the $1.69 bottle of glue, along with a bag of cheetos only cost $1.80.

At any rate, before Mike got home from School today I rounded the bottem of the boat off a little with the wood rasp and sand paper I got from Cameron. The block the give you is boat shaped but very flat. Once Mike got home I set up some newspaper and let him paint the fist coat. He did very well, though he managed to cover three of his fingers in paint. We let it dry during dinner, then I gave it a quick sanding and let him do the second coat.

Somewhere in the back of my head I figured it would be ok for me the hold the boat upright by one finger in the tip while Mike painted with a spray can. Needless to say, my had is red. I touched up that coat once Mike left the room. We're gonna give it an hour to dry then attach the mast, keel, and rudder to the boat. One that is done Mike can decorate the sail and we can put that on.

Then, maybe we can get Mom to write the name of the boat with a sharpy or something.

I'll post pictures when it's all said and done.

Dresden Files...

Jen and I just finished watching the Dresden Files on Sci-Fi, or rather we just finished watch it on the net. It's a new tv show based on a set of books we really liked. We've been rather excited to see it sense we found out it was coming, but the first episode left me unsatisfied. I'm about to spoil the episode for you, so if you don't want to know don't read farther.

The main character of the books and show is Harry Dresden, who is a practicing wizard in modern day Chicago. Above anything else, in the books, Harry is a smart ass. He is also very old fashioned, going out of his way constantly to help women and children. He is a nice guy. In the show he appears to be an asshole, and not very much of a wise ass.

I realize that when you make a set of books into a T.V. show you have to change some things, not everything works as well on T.V. as it does in a book. But one of the things that shouldn't change is the main character, and the one in the show is nothing like the one in the book. The show starts off with the main character Harry waking up in bed, with a woman next to him. In the book he was hopeless when it came to women. With the exception of one or two in his life. For him to be waking up with one in his bed is completely out of character for him. After she leaves he walks down into what I can only assume is supposed to be his office where he runs into "Bob". In the books Bob is a sentient spirit of air that live in a skull on Harry's shelf. He is sort of a PDA and Computer for the wizard world. In the books he resides in the skull for protection, in exchange for that protection he helps the wizard that owns him. He is also not able to come out of the skull with out permission of said wizard. Apparently in the show he is the ghost of a dead wizard, and he can come out of the skull when ever he feels like it.

In the book Harry drives "The Blue Beetle" which is as you can guess a VW. It is beat up, most the body panels have been replaced. It is a junky car, but it is his. And the books make a point of the fact that he loves his car. In the show he has a jeep, like it would have been that hard to get a beetle. The case revolves around a kid that has monster problems.

This is the point where I think the show strayed too far from the books. Harry is approached on the street by a kid that wants to pay him to look into his monsters. Harry refuses the money and tells the kid there is no such thing as monsters. This is not the Harry Dresden of the books. The Harry of the books would have believed the kid, he would also have taken the money. This Harry only looked into it after "Bob" talked him into it, which wouldn't have been the case in the books. In the books "Bob" is constantly trying to talk Harry out of doing stuff.

All in all I'd say that if I hadn't read the books I may have liked the show, but there are too many things that they changed for no reason. Things that they should have left the same. In the books technology doesn't work around Wizards. Light bulbs burn out if he stays by the too long. So his apartment is lit by candles. But in the show he has lights everywhere. I also noticed a TV in the background of one shot, he doesn't own one. Not only do the tend to blow up on him, they don't get reception when he's near.

At any rate, I'm gonna watch one or two more shows before I decide to hate it. But I think that's how it's going to turn out.

Blizzard

It's snowing again, why is it snowing again?

We went though all of December with out any snow, and now it won't stop. It's getting to be a bit insane. The cold is bad enough, but do we really need all this snow?

That's all I really had to say.

Beware the spiders.

Last night Jen decided to break out her Palm Piolt, to help us get a little better organized. Mostly because it has a check book program that will maybe help us with finances a little better. She also found a program that lets you add, sort, and search DVDs. So after she got the important stuff out of the way we spent a good two hours making a list of all the DVDs in the house. Later tonight we are going to do IMDB searches and add some vital information to them. This is a good thing, we are constantly wonder what movies we own, and sometimes buying a second copy. Or at least we where when we had money to buy DVDs.

After sorting the DVDs we 'curled up for a nap' before Mike had to get up. Some where in the process of 'napping' Jen spilled water all over her night stand. While we where cleaning it up I looked down and noticed a spider crawling across Jen. Reacting swiftly with my sloth like reflexes I knocked it onto the bed. Where Jen screeched and covered it with her towel. After disposing of it we changed the sheets and then Jen watched M*A*S*H while I tried to sleep. I should mention that I have a sever sensitvity to light, any sudden or intense lights trigger instant migraines. When I got up to get rid of the spider and flipped on the bathroom light I blinded my self, and spent the rest of the night in pain. My head still feels like it's going to explode, even after 7 hours of sleep.

I just got back from GFS, filling out an application. They had a little station set up in front where you could fill out one and put it in the drop box. The also had a sign up saying that the Brighton store was hiring, and that you could apply on-line. So I am searching for that now. With luck they will call me back. I've found a place where you can e-mail your resume to GFS for applications in all stores. I think I'm going to do that too. After all, they have stores or warehouses in Wixom, Brighton, and I hear they are going to add one in Fowlerville. At any rate, that's my update, with any luck I will get a call back. Currently I am going to go lay down in the dark and hope my head doesn't explode.

Big BaaDaaBoom..

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Jen is in the kitchen making some fish and mac & cheese. We where going to go to my parents house for dinner tonight, as it is my dad's birthday. But with the condition of the roads, and the fact that they are just going to get worse we didn't want to risk the drive out there. Gregory is a long distance from here, and mostly we would have to back road it. Though we could take the e-way, on days like today it just seems like trouble waiting to happen, stupid people make horrible drivers.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

I used to love this time of year, winter was always the best for me. But it seems like the older I get, the more I dislike the cold. When I was 16 it would have to drop below 40 before I'd even register the fact that it was chilly and put on a jacket. I almost never wore a winter coat. Until I was working for Metro and had to spend 16 hours a day out in the windy weather, when it was below freezing. After that I lost my ability to ignore the cold, now I get cold easy, and over heat even easier. But that's cause I'm fat.

I still wonder how Paul could stand around in a blizzard wearing short, while it was 5 below 0 and still not be affected by it. I guess it really is just mind over matter.

On a side note, The Dresden Files premiered on SciFi last night. I really want to see it. They are really good books, and while it looks like they changed some of the main parts of it, I still think it might be good. I wish we had cable.

Crash Bandicoot: Warped

Sitting in bed watching Jen play Crash Bandicoot:Warped, she doing a secret level and trying to get all the boxes in the game. It looks seriously frustrating going in the endless circles looking for the last two boxes. Doesn't help that she's on a 'jetski' level and the water is funny colored, looking at it for long periods of time makes my head hurt.

Jen keeps saying she's gonna quit cause it's pissing her off. Willing to bet she doesn't.

Yippy, she made it.

Just one of those days.

Jen and I stayed up all night last night watching the "Lord of The Rings" special editions. We had watched Fellowship on Monday and decided we wanted to watch the other two. We ended up borrowing them from Jen's Dad yesterday. That would be Wednesday I'm talking about. For some strange reason we have two copies of the regular "Fellowship", and one copy of the special edition. But we don't have either of the other two on special edition. We only have "Two Towers" in normal wide screen, we don't even own "Return of the King".

At any rate, we put Mike to bed at the usual time and then we started the movie, and made some cheesy bread sticks that we had picked up. About 20 minuets into the movie we headed into the bedroom to finish in bed. Jen's neck had been hurting all day, so we thought it might help. We watched all of the "Two Towers", and by the time we reached the end it was late. Neither Jen nor I could remember seeing "Return of the King". I knew that I had seen it, I saw all three in the theater. But I couldn't recall any of it. We decided to watch it. We had to pause it about 20 minuets from the end to get Mike off to school. It's a long movie. I have to say that I really enjoyed the extras in the special edition. The added footage is well worth it.

At any rate it was 8:30 in the morning before we made it to sleep. So naturally we slept all day. We where supposed to go fix my parents computer today, but we didn't manage to make it out there. We didn't get out of bed until almost 4:00 when Mike gets off the bus. Then Jen headed out to take her Mom somewhere, leaving Mike and I to fend for our selves at home.

We had chili dogs and french fries for dinner. After which Mike asked if he could play on the computer, so I let him while I read some of my book. Then he wanted to watch me play Final Fantasy. So I played that a little. He went to bed at the right time, Jen came home and took a bath.

It's now almost 3:00am, Jen and I finished watching "Saving Private Ryan" a little while ago, I hadn't seen it in a while and she said she never had. We are now just sitting on the couch "maccing" as it where. I'm strangely not tired, nor can I really find something to do. Seems like every I try to do at the moment is just boring.

Jen's neck is still hurting, we think she might have pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve. I watch her cringe every time she has to turn her head. I don't like seeing her in pain, but there isn't really any way for me to help. The heating pad didn't work, and I tried rubbing it last night. That didn't do any good either.

Ahh well, Maybe it'll be better in the morning. Mike doesn't have school, so it's going to be an early day.

Intersting Video...

Jedi Demo

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I got a call from my mother earlier tonight telling me that my Uncle Erny passed away. She didn't know much about what was going on with the view or the funeral, but she'd keep me posted.

Uncle Erny is my aunt Teresa's husband, that would be my fathers oldest sister I think. Hard to keep the all straight. At any rate I think I've only met the guy twice, maybe more when I was younger, but I couldn't pick him out of a group if my life depended on it. It's rather strange to think he passed away.

SweatBBQ Meat Loaf

Jen made some Meatloaf and Mashed Potato and Green Beans. Mmm.. the meatloaf was some sort of sweat BBQ thing, that she made up I think. It was yummy, I think I ate a pound of it all by my self. Add to it mashed potatoes and bean and I'm so full that I think I'm going to explode.

Seriously, I'm feeling a Monty Python moment coming on, anybody got a mint?


On a side note, I recently picked up Final Fantasy 6 again. It was called Final Fantasy 3 when it was on the Super Nintendo. They re-released it for the PS One right before the PS2 came out. As I am a huge Final Fantasy geek I picked it up when it hit the play station. I think it was Saturday or Sunday that I decided to start playing it again. I forgot how addicting it could be. Now I wish I had Final Fantasy 2. I remember Alan and my self staying up for days on end trying to find everything in the game. Or David playing Final Fantasy 7 in my room, for hours and hours on end trying to get a gold Chocobo. Ahh.. the memories...

All good dinners should end in wine...

After dropping Mike off at his grandparents Jen and I decided to pick up Cam and head over to Stillwater for dinner. Jen and I decided it would be most efficent to drop me off to get the table while she ran back to pick up Cam.

Once I stepped out of the van I knew it would be a wait for the dinner. I shouldered my way to the counter and politely requested a table for 3 in the 'non choking' section. The nice lady behind the counter, who couldn't have been over 16, informed me that it would be at least 1 hour and 20 minuets for a table but probably closer to 1 hour 45 minuets. Stepping out into the parking lot I called Cam's phone and we decided to head to the Olive Garden for dinner. (Stillwater and Olive Garden are the only places we have gift cards for.)

After a 'quick' drive to Novi we stopped into Olive Garden and was informed it would be at least 30 minuets for a table. Even with the drive time, and wait we still get to eat at least 45 minuets before Stillwater.

The service was okay, seems like the Novi Olive Garden gets worse every time we go there. The waiter seems a little on the slow side, and not very bright. But at least the food came out right. And it was yummy.

By the end of the night as we where getting ready to leave the entertainment arrived. By the way of a waiter accidentally dropping a bottle of wine on a costumers head. I guess he knocked it off the shelf. Everybody was apologetic to her, in the end they ended up having to pay for her visit to the hospital for the bump on her head. I could over hear most of the conversation. The lady informed the manager that she wasn't sure if she was okay or not because she had 4 or 5 glasses of wine and her head was fuzzy to begin with.

Brother Odd

Jen, Cameron and I made a trip to borders right after Christmas. With the in store discount and Jen's borders rewards we managed to pick up 'Brother Odd' for a little over eight dollars. We used the remainder of a gift card to purches it, so in reality we got the $28.00 book for free. Which was nice.

It is the third installment of the Odd Thomas books by Dean Koontz. The first book Odd Thomas was a really good book. I thought it had a good plot, and was rather well written. The second book was also a good read, though a little strange. All in all the idea wasn't to far fetched. At least as far as a person that can see dead people is concerned. After all, while he could see the dead, there wasn't anything overly supernatural about it. He just stopped the bad guys.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read the book and are planning on it, don't read the next few paragraphs.

This book was a good read, but I think that it was rather predictable. And disappointing in cretin spots. By the third chapter I had the 'bad guy' narrowed down to one of two people. The scientist and the Russian. By the middle of the book I knew that the scientist did it.

The Russian was a bit a puzzle for me, one that ended bad I think. By the middle of the book you realize that the Russian isn't what he claims to be. From the way the book was heading I thought perhaps he was another person like Odd, with the ability to see dead people. Or at the least he would turn out to be horribly evil. Neither is the case. He is in fact a NSA agent. I mean, really, an NSA agent in the middle of a monastery on the side of a mountain.

As for the 'bad guy'. He turns out to be a mad scientist. Jeckle and Hyde type. He is a monk, and devoted to God, and to proving his existence. In his studies he makes a machine that can produce matter based on thought. Unfortuity he has a 'evil side' that uses this machine to produce evil skeletons and a 'death' figure that tries to kill of the scientist retarded son.

The ending was anti-climatic. It all ended with two bullets from the NSA agent.

END SPOILER

All in all it was a good read, and I glad we picked it up. It eludes to another Odd Thomas adventure at the end. I would recommend it to anybody that is a Koontz fan.

MQoTD

"This games not paradise, this game is hell."

Soar Throat

My throat is sore and scratchy, my eyes puffy and heavy. I'm getting a cold again, I hate the turn of the weather. I wish it would either stay warm, or get cold and stay that way. We have night Quill and Day Quill but it doesn't appear to help at all.

Fucking Al Gore, why did he have to invent the flu?

2007 Here we come...

It's officially 2007. Once more I'm going to have to train my mind to remember to put 07 instead of 06 on things. It usually takes me until June to get it figured out.

With any luck this year will be a lot more productive then last year. Jen and I spent most of last year scraping by. More often then not we barley managed to make rent, let alone the rest of our bills. Tomorrow I am once again going to have to go job hunting. I've been working for my uncle Tim for the last few months, but it's seasonal and there is no work until March, maybe April. He has a job, 100,000 feet of silt fencing to do. We can start it the first day the frost breaks. But, again, that won't be until March or April.

The bright side is that if I can find a way to survive until then I'll be able to work for him this summer and hopefully make enough money to pull us out of this slump we are in. I hate not having money to go do stuff with.

On another note, we spent last night at home watching movies for the new year. Cam came over and we just hung out. It was cool, I'm not much for parties, or getting drunk. Especially for new years, if you go out then you have to come home. And between the stupid drunk drivers and the cops the trip really isn't worth it. We rented a few movies, Pulse, Click, Lady in the Water, and Memoirs of a Geisha. We also used a few gift cards to buy Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

All in all I was mostly disappointed in the movies. Pirates was slow, and lacking in a plot. Though it had good effects and slapstick comedy. It wasn't even remotely as good as I expected. Pulse was decent, I'm glad we waited for DVD. It had an okay story line behind it, but I spent the entire movie wondering why they didn't just shut everything off. Click was funny, in an Addam Sandler sort of way, again it was good DVD rental, but I won't be buying it. Lady in the water was the same, a good story, but not translated well to movie form. Memoirs of a Geisha was good, surprisingly so. I wasn't sure I was going to like it at the beginning. But it turned out to be an excellent view. All in all nothing I regret watching, but I'm glad it was rentals and not buys. Superman was Superman, how can you go wrong?

Now I'm just trying to function on not enough sleep, and trying to figure out what to do for the next 3 months. Wish I had some unemployment banked. Hell, I'd settle for taxes coming in.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!