And the winner is...

Monday night.

Nobody guessed Monday night. Well, I did, but I kinda have special knowledge, it being me and all. So since I don't count then nobody wins the bet. Sorry guys. Perhaps I'll get some complimentary prizes out there some day.

After lunch on Monday I started to feel not so right. Then Monday night I couldn't bring myself to eat or drink. Something told me it would be a mistake. So I went to bed feeling kinda sea sick.

Then at 2am I was awakened by a knee-wobbling urge to use the bathroom. It was not pretty. And it wasn't pretty 20 minutes after that, or 20 minutes after that when I repeated the first installment. By morning I was fairly certain that there was nothing in my digestive system.

There was no throwing up, though. Only throwing down.

Today I have slept most of the day. But I have managed to eat a whole bagel, one bite every 30 minutes or so, and a small bowl of apple sauce. I'm sticking to the BRAT (bananas, rice, apple sauce, toast) diet until my stomach doesn't hurt. Technically a bagel isn't toast, but my stomach seemed to accept it.

Oh, credit to the Mrs. on the BRAT diet. Everything I know about medicine I get from her and a friend. Between the two of them I can hardly get away with feeling sick.

"Man," I might say to my friend, "I think I have appendicitis."
"You don't have appendicitis."
"I think I do."
"No, your appendix is on the other side."
"Then what could it be?"
"Isn't that where I hit you yesterday?"
"Oh yeah."
"Yeah."

Or I might say, "Sweetheart, I think I have cancer."
"Oh yeah, where?"
"I don't know where. I just feel bad."
"Hmm. That's a sham. I mean, a shame."
"I'm serious baby. My feet are killing me."
"Oh. You have cancer of the feet?"
"You kid, but my feet hurt."
"Let me see them... Oh my. Have you thought about clipping those toe nails in the last four or five months?"
"Very funny."
"Seriously, where is this cancer supposed to be?"
"You have to rub around the soles. You'll feel it. It's there. Just rub around. It might take some time."
"I've gotta go cook dinner. Shame about that foot cancer though. That's a hard one to beat."
"Is it really? You think I have it. I mean, I was kidding, but you really thing I have it?"
"Probably."

No one loves me.

Hopefully I'll be able to go into work tomorrow. As it is I've missed 4 days in January. And I was so out of it this morning that when I called in to my boss I gave him my work number to contact me if he needed me and I told him that there was work I could do at home, which I honestly believed at the time there was, but now that I am awake and bit more aware I realize totally isn't true.

It wasn't mud...

...and I knew when he said that it was mud that it wasn't mud.

My son has a stomach virus. The poor kid.

It actually started last week. Thursday night he didn't want to go to sleep, but what else is new - he's 3. Rebecca was tired from a long week of handling the kids by herself (I had been sick), so I was trying to take care of him. Anyway, he called for mommy and I went in to see if he was ok.

"What do you need sweetheart?"
"I want mommy, my tummy hurts."
Naturally I saw this as an excuse to stay awake.
"Are you thirsty?" I asked, trying to redirect.
"Yeah."
"Do you want some cool-aid?"
"Yeah."

So I went downstairs and came back up with some cool-aid. It was blue.

Half an hour later he called for mommy again.

"Mommy's asleep, dude. What can I get for you?"
"Mommy."
"Do you need a story?" I asked. Rebecca usually reads him his stories while I read to his sister. However, that night he had fallen asleep on the couch so he hadn't gotten any stories.
"Yeah," he said.
So I read him two fairly long stories. When I was finished he said, "My tummy hurts."
"Ok," I said. "I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning. Try and get some sleep."

So being the good boy he is he lay his head on the bed and tried to sleep. But thirty minutes later he was crying for mommy again. Only this time he was being loud and I was afraid he was going to wake Rebecca up. I didn't want that because she needed to sleep.

"What's the matter now?" I asked curtly.
"I want mommy," he cried.
"She's asleep. And you need your sleep too," I fussed. "Why do you keep trying to wake her up?"

At that moment a tidal wave of blue cool-aid and yuck came spewing forth from his mouth. And, of course, before I could blink mommy was rubbing his head and comforting him. She got to comfort him. I got to change the yak sheets.

So anyway, as digestive viruses do, his moved from the top to the bottom. And this Sunday morning I was awakened by him calling from his bed. "Mommy? Mommy! I got mud on me."

Well, now Rebecca is sick at home "making mud." I'm sure I'll have it within the week. Anyone want to lay odd on what day I'll get it?

Traffic

This picture is kind of dark. But I hope you can see some of the traffic that I had to deal with today.

This is an exit ramp onto I-85 in Atlanta. What you are seeing here is very unusal. Many people say that traffic in Atlanta is horrible, but that is a mis-statement. Traffic IN Atlanta is almost never bad. Traffic in the Atlanta suburbs is almost never good. I don't think Gwinnett ever has good traffic flow. Not even on Sundays.

When the traffic is backed up to here (in the picture) it means my 45 minute commute is going to be an hour and 15 minutes or longer. And I take the HOV lane.

Interestingly, the traffic is not the reason I hate my job. I honestly don't mind the traffic most days. I do, however, hate the music that my other carpoolers listen to. Dear God, do I hate that music.

Movie

Think less of me if you will, but I really liked the movie
Joe Versus the Volcano.

I'm on antibiotics right now. Amoxicillain. So far my dreams have not been sufficiently effected. Antibiotics usually give me some crunked up dreams. But not yet.

Most of my more bizarre dreams come from antibiotics. But the most disturbing dreams I have ever dreamed came from Strattera. Strattera is one of those meds that is designed to help people focus and to even out their mood. Well, all it did was make me easily agitated. And it seemed like I sweat a whole lot more on that medication. But the dreams I had on it creeped me out. I quit taking it after two months.

One time on it I dreamed that I was visiting this town and all of the women were infected with this disease that left them bruised. At first I thought it was spouse abuse run rampant, but then the bruises started turning green and yellow, and parts of their bodies started to fall off. Disturbing.

Meg Ryan played three parts in that movie. The best part is the look on Tom Hanks face when Lloyd Bridges punches a hole in the wall.

Not my only present

Rebecca was upset because she was afraid you would think that the thingy shown below was the only thing that she got me for Christmas. Well, it wasn't. Rest assured she got me plenty of stuff for the holidays. I also got a pencil, an eraser, and four pair of underwear.

Thingy

I haven't given you picture pigs anything to look at lately. So I decided to upload this picture of one of my Christmas presents. It's a thingy.

I love these thingies. They're little brain puzzles. The point of this one is to separate the paper-clip looking one on the bottom from the bigger one that looks like a modern art depiction of a cow.

Sadly I figured this one out in about 3 minutes. I still think this was one of my cooler presents.

All you have to do for this one is take the little thingy and slide the long part through the hole. Then you wiggle it around and nine months later you're a father. If you talk dirty to it, it might finish faster. But not too dirty, not hooker dirty. That's just askin' for a slap in the face.

Anti-antibiotic

In the future they will not give antibiotics. They will be considered barbaric and even the high school drop-outs will laugh at our 21st century ignorance.

Anti-biotics will eventually be useless against virulent bacteria anyway. No, in the future the Anti-antibiotic will be the key; also known as the BIOTIC. When you are determined to have a bacterial infection your doctor will give you a pill containing the appropriate alternative bacteria or micro organism.

Scientists will spend decades developing vicious little bacteria and fungi and amoeba, and my favorite, the killer hydra, genetically enhanced with DNA from your very own white blood cells to seek out and destroy the bacteria and infected tissue within your body. Then you will take more biotic pills to feed the organisms within you, to give them a raging blood lust for all staph, strep, and mono lococus type wee beasties that lurk unwanted in the temple that is your body.

Naturally these genetically enhanced critters will be incapable of asexual reproduction, and when you are germ free they will die and sail through your veins on a flaming ship of victory, like unto the Vikings. In other words, it will burn like hell when you pee. But you will be healthy, and happy. And the razor shooting out of your urethra will be proof positive that you are bacteria negative.

codeine-schmodine

What the hell? Why is it that I can sleep during the day with almost no coughing, but when the sun goes down and I lay my head on a pillow I start coughing my lungs out?

And now I'm on codeine, which is supposed to cause drowsiness but totally isn't, and furthermore is supposed to stop coughing, which it also totally f-ing isn't!

I took this stuff at 9:55 thinking that I would be drowsy by about 10:30 and I'd get pleanty of sleep. Well, 10:30 rolled around and I was still peppy. But I went to bed with a positive attitude. So the wife and I chatted about this and that for a little over half an hour and then called it a day. Only I called it too soon because I woke up coughing at 11:50. And I have already kept the poor woman up three nights in a row, so I wasn't going to do that again. So I dragged my ass and my pillow downstairs to the couch to try and sleep sitting up. NO LUCK. I fell asleep after about ten minutes and at 12:20 I was up and hacking.

In the future we won't drill for oil. We'll find a way to get the earth to cough it up. You can dig up some of the thickest, nastiest stuff that way. And I'll bet the earth coughs it up better when the sun is down. And for good measure let's lube the hole up with some Codeine.

I knew a kid named Cody in the sixth grade. He was pretty much usless too. Cody ~ Codeine; it's not exactly the same, but I should have seen it coming.

So now it's 12:40 and I can feel the coughs lining up in my chest to burst forth in a chorus of "Everybody in the House Wake Up!"

If I hadn't already taken the codine I would totally put myself out with a shot or two of whiskey.

I'm gonna go watch a cartoon and try to go to sleep. AGAIN.

doctors

So I finally went to the doctor today. I didn't go last Wednesday because I didn't want to spend the $20 for co-pay when I was pretty sure it was just a virus. Well, it may have been a virus, but now it is a full blown upper resperatory infection. $20 co-pay, $13 perscription co-pay, and now my kids are sniffling, so probably another $66 in co-pays. I'm a financial wizard.

Anyway, because of financial issues I have to delay the beginning of the 4th campaign. Instead of beginning on 1-22-07 and ending on the blog's anniversary, I will begin it on the blog's anniversary. A little lame, but I need the extra time to prepare. I don't want to start another campaign that will sputter out like the last two. I want to be as near to finished before I begin as I can be.

...It was awesome. I was actually going to go back to work after my doctors appointment, but she actually recommended that I not go back because I was still contagious. Rock on! I love it when the doctor tells you not to go to work. The only thing better than that is when your boss says, "You sound horrible, perhaps you should go home."

Does it mean that I hate my job if I would rather be sick at home than well at work? I'll answer that question for you: Yes.

3:30am

It is 3:30 in the morning and I am up because apparently there is no over the counter cough suppresent cool enough to work all night long.

I have taken Day-Quill in the mornings and it has done a decent job of lasting throughout the day. Well, about 7 hours or so. But once I lay down I start to hacking and I cannot stop.

I took some Ni-Quill one night and some Tylenol the next. But I really can't afford to be experimenting with meds. I need something that will keep me from coughing while I'm asleep.

Sitting up = fine.
Laying down = coughing like I have the plague.

I'm so flippin' tired. All I want to do is sleep. But as soon as I lay down I can feel something in the back of my throat, almost in my chest, start to vibrate or itch or get irritated in some way, and I start coughing.

I haven't gotten a good nights sleep in four days. I'll be skipping work tomorrow so that I can go to the doctor and get some kind of codine or something that can last through the night.

*sigh*
*cough*
dammit
*cough, cough, cough, cough,-hack, hack-cough*

Oh yeah, I can't use my vocal chords for anything without coughing. I have to whisper and only say about two or three words at a time, then pause. I'm sure this thrills my wife as my stupid jokes and puns are at an all time low.

*place where a sigh would be perfect, but I just can't*

Anyway, on a lighter note I have finished my first animation. It is nothing special. It's about 30 seconds long and it is mostly a static logo, but it is technically animation. The logo shrinks and there is flowing water within it. It isn't great, but it is not bad for a first I think. I'll try to get it on the net so you guys can watch it.

Well, if I'm gonna be awake I might as well be watching Family Guy.

nite

All that effort for 2 seconds.

Ok, today I worked on an animation in After Effects. I know that there is much I have to learn in this program that will probably speed the process up, but holy crap! I spent 4 hours over the last two days putting the individual frames for an animation in place. Essentially I am trying to animate a guy singing a song. The song is already recorded and the pictures are already drawn, but getting each mouth movement to line up is tres difficult.

In your typical movie or cartoon what you see is a series of pictures flashed at you so quickly that it gives the illusion of motion. That is pretty basic. Most everyone knows this. There are typically 21 pictures per second, sometimes more, sometimes less. I was going with about 30 frames a second. So in a song that is two minutes and 15 seconds we are looking at about 4050 frames. However, there is not a lot of action going on in this short film so each picture lasts about 3 frames. That is still 1350 individual frames that have to be placed perfectly so that the animation gives the illusion that my character is singing the song.

In 2 and a half hours I have managed to place, with some degree of accuracy, about 25 frames. So essentially I have finished 2 seconds of my animation. !!!

I almost said screw this animation thing, but then I realized that those two and a half hours zoomed by and I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit.

Ps. Once this animation is completed I fully intend to put a link to it on this blog. I have no idea how to do that, but love will find a way.

My Bad Man

Apparently there is still the word verification on my blog. Well, I'll take comfort in knowing that I am not the first idiot on the planet. Probably not even the last, unless the Left Behind book series is right.

I tried to read the first Left Behind book several years ago. My sister-in-law was really into them and I thought I'd give it a read. Afterall, I really like apocolyptic and post apocolyptic literature. But let me tell you, the first Left Behind book = crapola.

What a waste of paper.

I can't comment on all of the rest of them, because there is no way in hell I'm ever going to read them. But man, what a piece of doo-doo that first one was.

Gate Keeper

Ok, you may have noticed that I no longer have the word verification activated for the site. It was removed when I transfered over to the new Blogger. I have taken on the task of judging all posts submitted myself.

Instead of a dark word verification you will have blog administrator.
Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn,
Treacherous as the seas,
Stronger than the foundations of the earth.
All shall love me and despair.

Counter Update

Tiny Counter dot com, where everyone should go to get their free web page counter, has a message on their web site saying that a surge in popularity has caused some counter outages. They ask for our patience while they upgrade their hardware, and that hopefully the counter will return soon. This seems fair since the counter is free afterall.

Though this does explain why my counter is missing, it doesn't explain why my readers are missing. I need to go to www.readersfortinyinsignificantblogs.com to see if they have any messages posted as to what happened to all of my readers.

Money

Ah, the age old question: To pay bills, or to eat, which will it be this month?

Here is a tip from your friend at the To Become a Writer blog:

Eating the bills will not solve either your bill or your hunger problem. But if you are constipated it will help a bit there. But only if you don't eat the plastic window. The plastic window only makes things worse.

Chocolate Gum

Yummy.

I am chewing a piece of Hershey's/Bubble Yum's chocolate gum. At first it tasted yummy and wonderful. Now it tastes kinda hard and like diet chocolate. I'll still chew it until my jaw hurts.

ps. I'm totally poor and in need of some income. If anyone wants to buy my chewed piece of chocolate bubble gum just comment to this post.

pps. A comment to this post does not qualify as a desire to purchase my bubble gum. You must explicate in your comment that you are intersted in purchasing said gum, and, perhaps, make an offer.

Lazy

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A day that everyone should work hard to get out from under the oppressive thumb of the man. Whoever their respective "man" might be. Could be a woman, I suppose.

I didn't have work today so I slept in until 11:15.

I know what you're thinking... Not exactly the kind of industrious attitude that will loose me from this life of mediocrity. But I turned it around.

I said, "Michael, how can you be so lazy? How can you just sleep most of the morning away with a clear conscience?"

So I set the alarm for 12:00 noon and went back to sleep. I slept the whole morning away, and the man can just eat it!

I'm not doing anything half-assed anymore.

Sad

The last couple of fatter and uglier and older I've been getting increasingly years.

Cereal

When I am doing really well with my diet and controlling what I eat my breakfast consists of exactly 1 cup of Total cereal and 3/4 cup of skim milk. But when I get lazy or terribly hungry I skip the measuring tools and just pour. And when I run out of Total I don't mind so much eating the kids Honey Nut Cheerios. It's is good for your heart. Well today we were also out of Cheerios so all we had were Apple Dapples, which is the Kroger brand knock-off of Apple Jacks. I usually call them Crapple Jacks.

Anyway, apparently this cereal has a real developed sense of irony because when I measured out 1 cup of it, it sniggered. Then when I poured in 3/4 cup of skim milk it burst into laughter. My cereal was laughing at me. Then, because I care about what I eat, I sliced up half a banana into the cereal. And as soon as the first slice of banana hit my breakfast started laughing so hard that it actually grew a nose and shot all of my milk out it's nostrils.

Well that just happened to be the last of my skim milk. So I cleaned up the mess on the counter and poured in some regular 2% milk, which is what the kids drink. As soon as I did the nose that was in my cereal shot marshmallows out of it's nostrils and disappeared.

It tasted delicious.

On the way to work I had ten heart attacks.

Irritating

The irritating thing about Thursday is that it parades itself around like it's the end of the week. But Thursday still expects you to wear a shirt and tie. And Thursday still expects you to go to meetings that last all day. And Thursday still expects you to come back to work tomorrow.

You aren't Friday, Thursday.

You're nothing but a dirty whore.

Annoying!

So I lost my counter. It just disappeared.

So I went to tiny counter.com and read all of their FAQs, none of which helped. They said that if I had really high traffic then they might have banned my site. But I hardly think 300 hits over the course of a year counts as high traffic. It isn't even quite up to low traffic. It's still in the extremely pathetic range. (And incidentally, Blogger's spell check isn't working, so I have no idea whether I just spelled "extremely" correctly or not. It could be extreamly. Or icecreamly. I don't know.)

So I decided that, at the risk of losing my incredibly accurate count of 309, I'd just re-add the tiny counter to my HTML and start over. Well guess what? That was easy and I did not lose my count. And the next day, lo and behold, there my counter was, still sitting at 309, but that is more YOUR fault than tiny counter's, isn't it? If you would tell your friends about this wonderful site, rather than hogging all of it's glorious wondertude to yourself, then my counter would move up. But that is neither here nor there. The counter was working.

Only now it is gone again.

Is there anyone who can explain this to me? Where fore art my counter?

Hey

Where did my counter go? It was here just a second ago.

Church

Ok, background: I go to church.

So anyway, I went to church Sunday and I was determined to pay attention to the sermon this week. I have a bad habit of drawing when I should be listening. But then someone to my left or my right starts acting like it is totally inappropriate for me to be drawing in church, especially if I'm going to be drawing pictures like that! So I usually wind up scribbling over my "artistic renderings" and then just drawing lines through the words in the church bulletin.

But this Sunday I wanted to listen. And I heard a lot.

The sermon this week was on stealing people's light. For those of you geeks out there who already want to challenge the possibility that light can be stolen, or even owned, let me set you straight. Light cannot be stolen. It can, however, be owned. I own it all. If anyone you know claims to own some light, then they are borrowing it from me and I probably have a receipt.

This sermon is what we call a metaphore. The minister was not actually talking about stealing people's light, but about stealing people's enthusiasm. The example the minister gave was that she was in line at the grocery last week and the cashier was being cute and bubbly to everyone she saw. Then she got to one man and she asked him, "Did you have a great holiday?" And the man returned with a grimace, "I don't do holidays." Anyway, that burst the happy girl's bubble and, according to the minister, you could see her enthusiam disappear.

I was actually starting to really get into this idea. This would be a really cool sermon. I can't stand those joy-kills. I hate people who want to crap on your good time just because their life is miserable and hopeless.

Then something odd happened. The minister said, "Don't you just hate that?" And I said out loud, "Yeah," but in a much deeper voice than my own.

I looked around. Did I say that out loud? I got really still.

The minister continued... "I mean, this girl was just trying to spread some joy and he shot her down, and for no reason."

"A-men," I said again.

I sank in my chair. I was pretty certain I hadn't moved my lips.

"Because," she continued, "Joy begets joy..."
--"Yeah."
"And anger begets anger."
--"Uh-huh."
"And... and... when you shoot someone down like that, someone who is trying to spread the light,"
--"Yeah."
"....then.... then you are part of..."
--"Uh-huh."
"the darkness."
--"A-men."

By this point I realized that I was not the one making the noise. It was some guy in the back of the church.

MORE BACKGROUND: Our church does not do the evangelical "yeahs" and "amens" and whatnot.

This guy had no problem with being led by the spirit to accent the sermon with his own affirmations of the holy Yeah. And his vocalizations were growing bolder and more frequent. Here I was, trying to enjoy a great sermon on letting other people shine their light, and not kill their joy, and this dick was enthusiasming all over it.

And I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Asses were shuffling in their seats. People who normally had no problem sleeping through church were restless. The temperature rose. Even the minister was flustered.

Normally our minister is a very controlled speaker. She knows when to pause and for how long. Actually, she has a tendency to drag on. But this week she was far from collected. The more Mr. Joy uttered his utterances the faster she began to speak. Places where even the most inexperienced speaker might naturally pause, she blew on through. But Mr. Joy kept the pace.

King Herod
Yeah
was a source of darkness
A-men
so
Yeah
obsessed with his
Uh-huh
own power
Yeah
that he couldn't
Yeah
see the good
A-men
that this wonderful baby
That's Right
was going to bring
Yeah
to this world
Yeah

...Andsohetoldthewisemenwhowerefullofjoytolethimknowwherethebaby
Jesuswassothathecouldhavehimkilledsothathecouldstayinthedarkand
notallowIsrealintothelight
Yeah.

I could see the pain in the minister's eyes. She was flustered. By the end of the sermon this guy was saying Yeah and A-men to just about every sentence, no matter what the minister was saying. I was hoping she would throw something in there just to see if he was listen.

And the good baby Jesus
Yeah
Came to save the fallen world
A-men
And
Yeah
Satan is good.
Yeah... wait... no.
Ha! I got you!
Awe, dammit.


That sermon finished in record time. Even though we had communion we were still out by noon. Not that I keep track of that sort of thing.

Lame

I'm so useless. Has it really been since 12-22-06 that I wrote in here? That's pathetic. I felt certain that I had posted something last week. I must have killed it in review.

Anyway, numerous apologies. One of my resolutions for this year is to return to documenting on this blog my pathetic attempts at life. We are coming up on the first anniversary of the blog, when I made my first campaign for a job with [adult swim]. It seems only fitting that I begin a new campaign. This campaign will be a return to the first format. I'll send a letter a day until the campaign is done, no picture required, each letter must be one page or less.

I'm excited. If I wasn't in a public place I'd probably have a nice celebratory fart.