Catchy Title coming soon

Last Tuesday, the lack of sleep caught up with me. It's only happened about 5 times ever, but eventually I start puking for no reason. I figure it's my body's way of saying, "Hey, dipshit, get some sleep or I'm gonna make it really miserable for you."

I was sitting at the computer, reading e-mail, checking out some news blogs, probably paying a bill. I really started to feel dizzy. Couldn't focus. I got up, turned around, and pointed myself roughly at the bed. I got to the near corner, and mostly collapsed face down with one hand over my head and one under my chest. Asleep in about 2 seconds. I don't count this as passing out or fainting. And, no, beer was not a factor in this.

I don't know how long I was plopped face down on the bed. Abby said she called my name softly a couple of times, then got a little louder. "Dad! Dad!!!"

I woke up, stood straight up (my feet were still hanging off the corner of the bed), took a look around the room with a frenzied (my word, not Abby's - she said "crazy") look in my eyes, figured out where I was, and bolted for the bathroom where I revisited my dinner in reverse order. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Before I hit the door to the bathroom, Abby had already started calling for Jen. "Mom! Mom! Help!!! Dad's puking!!!" Thanks for trying, Abby, but a rerun of CSI from 2007 was on.

"I thought you were dead," Abby later admitted.

So that's the story of the time Abby found my dead body.

I've been getting even lower on sleep since last week, so I'm expecting the worst sometime in before the weekend.

... Besides forgetting to post the occasional rant, I mean.

Didn't there used to be a title bar? Didn't there used to be some bar between the postings and the stuff on the sidebar?

I'll try to class this think up a little, and I'll try to remember to come back here to complain or maybe even brag more often. Hey, it's not like I don't seem to have enough to say. Most people would prefer I shut up.

What the hell is a "wintry mix?" It sounds cute, more than anything else. Maybe it's a fruit bowl with some clementines, those ugly cabbage plants that people grow along their sidewalks all winter, and maybe a few packets of hot cocoa mix. "Gee, Susie, I heard you weren't feeling well, so I had FTD send you their Wintry Mix basket."

I'm taking today off because school's are closed, and I really needed a good excuse to take an actual work day off. Believe me, I just needed it. I looked out the window, and saw some snow. I had a moment of what seemed like genius - check the weather forecast and see if I should plan on having the kids play in a ton of snow, or if this will be finished and melted by mid-morning. Probably finished and melted by lunch, but that's a different story.

The real story is the "SEVERE WEATHER ALERT" for Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. The official National Weather Service bulletin calls for a big low pressure system, possible significant accumulations of snow, and probably sleet and freezing rain to cap it off. There's a pretty specific prediction of this storm following the Tennessee Valley, stuff about when the storm will cross the Mason-Dixon line, etc. All in all, it's definitely a well done alert.

Of course, that's all too much detail for the web portal front pages. Yahoo, MSN, Comcast.net can't give much detail. According to them, I'm getting a wintry mix. Actually, that's nice, because I really love winter citrus fruit.

Hmm... Seem to have forgotten about this one. Well, here's a story.

Last weekend, we went to King's Dominion. Of course, we ate fast food, junk food, bad food. On the way home, we stopped at Waffle House (I'd tell that story if I also had a "Why doesn't anybody in the car ever listen to me?" blog) for dinner. Abby (7) capped off her day of junk food with a pancake covered in syrup. I think she realized that we hadn't really paid much attention to our fat and calorie intake today, but she's also a little young to understand the details. Her request, after placing her order, was, "Do you think I should order a healthy side dish, like bacon?"

It was so funny, so innocent, so well-intentioned, and so ironic that we had no choice but to add bacon to her dinner.

I really want to put my stupid stories of day-to-day life up here more often, but I seem to usually run out of time. It's a Friday night, I'm a little bit drunk, I'm listening to The Killers because Beth says her kids like them, and I'm supposed to be in touch with music. Oh, and one of my guys apparently thought I was supremely bullshittable yesterday.

On Wednesday, one of my network guys (let's call him Laurel) had a big, loud, curse-word-filled fight with one of the desktop support guys (let's call him Hardy). After Beth (same Beth with the kids who listen to The Killers) intervened, the two guys kissed and made up. I missed the whole damn thing by being in another meeting. Maybe I'm lucky, but maybe it would have been better if I'd been there. Who knows?

Anyway, Hardy called for me when I wasn't able to take a call. I figured it was about the fight, so I decided to get Laurel's side of the story.

Me: "Hey, Laurel, any reason you can think of why Hardy would be calling me?"
Laurel: "Hardy? No, what does he want?"
Me: "I'm not sure. I figured I'd ask you first."
Laurel: "I have no idea."
Me: "Well, Laurel, I've heard some rumors."
Laurel: "What kind of rumors?"
Me: "That maybe you and he had some words."
Laurel: "Where would you hear crap like that?"
Me: "OK, Laurel, I heard from Beth that you and Hardy had a big fight with a lot of yelling and shouting and cursing, that somebody else was so shocked they had to ask Beth to step in, and that Beth had to send you all to your neutral corners and actually did the work in 8 seconds that you all were so upset about."
Laurel: "Hmm... Yeah, that's about right."

Did he really think that the whole innocent act would work? Apparently so. The two jackasses worked it out themselves, but the jackass who reports to me thought that I would never have any clue that he started a huge screaming cursing fight!

I need another beer. I'm going to update this more often. It's the best place I have to vent, because God knows that nobody is reading this!

Thanks for not listening.

So, it's Memorial Day weekend, and I really hate it when people start an entire conversation with the word "so," but I wanted to see what it looks like in print. Just as I thought, it sucks in print, too.

So I'm looking forward to having 3 days to finally get some stuff done around the house. PepperCam needs to be installed, the lawn needs to get mowed, the tomatoes need to be planted, I want to make a geocaching run with my 8-year old (note to self - check how old he was when I first posted here), and of course, there's eleven loads of laundry to do. So I find out that we're babysitting the niece and nephew (5-ish and 3-ish? something like that). The best part is this is the weekend my nephew is getting potty-trained! And why is that my problem? I vowed going in to avoid all participation with the process. I couldn't avoid everything, but I did limit myself to "Honey, your nephew doesn't need to pee anymore!" and "Honey, your nephew managed to not poop on the grass, but you might want to change his pants!"

Sort of pissed me off (no pun intended) (OK, pun intended).

So, I'll never use "So" to start a sentence again.

OK, so I'm reading the latest issue of Communications of the ACM (yep, I'm a bit of a computer geek), and I come across the special section on "The Blogosphere!" Hey, I've got a blog! I'm back from the lost, and I'm going to put more here, if only to make myself feel better.

So, which story to post next?
1. Why I Won't Sleep Until After February 16, 2005?
2. Why Am I Being Punished For The Sins Of My Brother-In-Law?
3. Is A 2-Year-Old Still Being Bad If Mommy Stops Looking?

I can't post any of those without making somebody feel bad. It might make me feel a little better, but I've been told that no matter how much it hurts me, I'm not allowed to make anyone feel bad for completely screwing me over. So, I'll go on a cruise I won't enjoy, I'll babysit a kid who seems to get no discipline when I'd rather have gone out to dinner with my family, I'll lose more and more sleep until I finally snap, and I'll pretend to enjoy it all.

This is stolen from a TV show, but it really fits me:
"I don't need a reason to drink, but it's nice to know I have one."