Fight the power

There have been quite a few changes in my life recently.  I moved into a home with a woman and her two dogs and apparently gave up all my rights to individuality home décor. But nothing prepared me for all the stuff what I would get chastised for when I moved in with a significant other.  For example, apparently it's not ok to just add decorations or useful things around the house, they have to be pre-approved and match with the way the home is designed to be shown. Also if someone is hosting a bachelorette party at your house the first weekend you are living there, you have to leave and go stay with a friend. Thirdly, apparently it's not ok to hate on any silk sheets that may be on the bed. Lots of stuff. But little did I know how quickly I would become accustomed to it.

When I was using the restroom the other evening, I ran the current toilet roll out of paper, so I replaced it and rehung the new roll.  I hung the roll in the underhand manner, and at the time I guessed that someone in my household couldn't help but make a comment about how we don't hang toilet paper rolls in such a fashion.  Sure enough within 15 minutes I was being yelled at from the bathroom and informed that we don't hang the toilet paper in such a manner in this household. Which is an amazing bit of foresight for a man, since mostly we would never think about that kind of thing.

This means one of two things, either I'm gettign smarter, or, far more likely, my brain is trying to rebel against the oppresive power without my consent. If it is my rebellious subconcious, we can expect things that will fight the "man" keeping me down that are both subtle and inconveniencing. I can't imagine the depth of the sneaky things my brain can get up to when I'm not aware, such as putting dirty dishes in a dishwasher full of clean dishes, rearranging the pillows on the couch/bed, deleting saved shows from the DVR.  Who knows what my subconcious will get up to, my rebelious spirit can't be quenched all the way, even if I want it to.  How can I be to blame if the guest room door gets left open and the dog sleeps on a bed she's not supposed to?

Spidies are tricksy

This is actually a post from my friend Katie W. and it's a story about her mortal combat with a spider in her house.  Generally I don't hate on spiders, I hate on milipedes and centipedes, which I find far more frightening! I'm not saying I'm not man enough to take down a spidy, I am.  But I'd rather they eat the other bugs, but I digress, here is the epic story of one mother’s epic battle to overwhelm her opponent:

“Here is what happened to me last night:

I was watching tv and a huge brown spider skittered across the fireplace. It totally made eye contact on its way by. My first thought - eep! My second thought - I have to kill it before it gets hungry and eats the cat or the baby.

I got out of my favorite chair without breaking compound eye contact and picked up a flip flop.

I decided the flip flop wasn't sturdy enough to kill the humongous creepy spider. I reached very slowly and cautiously for the welder's gloves on the mantle. The spider inched into a deep mortar line in the fireplace and hunkered down.

I donned the glove, flexed the flip flop, and poked at the bricks in an attempt to threaten the spider out of its crack.  It laughed at me. So I fake swatted at it.

It went 'oh shit, she means business' and took off across the fireplace like a cheetah (0 to 60 in approximately 2 seconds), turned the corner, and stopped before the fireplace meets the wall. Smarty-spider-pants apparently is evolved enough to know he'd be easy pickings on the wall.

What an effer.

I tried to work up the nerve to squish him with the hand in the glove, but I was too scared of him. Instead I settled for faking another flip flop smack in the hopes of luring him closer to optimal crushing distance. He ran again (yes! just like I'd planned!!) and then stopped right on the effing corner of the brick.

Dammit.

I dropped an f bomb out loud and decided to go for it. I readied the flip flop, wound up, and swung. Wouldn't you know it?! That beeatch freaking ninja flipped off the brick and disappeared somewhere. Maybe in the bucket of train depots... Maybe under my favorite chair... Maybe back into whatever hellish crack it came out of.

All I know for sure is that it's out there somewhere in my house plotting its revenge.

Today I am carrying my flip flop everywhere I go.”

Excellent stuff  Katie, I wish you well in your triumph over this clever opponent.

How did they know?

So I rarely pay any attention to facebook ads, but I've had one pop up a number of times that not only piques my interest, but takes every fiber of my being to not fall into the trap.

Yes that's right, Bret the Hitman Hart glasses of my very own.  Sometimes Facebook knows you pretty well...I don't even watch wrestling, haven't in years, but somehow Facebook has been able to figure out that by tapping into my 10 year old mind and desires they can almost (and by the skin of my teeth almost) get me to purchase some shiney wrap around glasses that a old WWF wrestler used to wear. It's creepy odd too because I don't watch "professional" wrestling at all anymore and haven't for years and years. But somehow facebook is tapped into my soul

I've seen the ad about 5 times, and I've gone as far to see what they would cost (like $20 for 3 pairs...which seems pretty reasonable...).  I've even added them to my cart once but didn't finalize the purchase. It takes all of my willpower to not buy these stupid glasses.  Why can't Pintrest teach girls to do useful things like make sunglasses from some obscure wrestling reference for their boyfriends.

I feel so safe

So at work all day we've been getting these loud security pop-ups telling us about an emergency at another base near ours. On the bottom of the notification, which blinks and causes a siren sound to happen, there is a think that you have to click to acknowledge and then another link to click for more information.  Clicking the link for more information causes a website to pop up that doesn't get past our internet security program.  So to put that in context, an urgent security problem is happening, and we can't get to the information provided by the local base security because our internet security doesn't allow us to visit the security office web-page for possible life saving information.  In the meantime every 20 seconds someone else gets another loud security alarm on someone's computer nearby telling us there is a dangerous thing going on that we can't find out about.  Good times,

Sequestration and the Continuing Resolution

Look, if I see one more ignorant comment on the subject people are going to get hurt. I understand some of you may not like the federal government and are ok with it getting cut, I understand some people are not for these things, I don't care either way.  But what the Department of Defense has been told, is that these cuts mean the following things to their civilian employees:

1) If they stand, they will be forcing us to stop working one day a week for 22 weeks which effectively cuts my (and other DoD workers) salary by about 20% for those 11 odd pay periods. That ends up being about 10% of my yearly salary. Not 2%, it will be about 20% a paycheck. Kindly take 20% out of your paycheck for 22 weeks and let me know if you are ok with it.

2) DoD employees will be receiving less benefits and less time off. We don't get accrued leave or other benefits during the ~44 days we're not working. It's like free vacation except I don't get paid or get any benefits on those days off.

3) There is no new hiring so you can't replace people who retire or move or anything.  So it's kinda restricting for those people with career goals.

Anyway, hopefully it will all get settled, if not then I'm going to be poorer for the experience.