Good morning, folks. You know I'm all about the education on this here blog. You know I'm one for making sure you leave here with some knowledge or information that you didn't have when you clicked my link in your favorites list. What, I'm not in your favorites list? You better rectify that, and with the quickness. I'll wait. ... OK. I have a few rambling thoughts to share today, mostly about my so-called weekend, but first let me start off by talking to my dear friend, Softball Slut. Hey. SS. You there, sweetie? Angel food cake? You readin', honeypie? You out there, muffin? I'm not usually one for rubbing NaCl into open wounds, but I got a Costco-sized box of Morton's (the one with the hot spices addded) with the safety seal removed, all set to pour a cupful into your aching flesh wound you received over the weekend. Now, I didn't do my picks on Friday because the games all looked like bad Sloppy Joes, but boy did I get a gem. Kansas State, unranked, nobody talkin' about 'em, rose up and beat down the much-vaunted defending national champion University of Texas squad, 45-42. To be fair, UT lost their phenomenal QB Colt McCoy (again, who names their child after an animal?), but last time I checked, Colt doesn't play defense (kinda like the Indianapolis Colts, but I digress), so that doesn't explain K-State running all over UT like Libby Grubman at a rave. What happened, Texas? Too many bong hits the night before? Not enough cheerleaders doing naked pyramids? K-State made you look like the new guy in prison out there. So much for defending your title. Maybe you should take up boating, UT. At least in that sport, they block and tackle. OK. I got THAT out of my system. You can be mad, SS, but I sent you some traffic, so pipe down. Your team got slipped a roofie and left in a strange bed this past weekend. Now let's talk about MY non-weekend. Friday: I worked. Duh. But after work, 7YO had his final soccer game, a makeup game that had been cancelled twice before. It was cold and windy that night, and I purposely left my whistle at home, 'cause no way was I gonna be roped into being the referee. Hell, we were the visiting team anyway, meaning we weren't responsible for supplying the ref. Score. When we got there, we found out that the other team had no one to ref. The only other parent on OUR side who could've reffed had reffed the previous weekend, when I faked a leg injury to get out of doing it. Oh yeah, I completely faked being hurt, limping like a Civil War soldier the whole time. Lame? Yes. In every sense of the word. But I didn't have to ref. I forgot to put on my lame act on Friday, though, so I relunctantly agreed to ref. I didn't even have a whistle. I just hollered real loud when the ball went out or when there was a penalty. I got hit with the ball TWICE in the first quarter, and the fans were yelling at me to get out of the way. As though I ENJOYED being hit by a kicked soccer ball on a cold night. The opposing coach got pissed with me, though, 'cause I wasn't calling penalties on the teams. Frankly, both sides were pushing and sliding, and I just wanted it to be over as fast as possible, so I just let 'em play. He wasn't happy. He was even less happy when our team won 2-1. Oh well. Maybe he should teach his kids to not kick the ball in their own goal. Just sayin'. Went home and collapsed. Saturday: Cleaned the garage. We've lived in this house for 3 months now, and the garage looks like a street in Baghdad. I swear, two merchants tried to sell me my own shit in there. We worked out a good deal, though. We had to get out there and clean it so that we could empty a storage room we were renting near our old house, 'cause we didn't have a garage there. So we cleaned. Dear merciful God, we cleaned. We alternated between cleaning and yelling at the kids for doing dumb shit while we were cleaning. After quitting (yeah, we weren't finished, we just stopped), I hung out with my boy Pilot, (not YOUR Pilot, Fresh Air) who was in town. It's been 9 years since I've seen him, and damn was it good to just hang out, eat ribs, shoot the shit, and just chill. Hopefully he'll be moving closer to me, and we'll get to see more of each other. You my boy, Pilot. Good luck today. Went home and collapsed. Sunday: I rented a big ol' U-Haul truck to go get the crap from storage. I swear, it was like slavery was reinstituted, the way we worked on Sunday. We found boxes of junk that we hadn't opened since we moved from South Carolina, meaning they've just been moving from house to house with us, not being in any way useful. Can you say "garage sale"? I can. The storage facility was part of a convenience store, so once the truck was filled, I stopped by the store to close out the account while DWW went to get lunch for everyone. As I drove up to the store, I decided to park beside the store so I wouldn't have to worry about backing out and all that. As I went around the corner of the store, I heard the worst sound in the world: CRUNCH! SKRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! It was the sound of a 24' U-Haul truck hitting the hanging corner of the roof of a convenience store, and the subsequent scraping as the aforementioned truck tried to continue on as if nothing happened. I said what anyone says in that situation: "Oh, shit." Even nuns would say that. I backed up, creating an even louder screech of metal on metal, and moved the truck to the side, and jumped out. There was no getting away with it, 'cause there was a Cletus going into the store who was staring at me like I was at a Klan meeting, and I said I wanted to marry his daughter. So I had to own up to it. I walked in, and the 2 girls running the register were laughing their asses off at me. Damn if that fucker hadn't ratted me out. We walked outside to assess the damage, and the girl couldn't tell what damage I'd done. Not because it was so small (in fact, that shit was all kinds of dented up); because the REST of the roof looked smashed in, too, and obviously not from anything I had done. Thank God I got the insurance on that truck. We'll see what happens. After that ordeal, I had to drive the truck to the house, where we unloaded it and packed it all into the now-clean(er) garage. By the way, I hate books. They are...so heavy. Why do I keep them? Because I love them. Therefore I hate them. Don't try to follow my logic - you'll only trip and fall. After resting for about 30 minutes, it was time to take the truck back and go to band practice, where we proceeded to have the most awful, tiresome, monkey-fuck of a rehearsal in a LONG time. We were laughingly bad last night. And we have a show on Friday, so that was very encouraging. Went home and collapsed. Sometimes, coming to work is more restful and relaxing than being at home. Peace.