The Big DumpTruck

14 Feet is Maybe Too Much

2008-05-08T21:04:00.002-04:00

I need a cable to hook up a peripheral to my Mac, and so I went to Best Buy to look for one. (I bought one last year, according to Amazon which tells you on what date you ordered something even if it was a jillion years ago, but I couldn't tell you where it is to save my life.)

They had two. One was 52 bucks (uh, no thanks, I saw them for ten bucks on Amazon) and the other was 32. Junior told me to just get the $32 one (I had a $5 coupon, but still...) but the guy who found it for me pointed out that the reason it was so expensive was because it was fourteen feet long. Okay, picture a laptop, and picture something you want to connect to it, like, say, a camera. Do you have any need at all for a 14 foot cable? Because I don't.

So I don't have a cable yet, but I hear you can get one on Amazon for $10, and the only problem is that it disappears into the void at your house after a while.

Day Two of Being a Hall of Famer

2008-05-02T09:04:00.005-04:00

It's my official 2nd day of being an Utter Wonder Hall of Famer. Things are still going exceedingly well in the Hall of Famer department. I had no idea what it was like to be a Hall of Famer, I mean, it's like all of a sudden my life was converted to HD when it used to be just normal regular TV. You don't really know what you're missing until you get that HD TV, and then you scorn the people who are still living with the technology of the 60s and 70s.

That's what it's like being me.

I highly recommend you all become Hall of Famers so that we can start getting together on the 2nd Wednesday of the month for a luncheon. (That's a good word, isn't it? Luncheon. Not just a sandwich and a drink, it's a luncheon, because special people don't just eat lunch. They attend luncheons.

One of you will have to be the guest speaker, though, because I'm going to be busy trying to eat my lunch. Luncheon. Sorry, still not used to all this.

Autographs, $5 Each

2008-05-01T10:02:00.002-04:00

Okay, all the cool kids probably knew this, but I'm a Hall of Famer. I'm a rock star. I'm a goodness-to-gracious web celeb. CMonks added me to his Hall of Fame over at Utter Wonder today.

This is the moment I've been dreaming of ever since I realized that you can't be Miss America if you are older than 30 and have been married for 15 years. Well, I hit 15 years in 2 weeks, but you get my point.

I said to myself, "Self, if you can't be Miss America, or be one of the kids who gets to be on the box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, you could at least be in the Hall of Fame at Utter Wonder because he has absolutely no requirements other than that you ask. And I can do that! I'm a good asker!"

So there I am.

And for the record, I do like dolphins. They are cool. Not as cool as rhinos, but hey, what is?

Great Moments Not Caught On Film

2008-04-26T10:11:00.004-04:00

I'm more than a little bummed the past couple of days. (What day is this? Saturday? Okay, that's good.) Thursday night at Junior's Little League game he hit a GRAND SLAM, the first in his life (hell, he hasn't even hit a home run before now) and I did not capture the moment on film. Or on computer chip. For the first time, I'm REALLY mad that my good video camera is broken and that I haven't been able to replace it. I mean, what if he never hits another grand slam? My parents weren't able to make the game and I won't be able to share the moment with them. And trust me, they've been to enough games where we've all had to say "good try" to him because prior to this year his mad baseball skillz were, well, lacking. He had none. He had a lot of heart and loved to play, but well, never quite pulled it off. He couldn't hit and he couldn't catch. But now, he hits everything and his glove is a baseball magnet. (In addition to the grand slam he also hit a double, for 5 RBIs on the night) I think you should all put him on your fantasy baseball watch list cause he's gonna rock the big leagues.
But I can't show it to you because I don't have a video camera. Grrrrr.

The Entertainment Portion of Your Day

2008-04-24T08:34:00.005-04:00

Here is the part of the website where I try to entertain you by making up a story and trying to convince you it's absolutely true. Well, I will place two true "truthiness nuggets" in the story, and your job will be to try to determine which those are.

I was eating lunch at Johnny Rockets at the Burlington Mall when I realized I'd left my wallet in the car. This was not cool because, well, Mrs. Rocket was staring at me with a bill in her hand and I couldn't very well tell her that I did not have any money. I scanned the restaurant to see if I knew anybody, and was shocked and amazed to see Mike Lowell eating a #12 with his family. It turns out Mike is a big fan of the "red red sauce" that they put on the #12, and he often eats there four or five times a week. Now me, if I was a big famous sports star, I would ask if they could hook me up with a bottle of the stuff, but maybe he just enjoys spending quality time at the mall. You never know.
But you thought I was going to ask Mike if he could cover my bill for me, right? Wrong. I could not do that. But what I could do is ask Mike if he was interested in buying my watch from me. It's a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch with Indiglo, so you can tell what time it is in the dark. I told him I'd sell it to him for $19.65, which covered my bill plus a hearty 10% tip. (Only 10% because Mrs. Rockets forgot to bring me my fries and she forced me to do the ketchup all by myself instead of doing the first pour for me. Beeatch.
Mike inspected the watch for wear and tear and told me he'd give me a full twenty for it, which was fantastic. I didn't want to give Mrs. Rockets the extra 35 cents, but I felt it would be awkward to ask her for it. But then, Mike Lowell paid for the watch using giant handfuls of change. I'm not even sure how he got all that change into his pockets. He may have been carrying it in some sort of man bag. And you should totally not make fun of him for carrying a man bag because on him it would look very very cool, unless it had some kind of Hello Kitty design on it. I'm not saying he's partial to Hello Kitty, but really, could you blame the man? It's so damned cute!
So I handed Mrs. Rockets the twenty, and thanked her for a lovely meal. On the way out of the restaurant I noticed they had a giant gumball machine. I love gumballs, and couldn't believe I'd just tossed away that extra thirty five cents. All I needed for a gumball was twenty five cents, you see. So I made eye contact with Mike Lowell again and nodded toward the gumball machine. He got up from his table and came over to me, and used his manly baseball muscles to push over the huge gumball machine like it was so many Q-Tips. The ball on top shattered, and hundreds of gumballs flooded the entryway to Johnny Rockets. I gave Mike Lowell and thankful nod and as I grabbed a handful of gumballs, careful to avoid the ones with glass in them, I whispered "until next time."

DumpCast Home in Flux

2008-04-22T09:19:00.002-04:00

I didn't have the $$ to renew my .Mac account (it expired yesterday) so the DumpCast link that used to be in the upper right hand corner has been removed. I don't know when or where it will re-surface, but I may just host it right here on BDT going forward. I'll make sure I let all the faithful fans know when it's available again.

I took yesterday and today off from work because Junior is on April vacation. Yesterday I combed the back yard for dog poop, and I was thinking to myself...hunting for crap is still better than going to work. I also did a little raking (after we picked up a new metal rake...way too much thatch to use a plastic rake) and we did get the little tabletop grill I was yearning for. Cooked up some shrimp and steak to break it in and welcome it to the family. I think there may be a problem with it (flame is too low) but by the time we figured that out, we'd already started cooking on it. So now I'm not sure what to do. I guess I'll contact the manufacturer, because I don't think Lowes wants me to take back a used grill. Or maybe they do, because the thing we noticed might be a safety issue. Will keep you informed

Don't Hire Me as Your Manacurist

2008-04-21T08:45:00.002-04:00

I am really really bad at it. I don't let the polish dry enough before I start doing things and then it gets wrecked and I have to remove it and re-apply it. And then I sort of wreck it a little bit and I think to myself "Well, I can probably live with that" even though it doesn't look very good.

I need instant-dry nail polish that is very thick and covers well and doesn't peel off in two days. Is that so much to ask for?

Probably.

I don't even normally do my nails all that much. I like to keep them short. But the minute they get even a tiny bit long I put a little polish on them and then a few days later I just cut my nails short again. And by the way, long for me is probably short by anyone else's standards.

So is that mundane enough for ya, this lovely Patriot's Day?

A Little Slice of Heaven at Home

2008-04-20T10:58:00.002-04:00

I am a happy girl. I have in front of me

My MacBook Pro with a wireless connection to the internet
a cup of coffee that Mr. Dump made from whole Dunkin Donuts beans ground by the coffeemaker right before brewing
a bowl of Special K Red Berries

All of these things made more special because I am enjoying my breakfast for the first time out on the deck. Goodbye, winter, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Sad State of Affairs

2008-04-18T12:43:00.003-04:00

Over on the Fox news website, they have a list of the "most popular" stories. I found the juxtaposition of these two headlines rather jarring.

I don't really have anything else to say about this that you probably aren't already thinking to yourself.

Unintentional Downtime

2008-04-13T11:23:00.003-04:00

I didn't realize you guys were bigdumptruck-less for a chunk of the weekend until I got my daily traffic report email and it said that my hits were about a third of what they normally are, making me think there was some sort of problem. Apparently, there was some sort of problem. Luckily, it appears the hosting company found their plunger and released my website, and it is now available again.

I just got paid four days ago and I'm already counting the minutes until next payday. For those of you keeping track, I only get paid once a month. It SUCKS OUT LOUD. I hate it. I'm no good with getting paid once a month. I had to set aside a chunk of change for getting the furnace fixed out of this one and there's just no cheese money left. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining about a lack of cheese money when some people can't buy groceries or pay rent, but dang it, I strongly dislike not being able to spend $10 on myself without feeling very guilty.

And on that topic, we were going to look for a nice rubbish container for the kitchen, and we were at Lowe's and the cheapest one was $79. The one we liked was $99. Hello?! A hundred bucks for a trash bin? And it isn't even one of the "survives a nuclear blast" kind that you want to buy for putting out at the curb. This is just a bin with a foot pedal for the kitchen. I could buy a grill for less money than the trash can!

Needless to say, we do not have a hundred dollar trash bin this morning.

Mortified: Angst Written

2008-04-11T22:15:00.001-04:00

Ask anyone who wrote a journal (or letters) when they were a pre-teen or a teenager and they will tell you it was deep and meaningful and captured the deep and important moments of one's life. Okay, so fast forward and read some of those journal entries and cringe, baby. Wait, you didn't write one? Well you have to go share the love at Mortified: Angst Written.

This site is a multi-media journal karaoke for the ages. Real people (some celebs, some not) read from their original journals. The real words. The real feelings. It is as funny as you might imagine.

I doubled over with laughter watching this month's featured video. Real Live Actors perform a script written back when the author was 15. Kevin McDonald's part made me weep with laughter (I love his work, but the lines he was given were the real star here.)

So that's my fun link for the weekend. And don't even tell me that it doesn't make you want to go look for your old notebooks and journals!

Today's Book Titles

2008-04-09T15:35:00.005-04:00

Here is today's list. You can't have the first one, that one is mine.

The Adventures of Keychain and Neil
40 Ways to Prepare Cold Cereal
The Rat in the Hat
Helmet Hair: Spending Too Much Time Playing Halo
Even More Ways to Prepare Cold Cereal

p.s. I think I successfully removed the snippet of code that was automatically adding links to key words in the blog to Amazon products. Some of the links were too odd. So from now on, if there's a link to an Amazon Product in an entry, I added it there myself.

What's that Smell?

2008-04-08T10:30:00.004-04:00

I am odd. Or maybe not. Or maybe I'm odd for reasons entirely unrelated to what I am writing about today. I'll leave that discussion for others to have.

As you all know, I'm a writer. I write. I don't claim to be a Writer (capital W) like some heavily paid novelist. But from age 24 to about age 41, I was a professional technical writer. Got paid to show up every day and put words into a computer. People all over the world read those words - some of them, to not be hurt or killed on the job. Others, to figure out how to get started with their new laptop computers. It's not glamorous work, but it pays well.

I've also written freelance stuff for a newspaper that no longer exists, and I consider myself some kind of humorist, at least at times, with this 11+ year old website. It isn't a paying gig, but I like it. (Don't you think I'd be writing more often if it were paying? I do.)

So with that background in mind, I can tell you that over the years, I have purchased probably every kind of notebook ever made. I'm kind of an addict. And the ones I like the best are the ones with thin-ish paper that makes a rustling kind of noise after you've written on it. Not exactly like the old air mail paper (does anyone but me remember that? It was super-thin so that it wouldn't weigh down the envelope and cost more to mail) but not far off. I like thin paper.

So I got a new notebook out of the supply closet at work when I started a new project (because the notebook I'd bought at Staples was really nice, except for the thick paper). I love it. Perfect paper thickness. The ink from my fountain pen doesn't bleed all over the place.

It smells like it came from my grandmother's barn. (She didn't own the barn, she rented an apartment in a multi-family house that happened to have a big (HUGE) barn behind it.) The house no longer exists as it did when she lived there, and the barn is long gone. But when I was about 10 I went in there with older boy cousins I had never met before (because they lived in Mississippi and had come up for my grandfather's funeral) because you cannot keep a teenage boy out of a giant old mysterious barn. We found some glorious old stuff - in one workroom the calendar on the wall was literally from the 1950s. It was as if the owner had turned off the lights one night and had just never gone back in. To be honest, I'm surprised none of us fell through a floor or needed a tetanus shot after that experience. Knowing me, I probably spent the entire time saying "We shouldn't be in here! This is dangerous!" whether it was or not.

Anyway, the one thing I still remember from that day (other than the funeral) was the smell. An old abandoned barn can really get quite a stink up. God knows anyone with a dust, mold or mildew allergy would have had to be hospitalized.

My new notebook with the perfect paper smells like it was stored in that barn. I'm so incredibly torn - I want to keep using it, but it stinks! I guess I'll just keep using it until I can't stand it any more. Or until I notice people wrinkling their noses when I walk into a meeting. Darn you, notebook supply company! Why did you do this to me?

Okay, Show of Hands

2008-04-02T06:52:00.005-04:00

How many of you completely missed yesterday's change to The White Rhino Preservation Society News? Huh? Three of you? And nobody said anything? I give and I give and I give, and what do I get? Everyone is too busy clicking "I feel lucky" on Google Calendar.

I should just start talking about rhinos all the time.

No Hot Water

2008-04-01T07:05:00.004-04:00

Hellish morning! First I don't want to wake up but the stupid birds (I hate them with a white hot fire that consumes my soul) are back. I guess I need to figure out how to borrow a shotgun again. Oh, and then? No hot water.

And after all that, I go down stairs and the entire first floor is missing. I have no idea if the dog buried it in the back yard or what.

I hate April Fool's Day.

:-)

Stop Putting Songs in My Head!

2008-03-29T13:52:00.003-04:00

Email friends of mine have successfully put the song "Brand New Key" into my head. It's been there for two days. Stop it! Stop it!

I came up with a book title yesterday. I don't have a book to go with it, but I'm giving the book title away for free. If you use it, be sure to at least send me a free copy of the book. And then I'll pull a Wright on you and go on some anti-American rant and people will stand on your front lawn and yell things about you because you took my suggestion for the name of your book. HA! I will PWN you!

Here is the title:

English as a 10th Language

Okay, so go get writing. I'll be sitting here thinking up titles. I'm working on one right now, the draft version is "English as an 11th Language." Too clich�d?

I Just Found a Dangerous Site...

2008-03-27T14:20:00.002-04:00

Noticed an ad at the bottom of my page today for http://www.gardenstatueshop.com/ and I have a feeling I should just mail my paycheck to them.

I wonder if I can set up a wish list with them?

In DirecTV Hell

2008-03-25T09:53:00.003-04:00

As you've undoubtedly heard by now, there was some kind of massive (nationwide) outage that impacted NESN and ESPN2 and therefore people who got up to start their day with a cup of coffee and the season opener could not actually see it on television.

We were among those who had to resort to listening to AM radio inside the house. Not cool, DirecTV, not cool.

Granted, we were already up at 6am, but I'm betting there were a LOT of people who set the alarm just that much earlier.

At least we won it, 10 innings later (not an easy win, and not a pretty one, but a win nonetheless).

melting ice

2008-03-23T21:01:00.001-04:00

melting ice, originally uploaded by Big DumpTruck.

The last signs of winter slip away. The day might not have been as warm as I would have liked, but I spent more time outside today than I have in at least 5 months, so all is good with me right now.

I would just prefer to have another good day puttering around with a camera instead of facing another week of work, but what are you going to do?

Hey, Easter Bunny

2008-03-22T09:19:00.003-04:00

We could skip the candy if you would just bring me a warm, sunny day. I realize that Easter is way early this year, so normally we're dealing with April temps instead of March ones, but still, I have certain expectations about Easter that just aren't going to be met.

Historically (and I mean back when I was a kid through recent years with my kid) after Easter dinner we would get in the car and drive over to the Leominster State Forest and look for salamanders and fish. I know, seems silly, but you must know, Easter Bunny, that you were the one who would bring us the butterfly nets that we used to catch the salamanders. You do remember that, don't you?

We took all the kids (and when I say that I'm referring to my son, niece and nephew) to the park a couple of times to either throw a frisbee, a baseball, or fly a kite. All things I do not want to do tomorrow because it's going to be too cold. So I'll ask again; instead of sugary stuff, can you give me a 55 degree day with puffy clouds and no wind? That would rock. (Of course, I wouldn't turn down the warm day AND some of those chocolate covered marshmallow rabbits that I love...)

Not a Moment Too Soon!

2008-03-20T07:05:00.004-04:00

This morning, while looking for something in my bedroom a pile of stuff that should not be in a pile but hey, that's my life, I found the lined leather mittens I've been looking for all winter. So that is certainly handy on the first day of spring. It's about as appropriate as finding your lost bathing suit in October.

So let's see a show of hands; do I leave the mittens in the pile, because now I know where they are, or do I take a chance and move them into the big bag of hats and mittens that will soon have to be washed and put away? It could be risky, either way.

Words I Never Want Associated With Me

2008-03-19T16:37:00.002-04:00

Okay, now that we're over the lady with the toilet seat embedded in her behind, we get this lovely headline:

"Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead"

I'd rather have my ass absorb my toilet seat.

I Hate My Shoes

2008-03-19T10:23:00.003-04:00

I do no like my winter shoe selection. I'm quite unhappy with it, to be honest. I don't have enough very comfortable shoes that are also stylish. It's hard to keep your feet happy when you have to go to work somewhere with dress code. Granted, I'm not trapped in nylons and high heels (I'd quit) but still, they'd be happier if I was than with my personal take on business casual.

So yesterday, when it hit 50-ish, I was actually wondering to myself if it was time to take the sandals out of storage. 50! You know last fall, when it dropped to 50 for the first time, that was not even a consideration. I practically wrapped my feet in wool and animal skins to keep them warm. But in spring, why a 45 degree day feels like summer!

This morning it was snowing when I woke up. I can totally understand why winter is a depression-a-thon. The sandals will have to wait for another day. Certainly not Easter Sunday, which looks like it will have a high of 37 for the day. Ya. 37. Nuff said.

My New Measure of "A Good Day"

2008-03-13T09:59:00.002-04:00

If I can say "Well, at least my ass didn't grow around my toilet seat" I'm having a good day.

Attack of the Gnomes

2008-03-12T09:16:00.002-04:00

Longtime fans of the Big DumpTruck know that I have odd obsessions. Some come and some go. Some appear to come and go because I don't talk about them as much as I used to. Michael "Lord of the Dance" Flatley, ice cream trucks, and Adam West come to mind (because I used to do a weekly Lord of the Dance update and talk about Adam West sightings, which I don't do any more. I still love them both.)

My current obsession is with garden gnomes. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. I love them. I don't own any, but that's part of the appeal. Not having one means I get to focus my life on finding just the perfect one.

So now my family points out any television show or commercial that features garden gnomes. It's nice to have people trying to make me happy. Yesterday Mr. Dump sent me a link to a YouTube cartoon that had a very small garden gnome appearance that made me laugh out loud.

And today in the news there's an awesome report of a garden gnome terrorizing a small town in Argentina. Viva la scary gnome!