Month: October 2013

The Power Of Facial Hair – Part 2

Sox Beard 2

The Red Sox won the World Series 4 games to 2 over the St. Louis Cardinals and I like to think that my letting my facial hair grow unchecked for the last 50 days (previous post) had something to do with it. Sunday night as part of my usual prep for the upcoming work week I will trim it back to its former shorter length.

The second shift supervisor for our Turned Parts Department is also a Red Sox fan and when he came in this afternoon he walked over to where I was sitting and asked, “How do you like it?” pointing at his hat. From my seated position I could make out an arc of the words World Champions above the Red Sox’s B. I asked, “What did you do? Dial the souvenir hotline at midnight last night and order a hat overnighted to you?” Then I stood up and saw the number 2007 below the B. It was from the last World Series.

I told him that I bought similar hats after both the 2004 and 2007 Series, but they were worn out. That’s when he let me in on his secret, he orders two hats. One to wear out and the other as a keepsake.

Going to go hats shopping tomorrow.

Third Time In 10 Years

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWsmB4SjGJw

The only way this could be more perfect is if I could put little Boston Red Sox Hats on the two of them…

The Sports Night Apportionment

Right now the Red Sox/Cardinals game is on the big TV and ESPN Monday Night Football is in a small window of the laptop. This display mix is as it should be, because, well, World Series game five vs. keeping track of one guy’s running yardage.

The World Series is tied at 2 games a piece, so it is now down to a best two out of three series with two of the games at Fenway Park. Tonight is not a must win for the FRS, but if they do it would really put the pressure on the Cardinals.

Yesterday morning the Purple Whales were a 43 point favorite entering the day’s football action. By the time the day was over I was trailing by 23 points! I still had a glimmer of hope tonight, my opponent had no one playing and I had my premier running back going, Marshawn Lynch. Mr. Lynch was predicted to get 17 points, but he has had two games over the needed 24 points this year, so I theoretically had a shot.

Had being the operative word. It is now nearly halftime and Marshawn has 8 yards for zero points.

The Geocaching Devaluation

Pioneer Trail

We haven’t been doing a lot of geocaching lately, but today was to be a day to get back out there.

We have always been fair weather cachers, but mainly the lapse is because we have run out of local caches of the type we like to hunt. In August Geocaching.com ran a 31 Days of Caching promotion and during that time the local caching group endeavored to place a new geocache for each day. Several of them were along the bike/walking trail adjacent to the newest section of I-520 and a few of them were at least regular sized containers, more like our cup of tea, so this was where we were going.

As we were finishing up our morning beverages at our usual spot, Donna said, “I don’t feel like geocaching.” “My feelings aren’t hurt,” I replied. “Can we just go for a walk in the woods?” she asked. That is what we did.

The No Hot Chocolate Incident

Dunkin Drive UpI’ve been thinking about this for about a week now on how I could write about this and not come off as a little stupid, but have been unsuccessful, so here goes anyway.

If at all possible we like to start our day off with a couple of hot beverages from Dunkin Donuts. The DD on the south side of town, because of being shoehorned into an already existing lot has kind of an interesting drive-up line. Coming from one direction you have to drive past the store, then turn sharply back into the line as it crosses in front the store. But if there is no one in the line you can cheat and sneakily turn into the entrance of the Captain D’s next door.

It was early and no one was in line yet, so I cheated. When I placed our order I was informed that Donna’s beverage of choice was unavailable, the hot chocolate machine was not working. This has happened before and our usual recourse is to drive to the other side of town and try the other Dunkin. Because there was a car ahead of me waiting to get their order, I checked my driver’s side mirror to see if anyone was behind me and started to back up. I didn’t get far. Bump!

Had I checked my interior rearview mirror I might have noticed the Isuzu Trooper behind me. He, like me, had come in the cheater’s way like I had so he was invisible in the driver side door mirror. Fortunately the plastic bumper of the Purple Whale was almost the exact same height as the bumper of the Trooper, so there was no noticeable damage to either vehicle.

The only damage was to my pride which was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t back up and had to drive past the drive up window and everyone inside who heard the whole incident through the ordering microphone.

Save Me Some

Here at the Valve Store(TM) in the cafeteria we have an industrial sized ice maker/dispenser so everyone can fill up their cups, mugs and glasses. I get ice three different times, morning, lunch and afternoon break because I drink three different beverages throughout the day.

Because of the quanity of ice the machine produces and I fancy myself a sort of a smart-ass, whenever I get in line behind someone who is getting ice I always say, “Save me some.” Because it will never run out, most people ignore me.

Here is an ice machine conversation from yesterday:
Me Save me some.
Co-Worker Every time I get ice, I end up with ice on my arm.
Me Maybe you did something bad to the ice machine in a past life.
Co-Worker I don’t beleive in past lives.
Me Maybe the ice machine does.