Simian Farmer

Pro.

Engineering is the professional art of applying science to the optimum conversion of natural resources to the benefit of man.

~Ralph J. Smith

Mountains of minutiae

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

~Quentin Crisp

Oktoberfest, baby!!

There was a time, a few years ago, when Amy and I were just starting to date, when I went to Oktoberfest in Edmonton and had to have her drive me home at 9 PM because I was a wee bit soused.  And green.  Suffused with cold sweats and shaking a bit.

I was in bad shape.  She still married me though.

This year, I flew solo to the shin-dig (this past Saturday) since she's preggers and, well, wouldn't be having quite as much fun being surrounded by sausage-eating drunkards as she would as one of them.

I still left early this year.  I didn't even get to see the headlining act: Trooper!  The Black Forest Band plays polka through dinner and ends some time just before midnight when the headliners take the stage.  We had finished the Elephant Dance and the band was just wrapping up when I left.

Not because I was too wobbly -- far from it -- but rather just too tired.  The intervening couple years of marriage and child-rearing have set my internal clock for an earlier bed time than had previously been my habit and I was almost falling asleep. 

It would seem that the T-shirt I elected to wear that night had the figures on it slightly reversed.

I got me a great gal

My poor, sweet wife.

A couple weeks ago we returned home from being 'out'. 

I have no idea where we were and it has no bearing on this particular post, but it irks me a little that my short term memory is soon to be surpassed by that of the average mayfly.

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Reconfirming Foxtrot at the pinnacle of my comic preferences, right up there with Dilbert, was Sunday's colour comic.

The nice touch is the Tie Fighers on the bedspread.

And, of course, I absolutely cannot let this sort of opportunity pass me by. 

I had to solve it.

Check below for my scanned copy of the completed nerd search.  Er, I mean, numerical word search.  I have the questions and solutions numbered so you can see which go together.  I had to look up some help for the ninth one, the integration.  I haven't solved an integral in over six years now.  The rest were pretty straightforward.

...and the truth will set you free

Driving home in my truck last night after dropping Amy's car off at the VW repair shop, hoping that the prognosis she receives today is that it's NOT the transmission, but just some minor leak that the repair guy is gonna fix with the wad of chewing gum that's starting to go stale in his mouth anyway:

"So how much have we spent on this car since you bought it, Aim?"

"Well, there was that switch thingie that went after we drove it through the carwash an hour after I bought it."

"How much was that?"

"About 600."

"600!?  Jesus!  I thought it was, like, 2."

"No, it was 6.  Then there was that valve you picked up that had to be replaced.  Then the starter switch.  And then a couple weeks later the starter itself.  And we got charged for the labour when they were looking to see what was wrong with the cruise control but didn't find anything."

[Simon, adding stuff in his head...]

"So we've spent almost two grand on the car since buying it just over a year ago."

"That's about right, yup."

"You know, I so like my GM truck right now.  Only thing I've replaced is the windshield, like, four times.  And that's just 'cause of all the highway driving I did the first two years."

"My GM truck was the same way before I sold it.  Ten years and never a problem.  That reminds me, I once put a bunch of sugar in a guy's gas tank back home when he pissed me off."

"Geez, remind me never to get on your bad side!  What did he do that pissed you off enough to put sugar in his tank?"

"He just said some stuff about me, so I thought he deserved to have sugar in his gas tank."

[...pause...]

"I mean, it was true, but he had no business spreading that sort of thing around."

Headline news

Some amusing headlines read today when taken out of context with their assocated articles:

UN COMMITTEE TELLS FEDS TO NEGOTIATE WITH LUBICON

PROVINCE LOOKS AT TEARING DOWN BUILDINGS ON LEGISLATIVE GROUNDS

LIBBY WANTS TO 'CLEAR HIS GOOD NAME'

INTERNET STUDY SHOWS CANADIANS ARE HEAVY USERS

NO QUICK DECISION ON ELECTION: LAYTON

Why?

I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.

~Real Live Preacher

Stop with the gratuity!

As has been made obvious this week by my ongoing impression of Dearth Vader, I've had very little time to post miscellany here.

To fill that void, I offer a few recent pictures of the boy so that your daily quotient of Cute may be filled in one swell foop.  (Which is even faster and more efficient than a fell swoop, and funner to say.)

More typing stuff over the weekend when I'm not being assaulted by so much inconvenient busy-ness.  And business.

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