Begin The Blogguine

Join the crowd, go with the flow, start a glob, uh, bolg, blog. Yeah, that thing.

Screwed off at work today for the first two hours, making a cutesy spreadsheet outlining the achievementns--and in a few of the rows, non-achievements--of the boys in my Boy Scouts of America group. Little icons and such, neato. Then chased my tail for another six hours trying to find out information about submitting a company proposal to a major Department of Defense agency. Nothing but ringing phones and voice mail. I kept hoping I'd find the phone directory offering "If you'd like to fire a precision-guided munition, press six now . . . press one for Asia, two for Africa . . ." but was disappointed. Left a message, will try to get the One Crucial Guy on Monday, with less than three days to go until contract proposal deadline. One can only hope they'll extend the deadline, again. I'm still surprised they pay me what they do for the work I do. I'm too new to be of use, and hope to be of real use sometime soon, but still can't help feeling guilty, like I'm perpetrating some kind of fraud, for sitting at work, still clueless, reading email and drafting hollow documents and getting paid over $2k/week.

Then home to factory pizza and right back out the door with The Girl to soccer practice and 11 other ping-ping-ping elementary types, all goofing off. I cracked the code on them finally: find a huge practice space, and keep them running, running, running. All they'll think about is catching their breath and getting a drink of water, and the mindless grab-ass will wait until they get home to their little brothers. Gotta put together tomorrow's playing roster now. The little voice inside me is hoping the rain keeps up so the game is canceled, so I can go back to bed, stay at home on a cold n' rainy Saturday morning, get something done at home. We'll see.

Happy to go the 8 minutes to and from practice in the new GMC, with its XM radio. I'll never listen to commercial radio again. I've actually heard Frank Zappa twice in the past week on the jam band/prog station, so I'm there and there's no tuning back. Damn, that little phrase just popped out there, right onto the virtual page with no forethought at all. Gotta remember to email that to XM, with a note to remember me for the royalty checks.

Watched Sideways with The Wife. Okay, but not the laughoutloud comedy I was led to believe it would be. It was somewhat satisfying to see Thomas Hayden Lowell Church get his nose flattened with the motorcycle helmet by that scary-thin girl--Stephanie?--with the lopsided eyes.

Read the mail to discover our state tax folks are slamming us with a bill for taxes we didn't pay. Yeah, you niggling bureaucratic morons, that's because we never owed the tax in the first place. How much work is this going to take me to un-fuck, because you people can't keep accurate records? CEOs are getting $35 million/year in compensation packages, companies are cooking books and lying to both consumers and investors, and you want $4k from me that I don't even legally owe? Amazing.

Got a brochure from Grand Canyon Expeditions (http://www.gcex.com). I can't recommend these guys highly enough. The Wife and I did their 8-day motorized Grand Canyon trip for our honeymoon in 1994, and it was fantastic. A bit spendy, yes, but you get what you pay for, and their performance was absolutely outstanding, in every single way. We're looking to go again, in about five years or so, once The Boy and The Girl are old enough to go and actually appreciate it. Go now and raft the Grand Canyon before the Republicans pave it over.

Bedways is bestways for the oldster.