Real quick here. If anyone does not have one of those little toothpaste tube roller upper thingies, then they are most likely a dumb shit. You can see a picture of one here http://www.4imprint.com/imageserver/productimages/4imprint/detailed/6123.jpg. There are several different kinds. You feed the toothpaste tube through it, that way, all the toothpaste is always at the front of the tube. Everyone should have one, they cost less than a dollar.

If I can remember, I might compile a list of small helpful cheap tools like this that everyone should have in their arsenal. Maybe "10 REALLY cheap things that will improve your life".

I have another project in the works that I will begin on in about a week. It will involve some soldering of really small electronic parts, which I have never been good at, so the project is partly due to my desire to get better at soldering. More on this later.

Tons of stuff since last Thursday. For one, as of right now, it has rained a little over 4.75 inches (that's a little over 12 cm for you metric folks) since Thursday. We have not had rain like this in a few years. Good times considering how long we have been under a stage 3 water restriction. Friday I brewed up a batch of cream ale beer. When I started it was not raining but right after I started it poured down all day. This may or may not affect the beer. It was hard to keep the brew at a constant temperature and therefore at a steady boil. After pitching the yeast, it started the process of converting sugar into alcohol in just a few hours, so I think everything will turn out well.

Also, My best gal decided on Friday to take take a position at another company after working at her current job for around 8 years. It is a big change for her, and thus it affects me as well. I went through all the various advantages and disadvantages with her, and tried to help her make a wise decision and prepare her for all the things that would happen now, such as the current company giving her a counter offer, and the like. Also, this puts a dent in my vacation planning. She did, however get the new place to agree to let her have 2 weeks of vacation instead of just one, so I can still go twice this year, although they might both have to be in the later months.

Saturday I began a major overhaul of my garage. This process is going to take a few weeks. Basically, I am doing the same thing I did with my closet. Tossing out everything I don't absolutely need, to clean up, and maximize usable space. Also, I tend to just kinda stack shit up here and there, and then leave it there, so it creates a haven for various bugs, spiders, and stuff like that. I also have TONS of leftover wood from projects I have done, so I am phasing that out as well. I am taking a few pieces of wood each day to work, and depositing them into the big dumpster, which gets emptied every day. I figure it will all be gone in a few weeks 8-). I am also going to buy some sort of organizational containers for garage stuff, so I can lump similar things together on the shelves to make them easier to find. I also may purchase some sort of large toolbox to put all my tools in. I have quite a healthy collection now, and it is sort of scattered around, and I am not happy with that.

Sunday, I went to visit some friends, and we went out to eat, then to 3 different beer stores 8-). We drank pretty heavily and played Guitar Hero II on the XBOX360. (http://www.guitarherogame.com/gh2/). We played well into the night until we were so tired we could not continue. Got home around 2:00am.

Monday, I went to Lone Star Park (http://www.lonestarpark.com) with a friend of mine from my hockey team. We bet on the horse races all day. It was a blast. My friend hit the first daily double, so he used the proceeds from that for the rest of the day for his betting. He didn't do so well after that, but he broke even, so that's a good day. I hit a few exactas and trifectas, but still ended up losing about 35 bucks. So to try and make up for it with a big win, I made a few interesting bets on the last race and ended up losing 65 more. So overall I came out 100 bucks in the hole, but I took 125$ to lose on betting, so in a way, I sort of won 25$ 8-). Gamblers will ALWAYS spin their story to make it not seem so bad. Anyway, it inspired me to figure out some sort of horse betting system to make money next time I go. Basically, my system will establish a sort of points system based on a certain criteria, with more important factors weighing more heavily towards the overall point total. The horse with the highest overall point total, will be my pick. This is by no means revolutionary, and if it was easy, everyone would do it, and make that their career. There are people however, who do make a career out of horse betting, so it can be done, so my goal is to make my horse betting hobby a little bit more fun, by winning more money. I will post more on this later.

Anyhoo, I know I said this would be less of a log of my days events, and have more opinion pieces, but so much happened over the holiday weekend, that I needed to jot it down, for my own memorandum more than anything. I'll put up something more interesting before the end of this weekend.

I took today off from work. I called in sick. Really I emailed in sick, since I don't have to call in. I am not ill per se, but I am sick of working, so to me, that counts. I don't think anyone could argue with that logic. Anyway, I took a vacation day tomorrow, and Monday is Memorial day, so nice long weekend for me. I used today to mow my yard, edge, blow, etc.. My friend from Austin came in to town for his brother's high school graduation, so we went and played disc golf. If you have never heard of such a thing, you can check it out at http://www.pdga.com. Basically, its gold with discs. You play 18 holes, you have to put the disc into the "hole", which is a specially designed basket. It is just as much exercise and just as challenging as regular golf. Anyway, it was a blast.

I have noticed that my blogs have become more of a notepad for things I am doing and stuff like that. That was not really my intention when I started this. I think those things are okay and will continue, but I am going to start including more content like I did early on. I'll start right now with a quick passage about business hours.

Have you ever gone to a place after their official business hours, and just walked right in ignoring them, or thought, I already know what I want, so this will only take a minute. If you have, then you are probably some kind of asshole. I think business hours should be respected by everyone. I know that I personally hate it really bad when someone comes up to me when I am about to leave work, and expects me to help them. I usually try to explain that I am leaving and can help them first thing in the morning, or point them to someone else that is going to be there for a while that can help. Most people understand this and have no problem with it, but some don't, and they create a situation where they come across as a real sphincter, and set themselves up for future bad service.

In my opinion, this translates to all business. If a restaurant closes at 10:00pm, and you walk in at 9:55pm, then yeah, technically they should have no problem whatsoever serving you. No one should start cleaning the restaurant until exactly 10:00pm, and at that time, the exterior doors should be locked to where they are exit only. If you show up at 10:01pm, you are too late, go home.

The reason this came about is because last week when I was buying trees, a lady walked up to us and asked us if there is anything she could do to help. We told her we were just looking and she said okay, no problem, it was just that they were finishing the cleanup process for the day. I asked her what time they closed and she said 6:00pm. It was currently 6:35pm. It turns out that we had arrived after they were already closed. We felt like complete douche bags. The lady was not rude in any way, and I apologized and explained that we didn't know what time they closed. Also, in all fairness, their business hours sign was a regular sized sheet of paper kinda off away from the door, so we didn't even see it. It was really not a big deal, there were other people there looking at stuff as well, so we weren't the only ones keeping them there. We quickly grabbed what we needed, checked out, and left.

We live in a society that whether it be good or bad, has general rules of thumb that all people should follow. It is really common sense. If the place is closed, do not go there. If you want to go there anyway, and the people shit on you, you have no right to complain. Perhaps I should write a book of these basic unwritten general societal rules that people have either forgotten about, or choose to ignore for their own benefit. I could call the book "You Are Probably Some Kind of Asshole". I would have to change the name to something like "You Are Probably Some Kind of ---hole." Then as a hook, have the subtitle be "What You Are Doing That Makes Someone Else Angry". That way it could be on the shelf at any book store. Ironically, having to change the title of the book would probably be a chapter in the book. 8-)

I think I had the worst dream ever invented a few days ago.

I dreamed that I had invented a new way to sleep that was totally kick ass. The new methodology was amazing, the best night's sleep ever, and you would wake up feeling 100% refreshed and re-energized for the next day. Part of the process of the new method though, was that if I was not doing it correctly, that I would wake myself up, and start over to insure that it went right. This is all well and good except that in the dream, I could not do it right.

The problem is that instead of my sleeping dreaming self waking up my sleeping dreaming self to start the process over, my dreaming self kept waking up my literal real self. This may sound confusing but basically, I kept waking up in real life, because that's what the dream told me to do, and I guess my mind got confused by this. Anyway, so I spent the whole night kinda locked in maybe 10% sleep state, so effectively I did not sleep at all the entire night because of the stupid dream. It was quite bizarre.

the next night I dreamed about a circus or some shit, so everything was back to normal.

Wow, Wednesday night we had a major power outage in the data center at work. I went in at midnight, and had to stay until around 9:00am. The upside, if there is one, is that I didn't have to work Thursday during the day, but I guess I had already worked more hours that day then I would have had I worked normal hours. Another downside is that Game 1 of the playoffs in my hockey league were Thursday night. Although I showed up on a real screwed up sleep schedule, I played a fantastic game. Unfortunately, we still lost.

Friday after work I went to Northaven Nursery in Dallas and bought a rose shrub to match the other one I already had, and two Blue Arrow Junipers to replace some really shitty shrubs they installed when I bought my house. While I was there, it came to our attention that we were there technically after they closed. This is an interesting subject, and I have some strong opinions about the subject of going somewhere after they close, or staying later than the posted business hours. I will make a note, and cover that next time though.

Saturday was game 2 of the 3 game series for my hockey league's playoffs. I did not have as good a game as I did Thursday, but I still played decent, and clearly better than other people on my team. Unfortunately, we lost game 2 and only won 2nd place in the league. We did receive a trophy for second place, so I suppose it was not a total shitter, but obviously winning is much finer. At least we made it tot he championship series, which is fairly exciting.

Sunday after breakfast, we installed the two rose shrubs and the two Blue Arrow Junipers. This took most of the day. We will have to keep them watered daily to make sure the transplant "takes". Hopefully, everything will work out and in a few months, it will look spectacular. The trees are a little smallish, but they will certainly grow in nicely over the next few years, and it is a major improvement over what was there before.

I seem to be quite bust lately so I have not felt lazy at all. This is a good transition into a non lazy phase. I am taking Friday off to make beer. I bought a cream ale kit which is an extract version of cream ale, so it should be a snap. Then, Monday is Memorial Day so no work that day either.This should make for a nice, extra long, much needed weekend experience where I have plans whatsoever. Hockey is over and my landscaping is taken care of. I will probably take the opportunity to spend time with some friends. Good times.

I think I may have snapped out of my lazy phase already. I have been working pretty much non stop for the last week on my yard and my landscaping. I think I have gone to the other extreme where I am working too hard on stuff. Anyway, I have quite a bit more work to do on the landscaping, which I plan to do over the next week. Perhaps I will post a few pictures of my handy work when I am done. Also, I know I might be starting to sound like a broken record, but anyone who is opposed to migrant workers has never spent any measurable amount of time doing really hard manual labor.

So instead of May 28th being a day to stop being lazy, I will make May 28th the day to really ramp up productivity, or at least better regulate my flow of activity. I may also include some sort of workout type thing, even if that only includes walking/running on my treadmill or something. Currently the only exercise I get is playing hockey a couple of times a week, and doing yard work. Also, I will be more mentally active as well. For example, I will get off my ass so to speak, and get a vacation plan in gear. I plan to go, perhaps to Las Vegas, near the end of June, then the cruise in December. I can book the cruise now, or close to now, and only have to pay about 250 bucks, then the other 250 bucks for the other half before October or something like that. So basically, making two installments of around 250$ for a cruise for two to Mexico, an amazing deal.

Perhaps I should generate a list of things to do, and then do them.

I am in a lazy phase. I am getting things done, but not in a timely fashion. I am going to pick a day, and snap back into productive mode. I think Monday, May 28th is a good day. That is the Monday following the last playoff hockey game in my league, so to me, that is when summer officially begins. I may ramp up to that day by increasing productivity slowly until then, but I'm not sure yet. I may just make that day the hard deadline.

I need a vacation. 1 vacation a year is not enough. I of course, had to bail on my "3 cruises this year plan". Logistics got in the way, and I was about to book one for first week of August, and my travelling companions bailed on me. So now, it may just be me and my best gal, so we are not tied to any specific window of time, nor any specific destination. I am thinking about going back to Vegas and do some of the things I did not get to do last time.

Looking ahead, I am going to go a cruise in December. They are only around $250 since it is off season, but what better time to spend a week in the Caribbean.

Thursday, the day after my last post, we had a nice Texas spring storm. The wind blew ~80 MPH for about 45 minutes solid and of course, we lost power during the entire thing. It claimed two huge sections of my fence, and detached another part and angled it out into the street for me.... how nice of it. Also, I lost 8 shingles from the Southwestern corner of my roof. Down the street a few blocks from me, there were huge trees 2.5 feet in diameter snapped like toothpicks, laying out int he street and on people fences and houses. I saw a few people who lost their entire fence. I had already replaced 4 of my fence posts with steel posts after previous storms took their lives.

So I spent all Friday evening digging out the old fence posts that had snapped, and most of Saturday morning/afternoon getting the damn thing repaired. Again, I have to say, anyone that does not like migrant workers in their country should have to go do the type of work they do for a day or two, and then make their decision.

Saturday was Cinco De Mayo, so I went to a party at my friend's house, and drank many Tecates and watched the De La Hoya fight. De La Hoya lost, so I lost 50 bucks.

Sunday I had some sort of wicked relapse with whatever bug I had in my stomach. I spent the entire day crapping mostly water out my ass. Because of this, I have yet to complete my massive closet cleaning process.

Good times.

This will be short.

Cleaning out my closet turned out to be fairly futile, I did not find any real treasures, just a lot of mementos from my past, all the way back to ~1983. I think that was the earliest artifact I found. I threw away everything that I figured I would never need again, so essentially now I have one box containing all past documentation of my life. It will come in handy if I ever feel compelled to scribe an autobiography. On a lighter note, I reclaimed about 270 cubic feet of storage space. That is quite a bit.

I am sort of in the market for a new watch. Mine is 10 years old and getting kinda worn out. I think I may have settled on the Citizen Skyhawk Model JR3060-59F. It does what I need and is quite stylish. It retails for $500, but you can pick one up at several interweb vendors for $300. You can check it out at:

http://www.citizenwatch.com/COA/English/detail.asp?ModelNumber=JR3060-59F

Not sure when I will invest, but it will probably be fairly soon.