Archive for the 'Strange things people do' Category

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Attacked

sunset

I’ve been taking a lot of pics lately (imagine that) and really want to get some good sunset shots, but it’s hard to find good spots in the city where you can really see the horizon. I found a few spots by the water (above) but wanted something better. So tonight I went on a hike into some fields and hills hidden not far from where I live in search of a good spot to shoot from. There wasn’t a good sunset tonight, but I saw a lake hidden behind some really heavy cover and trees, and thought I’d go check it out. I walked up into the heavy brush to see if I can get down to the water when I heard something big (HUGE!) moving in the trees about 10 feet away from me. It was big, hairy, smelly…just a nasty beast. I found myself confronted by this snarling, toothy hissing blood thirsty wolverine (might have been a grizzly bear). He had blood on his snout, and I could tell he wanted to kill me. I was after all in his house. I knew the end was near, and had to defend myself and kill this beast or die….alone by the water. Before I beat him away from me with a tree branch, I snapped of this pic.

raccoon

Ok. So it was just a raccoon who was sleeping in a tree, and mildly pissed off about me waking him up just before sunset. He looked at me, yawned a few times, and climed a few feet higher in the tree and went back to sleep…. But that story isn’t NEARLY as much fun as the wolverine/bear.

And no, I didn’t kill or beat the raccoon.

I added a few new pics to my random gallery tonight also here.

Vitamins, Neon glow in the dark pee and such. Abs of steel

I Know, I know, I know…. I’ve been slacking! The good news is that I have at least half a dozen things that I will write about soon, but I just have to make myself sit down and do it. Life has been a little bit crazy with the job hunting quest and I’m having to make a real effort to keep my spirits up.

The guy at GNC talked me into trying some vitamins to help with my “well being”. I’ve never really taken vitamins, but thought I’d give them a try. HOLLY CRAP. Well, Holly piss is probably more accurate. I’m pretty sure that this stuff is radio active. I took a leak yesterday and it was like I was pissing a glow stick. That stuff was the brightest chartreuse, neon, crazy looking pee of all time. I’m going to wear my sunglasses the next time I use the restroom so that I don’t damage my retinas with the bright light and radio active glow. I’m pretty sure that it glows in the dark. If I got trapped in a dark cave I could just pee on the walls and I’d be able to see for a few weeks. Maybe that is why so many people take vitamins…. for the entertainment factor of neon pee.

Blake, Keni, John and I are all going to Mexico at the end of May for a nice beach vacation. This is my motivation to take my fitness stuff to the next level. You know, I want to be all sexy like while I’m on the beach. I guess this is a good time for a fitness journal update then huh?

For the most part I achieved my goal from the beginning of the year. I’ve kept all of my muscle mass but lost most of my body fat. Well, at least I’m lean by traditional standards. I can tuck my shirt in tight, have a flat belly and no love handles. All of my clothes fit and wear the way they are supposed to. But for the beach I don’t want to be lean, I want to be ripped!!!! I want a 6pack again! I’m not sure if I can pull it off in time but I’m trying. We’ll see how it goes.

***Fitness Myth: If one has a big belly, doing 9 million sit-ups will make their belly go away or will give them a 6-pack.

It always cracks me up at the gym (particularly around the first of the year) when you have all of the really heavy folks that come in and work out for 45 mins, and spend 30 of those min’s on the ab-machines at the gym. When your body burns fat, but burns it all over your body, not in the specific area that you are working out. So doing abdominal workouts will not target the fat around your belly any more than it will target fat on the rest of your body. It’s great to work your abdominals! Strong abs will help your back and make you feel better for sure. But it will not magically make your belly go away. If you want to spend a lot of time doing something to burn your belly off, I recommend doing cardo. You will burn a hell of a lot more calories (thus fat) on a bike or treadmill than you will on a crunch machine for the same amount of time. About the 6 pack. Everybody wants a 6 pack. They are always seen as the true test of how fit someone is and is thought to be uber sexy. The thing you need to know about a 6 pack: Having a six pack is more about being lean than it is about having strong abs. You can do a million crunches and have abs of steel, but if you have even half an inch of fat covering them….you wont have a visible 6 pack. To get a six pack you need strong abs, and to be lean enough that there isn’t anything other than skin covering them up.

1965 Ford Fastback Mustang (Cobra Engine) Pics, and getting in great trouble at work.

Blake and his 1965 Fastback Mustang

Well, Blake’s lovely lady Keni has been giving me trouble about not updating the blog enough, so I figured I’d put something new up just to make her go away! I HATE when beautiful girls are bothering me all the time ;) .

Soooooo. What’s new? I’ve been staying busy with work and with job hunting for the past few weeks. I have had a few interviews that have gone pretty well, and I really hope to have something firmed up in the next week or two.

My boss asked me into his office this morning for a reprimand. Sometimes sales people live in their own worlds and the only thing they care about is how they look and making sure the impossible promises they make to their customers are fulfilled. A salesperson started to whine in an e-mail trail that she needed a rush order immediately, and wanted to know “what gives” with the order being late. So I wrote back the truth: Our plants were working double overtime to keep up with our huge influx of work over the past 2 months or so, and that those same guys working 70-80 hrs a week were just rewarded with the news that they no longer have jobs. Imagine that, their motivation to work above and beyond disappeared and now everything is late. I wanted to really write back a nasty note telling her silly she is to flip out over a $15 box of business cards being late, because she isn’t smart enough to realize that over 100 people were just laid off, and an entire company shut down. I held back and just wrote down the facts, but they didn’t seem to like that very much. So sales folks didn’t like what I said (even though it’s true) and asked a boss of a boss to ask my boss to talk to me. My boss told me that he was sick of lying, and that everything I said was true and he didnt’ have any problem with it….and “reprimanded me” by giving me two 4th row tickets to an afternoon Texas Rangers game and a full day off to go. He said it was a reward for all of my extra hours and hard work. Man, I need to be reprimanded more often!!!

Last week Blake and I went out to take some pics of his 1965 Fastback Mustang (with the Cobra Engine). We went to one of my favorite spots under the bridge and did some night long exposures. We were just fooling around and trying a lot of different things (flash, no flash, flashlight painting etc.) and ended up with some good pics. We are going to go out again soon when the weather gets better and take some more. We learned a lot and have some ideas about what we want to do.
You can see the rest of the pics from that night in my gallery here:Clicky
Blake’s page about his car
1965 fastback mustang

Laid off, and a few pics. ImageX is no more.

laid off

As noted last week, I have in fact been laid off! FedEx Kinkos made the decision to cut loose the division that I am a part of (ImageX). I have a job until the end of May, and hope to find another job inside FedEx Kinkos before then. I’m not too worried, but thought I’d go take a few pics to make fun of my my new found situation. I also wanted to prove to you guys that I don’t only take pics at night.

The pic below was set up for any formal interviews the bum might get.

I’m thinking about sending these to a few of the magagers at Kinkos I might try to get a job with at the home office.

Formal Bum

April Fools Day. April 1st

First of all I want to apologize for slacking off so much with a lack of blog posts lately. I have been super busy with work (thank god for OT!) and just haven’t made time to post meaningless nothingness on here. So to motivate me I posted a bulletin on myspace.com my profile telling people that I would blog about the first subject that someone wrote me back with. My sister was the first to write in, and said that I have to write about April fools day. I also promised to post a pic of whoever wrote me first.A deal is a deal, so here we go:
Sister

Far and away my favorite holiday is April fools day. You can keep your Christmas and Birthdays, I want my April 1st!!!! As long as I can remember I have always looked forward that wonderful day; plotting and planning my dastardly deeds. Not to toot my own horn, but I have to say that I’ve had some pretty good ones:

April 1st, 198something. One of my first great pranks made me very proud. I unscrewed or removed every light bulb from every lamp and light fixture in the house before my parents came home. I then sat in my room and laughed as my Dad went to the garage and started throwing breakers. My Mom was inside, and every time he would throw a breaker (and another clock or VCR would reset :) ) he would yell “Was that it?” and mom from the inside would reply, “No, try another one”. I let the process repeat about 10 times, resetting every electronic device we owned before I screamed April fools, and then ran for my life.

April 1, 1993: 8th Grade. My step brother was house/baby sitting for us while my parents were out of town. I procured some blank detention and ISS (in school suspension) forms and enlisted the help of one of my female classmates. I had her fill out the forms in nice girly handwriting that could never be confused as being a forgery in my penmanship. As may still be the practice, when we got in trouble at school we had to have our parents sign the forms and take them back to school the next day. My stepbrother went out to eat with his lady friend, and upon his return he found 3 slips and a note from me attached to the door leading into the house from the garage. I listened from upstairs as he read the paper work:
“Kevin, please sign these forms for me, I have to take them back to school tomorrow, thanks Zach….” Then he and his girl friend “what the hell are these…” As he continued to read my scandalous adventures “ detention… Zach sexually assaulted a young lady at school with inappropriate contact in the class room…..What the hell? Second detention: Zach was verbally abusive and cursed at two teachers when confronted about his behavior…. Suspension notice….He’s suspended for 6 days…”. I couldn’t hear the end of what they said because as I heard his blood pressure rising as he read on, I knew I had to retreat back to my room for part two of my plan. I tried to play it cool and act like I was studying on my bed when he kicked the door open. He asked me what the hell this was all about with the slips in his hand, and I had to FIGHT to keep a straight face as I told him the story that I had practiced at least 20 times. “I couldn’t help it. We were sitting in class and the next thing I knew my hands were up her shirt. Kevin, this girl was asking for it, you should have seen what she was wearing! The only girl in 8th grade that is that hot with a body like that wearing a tight low cut shirt. You would have done the same thing. Why would she wear that if she didn’t want someone to touch.” The last sentence was spoken really quickly because as I made the “she was asking for it” comment his eyes did the same thing that happens in cartoons when people get mad. I could see them swell up and get red. The guy was about to kill me, so I move to the other side of my bed to create a little distance. As he started to charge I said the magic words “April fools!”. It would seem that when you are so upset that you are about to kill a 8th grader, that it takes a few seconds and a few panic filled repeats of the magic words before they sink in. He didn’t stop charging until the 3rd or 4th “April Fools!” He couldn’t laugh about it for another few hours. He was so worked up and so pissed off that the humor escaped him until his blood pressure returned to normal.

April 1st 2003: Have you ever wanted to know how your boss would react if you quit? Well, I used that day to find out. I took my boss at the time back into the safe room and told her t hat I was putting in my 2 week notice. She was 6 months prego, the store was way understaffed and already having huge problems keeping up. I could see her just deflate when I told her I was quitting. I knew what she was thinking… she was going to have to go from working 12hrs 6 days a week to 16 hours 7 days a week for a while because I opened the store for her. Then she tried to be cool about it and asked me where I was going. I rambled on for about 10 mins with this cockamamie story I made up about getting a job for an international company where I would go to Africa and 3rd world countries and project manage westernization projects (roads, water treatment ,power, infrastructure etc.). I went into all these details about how the money was ok, but I’d travel the world and not have to pay taxes…and I ‘d always wanted to go to Africa. She was sitting slouched over and dejected trying to act interested for about 10 mins. Then she got out the resignation form and asked me to fill it out. Man, as I think about this, I’m really evil!!! I think I made her look up my hire date and some other info while I filled the form out. In the reason for leaving section, I write in 4 inch letters: APRIL FOOLS! I handed her the paper a few mins later and slowly started to walk away and create distance (prego girls run like gazelles and hit like prize fighters, their babies use their bladder as a punching bag, so they are ready for some revenge!!!). I could see her face as she read it. It took a few seconds for it to sink in that it was all a joke…. She came after me throwing pens and cussing my name. I barely escaped with my life. I used a variation of the same story to write an e-mail to my girlfriend at the time. We were on again- off again (off at the time) and that had a outcome that was very different than what I expected.

Has the prankster ever been pranked? April 1st 1996. Driving home from school in a pack of cars in a school zone I noticed a motorcycle cop parked up ahead. I hated those guys because they always used to stake out some of the unmarked (no lights, just times written down) school zones near Plano Senior High. As I passed him I saw him make a U-Turn and start weaving through the mass of cars. I thought to myself, man he’s going after someone. I was right, but that someone was me. He pulled up on my bumper and told me to pull over. WTF? I was smack dab in the middle of 30 cars and there was NO way I was speeding. I pulled over into the Burger King parking lot by school and he came up and asked me for my license and insurance. Typical moto cop. No smile, all business. He went back to his bike and ran my info as I sat there watching all of my friends drive by laughing at me for getting pulled over. Ten mins later or so he comes back and says: “Son, do you know why I pulled you over?” I went through all of the standard banter. I couldn’t have been speeding, is there something wrong with my car…yadda yaddda yadda. He starts to raise his voice and give me a lecture about how he knows what I did… then he leans over and says that he needs me to sign this ticket. He hands me his ticket book and a pen. On the front page is a hand written note: I got you! April Fools!!!! Mom

Owned.