Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Multitasker

Normally I'd have a mini rant on traffic during the week. Guess it's a normal week. *grin*

So today as I'm driving home I see some erratic driving. Now I know what you're thinking, "But Ken surely there wasn't erratic driving in northern Virginia!?!", no shocker, right? I fully expected said driver to be on a cell phone, and as I came even with the gigantic SUV I saw the phone plastered to his left ear. Again, no surprise. It was however a moment later as I gained a better vantage point that I was overwhelmed with disbelief. The steering wheel was not in his right hand as I assumed, but merely guided by a wrist or perhaps a knee, for in his right hand was an active blackberry that we has reading and pressing with his left hand on occasion. One would think that at this point I would've become numb to this kind of behavior, and honestly if we had been in the 0-5 mph traffic I probably wouldn't have cared. Unfortunately the speeds ranged from 40-60 mph and all the while our little technophile addict was talking and emailing. If he could've figured out how to drink a hot latte at the same time, I'm sure he would have. Matter of fact, I expect people will soon realize they can use their old sporting event "beer on my head" crazy hats for vehicle mutli-tasking. Or perhaps we'll all just start learning how to type with our toes, so we can put a laptop on the floor.

Well that's enough scorn for today. I'm off to dremel my dog's nails. Most girls would be thrilled to get a free pedi-pedi (well it's not a mani-pedi!!), but she doesn't seem to like it. Maybe I should paint her toes while I'm at it. Would it be wrong to have a French Pedicure on a Manchester Terrier? Speaking of the little black dog, Da Wife has a post with the new video of our pup. Orrr... you can just go straight to google video.
*grin*

Monday, February 26, 2007

Just hibernating

Haven't felt like updating in a while, whether due to all the changes in my life recently (see below) or just my general "I hate winter" blahness. We'll chalk it up to both.
(HA HA Scott and James, just when you thought it was all over!)

Ok, so maybe it's because Da Wife has (secretly) posted several new entries....
Man... she TRICKED me!

In the meantime I have returned to my old workplace, and wrested my old phone number back too (Sorry C!). I have a different boss now, but I'm still working along side my old boss. Some things are new and different, and some are still the same. I really hope to make this year, the year of change there. I have many goals and a plan to make the whole group better and more responsive to the company's needs. We'll see how well it's met at the upper management levels.
Hope springs eternal.

James, Scott, and Barry already did enough coverage on our recent snowfall, but none of them had sufficient scorn... so here goes....

Soooo when the snow hit, I started shoveling out both da wife and my parking spots. I managed to clear around both of our vehicles, and back a good 5-6 feet behind them into the parking area. It was fairly heavy wet snow, so I'm glad I got to it before it was all done and settled in. I was too tired to clear off the windshields or tops of the vehicles, so I figured a quick 5-10 minute brush off in the morning before driving in would be all that was needed before heading off to work for my morning meeting. I was right about the amount of time needed to clear my car. I was however sadly mistaken about 1 tiny little detail. I ASSUMED that the person plowing our neighborhood lot had a clue or some inkling of consideration. WRONG.

Despite my clearing a wide berth behind our cars, the plower decided to plow most of the snow from behind the other cars to behind ours. Now when I say behind, you're probably picturing the usual small hill of snow that even a miata could hurdle, but this is not what was there. Somehow the plower had managed to not only create a wall of snow boulders (now partly frozen) behind my car up to/over my rear bumper, but had also managed to fill in the entire space under my car to in front of the rear wheels.

I stood there in my "casual business attire" staring flabbergastedly at the snow barrier that had sprung up whilst I slept. I truly for a moment could not believe that the plower could not have just pushed the snow past my car given the space I had left. Then the reality of "I'm not gonna make my meeting" kicked in, and I grabbed a shovel from inside and began to furiously chop at the semi-frozen boulders blocking me in. About 20+ minutes later, da wife had realized that I had not left yet (after providing appropriate care and feeding of our K9), and grabbed warmer clothes and a second shovel to come help. With her much appreciated assistance I was able to make it to my meeting only about 15+ minutes tardy. Thanks wife!

And to you Mr. Plower, may you receive in kind the kindness you've shown me.

Here endeth the scorn.
for today! >:o(