Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Took me a few tries to come up with a header.

I was afraid "I think we are all gonna die!" was too scary.

There is a "Winter Weather Advisory" in effect for central Texas. This might have been upgraded to an "Ice Storm Warning" by now for Williamson county.

The TV news said we should have 3 days of food and water in the house. This type of advice apparently stirred quite the frenzy at the grocery stores. Gina and I went to HEB to pickup stuff for dinner (we had not yet heard the 3 days of food and water advice on TV yet). I knew a storm was coming but this was ridiculous.

So where did the headline come from? It comes from the fact that the meat section @ HEB had a big sign that had been put together quickly to say "SOLD OUT OF GROUND BEEF. NO MORE GROUND BEEF. SOLD OUT."

Ummm, yeah. I have never seen any store sold out of ground beef. I have seen them sold out of turkeys or good steaks that are on sale, but never ground beef.

What the fsck? Mind you the water section had PLENTY of water left. But man do people think the ground beef will be useful in an ice storm.

It might also be that it was on sale for $1.99/lb. But it wasn't the only thing going for broke. The whole meat section was picked over. They were even running low on brisket. The were sold out of Smokey Links. They were pretty much out of bread too.

From what the checkout clerk told us the store was a mad house right up until we got there. That all the lanes were open and it was taking up to 30 minutes to get through the line.

I mean, in all my years living in Michigan I don't remember people freaking out like that over an ice storm. I mean, sure they happen here once a year, at the very most. But good god. Buy some soup, some candles, some wood and some batteries for the flashlights and some extra jugs of water.

Do not buy all the ground beef in the store.

Well I really need to get to bed.

Laterz.

Of course, the rumors about the rumors of my demise are also probably grossly exaggerated.

I wanted to get a quick post in as I wrap up lunch here at the office. Mmmmm... frozen fully cooked chicken breast from HEB. Not that bad actually, I need to keep a bag of salad mix at the office too.

Back to the rumors. Having seen the fact that I didn't post the rest of my birthday weekend. I could just imagine the folks that had asked me about my plans and I replied "Not sure, but it involves drinking." might have gotten the idea that I had drunk myself into a stupor, or worse.

My birthday did involve drinking and just maybe one beer too many. I felt a wee bit hungover the next day. Which is odd, since the hangover tends to skip a day. Regardless, the feeling bad on Sunday was because of two things.

1. Cleaning the garage out. Gina put up with my crabby attitude while I did some manual labor. In the end I am glad she got us to finally do that. Because she can finally put her car in the garage. But also, because it brings us one step closer for me to be able to bring my car in the garage too.

2. Michigan State LOST to Notre Dame. I mean come on guys. You had be very excited for the first quarter. It looked like we were going to sweep the Fighting Irish out with the rest of the trash. Nope. I mean once MSU started messing up, I lost the excitement and the beer started to take over, making me sleepy. I passed out and missed the rest of the game. At least MSU did me the favor of keeping it a close game. A shut out on my birthday would just be entirely unbearable. 40-37.

You might be wondering what we did on my birthday. Right?

First, I had fallen asleep on the couch on Friday night. It was about 1:30 in the morning before I passed out watching DS9. So when I woke up around like 2:30, I figured it would be better to just sleep on the couch than wake Gina (and the dogs). This means I woke up on the couch. Which, also means that as usual when sleeping on the couch I woke up early. It used to be a comfortable couch, but it has seen better days, and the remaining days are numbered.

I woke up early (8:30 or so) finished watching the remaining DS9 disc that I had. Afterwards, I went to get the mail. Two reasons there. Gina told me that her parents sent me a package (ie birthday gift) and I had another DS9 disc waiting for me.) That was probably close to 10:30am.

I received a snazzy looking orange tie, a little bit of a retro feel to it. When I wear it I will post a pic. And some dress socks. Now, of course dress socks at first mention sound like a bad gift. But for me they are not. I am not sure what happens to all of the dress socks I buy. But I know that I am always in short supply. Personally I think the dogs are eating them or dragging them into the backyard.

I should mention that my pops got me a very good and again practical gift. A gift certificate for Northwest Airlines. It should pay for a flight home and part of a flight for Gina. This means that we can fly home for x-mas and not break the bank. (Remember, when we fly we have to pay to have someone watch the petting zoo. New pet sitter is going to be around $35/day.)

Back to the festivities. Gina brought in my gifts and asked me. "Do you want them wrapped?". To which I replied "Nah, just a waste of paper. But make sure you wrap the x-mas gifts."

Gina got me a subscription to The Economist. I love that magazine, it appeals to the "Amateur Economist" in me, more on that later.

She also got me a DVD player for my home office. That way I can watch DS9 in there and not hog the whole living room. She also got me a little carrying case for my MP3 player that can also hold my headphones and some other stuff.

We went to Enchiladas y Mas (Enchildas & More) for breakfast. I had potatoes (papas), refried beans (frijoles refritos), egg & chorizo taco (huevos y chorizo taquito) and a barbacoa taco (usually cows head, not sure but it was beef). When we had the barbacoa at Arrandas it was very, very good. The barbacoa at Enchiladas y Mas was not as good. Everything else was great.

We decided that we wanted to go to a movie. I had wanted to see Invincible that came out a week or so ago. The gateway had one at around 12:20. We headed over there. Popcorn is a vice for me, luckily they had burned the popcorn and that burned popcorn smell is just not enticing. Not that I needed popcorn, seeing as we just had a very filling brunch.

Invincible was a GREAT movie. I was never into sports, probably for the same reasons I don't like manual labor. However, movies like Invicible, Any Given Sunday and Mystery Alaska make me wish I had gotten into sports as a kid. My boss has joked around with me joining his hockey team, in the off season. Who knows, who knows. But Invincible made me wish I had played some football in high school.

While, as a former AMC Usher I do not condone the act of theatre hopping. I cannot say that I have never done it. I would have to say that if the theatr was truly looking to prevent this they can. I mean at theatres like the Gateway Regal, they open themselves up to this when they rip tickets at the front door. Rather than down by the two main halls they have.

While, ripping the tickets at the front door does help to ensure that everyone that is in the building has a ticket. It means that your staff isn't conistently in those hallways making sure that no one is coming out and going back in without a ticket to the individual theatres.

At the AMC Elmwood Plaza 8, we ripped tickets at the door. But we only have 8 theatres these guys have around 24. I think there are like 12 in each wing.

Anyway, I just want to say that The Last Kiss was also a good movie. I bought a Soda and some Nerd's rope, again the popcorn didn't smell good enough to buy. The Last Kiss was a movie I wanted to see because of the actors in it, I had no idea what the premise of the movie was.

After, the movies we headed home. We stopped at Cavenders and I bought a new wallet. I will keep the old one as a keepsake, but it was time to retire it. The new one is similar to the old one, but different. Pics will come later.

We then headed over to Fry's. Gina had to return some headphones she bought. I had to pick up an RCA-RF/Coax converter, for my DVD player to connect to the little TV I have in the office. Oh yeah, a monsoon decided to spring up as we were leaving. Gina got DRENCHED. I would have been the one to get wet, but we took her car and well she still won't let me drive it. Even if she was bleeding and on the way to the emergancy room she would probably want to drive.

We picked up a pizza on the way home and rented some DVDs. We had just started eating when her phone rang. It was Anthony, calling to let us know that the MSU - Notre Dame game was on. An event that had completely slipped my mind.

The rest of the story you know.

Laterz

We made it home last night about 9:00 on the dot, give or take a minute.

We made a quick run to HEB for some dinner along with food for the weekend.

Gina and I will be spending some quality time in Dallas next week together. She is going to be receiving training for her new job with NetworkIP and I will be spending time there in some PrivateTel related meetings. So no point in buying groceries for the whole week.

Gina is going to do her signature oven roasted chicken on Sunday night. I will be grilling a couple of pork loins tonight.

Well, I have to go tame the lawn and I best get to it before the temperature raises too much out there.

Also, in case you guys haven't heard.

Google has come to Michigan. They are building some sort of tech center there. I believe the primary purpose relates to Google's plans to digitize all the books in the world. I will have to find the article, but I remember something about Google and the University of Michigan have teamed up for that.

However, they are also hiring for some adWord positions, so some sort of regional sales account management office is being formed as well. Here is some more info: (article)