Tony’s Journal

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Hail to the Redskins!

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Do you remember your K-12 years? Do you remember the week before Christmas, or the last week of the school year, when it would be party after party, too much food (you have found 28 cupcakes but you can only fit 6 in your gullet), class to class, in every room? Candy canes and cake and brownies and pizza and soda everywhere you looked? Did you ever think, man, I am way past overloaded here, can’t we spread this out over the rest of the year? I mean, February is ripe for a gluttonous holiday, and there ain’t nothing there, can’t we spread the good-time wealth across the calendar?

I did. And that’s how I feel right now. The past ten days or so have been a constant cavalcade of gluttony and fun. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I am just overloaded.

Let me review.

The people I spent time with who I rarely see: Billy’s Parents. Brian Cherry and the new Mrs. Courtney Cherry. Justin, Old Man Lloyd, and Adam. Melissa. Carrie and Dave. Kristi and Jeff, Cynthia’s old friends from New Bern. I got to see Cynthia and meet her Wayne. Hell, with the exception of Justin’s dad, I saw all of those people within 24 hours! And as a bonus, I even talked on the phone with Bridget for almost an hour! When it rains, it pours.

The Places: The State Fair, Topsail Beach, Permuda Island, Chapel Hill.

The Food: 3 BBQ sandwiches, 3 fried seafood dinners on consecutive evenings in Sneads Ferry, 2 helpings of the Best Chocolate Pie Conceivable, fried zucchini, 2 fried Snickers bars, one of them bright pink Jesse Jones hot dogs, hot cider on a cold night, some Mt. Olive Pickles out of a paper sleeve, hearty oatmeal nearly thick enough to choke a man, enough hushpuppies to finish him off, a ham biscuit, at least 3 helpings of Brunswick Stew, my share of a pound of bacon that Justin’s dad cooked and demanded we finish, Bo twice, and when I casually mentioned at 4 pm Sunday taht I hadn’t eaten a thing all day, running solely off my newly-sizeable cholesterol reserves, Mandy conjured up a magnificent ham sandwich for me.

So the past week was good. I will post more of a recap later. If you want a preview, the photos from Topsail are in my Gallery. Speaking of which. . . HEY LOOK AT THAT!

There is now a “Gallery” link under the photo of the cucumber beetle up there!

Ain’t much in the Gallery, but there will be. And it’s been running pretty slow for a couple of day, I’ve gotta figure out what’s up.

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If you are like me, you thoroughly enjoyed watching the Skins whip up on the hapless 49ers yesterday. And you saw the FOX cameras land on this portly red-painted gentleman on multiple occasions.

Well. . . looks like he made it onto ESPN’s web site too. What a jolly, upsetting man.

ESPN.com – NFL – Photos

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So I read this article about a girl who got bitten by a copperhead in PA. At the bottom, they describe the effects of a bite from such a snake, and credit NCSU Cooperative Extension. Awesome! NCSU has been in the news duringthe past week for a bunch of bad stuff, like booing Chuck Amato (true), Hodge getting accused of sexual assault (trifling gold-digging probation-violating ho who ended up being the one thrown in jail), The Mexi-Cam (what in the hell), so I thought it was cool. “All right, NCSU must be some kind of expert on snakebites, and that’s the first place CNN turns.”

Come to find out, through trying it, that if you type “copperhead bites” into Google, the first result is a web page from NCSU Coop Extension. So really, it was just good search engine luck/skill, and lazy journalism.

CNN.com – Snakebite at school may cost teen’s arm – Oct 23, 2005

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I swear to God, every time a contractor puts a shovel in the ground around here, they jam it right through a power line, or gas line, or something. It’s like no matter where they dig, they are surprised to find that there is a buried utility line. And by “find,” I mean “tear asunder with something huge and metal, causing us to sit in the dark and all our computing services to die.” I am sure they have maps, but I am not sure they know what maps are supposed to do. We must hire the dumbest contractors known to man.

Today I see a backhoe as I walk into work. Walk in the door, power’s out.

It’s still out. It’s been over 90 minutes. I’m on a wireless signal from some other building somehow. It ain’t from Pork Chops, ’cause they knocked their power out too.

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I’m going to Canada!

For 36 hours!

Yes, the land of my youth, Montreal. Not that I really remember it well. I lived there from when I was 0.5 until I was 2.5. We moved up there because my dad got transferred to work at the Y&S factory. Twizzlers. Anyway, he has a speech to give up there at McGill University on November 12. This is also the day of the NCSU/Boston College game. So I am flying up there (Burlington, VT) with my dad and my older younger brother Andrew on Thursday, we are driving up to Montreal that evening, hanging out on Friday, and then Saturday morning I fly out of Montreal to Boston and haul ass to the game which is scheduled for To Be Determined o’clock. Meeting some of you in Boston, staying overnight, and flying back here on Sunday.

One man. Two countries (if you count Canada). Three one-way flights on three different airlines. No passport.

Time to get rogered by customs.

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I am not trying to relate to a dinosaur comic each day, but this one is so about me that I had to link it. It’s about me and Harris Teeter. Here is that link.

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Were we* not discussing Intelligent Design recently?

We* were.

Here it is. Explained by some of His best-designed creatures: The talking dinosaurs.

qwantz.com – dinosaur comics – October 10th 2005

* “we” is defined as some group incuding me, at some point in the recent past that i can not quite put a finger on

Tags: General Thoughts, Just a link, Nerd Stuff by Tony
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I am happy that Cherry is getting married.

I am sick of having to buy new clothes every time I need to dress up. Hopefully I will stay the same size now.

I did go through some old clothes last night and found a great jacket and pair of pants that I brought to college with me. Really nice stuff, too; the pants were over $120 in 1998 if I recall correctly. Of course, I got them for something like 70% off with my employee discount so it wasn’t that bad, but nowadays if I pay $120 for a pair of pants they goddamned well better come with a $100 bill in the pocket.

For some reason, the pants are still the correct length, but they are juuuust a little tight. Too tight for me to really be comfortable in them. I tried Urkeling them somewhat but it was to no avail; sitting down in those pants would have been unpleasant. The jacket was also a tiny bit small, so basically unwearable, and had gold buttons to boot. Gold buttons? Why do I even own those? I could replace them, but a jacket that’s a little too small looks much worse than one that’s a little too big, so what’s the point.

So yeah, time to buy new trousers A-FREAKING-GAIN. F— a damn jacket, I’m going business commando to this wedding.

Business Commando! I don’t know if that even makes sense, but I think I’m gonna copyright that phrase.

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So you may know that my right ankle has been giving me problems lately. My left ankle is the one that collapses like a cheap tent all the time, so I didn’t need the right one to have issues as well. About 3 1/2 weeks ago, my Achilles tendon started getting sore, and the pain has moved around a bit, down towards the back of my heel.

Turns out this is a textbook case of, believe it or not, Achilles tendonitis. (The legend of Achilles explains that he was dipped by the ankle into the river Styx to gain his invincibility. Does that mean that I am listening to “Come Sail Away” right now? Yes.) Anyway, the prognosis is good, I just have to use my ankle as usual and stretch a lot. The aptly named Dr. Pleasants actually instructed me to keep going to the gym. So I’m happy with that.

Switching subjects: How about the Pack, eh? About time fortune smiled upon us.

Switching again: I have been working on a journal entry from about a month ago. It’s from when I went up to DC. That was September 11. It’s a very long entry, and it refers to some photos that aren’t up right now, but I did a ton of writing, and I’m not NOT going to post that. So, since I’m sick of adding to it and editing it without actually publishing it, here’s a small excerpt from it.

The zoo is a nice place early in the morning. As you may know, I am a big fan of the National Zoo, even though they scandalously keep killing their animals with their ineptitude.

My dad was actually consulted in one investigation. The red pandas died a couple of years ago. Turned out that there were some rats that had been loitering around, and the Zoo, ever vigilant in its care of animals, hired an unlicensed pest control company and didn’t review what this company planned to do. They just dug a couple shallow holes in the red pandas’ cage and threw in some rat poison. The pandas, animals that DIG IN THE GROUND ALL THE FREAKING TIME, immediately were overjoyed that someone had buried treats for them, dug up the poison, ate it, and the next time the zookeepers came by, they had expired. The pest control company didn’t really do anything wrong. The Zoo should have maybe put some thought into the appropriateness of the solution.

Zoo Lackey: HAY GUYZ i think a fish is sick, want me to take it out of the water and put it in a paper bag and fedex it to the people hospital

Zoo Vet: k whatever. i have got my own problems with the hungry hungry hippos having lost 3 marbles so leave me alone thx

Zoo Lackey: wtf, did we use the last paper bag when we mailed the sick koala to paul hogan

Zoo Vet: LOOK THESE MARBLES ARENT GOING TO FIND THEMSELVES

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