Box On My Head

21 May 2012 1 Comment

by ankoku1331 in Deep Thought Tags: , , , ,

Shivelbush everyone,

Every now and then I like to take a moment to see what I have going on and what I would like to do, then I tell the people I know about it.  That way they know what I am up to and if they want to take part they can.  Funny story, I have the summer off, no school or at least no school officially and that brings me to my first and probably biggest project.

I am working on a book on to be a volunteer at a grade school.  Think of it as a combination of how to, what to do, what not to do, what to expect and the future of volunteering.  This is both for myself as I spent the whole year (give or take a day or three) working as a volunteer at my son’s school and this is for a class.  For a grade I am to actually write the book and get it published.  Now, to be honest, the grade is secondary as I am really behind this project and the more people I talk too the more I see the need for such a book.  Thus over the summer I will be working hard to get the book as done as I can before the school year starts when I will have to work on the book and do classes.

Part of the book was getting the proper software to do photoediting and page layout.  I have those programs now.  Working with them has got me thinking about doing two smaller publishing ventures.  One is a wings cookbook, just about everyone who has been over here for Sons of Algebra meetings has one wing or another that they like and request.  Since I was planning on redoing FU! Crockpot into something larger it seems like a good idea to me to start with something small, a wing cookbook.  The other project is a new version of Naked in Life.  Having Photoshop at my disposal I can make some corrections that I wanted to make before and can do things like add touches of color to many of the black and white photos.  Thus the title would be Naked in Life with Color or something like that.

Don’t worry I will still be posting daily on the blog.  I have even set up a schedule for some of the more regular topics: Menagerie on Sundays and Stories From Stroud on Wednesday or Thursday.  Other than that will post whatever is on my mind so continue to expect the usual or unusual mix of thoughts of mine, food and sex.  Creepy.  :)

As always continue commenting, I love to hear what everyone thinks (good or bad), continue to read and share.  If anyone would like to assist with a project or something else contact me.

Shivelbush.

Meat Bundle Monday

22 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in Daily Thought Tags: , ,

Tomorrow could be a big day.  We could get our 30 pound meat bundle.  This means Barb will have to Tetris all of the meat into the freezer.  This also and more importantly means that we will have meat for several months.  Further this means that we will have some high quality meats for me to cook with.  I am looking forward to the pork shoulder and pork steaks, the delicious meals I can make are making my mouth water right now.

Yesterday, was all about cooking.  I spent the whole day from 9 in the morning until 8 at night doing prep-work, cooking, and cleaning. The results of the cooking were little pieces of bread with one of three toppings.  The bread was given a brush of olive oil with garlic and then put into the broiler until golden brown or occasionally burned edges.  :)  Thankfully Barb got pre-sliced bread otherwise I might not have ever gotten out of the kitchen.

There was a blue-cheese with bacon topping; the blue cheese was melted.  There was a turkey, cheddar and bacon topping.  There was a broiled chicken, swiss cheese, ham and a little bit of bacon topping; most of the bacon had either gone to the first two or been eaten by mysterious bacon gnomes. *  A fourth topping of whipped cream cheese, sliced strawberries topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and a drizzle of chocolate was planned and the prep work was done, but after all of the time in the kitchen I needed a shower and was tired of making food.   A bunch of strawberries were sliced, fanned out and given a drizzle of chocolate.

People stopped by to get their shirts; Ashley picked up her Math Talker shirt.  Zach swung by to get his Ninja Donut shirt and Ryan dropped in to get his 5 and 7 Sons of Algebra Shirt.  There was going to be a group photo, unfortunately due to schedules it will have to wait for later, plus I was pretty grungy from being in the kitchen.  There may be a second round of new T-shirts with new names as several alternate nicknames were suggested for many people.  The rest of our day was spent relaxing and watching movies; mostly silly stupid movies like the Fast and Furious series (which by the way I like because they are silly and stupid).

Today, is all about writing, and working on a resume for me again.  Ugh.

Tomorrow is hopefully all about MEAT; 30 glorious pounds of meat.

* A bacon gnome is mysterious creature that sneaks into kitchens and snatches cooked bacon without anyone noticing.  Usually not a problem in groups of one and two, but should a kitchen have a full-on infestation bacon gnomes can consume a pound or more of cooked bacon in mere minutes.  Unfortunately the only known treatment for bacon gnomes is to catch the bacon gnome in the act and whack them on the back of the hand with a wooden spoon.  Much harder than it sounds.

Shopping at 3pm

21 Apr 2012 1 Comment

by ankoku1331 in Daily Thought Tags: , , ,

What can I say about today, well now yesterday?

It was fun.

I got the T-shirts for the new members of Sons of Algebra, bringing our group-gang up to eight members.  The newly added in no particular order being Ryan, Ashley, Zach and Kelsi.  Since shirts have not been handed out I cannot tell you their nicknames, but I will sometime tomorrow or Sunday.

I got to see the mock up for the one-year anniversary Sons of Algebra beer mugs.  Looks sweet.

We should be able to pick up our meat bundle tomorrow.  Only downside of that is that we need to make space in our freezer for all of the meat.

As a group we went shopping across town.  Nothing overly special, beyond the meat bundle, just picking up lots of groceries and getting the boy his reward for having a good week.  He was very happy with his SuperHero Legos, he now has the Hulk to play with.  Walmart did not have enough lines open and Meijer had more than enough open.

After shopping was a group Chinese and Thai dinner.  I made Pad Thai and General Tso’s Chicken.  Since I was making two meals I went with pre-made sauces, so I wasn’t as happy with the dishes as I would’ve been had I made the sauces by hand.  However, time and seven hungry adults was the deciding factor.  The nice thing was that everyone said they liked the food a lot.  Still I plan on visiting Lee’s to get the proper ingredients to make Pad Thai and good General Tso’s Chicken.

Ashley wants to do sushi.  I am looking forward to that soon.

Looking forward to today because the kids are going to the park.

Things On A Plate

19 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by ankoku1331 in Deep Thought, Food Thought, Sex Thought Tags: , , , , , ,

Hello, I am your Research Monkey.  Today we are going to explore things on a plate.  In particular an exploration of the things on my bosses plates.  Paper plates, how classy…sir.  My boss does not like to have only one or two things to do.  In fact the more stuff that he has going on the happier he seems to be, even if the very act of having more than enough to do causes him stress.  He seems, or at least he likes to think, that the stress of having more to do on a deadline is a good thing.  Did I mention my boss is not the most logical of people?

As the Research Monkey I am privy to all that he is currently doing, even those projects that is thinking of doing.  Silly human, everything he does goes across my desk.  I will say that he is finally getting his projects to have similar themes which means that in general while working on one thing he is actually working on two or more.  Very clever…for a human or lemming.

The big project, the one that seems to occupy most of his time is finishing up this semester.  I don’t know why it is taking up so much of his time.  The actual amount of time put into work is minimal, but there seems to be this disparity between amount of time spent in class verse the amount of work required for said classes.  Odd.  I don’t recall it being this way last semester.  In fact, upon review, the amount of time spent in class was almost equal with the amount of work required.  This was a good ratio.  This current ratio, gives my boss a lot of time to think, ponder and wonder about.  That is not good.  However, that being said, he is spending more time, as he puts it “in useless classes where I won’t remember whatever it was that I was supposed to learn a month into summer break.”  That to me, as a Research Monkey, is a sad statement, but having gone over his classes he is correct.  This is not a good, growth producing semester except in one class.

The amount of time spent in his writing class is equal to the amount of time he spends working on writing for the class.  This is a good thing.  The writing for the class has been useful on his other projects.  My boss like projects.  In the past, his projects used to be setting up for roleplaying games and people.  He has dropped both of those projects, interestingly enough because there aren’t enough people to bother.  Fun fact, roleplaying requires four people beyond my boss and so do people projects.  Bet you didn’t know that.  What is my boss doing now that he isn’t working on one or more roleplaying games?

His biggest project seems to be the cookbook.  I am glad that he dropped the FU! from the cookbook, it sounded so rough and was bound to scare off more than attract.  That being said, while he was blazing through the revision he seems to have hit a conceptual wall of sorts.  The primary feedback that he was given was that the original cookbook, while good to read, was vague in some areas.  His line of thought was to tighten up the vague areas and provide more detailed information.  This led to him spending a lot of time of three recipes, where he generated all of the information that could be had from the cooking process.  Boring!  Worse than boring was that the three recipes ended up looking like they could’ve fallen out of any cookbook.  If you know my boss, looking like someone or something else is not what he is about.  Thus the conceptual problem, how to give more information without turning into yet another cookbook on the shelf?

Related to the cookbook is a smaller cookbook on wings.  This cookpamphlet would most likely be done if he could stop making sauces, adjustments to sauces and batters.  I stopped counting when he got close to twenty sauces and do not get me started on his quest to make a decent Asian wing sauce.  I’m just glad he created one.  Although he will probably continue to adjust it to death for another three months.  However, should he start the work of writing, it should be done in under a month and that is with photos.

The cookbooks tie back into school.  The time has come to start looking at classes for next year and he has a plan, actually had a plan, to take classes that will allow him to learn skills to make his books better.  In fact, the digital page layout class was supposed to be for that reason, but that is not what is happening, unless he wants to cut his face onto the various images of food.  Unfortunately, that is not what he wants to do.  He has been spending his time trying to figure out how to take the classes that he wants or feels he needs to get the skills he wants, such as basic photography or a comprehensive class on how to use InDesign.  This is a work in progress.

All of this ties into the blog.  The blog has replaced the Ramblings and while I was not pleased about my abrupt transfer here I am finding it much more enjoyable and fulfilling work.  I am busy all of the time, almost everyday.  I have to go through the various and numerous ideas for blogs that he has everyday and filter out the ones that are bad.  Yes, he has bad ideas and a few of them have found their way onto the blog.  I apologize for that, but at the time they seemed like a good idea at the time.

The blog, which is more of writing of opportunity than planned, has spun off a couple of potential projects.  The biggest being Naughty Monkey, his idea for a adult toy “review” site.  Unfortunately, my boss has run into nothing but problems, pitfalls and obstacles at every turn.  Nothing that can’t be overcome with the proper application of dedication to the task and finding the right people, but at the moment they are causing him to have second thoughts about starting up the site.

Speaking Out has also lead to another co-authored story.  Now unlike the blogs, these are more planned events.  The current story is turning into something more than the previous story with plenty of plotting and planning.  My boss likes this alot.  He is working on this story either in his head, read at my desk, or in his notebook everyday.  Working on this story reminds him that he has a novel in progress.  I am not sure if he has shelved the book because from what I can tell he wrote what he wanted to write or if he has shelved the book for when he has more time to devote to it.  Either way the book is on a shelf for now.

The last thing associated with the blog was an offer to write reviews about video games for a friend.  While my boss banged out a review for Battlefield 3 (see This is the Online Life), he has yet to get any concrete information about the review blog site.  This is called a project in waiting.

Now for the side projects, these are usually small one-off or something that he can do here and there on a regular basis.  The Sons of Algebra used to be a full-on project, but as member interest has faded so has his to the point where he doesn’t even bother thinking about what might need to be done for a Sunday.  That is not a complete truth, he has put some thought into what to do, but is not acting on them because he wants to see if any other members step up.  Until then though he is looking at the member list to see how many are active and how many are not or no longer active.  His line of thought seems to be to cut out those not active or no longer active and start up Sundays again.  There seems to be some movement by other members on this line of thought as well.

The only other side project, which ties into other projects from above is working on planning an annual “party,” demonstration event.  This side project has turned into a lot of fun and does have a few motivated people working on it as well.  In fact for the most part my boss is just an idea guy or man with an idea that he would like to see happen.

As you have read, my boss has a lot of projects going on and I haven’t even gotten around to things that are just on his mind for short and long term goals.  I am positive that he will add more, which means more paperwork on my desk.  I am also positive the second school is over that he will turn some of these projects into projects that are done…then add more.

Anyone Out There Getting This? Hello…

12 Mar 2012 4 Comments

by ankoku1331 in Deep Thought Tags: ,

There are times that I miss the days before the interwebs, texting, MySpace (is that even a term anymore?) and Facebook.  Why do I sometimes long for the days before the “Golden Age” of information and communication?  No, it’s not a sense of nostalgia or my advanced decreptitude saying “when I was younger it was so much better.” I am a fan of history, but I am not a revisionist nor one of those people who look upon the past with rose colored glasses saying “the insert time period was so much better.” Do I wish I was alive during the Sengoku period, yes, but that is only because I think I would’ve made one hell of a bad ass samurai, but do I want to go back in time?  Hell no.  Well…maybe for some sushi.

So why would I sometimes long for the days before all of this “wonderful” technology that we have that allows us to stay “connected” 24/7?  Because most of the people I know SUCK at communicating.  Suck with a capital S and UCK!  It seems that having the ability to communicate and stay in touch constantly does not necessarily translate into the ability to do it at all or even do it well.  I understand that because people know how to type better than talk that face to face, communication has suffered.  I deal with it all of the time and this is from a guy who has never been a social butterfly.  What you see when I am being social is the sociopaths ability to camoflague ourselves.  :)

A funny thing that hit me today, on Facebook I have 34 Friends.  I had 35, but one decided to bail on me because I am not part of her social circle.  I get that and I am okay with it because I am pretty sure when I get out to Utah with a case of POP for her we will still be friends.  Besides there are times that I want to cut out all of my Facebook friends just so I can turn on Facebook and not have to spend an hour scrolling through all of the updates.  Do you know that I spend an hour a day reading the news, usually more?  Do you know that if I wanted to keep up with everything that is posted on Facebook I would have to spend double that amount of time.  Now riddle me this, how much of what is posted on Facebook is important?

So back to I have 34 friends on Facebook, do you know how many I hear from on a regular basis in a form of communication that I would characterize as something other than non-sense communication (something I do almost everyday on Facebook) or links to other stuff or even funnier links to pictures that are not their’s; those silly poster looking things?  Not very often.  I get tons of “requests” for stuff from the games.  In fact the games are the primary method that people communicate with me; “I need a brick, I need a crystal, I need a friend, I need…I get it.” It is part of the game, but I don’t get messages from people talking to me about the game, just what they need.  Most of the time I just turn on the game to send the requests back.  I find the games to be of the same format, tedious and timewasters of the finest level.

I formed a study group, you may have heard of it the Sons of Algebra.  Now, due to a lack of communication, it is in danger of going away before the end of the school year.  This is the same group that for weeks and months people raved about, planned weeks around, got clothing for and tried to get other people to join.  Now…well let’s see over the past week on Facebook I have tried to communicate with the members of the group and I even posted a lengthy form of communication here about the group.  Do you know how many members have said anything to me about it?

If you guessed zero out of 12 (Barb and I don’t count towards the 14, which by the way is an upward growth), then you would be correct.   Don’t blame or use Spring Break as an excuse either-we live in a 24/7 society with multiple ways to communicate.  Now I wonder if it is the form of communication, I know that most people don’t read much on Facebook and I know that even less read this blog (I get a daily report of how many people check-in the numbers are holding steady at 10 to 14-happy about that I am :) ).  So is it that none of the members check-in on the Facebook group that they are part of AND none of them read the blog?  That is a possibility.  A sad possibility.  If so, they don’t know that I have stopped planning events until I see some sort of movement on their part and if the group dies on the vine at least I have some T-shirts, Hoodie and memories.

When communicating using the most commonly accepted forms of communication doesn’t work, what does that leave?  There is texting, but here is the 411 on that, out of the people I know most only use texting to say “hi, hello, what are you doing at this moment or doing later,” and what is even worse is there are plenty who do not respond to texts.  They get them.  They send them, but they do not respond to them.  I would say it is just a me thing, but I now have friends that are connected and we all get the non-response.  Thus, it is not a me thing.  Some people just don’t respond to texts, but they will send them out and EXPECT a response.  Odd, right?

Face to face communication, using verbal and social skills?  No!  That can’t be!  Heresy!  Unfortunately for everyone that is what is left.  However, I can’t find most people or get ahold of them to set up meetings to have the face to face or they are avoiding me.  Since I can’t communicate with them they won’t get the message and you and I both know what will happen is they will finally decide to get in touch and be “shocked” that they weren’t told about the changes, group ending or whathaveyou.  Happens all of the time.

So here we are 1000+ words later in a blog about communication or the lack of communication that is going  on and I know full well that nothing will happen.  I can tell you this for sure, the message is out there.  Is anyone getting it?  I don’t know.

….

Is this thing even on?

How I Spent My Springbreak

11 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in BALLS!!!, Deep Thought, Food Thought, Sex Thought Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Today is the last day of Springbreak.  Following today is roughly eight more weeks of school.  I am looking forward to those eight weeks, not because I want to do whatever it is that I will have to do, but because I want summer to roll around, the FUCKTARDS to go away and have some more fucking fun with family and friends.

So what did I do over Springbreak? Well let me start off with the bummer end of the stick.  I came to the conclusion that I am tired, as in sick and tired of trying to keep Sunday Study Group running by myself.  I post and post.  I ask and ask.  I get one or two responses, but nothing more.  For example, today; I posted stuff about today at the beginning of the week.  Here is what I know for sure about today, Chris wanted bar food, but not what he would bring over or if he would come over.  Ryan, Ashley, Sara and Zach would not be over, that is a good thing that they told me as much.  Nick, not a fucking word.  Kyle and Kelsi, no idea.  Sorry to call everyone out guys, but the key to having a place to go and do stuff on a regular basis is maintaining communication, which means when I or someone else asks a question answers are needed and sooner rather than later.  So here is the deal, I am done trying to organize the next few Sunday Study Groups.  IF, there will be anymore it is up to one of you other SONS to do the organizing.  It can still be held here that is not in question.   I hope that they continue, it has been a good tradition, but I feel that some people think that it is a foregone conclusion that there will always be a Sunday Get-Together, as such have stop putting forth as much effort as they used to.

Now onto the good end of the stick.  Over Springbreak I or we did something with just about everyone who was in town and it was fun.  Lots of fun. The trip to Traverse City stands out as a high point (See Donovan Has Two Mommies) and has set in motion some plans for summer which we are already counting down for.  Barb discovered that she can enjoy written porn and I discovered that I don’t mind be woken up at 4am for a vigorous review of what she has been reading.  In fact, she went through an entire trilogy over Springbreak.  For the ladies out there, the trilogy was so good that Barb didn’t do any of the fun stuff that she had planned to do over the break.  It was non-stop reading and reviewing.  I sure as hell didn’t mind.

In that venu of sex, supposedly Sara is going to host a sex toy party.  Not sure on that, because word on the event has been sparse, but that could be due to her being in a region where phone towers are operated by mice.  However, talk of that got a good and fun conversation about holding a great sex toy party going.  That there will be no Battlefield 3 themed party is a good thing, I look good in cammies, but I’m not sure I want to be selling cammied dildos or lube.  Well…I wonder if Kelsi is still looking, plotting or planning a male version of a Pure Romance event.  No, I have no idea what that would look like or maybe I am not willing to let my mind go there. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

When reading, reviewing and planning wasn’t going on there was plenty of video games with the guys online.  Okay, Barb didn’t get online, but she did visit Skyrim several times, much to the consternation of someone.  :)   Even though this week was a wierd one online it was still fun, for the most part.  Best of all I found two more games to play.  Not that anyone else will join in with me, but I can always enjoy Credence Clearwater Revival in my M60 tank rolling through Phu Bai working on being the first guy on my virtual block to get a confirmed kill.  Don’t know what I am talking about, damnit learn some history, watch Full Metal Jacket or get into video games.  Speaking of Full Metal Jacket, how many of you who play Battlefield 3 with me know why I always use Hotel Squad for our squad?

Darin and I started working on another co-authored story, about animals in space.  So when I wasn’t getting reviewed on or shooting at I was writing.  The first part of the story looks good and here is something you haven’t heard from me before, but I am editing it BEFORE I put the whole thing up here.  That is how much I am enjoying it.  The cookbook got some love in the form of me making a few recipes and getting all of the information that I wanted.  Having done this though, I am not sure how much more I am going to do.  Something about knowing everything about a recipe seemed to sap the life out of the recipe for me when I wrote it up.  It went, from my point of view, from fun, easy to do, easy to read, to reading and looking like every other FUCKING cookbook and that bummed me out because those books suck balls.

Of course writing means music.  I always type while listening to music, I think I told you why before, but just in case I didn’t; the music sets a rhythm for me and has over the years drastically improved my typing speed.  With that in mind I found Ice-T’s OG album on the Zune and have been living out my youth via old school rap or at least Ice-T rap right before he formed Body Count.  Nothing puts me in the mood to write a fight scene like Midnight.

What about the kids?  Well Donovan when he wasn’t in school was playing with his legos.  Always the legos.  He built several pirate ships, a raft crewed by the headless and skeletons.  He built…he just built.  He even told me while going thru the latest lego catalog that he loved me as much as legos.  How sweet was that?  Kaylee meanwhile told us that she wanted everything she saw on Nickelodeon for her birthday in 11 days.  Nothing was off limits from Barbies to what looked like a slushie for the bath to a dog that pooped.  Yep, a dog that pooped, some sort of game.  I have no idea why anyone would want to play a game where the end result, HA, is poop.  Why not a foie gras game, where you over feed a goose and the end result is foie gras?  At least there would be a highend food product and not poop as a result.

The most ironic part of the whole Springbreak was that the weather ranged from cold, overcast to warm, but overcast the whole time, until today.  Go figure, springbreak coming to an end an hour early (fuck you spring forward) and the weather gets good just in time to go back to school.

That is how I spent my Springbreak.

About Last Night

26 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in BALLS!!!, Deep Thought, Food Thought, Sex Thought Tags: , , ,

Last night could be called the First Non-Study Group Gathering of the Sons, okay that is a bit wordy so maybe…Fun Times Had By All and I am Here To Share Some of Them for all Eternity…Gathering.   Well you get the point.  For the first time in close to a decade there were a bunch of people in our house having fun and it had nothing to do with studying, it was just because.  Well Apples to Apples was involved and that was the primary reason given for gathering, but honestly Apples to Apples was what a lot of stuff revolved around, but not the central focus of the evening.  Is this making sense yet?

So that everyone has a good idea of the cast involved here are the participants in no particular order: me, Barb, Kyle, Kelsi, Ryan, Chris, Amber, Jake and Erin.  Oh, who are Jake and Erin.  Jake is a tall mutherfucker, I had to look up to see him.  He is also real.  For the longest time he was just a voice over the headsets when playing online and Erin was someone that Chris ragged on Jake about so I wasn’t sure if she was real either.  They were and they were cool.

For the record I was, am, still sick with some sort of sinus funk.  Thus my “job” was to ensure that everyone else had fun, because for the most part I was not going to be doing anything “fun” beyond cook and feel my head swell up with sinus pressure.  As far as I know nobody else was sick.  Kyle and Kelsi showed up first with medication and white bean chicken chili.  It was at this time I discovered that I could not smell a damn thing and my sense of taste had also left the building.  Very distressing for someone who relies on those senses to make good food, but good news if someone came over smelly-nobody did, despite Chris trying to blowup the bathroom and Amber’s wish that he would blowup the bathroom so he didn’t do it at home-I wouldn’t have known.

My biggest fear was that the gathering would divide into two groups, the boys talking about nothing but Battlefield 3 and the girls sitting together texting and praying that something interesting would happen.  Turns out that talking about Battlefield 3 is like women talking about shoe shopping.  Within a three count any woman in the room eyes glazed over and they get this look of infinite boredom and sadness as the sudden realization of how much of a total dork they are with settles in.  It started out that way.  It did and I was so worried that the conversation wouldn’t swing away from the game, there have been times when the game has been the center of conversation for hours and as someone who plays the game it gets boring after about 20 minutes.  I can’t imagine what it is like to be someone who doesn’t play.  Thankfully, the conversation swung away from Battlefield 3 and stayed away for the rest of the evening.  The only one with glassy eyes was me as I tried to not fall asleep everytime I sat down.  Sinus funk sucks.

So on with the highlights of the evening…

“Don’t you hate that awkward moment when you are having an awkward moment?”  That was a Chrisism for most of the night usually directed at Ryan who the longer the night went on developed a stranger and stranger accent.  He started out sounding like an everyday pharmdork and by the end of the night had turned into Bill Cosby, which was very very odd.

Jake despite being close to 7 feet tall has a small dick.  How do we know this because “King Dick” Chris told everybody frequently.  He even used two fingers held slightly apart to gesture about Jake’s dick size and as part of bargaining with Jake when playing Apples to Apples and switching out drinks.

We found out from Amber and Chris in a rather revealing conversation that he does everything for Amber because it will lead to sex.  Take out the garbage, she feels grateful and thus sex.  Put away his clothes, she feels grateful and thus sex.  Backrub, her shirt comes off and thus sex.  You get the idea.  A interesting system especially when she kept countering that he was being an ass and would not be getting any.  Somehow in his head, at that moment, I am pretty sure he was thinking, I am being an ass to remind her about ass and that will lead me to getting some ass.

Chris can write.  All of his friends and family said so, which to me is similar to saying, I understand black people because I have one for a friend.  Also discovered that he doesn’t listen to music, Amber does, but Chris doesn’t.  Thus no music reviews and no movie reviews either because he watches “odd” movies.

Jake could give as good as he got from Chris and was pretty tricky with his wife-to-be-Erin managing to bet a round of Apples to Apples into a blowjob.  Of course there were plenty of jokes about “choking on a chicken bone” and “not going to be sucking on any Tootsie Roll tonight.”

Amber and Erin were a pretty close click, sitting on the same chair and drinking out of pirate themed cups.  Those cups by the way we bought for the boy when he was really into pirates and ever since then they have been used by everyone for every kind of drink other than kid drinks.  Erin spent a good chunk of her time checking her ebay account and Amber spent a large amount of her time getting Chris to focus on Apples to Apples and telling me that she would give as good as she got in the smart-ass comment department.  I’m still waiting.

Kelsi who has “been around,” her words, brought over the most awesome white bean chicken chili.  It was the first and pretty much only thing that I could taste.  It was spicy, hot and cheesy.  Made me feel much better.  Kyle brought over Dorito Flamas which are fire engine red Doritos that start out with a lime flavor and turn into a spicy kick.  They did not clear my sinuses as advertised, but they were damn tasty.

I made wings.  I don’t know what happened while making wings.  One batch was sweet and the other batch was supposed to be spicy asian.  Both ended up sweet and were well recieved, but definitely not what I expected.  Next time we do this we have to coordinate empty stomachs with food.  I almost forgot but as I look into the mess that is the kitchen I am reminded the Kelsi also brought over no bake peanut butter and chocolate cookies.  The peanut butter were very good and I am told the chocolate were as well (not a huge chocolate fan).

As the night wound down, due to Amber and Chris needing to get home to relieve the babysitter, it ended with plenty of hugs, handshakes and shoulder bumps.  Despite their being a bottle of wine there was no lesbian action going on, which was a relief primarily due to the potential awkwardness, but a bummer because wine and women in groups of two has always resulted in at least some girl on girl kissing.  Not tonight though.

By the end of the night the remaining people discovered that I can perform a trache-job with a knife and pen, thank you MASH.  However, the rather matter of fact way that I said it seemed to cause people to look at me oddly.  What? I have good knife skills.

So to wrap all of this up, it was a fun evening with nothing more than shouting going on.  Strange, Apples to Apples is such a simple game, but it is such a loud game.  Plenty of “in your face,” “I got this round,” “these cards suck,” “what the fuck,”"I won,” and the usual in game banter smack talk that I haven’t heard outside of a euchre game.  Speaking of which, euchre may happen next time.   It was nice meeting Jake and Erin.  Jake was what I expected only taller, so tall that I’m not sure what color his hair is.  Erin was quiet, but fun with people she knew, she will loosen up around us.   Hopefully everyone had fun and will take part in the next one (hopefully I will be well).

Brraaaiiiinnnnsss…..

19 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in Daily Thought Tags: , , , , , , ,

Brraaaaiiiiiinnnnsssssss….today was all about brains.  From the minute I got up right up until I sat down to bang out this blog.  My morning was a scramble.  Today was study group or Sons day, every Sunday is.  We love having people over.  It’s good for the soul to be around friends.  Food, talking and generally having a good time.  Unfortunately today I had to scramble to get a dish ready for the study group.

If I write down that there is going to be a dish here, then people comment on how much they are looking forward to that dish I will make sure it is there and thus I was attempting to create shredded BBQ beef along with the bacon wrapped hotdogs.  In the middle of getting the beef ready I discovered that we had nothing, zero, for the beef.  Shit!  Time for a quick run to the grocery store to get the rest of the ingredients.  Then back here, where I was juggling BBQ beef and the hotdogs.

Chop onions, red and yellow, that nobody not even me used…oops.  Make two types of mayo, wasabi and roasted garlic; the wasabi was awesome, the roasted garlic is a process.  Cole slaw, not too creamy.  BBQ sauce, apple juice and few other things for the beef once it hit shred stage, very tasty.  Time to wrap the hotdogs; what, this isn’t “thick” cut, stupid label.  Clean up some.

By the time people started showing up food was good to go.  Thankfully, I started the hotdogs early because they take a lot longer to cook than just a hotdog or just bacon would.  Chris brought some potato salad and it was good.  This coming from someone who hates potato salad, my normal excuse is that I am allergic to it.  When pressed usually allergic to potatoes.  Worked for years.  Ashley brought seven-layer salad with “homemade” (read package) ranch dressing.  That was some damn good ranch and salad.  Ryan, due to being cooking-challenged, brought and will continue to bring pop.  I got to watch people eat more than one bacon-wrapped hotdog.  Until today I had never seen that.

Post food, was studying.  The pharms broke out laptops and began talking about pharmstuff.  Generally gibberish to all of us.  Chris played some video game on his phone…really wonder what his degree is, but it seems like fun.  Ashley hopped on our new computer to try and make sense of her homework.  Based on the amount of cursing she was not having much luck.  The kids along with Ashley’s nephew, ran up the stairs, down the stairs, around the table, back up the stairs rinse and repeat.  It was tiring just watching them.  They were having a ton of fun though.  Me, I pulled out the math.  Ashley who was supposed to work on math with me had already left to reward the nephew with a trip to the arcade.  Thankfully Ryan was still here.

I am doing math that I have never, not never as in haven’t seen for a while, but never as in never seen.  It is apparently simple or low-level algebra, but it is new to me.  Parts of it make sense and parts make no sense.  I have to use a calculator, I don’t use calculators.  I want to do it long-wise so I can see the process and once I can see the process I understand it.  Calculators do not allow you to see what you are doing and calculators can be wrong, the professor proved this.  So I was having some issues with some of my homework.  No Sara, so no help that I would normally get.  Ryan was help, he was able to answer my questions in a way that I could understand and see how.  Barb…well she tries, but she too relies on the calculator.

Here is a thought, there is no faith in math and science.  Everything is a process that has a reason.  There is no guessing.  It is because it is.  There are rules and the rules all work together.  A calculator is not always right.  A calculator can be wrong and if you don’t know what was supposed to happen you won’t know that it was wrong, thus you are placing faith in the calculator in a subject that has no faith written into it.  Writing has plenty of faith written into it.  I write a word I have faith that you will understand that word or be able to figure out what the word means or at least what the sentence means.  There are rules, but they are broken all of the time and writing still works.  Break a rule in science and math, you don’t get “new math” or “new science,” you get a wrong answer.  Just a thought.

Taking a break from math and pharm (Barb) we pulled out Munchkin Zombie (see photo, thank you Steve Jackson Games).  It is a card game where you play a zombie trying to eat your way to level 10 where you win.  A simple enough card game that we can teach the basics to Kaylee and Donovan is getting the math.  Donovan won the first game using his own pancreas and spleen to cut a wave of carnage to the top.   Kaylee shouting out “Brrraaaiiiinnnnssss” every few minutes was a ton of fun.

As I bring this blog to a conclusion, for those of you who are reading the Andoril stories (beyond Big Man & Darin is there anyone else?), there was a break in the action.  Sorry about that.  I promise it will resume next week.

Yep, I Can See It Now

13 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in Deep Thought Tags: ,

I spent today running around taking care of “My Cult” as Sara calls it.  Visited the T-Shirt Shop as I call it, where I got prices on Sons of Algebra hoodies and bandanas.  Soon will be leather vests and patches.  Now if all of us could learn how to ride scooters we could own this town or at least ride around it from one end to the next, about 3 miles round trip.  All of us in our gear trolling thru Walmart and getting kicked out of McDonalds after rumbling with some pharmnerds or golfgeeks.  Yep, I can see it now.  None of that heavy cloak and sacrificing goats shit that Sara and Ryan were joking about.  For one, in the summer those heavy cloaks are hot as hell and another goats smell and that smell will end up in our heavy cloaks.  Do you want to smell like goat year round?  Not me I would rather be explaining away the suspicious red stain that I know full well is ketchup, but tell that fucktard is blood from the last time our gang threw down.

As a “Social Club” we would have to get a float into the Big Rapids parade or parades.  A giant flesh colored middle finger against a backdrop of a giant X.  Marilyn Manson’s “I was not born with enough middle fingers” blaring from a ton of speakers while we drink, dance, fight and toss candy from it or around it or the back of the one of the two police cruisers in town.  We would also do charity events such as the drive golf-carts drunk pro-am or the kidnap the opposing football team before the big game.  What? Oh, make that mascot.  Apparently kidnapping the opposing team is bad form.

We would need a “Club House” where we would hold our daily “meetings,” culminating in “weekend getaways.”  Lots of drinking, Xbox Live LAN parties, and scooter competitions.  Plus a restuarant.  Gotta to have a place to cook.  No point having everyone over if you can’t eat good food.  I could definitely go for a pool too.  Need something to swim in and dive the scooters into, drunk and sober.  Unlike most of the gang “club houses” that I have seen ours would have a well tended lawn and NOT look like someone just took a piss, shit, fired knuckle children, barfed, drove into or out of or on the walls.  No boarded up windows.  People want to see what the cool people are doing fine with me, just don’t mind a bare ass, boob or cock and balls pressed up against the glass.

Then there are the franchises…

I Could Write…

08 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment

by ankoku1331 in Daily Thought Tags: , , , , ,

What in the hell was I going to write about?

Good question.

I could write another Toy Story, but didn’t want to do two back to back.

I could write another slice of Andoril ready to go.  If you haven’t been keeping up you might want to, Darin is doing a good job of connecting his story with the start.  It’s looking good.

I could write about meeting Kyle and Kelsi and Synder’s, but that would involve writing about how Kyle locked Kelsi’s keys in Kelsi’s truckthing (I’m not good with cars or truckthings).  I won’t do that because it might embarass them; Kelsi for not reading the blog and knowing that men are not to be trusted with keys and Kyle for being in the Criminal Justice program and obviously failing the Criminal part as he could not get back into a locked vehicle.  I didn’t want to tell him how to do it as he was feeling bad enough for…well you get the idea.  I have probably said to much as it is.

I could write about how when I came how Sara was putting Kaylee through some test.  Now what kind of test does not involve a maze or electro-shock?  I don’t know.  I will just take it as another sign of the poor quality of education here and not a reflection upon her unwillingness to shock a child into performing an action faster or better.  Still not sure why she didn’t have a portable maze either, but maybe that is later in her education.  I do know that she was doing a lot of writing and she wouldn’t let me read it, so it must be bad.  I know that Kaylee has a Stewie head and vampire teeth so it must be something involving her ability to kick ass when fighting Donovan with plastic bowling pins which she brought over, thus I submit my child’s abnormalities are her fault.  There I feel better I have managed to blame someone else.

I could write about what I am learning and doing in my digital page layout class, but you don’t care or I don’t care to tell you all of the Mac shortcuts I learned.  I will show you my work when it is done.

I could write about the cookbook, specifically that I am starting the process of dividing the recipies up and rewriting them all with better measurements.  If Sara, yes the same Sara who is responsible for my child’s abnormalities, gets me her notes and ideas I can work on a better Helpful-Things Section; since I had to teach Jessica, the gawdmother, how to mince garlic via text I thought stuff like that might be helpful to others.  Those volunteers should expect recipes in the next few weeks, I hope.

I could write about the Sons of Algebra “initiation.”  Goes like this there are roughly 11 weeks left in the semester.  Show up for 8 to 9 Sunday Study Groups and make some friends and I will buy you your own Sons of Algebra T-shirt complete with logo and “gang” nickname.  Seems simple enough.  I am willing to make a bet that I don’t buy any T-shirts this semester, but this is going to be the initiation promotion from now on.

I could write about something else, but I have dinner to make, math to study and a chapter in the world’s most boring book on movies to read before I go to bed.

I could write the interview with myself using your questions, but I am not in the mood to be humorous, that will be later.

I could write…

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