The Big DumpTruck

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.

Labels: baseball, junior

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."

Labels: fun, Mike Lowell, Red_Sox, restaurants

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

Labels: cooking, shopping, spring

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?

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

1. My MacBook Pro with a wireless connection to the internet
2. a cup of coffee that Mr. Dump made from whole Dunkin Donuts beans ground by the coffeemaker right before brewing
   
3. 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.

Labels: food, fun, spring

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.

Labels: News, sad

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.

Labels: money, shopping

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!

Labels: humor, video, websites

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.

Labels: humor, lists, writing

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?

Labels: childhood, mundane, writing

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.

Labels: complaints

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.

:-)

Labels: complaints, holidays, humor