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Definately camped out in the ''miscellaneous ramblings'' category of life...
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Monday, December 08, 2014
Tue Oct 7, 2014
OK…just for
disclosure purposes I have to get this bit of information out of the way right
up front:
- We went to Italy for nine days.
- We ate everything in sight. If it looked like Italian food, it got ingested. If it had been Halloween, and small children were dressed like pizza, they would have been at risk.
- And we LOST weight. Yes...I said LOST. Muahahahaha!
I just
wanted to say that now so that any hatred you may harbor towards us *may*
possibly fade by the end of this trip report.
Of course we
fretted non-stop over preparations. One
of these was to get sleep masks. I kind
of figured they would hand some out on the flight, but we bought our own just
in case. But they were boring, so I
tricked mine out with some Homer Simpson eyes to give the flight attendants
even more stuff to talk about:
As our
flight didn’t leave until 8:45 at night, we stopped in South Beach for lunch
(sounds so freakin’ cosmopolitan, doesn’t it?).
Note the wine…that would definitely be a common theme on this trip!
There’s our
plane!!! (OK sorry…I won’t add too many
useless pics like this. But it was EXCITING!)
We tried our
best to learn some Italian before the trip, which included common hand gestures
and facial expressions:
Oh my…that’s
a lotta miles…
Wed Oct 8, 2014 (flying TO Europe, you
skip across time zones…we left US Tue night but landed in Italy after noon time
the next day)
But hey…at
least on the way THERE you pretty much just eat, then sleep, and after about
ten hours you wake to this:
Not 100%
sure but I think this is Corsica:
WizzAir. Just sayin’…”When you gotta go, fly WizzAir”:
OK so the
plan was to spend four nights in Rome, the train it south to Positano for four
more nights, then hop the train back to Rome for the final night:
ROME!!! Trastevere is on the west side of Rome,
across the river Tiber. This is the
entrance to the first place we stayed, Hotel Santa Maria. And yes, those are genuine copper pipes on
the left. You know…the same kind that
would be stolen in a heartbeat in most places in the States. The little tray
things attached to the wall are candles:
posted by gfak40 at 7:09 AM
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
I admit I’m anal, but in a good way. I have a set of rules that I frankly expect all of us to follow. At all times. Like no farting in the hallway or stairwell. Just because you’re the only one there at the moment doesn’t mean it’s OK to drop bombs, especially if you have hang-time talent. Same goes for cologne and perfume…you wanna take a bath in the stuff, then fine…go for it. Just do me a favor and stay in your home where you can wilt your own plants and burn your own retinas. And if you run into a friend at the grocery store and decide to chit-chat, please don’t stand there like a couple of high school dorks blocking the aisle. Yes, *I* moved your cart on you so I could get by. Trust me, that went over better than had I said “Pardon me, you ignorant potato-head.”
And don’t even get me started if you load your groceries into your car, and then casually push the cart aside so that it can then blow into *my* car.
But this one is a bit odd, even for me - I can’t stand to see “things” in the urinal when I go to pee. I’m compelled to pee them off so that they go down the drain, and I am left with a spotless porcelain landscape. Usually it’s just a hair or two, and doing target practice to bomb them down is kind of fun. Don’t laugh…what the hell else am I going to do to entertain myself while standing there? Make fun of the guy standing next to me who is peeing while his hands are in his pockets? That only gets me so far.
But for the past several weeks there has been some type of string stuck in the drain. When I first spotted it I saw it as a challenge, a step up from the usual curly hairs. Granted, some hairs are themselves a challenge just because they seem like they came off some 500 pound gorilla. Who the hell do I work with that has pubes that freakin long? It’s disgusting. I want to hang electrolysis ads in there just to drop a hint.
But this string was special. For starters it was thicker than a hair, so I knew it was probably hung up on the drain slots. It would require a few different “streams” to dislodge it. When I failed the first time, I was worried that I had just loosened it, and someone else was going to come along and take the prize. So I made sure I drank extra water just so I could get back in there as fast as I could.
Much to my delight, it was still there. I took a deep breath, aimed carefully, and held off as long as I could so that the first blast would be forceful, and not some measly trickle. And I nailed the sucker! I was right on target with a force that brought images of police using a water cannon against unruly protesters. (Hmmmm…”cannon”…I like the sound of that).
But the sucker only wiggled around, taunting me. When I had expelled the last remnants of the gallon of water I had wolfed down to prepare, I stood there a defeated man.
Day after day it went on like this. At first I was excited to see it still there each morning, and I began my assault anew. I tried different combinations of water, coffee, and tea, trying to see if varying friction properties might finally do the trick. But nothing worked. Soon it became a thing that taunted me, speaking to me in its little string-in-a-urinal voice. “What’s the matter tough guy, pressure gone down in your old age? Look at me, I’m just a pathetic little string. Maybe you should just focus on those wimpy hairs you enjoy peeing down so much. You ain’t got what it takes for this piece of action, Cupcake”.
Now I dread going in there, like it’s a daily assault on my manhood. Time and time again I’m tempted to reach in and pluck that little bitch out of there, but I’m too afraid I’ll get caught making audible death threats to something barely visible that I just yanked out of where I pee, like some drunk in the subway trying to eat the urinal candy. I thought about using another bathroom, but that would be like admitting defeat.
I’d like to say there’s a happy ending to this story, but I fear it’s still there, waiting for me. Soon I will know, as I have had two cups of coffee and a cup of water. It’s only a matter of time. My life is out of balance because of this. My ying is slightly heavier than my yang. My karma is tilted. My feng shui has clutter. Nothing will be right in my life until I watch that little bastard slip through the crack of the urinal drain, screaming its little screams against the onslaught of my Death Pee.
Maybe this afternoon I’ll break diet protocol and try drinking a bottle of Coke…
posted by gfak40 at 7:24 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
It wasn’t long after I bought my new car years ago when I decided to stop off at a local store to pick up a few things. At the time, my car was pristine. I hadn’t even farted in it yet, and it had been several months already. Believe me, this was tough…there were a few uncomfortably long commutes I had endured during this time. When I parked, I instinctively did so at the edge of the lot, well away from the Valley of Lost Carts. See, this lot had a big dip in the middle, and given that the average schlep who shopped in this neck of the woods couldn’t have a meaningful discussion with a head of cabbage, suffice to say that most people tended to leave their shopping carts wherever they felt like when they were done shopping. Parking your car in the dip area was like watching a huge magnet suck in every loose cart within a half-mile radius. So imagine my, um, ‘thoughts’ when I came out and found a cart wedged against my passenger door, with a corresponding “ding” in the side panel. I wanted to kill. Or at least maim. But when I looked, the culprit was of course long gone. Fast forward to last night, and once again I found myself in this same lot. With six years and almost 150,000 miles on my car, I wasn’t *that* concerned about door dings anymore, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. It was dark out, seeing as how it’s winter. I parked my car in the third slot from the end. Next to me was an open space, and in the first slot was another car. My mind was drifting a bit, thinking about the 25 degree weather, and how far away Spring seemed to be. As I started to walk toward the store, I half-noticed a woman walking the other way. She was all bundled up against the cold, but that’s about all that registered with me. Then, in the middle of the road, I stopped. “Was that a cart she was pushing?”, I thought as I slowly turned. And sure enough, as I stood there and watched, I saw her remove her one bag from the cart, and then she did it. Without a second thought, with not a care in the world, she shoved the cart away from her own car…and right down the slope towards mine. Time stopped for me at this point. Everything went silent. No more sounds of cars whizzing by on the road, no wind blowing. I wasn’t even cold anymore. Because after six long and unrewarding years, I finally had one. I had a Cart Pusher Awayer right in front of me, lined up in my sights. I heard a chorus of heavenly angels singing a song of sweet revenge in my head. There are things that rarely happen in life. You never see the guy who cut you off a minute earlier, now pulled over by a cop for speeding. You never see the bird that just splatted a softball-sized patty of green and white goo all over your newly-washed car. And you never ever see the person who shoved their cart into your car. Until now. What I had laid out before me was divine intervention. I could already see me years down the road, the judge at my manslaughter trial sanding up and saying “I declare this man INNOCENT! For Pete’s sake people…he defended himself against a Cart Pusher Awayer! Set this man FREE!!!”. And my status as a national hero cemented forever into the annals of world history. I’d be doing justice for millions of otherwise innocent victims. As I quickly walked over, solid conviction in my gate, I reached out to stop the cart’s progress. The woman’s back was turned to me as she was unlocking her door. I mulled over which option would be the best to savor this moment…ram the cart into HER car? Just scream and yell like a rabid mad-man? Smack her upside her stupid head with her…cane? In an instant, I knew what the Hindenburg must have felt like. Not the people inside her when she went from a proud beast, floating strong and purposeful above the masses. But the actual Hindenburg herself, right when everything just…deflated. For there, inside the cart, was a walking cane. And not just *any* walking cane. This one had FOUR support feet on the bottom, the kind that really old people use. I turned towards the woman, and at that moment she must have realized my presence for she turned as well. And in her face I saw…terror. Thirty seconds ago, I would have enjoyed that look like an all-beef hotdog smothered with Jack cheese and spicy mustard, on a warm summer day, with a cold beer, and the sounds of my favorite baseball team beating our arch rivals 21 to 2. But when I saw her face, all hope of revenge withered away…because this woman had to have been 85 years old. Maybe 90. My brain immediately thought of my own grandmother, long gone now, and in my thoughts I melted as I said “Nana?” There was nothing I could do. There would be no sweet revenge today. I smiled as I reached into the cart, and handed the woman her cane, saying “I think you forgot this, ma’am.” I had one last thought of shoving the cane where the sun don’t shine, but it lasted just a nanosecond. Her face lit up as she realized I wasn’t going to do bad things, and she smiled and said thanks. Through my grinding teeth I smiled and said, “And I’ll return this cart for you.” She smiled again and said ”Oh thank you so much, you’re so kind!” As I pushed the cart over to the storage area, I looked up and said “When I get to Heaven, all I want is to give me five minutes alone with a Cart Pusher, deal?” As I continued, I suddenly paused, looked up again and said, “I *am* getting to Heaven, right? I mean, I should be all set based on this one incident alone, right? TALK TO ME!!” I didn’t get an answer. I returned the cart, bundled up against the cold and the noise, and thought about Spring.
posted by gfak40 at 1:08 PM
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
Why I Hate Flavor Packs
It all started innocently enough. I was at my doctor’s office to get a pain in my foot checked out. As per the usual quality of HMO’s in these fine United States, I had spent over five minutes just trying to make the appointment, I had to leave work thirty minutes early to get there, I arrived five minutes early, then sat in the waiting room for fifteen minutes, all so I could get about three minutes and twenty-five seconds worth of quality health care from my doc.
I’m kind of excited actually, because at this rate I will earn my “100 Minutes With My Doctor” mug before I reach 70.
So we were chatting away about my foot…
Me: “Doc, it hurts when I walk on it.”
Doc: “Does it hurt when I do this?” (presses hard where it hurts)
Me: “Tell you what, let me put a pair of forceps around your nuts, then repeat that little procedure you just did.”
At the end of my visit, he asked me if anything else was giving me any trouble. In retrospect, this was one of those classic “Shoulda kept my mouth shut” moments.
I casually mentioned that I had seen blood in my crap a couple of times.
I guess this was kind of like when Keanu Reeves in the first Matrix movie mentioned his déjà vu incident. My doc immediately sprung into action, and before I knew it I was all signed up for my first colonoscopy.
Colonoscopy…such an innocent word. Whatever happened to the simple language that is so often ascribed to Native Americans? Why can’t they just call it what it is…Long Hose Inserted Up Ass.
Over the next few weeks I became more familiar with my impending probing. I learned about the procedure itself, including every thing I could expect during the operation. I even had an initial consult at the office of the doctor who would be performing this little diddy on me.
I also learned about Trilyte…with flavor packs. And I quickly became aware of a pattern…no one who has ever had this done really recalls the procedure itself, but they sure remember the alien skank fluid called Trilyte that they had to drink as part of the prep.
Trilyte is another one of those medical misnomers. I have a few other, more appropriate names for the stuff. Like how about:
Bowel Flush
Rotten Egg Surprise
Kolon Klense
Rectum Purge
I don’t fully know what Trilyte is, but I sure know what it does. It came as a powder in a four-liter jug. I mixed it up the night before, along with my flavor pack of choice. I picked Lemon Lime.
When I had my first drink of the bowel wonder juice, I was reminded of an old axiom: shit…sprinkled with a little bit of flavoring…is still shit.
The whole point, of course, is to flush out your digestive tract. There are obvious reasons for this, but in retrospect I think I would have preferred if they could have just stuck a blow hose down my throat and forced my cavities clean that way instead.
It took about 3-4 glasses before I felt the first twinge in my nether regions. The next thing I learned is that you don’t get a whole heck of a lot of time between “twinge” and “sploosh”.
When I felt the first rumblings, I was sitting on the couch. I thought “Wow, that stuff works kind of fast.” Seconds later I was scrambling for the can, almost running in a half-bent position. Along the way I was looking for possible alternative locations to deposit my load, because I figured I wouldn’t make it. One of the larger potted plants in the entryway was barely spared a rather gruesome fate while I briefly admired the broad rim of its container.
That first ‘expulsion’ was a work of art. Trilyte really is some type of wonder fluid that will take whatever is in your bowels, break it down into some type of amorphous goo, and then force it all out at once in a mini enema explosion that could probably clear twenty feet or more if all you did was step outside, bend over, and aim.
I could probably make a small fortune if I set up some big canvases outside as targets. I could create truly unique ‘frescos’. I mean why not? They sell that crap that elephants paint, don’t they?
When I was done, I didn’t know if I should flush my toilet, or administer last rites. Were it not for the holding tank, I’m not sure I would have even recognized it. I could have sworn I saw a blueberry or two in there, which is really impressive since I ate my last one over 24 hours prior. I didn’t want to think about where those little suckers had been hiding all this time.
This pattern repeated for the next several hours. I just set up shop in the bathroom…figured that was easier. If it had gone on much longer I was going to run some cable in there so I could at least watch TV.
Finally, it was time to go.
Now, nothing against those people who see long objects around them and say to themselves, “Hmmmm…I wonder how that would feel stuffed up my coo?”, but I really wasn’t relishing this whole tube-up-my-ass deal. I mean really…is there such a thing as a gay plumber? Because I would think it would be too tempting to be surrounded by all that tubular paraphernalia day in and day out, not too mention those retractable pipe cleaning things. Ew!
So as my way of voicing my protest at this entire event, I downloaded three little “signs” from the Internet. I printed them, then cut each one out. Next, I had Melissa tape each one to my backside, just above the target zone.
The signs said:
“DANGER: Trail Closed”
“STOP: No Spectators Beyond This Point”
And my favorite:
“Do Not Enter: Dogs Running Free Inside”
I’m sure people have done similar things.
When we arrived they did the pre-op check in, and then I was taken to the patient area. I was told to strip down and put on a hospital gown. Somebody has got to invent a better model of the classic hospital gown. Calling these things a gown is like calling a thong a pair of shorts.
After setting up an IV, I was given a briefing by the nurse. One of the things she put a lot of emphasis on was the fact that I would feel very bloated. She kept saying “Don’t be ashamed to blow those bunnies out”, and “When you feel a little gas, just push those little bunnies right outta there.”
Not for anything, but when I’m visiting a doctor’s office to have a tube shoved up my coo for the first time in my life, hearing analogies about the possibility of fuzzy, little bunny rabbits also being stuffed up there doesn’t help. I mean really…is there some line of children’s books out there that explains flatulence by depicting cartoon bunnies popping out of the rear-ends of little kids, while they blush and go ‘Ooopsie’?
I was next taken to the room where the probing would commence. I told the doc that if he finds Hoffa, all he gets is a finders fee.
It was at this point that they gave me the anesthesia, and for the rest of the procedure I was in happy happy unconscious land. As for the whole tube thing, it’s greatly overrated as I was pretty much running on one brain cell, and never felt a thing.
When it was all done and I began to come out of it, it would be a stretch to say that I was ‘conscious’. I don’t remember too many details. My wife was there, and I was still in my gown. Apparently at one point the nurse was telling me to get dressed, and I misinterpreted this to mean lay on my side because they were going in again. Guess I didn’t mind it after all!
We had planned to go to a local Italian place for food afterward, and this is where things got REALLY interesting. You see, one of the things they do when they probe you is to blow air up inside you. Guess this helps expand the colon, and give the doc more room.
Thing is though, if there’s anybody out there on this big planet of ours who really should not be subjected to yet more ‘air’ blown up his ass, it would be me. As Melissa can readily attest, there’s already a healthy volume of air that comes OUT of my ass…there’s really no need to pump in any more to the mix.
So there we are at this little eatery, surrounded by other couples and families. In particular there was a family of four, including two young boys. My state of being is pretty much akin to being three sheets to the wind, and I’m not really aware of too much beyond my own drool.
But, I knew I had a gas problem, and I was ‘sober’ enough to stumble my way to the men’s room, whereupon I entered the one and only stall, and sat down.
Shortly after I sat down, I heard the door open. This was followed by the unmistakable sound of two young boys standing at the urinals.
Being who I am, and recognizing that these fine lads are at an impressionable age, I began to quite deliberately release huge volumes of all that extra air that was stuffed up my ass waiting to come out.
I felt bad for one of these kids because he clearly was having allergy problems, or perhaps he had a cold. I could tell because I literally heard the snot come out his nose as he and his brother tried in vain to control their laughter. Which of course only made them laugh harder, at which point I proceeded to fart harder. They couldn’t take it any more and ran in hysterics back to their Mom and Dad.
Apparently it was quite the show because they were still laughing when I came out. And pointing, of course. It seemed like the whole place was wondering what was so funny, and I just stood there grinning like a drunk fool. It crossed my mind to perhaps do an encore for a wider audience, but I either fell back into my seat, or Melissa kicked me out of sheer embarrassment.
The final phase of my story happened on the way out. After attracting a whole lot of undue attention, and still stumbling, we walked out just as a cop was coming in. Great…just what we need! In my state I’m sure I would have gone out of my way to explain that I wasn’t drunk, but that I had just had a tube stuffed up my ass, and did the nice officer want me to show him for proof?
We managed to make it home, and luckily I went the whole way without another gas attack. Which is a good thing because Melissa probably would have dumped me by the side of the road.
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