Fair Food

The following is just a little story of the new food at the Texas State Fair this year:

The Associated Press: Lone Star State serves up frightening Fair fare

For those to lazy to look here they are:

1. Deep Fried S'mores
2. Fried Banana Split (apparently not deep fried)
3. Fried Chocolate Truffles
4. Fried Grilled Cheese
5. Fried Jelly Bellys
6. Chicken Fried Bacon Strips
7. Fried Chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls on a stick
8. Fire & Ice: Fried pineapple ring topped with liquid nitrogen frozen banana-flavored whipped cream

There will be a grand prize winner of best new food announced later. I think I am gonna try and sell battered deep fried Crisco next year.Oh, chocolate covered of course.

Berklee

New Job Responsibilities: Collecting money is going okay. One customer was having fun at my expense. Transferring me to back to herself as the Accounts Payable Department. Then asking me who I pissed off to get stuck with this job. Good times, good times.

Rock the vote: Well for the first time since 1999 I am registered to vote again. I am less excited to vote in the Presidential election as I am in the more local votes. Even with my cynicism about politicians over on Rob's blog, I do enjoy exercising my right. I just wish I had gotten my card a few months earlier to vote on some of the city elections we had. Of course my vote for the Frisco late night referendum (allowing bars to stay open past midnight) wouldn't have mattered as it got crushed.

What to do: I am thinking about upgrading my computer. Not sure how I want to do it. Back up the important stuff and wipe my drive and essentially rebuild it. I might get a barebones system and slap my hard drive in there and fire it up. My current computer is a hodgepodge of being ancient (my cpu and motherboard) and top of the line (my video card).


----------------
Now playing: (International) Noise Conspiracy, The - Ready Steady Go!
via FoxyTunes

Sing Dance Laugh

New responsibilities at work:
As I have started before, I tend to get rather bored at work with nothing to do. The reason being we have taken on another line of shoes, and my customers have to option of ordering directly on the internet bypassing me. This has let to a new job: calling customers who have past due invoices.

Calling people up and asking for money isn't something I really enjoy doing, but I have started already. It requires me to get into a different frame of mind to call these people up, and ask for money. Even though they are the ones who haven't payed. I was surprised about one aspect of this new task. I thought it would be harder to call people I already had a relationship with (as little as that may be) and look for money, but I actually found it easier to talk to them. I thought there would be some tension, but there wasn't. Some of these people I am trying to call have really sweet work hours. IE 8-10 AM. The alternative to calling people about money would be cold-calling prospective clients. No thank you.

My truck:
Well after getting my flat fixed and taking a look see at my front tires I went got four new tires on my truck. The current plan right now is in about a year from now to either pay cash or a huge down payment on a new vehicle next year. I've had the truck for over 12 years now and although it runs pretty good still. I am getting ready for something else, esp. with better gas mileage.

Legion Sketch #3

The third sketch in my mostly legion sketchbook:




This time we have Sensor Girl as drawn by Steve Erwin. Mr Erwin is the professional I get the most nervous around.I first met him in the late '80s after he had closed out Vigilante and he and Paul Kupperberg created the first Checkmate series. I always felt he was an underrated artist, and that he would have been perfect on a high-profile series like Spider-Man, or Batman. He is real good at drawing action with the acrobatic characters. Every time I am around him I flashback to Junior High when I first met him.

If memory serves this was drawn at the con completely different from the last two. In that this show was packed. Attendance greatly boosted by the appearance of Carrie Fisher. She was on a stage behind a screen, and there was always a line to see her (naturally). The problem was that the stage was not wheelchair accessible, so she came down to see one young lady in a wheelchair, I was at a dealer's table by the stage and could have reached out and touched her (I didn't). The layout of the room was horrible as well and with the crowd you could hardly move around the aisles. I do have another sketch by him, a friend of mine had him do one of one of my own characters, that one was done on a regular size board that they draw the comics on, and my scanner isn't that big. I hope someone read the boring story and a few enjoyed the art.

Just a few notes

The following link is a very interesting article about the conflict between Russia and Georgia spilling over into the internet. I always wondered when something like this would happen. It looks like now is the time.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Caucasus foes fight cyber war



Last post on house sitting for now. Last night I had everything packed up in my truck, and I was literally walking out the door, and I took one last look see around the house to see if I forgot to take anything with me. I did see one last pile of doggie doo on the rug. I, of course did my doodie...err duty and cleaned it up

"The best thing about animals is that they don't talk much."

I was telling a friend of mine about all of my trials in house sitting, and he made a very astute observation. Maybe, just maybe, the dog who laid down the Steaming Pile of...2008, and brought in the almost dead rat also laid down the piece of metal that punctured my tire. I thought about this for a while, and came to the conclusion that it is possible. He probably did it Saturday morning when I let him out back. If that is true then clearly he is related to this dog:




FYI, the quote in the title is Thornton Wilder

Keep it coming

Well when it rains it pours. As I continue the house sitting it just keeps getting better and better. Saturday afternoon I decide to go grab something to eat. I go outside, AND my truck has a flat. At this point I'm not even mad any more. I just chuckled. All was not lost however, as my friend left me the keys to his car if I needed to use it for some reason. Thank goodness for that. The nearest auto shop wouldn't be open until Monday morning. I buy a can of fix-a-flat Sunday and get up early today to use it. I toss one of my friend's bicycles in the bed of ym truck and go to the shop. I drop that off and ride back to the house. Once it gets fixed I will just ride back up there to pick up my truck.

And that is why I never say,"It couldn't get any worse." 'Cause it always can.

Animal House

Monday afternoon I got a call from my old roommate. He needed me to stay at his house that night to take care of his animals. He was unexpectedly called into work, and his girlfriend was already there. They figured their dogs being inside for about 14 hours straight would have made things a bit messy. Naturally, I agreed to do it. It went pretty well that night except I had a very restless sleep. I never slept longer than 2 hours straight. I just kept waking up.

After that I knew I would be back later this week to take care of my friend's house for about a week, I started that little venture Thursday evening. I walk in that afternoon from work, and Tuck, the pit bull, has uhhh, made a mess all over the front room. I immediately call my friend to let him know what happened.

"I didn't want you see stains in your rugs and not know why." He told me where the cleaning products were and I went to work. No kidding it took me almost an hour to get it all reasonably all cleaned up. They own a rug doctor, and he said they will give it a massive cleaning when they get back. This is also the house were I have the most responsibility: two dogs, two cats, a fish tank, and watering the plants. Whew!

Get up this morning after surviving Steaming Pile of... 2008. I let the dogs out and get their breakfast ready. I let the dachshund back in, but Tuck stays out. I hear him barking after I finish shaving, so I go to let him in. He isn't at the door while when I open it, so I call him a few times. He does come running in...with an almost dead rat in his mouth. *sigh* I tell him to drop it and he does. I get him to stay, and keep and eye on the cat that is hovering around it while I get some paper towels. I gather up the rat and throw him away in the trash can outside. At this rate either Tuck or I am are not going to make it to next Friday.

Beating---Well---Avoiding the Heat

Another day and another day over 100° day. I don't watch the news much, but I did last week and since around the middle of July we have not been at 100 or higher one day. 107 Sunday, 105 Yesterday, it is just brutal out there. Less than a minute outside and you get a sweat going. We had rain last week so that gives us a bonus of adding a bunch of humidity to the mix. Which as my mom used to say, makes it feel like you are breathing through a wet rag. What I did find amusing was reading the weather for the next few days and we are getting relief from the weather soon thanks to Tropical Storm Edouard. Yeah that relief are highs of 97 instead of 105.

This weather has temporarily put the kibosh on my bike riding. I rode a few times when it was only 101, and that just about did me in. Night time is out as Sunday for instance it was 97 at 10PM. Hopefully, I can get used to getting up earlier and be able to put a ride in the morning.

Next summer I will, if possible, take a vacation to see my family up north. I've done it a few times and it is nice to see my family in Iowa were their high temps are our lows.It may seem like I am bitching about the weather, but I'm really not. I just take it, because bitching about it isn't gonna make it any cooler. I'll just grin and bear it while wiping my brow.

Legion Sketch #2

I expected to post my next one sooner than this, but better late than never:



This one was drawn by local Dallas-area artist JE Smith. I was a bit saddened to learn that he has pretty much retired from comics while researching this post. That is right wiseguys I do a modicum a research for this thing. If you ever get a chance to pick up Jeff's excellent Complex City I highly recommend it. I chose Polar Boy for my next sketch as he officially joined the Legion around the time I started regularly collecting the series, and he soon became one of my favorite characters.

I still remember when I gave him the sketchbook he said, "Oh great I have to follow Todd [Nuack]." I think he did a great job of doing just that.

Faxless Payday Advances

This weekend is almost upon us, so it is time to talk about last weekend (huh?). Anyways, last weekend I went to my friend Wendy's lake house near Gun Barrel City (I love that name). It is about an hour and half drive. I rode up there with my friend's Sam and Nicole. I was a bunch of fun. It has been way too long since I have been out on a lake. Went riding around the boat several time. I also got to pilot a wave runner for the first time. Seriously, I shouldn't be allowed to drive one of those things. Not that I am too crazy and drive like a maniac. I just get lost too easily on the water. After like 5 minutes I didn't have any idea where I was.

Highlights:

I had Sandra Bullock's house pointed out to me about 25 times.

I was told we were going to play poker over the weekend, and we did. Starting at 1:30AM

I have a hard time sleeping when I am not in my bed. I went to bed after 4AM, and I started waking up around 7:30. I finally got up at 9:30 and read for an hour and half. I figured 11 was as far as I would let them sleep in, so that is when I left my room and started milling around. Plus it was hard to go to sleep at first, because when you cled you eyes it felt like the rocking of the boat on the water.

I was impressed I had my own room

It was a little tense because her ex-boyfriend (also a friend of mine) was also staying on the same lake. We did go and see him for a bit. Out of all of the lakes in all of Texas...

I met one guy who only had one long. I liked him, and he had a good sense of humor about it. He goes by "Uno."

I was surprised at how many people either didn't know how to swim, or were very weak swimmers.

I became very good at refueling the wave runner.

Paddle boats are more trouble than they are worth. Very tiring.

Late Sunday morning or right around Noon, Wendy's family came over. A lot of her brothers and sisters and their kids. When they first started coming through the door I didn't think they would stop. I swear by the time we left there was 30-40 people in her family there. I didn't really plan on eating any of their grilled good, but then I caught a whiff the hot dogs on the grill. I walked over there and one...and then I had another one. The major problem there was the heat. Above a hundred during the day and no breeze to speak of. That just beats you down. We left mid-afternoon and stopped by Dairy Queen to get a blizzard on the way back, which was a perfect topper after being out in that heat. It was a ton of fun, and I would definitely go back again.