The Heebie-Jeebies

I'm not a big "supernatural" person. As a man of science, I have a healthy skepticism. But I haven't shut the door to the fact that there are things that cannot be explained and the fact that there may be a grain of truth to some of the stories of the paranormal.

Going to Mac Murray College, filled as it is with its owns stories and legends, helped keep that door open.

On my first tour of the campus as a prospective student, I was on a campus tour with "The Blonde" and a John Lenon looking tour guide I will call "Toby*". As part of the tour, Toby took us into the old, abandoned theatre building, and told us a story of a friend who felt something touch her chest back stage. When she got back to her dorm room, she had a red handprint on her chest.

Oh, and there's the "Blue Lady", the "Harker / Michaelson Monster", and the psychics prediction of an axe murder on Jane 3rd on a rainy Thursday in April.

And then there's my story.

It was my junior year, '86 or '87, and I was 'working' in the computer lab, second story, Mac Hall. Few people ventured into the lab late in the evening, (pre-internet) and I was the only one in the lab. I was playing 'Dungeon', a variant of Zork I & Zork II. Even though no one else was there, I had to stick around until 10:00.

The lab was a series of 3 rooms. I was in room one. The hallway doors to rooms 2 & 3 were locked and the lights were out. There was no way to enter the lab without going past me. I was alone.

Or was I?

As I sat there, a little after 9:00, trying to open the jewel encrusted egg (you give it to the thief and let him do it for you), I felt as if someone was behind me. I was sitting sitting with my back 5 feet from the corner of the room, with the door at my 2 o'clock. There could be no one back there. But I looked anyway.

I'm not sure which was more disturbing? The seeing of nothing, or if I had seen something. As the clocked slowly ticked toward 10:00, every few minutes that creepy feeling would come back. Stronger.

I was not the only entity in that room. A fact that had neither of us seemed all that happy about.

By 9:55, I had a full fledged case of the heebie-jeebies. I would have bet ca$h money that the specter of Death was hovering behind me with his boney hand inches form my shoulder. At that point, I did what any other red blooded American male raised on Scooby-Doo would have done: Called it "good enough", shut down the lab, turned off the lights, locked the door, and jogged ran down the stairs, out the doors, and didn't stop until I was back down campus in my dorm room.

I never had that feeling again in the lab, but I am certain it was not my imagination that knight.

I
WAS
NOT
ALONE.

---

* I called him 'Toby' only because his real name is 'Tobias' but he said to call him 'Toby'.

My Day In Pictures…

How did my day go yesterday?

Well, I went to the vending machine, which has some kind of "SureVend" technology that may use some kind of laser or electric eye beam to make sure that your product drops and you get to enjoy your tasty, salty, garlicy Gardetto's. 

Which explains why I had to hit the machine with a high shoulder slam to get them to fall.  Rat bastards.

Speaking of rat bastards, I get on the "L" around 5:00, and I see this ass-hat zonked out.  Not only is he taking up two seat, with his guitar & amp, but his legs are splayed out taking out a huge amount of standing room, too.

Since he didn't so much as twitch for 7 train stops, I figure he was most likely dead, and just dumped there.  Because no one would SLEEP on the "L".  Right?

And no, I cannot explain the plastic pumpkin, either.

The Worst Smell of All Time

Many years ago, I was living in the suburbs, alone and trying to save some money by buying in bulk. Well to do that with meat, it means splitting it into smaller bags before freezing, because you don't want to defrost 10 pork chops when you are only going to cook one. Oh, okay, two.

This trip to the store (day 1), it was chicken breasts. The full, double breast. Boneless and skinless, but still, I had to split them and trim a little fat here and there. Since it's chicken, I used proper handling methods. The chicken was trimmed on a plate that would get washed soon. The wrapping, Styrofoam tray, and paper towels were all put into a separate trash bag to get thrown out right away, and the skin and fat scraps went down the garbage disposal.

After the cutting, bagging, and freezing of the chicken, I took out the special trash, washed down the kitchen and my hands, and basked in the glow of a job well done.

The next day (day 2) after work, I went into the kitchen and P-U! did it smell a little funky in there. Just to be certain, I threw out the rest of the trash, and wiped down the counters again.

The following day (day 3), after work, I opened my front door, and I could almost see the green baculovirals, maloderous stench slam into me. My eyes watered. "Good Lord! What is that smell!?!" I thought. It was the worst smell I had smelled in years. Maybe in forever.

Unfortunately, it would hold the title of "Worst Smell Ever" for maybe another 45 seconds.

Braving battle with the beast, I dashed into the kitchen. I could tell the source of the stink was the sink. I stood in front of it, bent over, and looked down the drain hole…

…and flipped on the garbage disposal.

The blades of the machine sealed my doom. Not only did they atomize the fetid chicken skin and fat that were rotting in that chamber of horrors for two full days, but like a fan, they pumped the essence of concentrated EVIL into my face.

I gasped in shock.

Bad idea.

I'm not sure what was worse:

• The unholy smell of the befouled fowl?
• The fact that millions of pathogens had just entered my lungs, but wouldn't kill me nearly fast enough?
• My mouth was open, and that $#!T was now on my tongue! And it smelled like a fresh mountain breeze in spring time compare to HOW IT TASTED!?!

How I didn't pass out and or develop chicken based super power, I'll never know. I must have been in pure survival mode. I turned on the water to try to smother the stench, then grabbed a lemon from the fridge and Darryl Dawkins'd that into the whirling maw of the InSinkErator.

Opening all the window, running the exhaust fan over the stove, half a can of Lysol, and a 20 minute tooth brushing let me claim victory over the stench.

That, and pulling a frozen chicken breast out of the freezer for dinner.

An Opening Day Tradition

I was sure I post this last year, but I guess I didn't.  Every opening day for the last few years I play this little snippet of history to get me in the mood for the baseball  season.  I know I've been ripping on the Cubs and their fans a little recently, and honestly, I have no plans on stopping any time soon.  :-)

To set the scene:  It's April 29th, 1983, and the Cubs are off to a 5 & 14 start.  And after the game, their manager, Lee Constantine Elia

lost

his

everlovin'

mind…

with a live microphone in the room.

I remember this day.  I remember the radio station airing this rant (bleeped, of course) over and over that week.

And to this day, its how I kick off the season.

Safe For Work Version – Bleeps!

Not Safe For Work Version – No bleeps!

Playoffs!?!!

Have A Good Friday…

Sorry, it seems the Easter egg hunt will have to be canceled this year.

(Yes, I ran this same picture last year, but a classic's a classic.)

Have a great weekend, ya'll!

Wedding Work Weekend Wrap-up

So, last Saturday, Cora and I were fairly unsupervised, so we did what all engaged couples do: wedding stuff!  And I do mean stuff!

The first batch of wedding invites were stuffed.  You can read most of the details over at Cora's blog.  But I will say, we worked like a well oiled machine.  Sure, we started off putting the cute inserts into the wrong envelopes, but we recovered.  And we did some very smart things:

• We assembled the sections in phases with each person only doing a few tasks, so we got good an fast at our tasks.
• After we made a couple, we went to the post office and had them weighed to make sure that we weren't THAT couple that sent things out postage due.
• Peel & Stick! Return addresses? Yes! Mailing addresses? Yes!  Stamps!  Outer envelope? No!  Yeah, we cheaped out a little and got the like 'em style envelopes.  Saved ourselves some decent coin.

All the envelopes were stuffed, and we were down to the sealing the envelopes.  Cora looked me in the eyes.  I gazed lovingly back at her, and we both had the same thought: "If you think I'm licking these, you are out of your ever loving mind.  Remember what happened to George's girlfriend on Seinfeld?"

I suggested a sponge, and Cora popped up and brought 2 little spongy makeup brushes and a shallow bowl of water.  And we ripped through the final steps of putting the invites together.

But we did take time out to play a little.

We met up with Cora's family at Red Robin, and I had a pretty girl sit right up on my knee.

But seriously, what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on with my hair?  That's REALLY not the look I was going for.

And we saw a car that went WAY beyond "wash me".

But we were being stalked.  Stalked by the fact that I was heading home on Sunday. But before I left, we had a couple of tasks on Sunday:  Mail the invites, order the wedding cake, and have a little lunch.  We decided on Subway, so I Googled mapped it, and there was one right in front of us, at Grady.  Now, I will estimate that I have been through that intersection 30 or 40 times in the last year that I've been going out to see Cora.  And her, a couple thousand times?  Yet, it took Google to point out that the Subway was attached to the gas station there on the corner.

The trip tot he airport was sad, but when we realized that we would be together again in just 2.5 weeks, it didn't seem so bad.

And now, I'm down to 2 weeks, and I'm wondering: Do I have enough time to clean this joint before they get here?

April's Fools

I was trying to think of a good April Fool's Day joke to play on you all. But I decided to dedicate today to the biggest bunch of April Fool's on the planet: Cubs fans.

For those of you who do not follow baseball, the Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series in 102 years. According Wiki, that's the longest drought of any major league sports team in North America. Thank God for the Hibernian F.C. of Scotland. They haven't won the Scottish Cup since 1902.

Speaking of April Fools, did I ever tell you about the time T-Bone and I were snowed out of an opening day game at Wrigley Field?

True story.

He had free tickets from work. None of his customers wanted to freeze to death. And it snowed. Players slid around on the outfield for a while, and then they called the game.

It's Like A Sign Or Something…

I guess the Universe thought "Corascope" was too long of a name or something.

Friday was a great day.

We dropped Gwen off at school and then hung out for a while before heading down to Ivar's on Lake Washington.  As we pulled in, I saw this railroad sign and knew I had to get a picture of it.

A few more errands, and it was time to get Gwen from school.  We headed to Best Buy to try to register for our wedding.  Did you know that Best Buy doesn't HAVE a wedding registry?  Nope.  You can make a "Wish List" on line, which would be kind of the same, except you can only put one name on it.  Therefore, it's not really the same at all.  I mean, seriously.  This is 2010, right?  You would think a national retail chain that sells information technology would have a little bit of a clue.

Anyway, after getting ideas for our my "Wish List", the family & I went to Cold Stone.  That's right, we were the good parents, feeding our kid ice cream BEFORE dinner.  But sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing, and the right thing is the wrong thing.

Thursday's Air-Rage

I woke up Thursday in a grumpy mood.

And the day didn't really try to make things better.  I should have been happy.  I was flying out to see my fiancée Cora.  It had been a while since I'd see her.  So I should have been in a GOOD MOOD, if you know what I mean.

I wasn't.

• I was running late.
• As I was locking the door, I had to run back in and turn off some lights that I missed.
• I got half way to the train station when I realized that I didn't have my BlackBerry.  Not good when you are on call AND heading out of town.
• I was on the train into the office when I realized that I'd forgotten my future daughter's Easter basket.
• Work was work.
• On the way to the airport, I didn't get the trains right, so I go to the airport at 5:45 for my 6:45 flight.
• All the moving walkways heading my way were broken.
• I go to the gate at 6:20, so needed to go somewhere quick to get a bite for dinner.  Went to Miller's Pub for a quick sandwich, but the lady in front of me was ordering for an army, and was asking questions about every menu item.  After 2 minutes, I bolt.
• Thank GOD for McDonald's somewhat speedy service.

Finally, they boarded the plane.  We were a little late, but I was off to see my lady love.  Eventually.  So, if any of you were checking out my Facebook status on Thursday, you would have read the following:

March 25 at 7:19 pm - Stuck on the plane waiting for the final 3 passengers to show up and make their connection. This is not helping!

March 25 at 7:44 pm - Still effin' sitting here an hour after we were supposed to depart.

March 25 at 8:05 pm - I don't give a damn about their luggage. If it takes you 40 minutes to move it from one aircraft to another, just assume it's lost and get it to them in the morning. It will be FREAINING MORNING ANYWAY by the time you roll us on to the runway.

March 25 at 8:20 pm - Has decided "cleared for takeoff" means something different to SW than it does to me.

March 26 at 12:27 am - And the beat goes on. We've landed, but no gate, so we are sitting out on the runway. It's "The Flight that Wouldn't END!". :-)

March 26 at 12:37 am - Now I'm expecting my checked bag to have gone to Orlando.

---

I was sitting on the plane, and had just ranted about "the flight that wouldn't end" when the phone rang.  It was Cora.  I think she was wondering if I got lost.  Nope, just being held hostage.

But the funny thing was this.  The instant I set eyes on her, standing just beyond the security gate?

It was all worth it. 

And then some.

Say WHAT?

The other day, I went into Elephant & Castle, a  chain of faux English pubs.  Instead of waiting for a table, I chose to sit at the bar.

The server behind the bar brought me my diet Coke and the prepared to take my order.

"I'll have a barbeque burger and a side of French onion soup.  And can I swap onion rings for the fries?*"

"Sure," said the waitress, "how do you want that burger cooked?"

"Medium well, but hold the onions.  I don't like onions."

It took her brain a good 3 seconds to start leaking out of her ear.

---

* I gave up fries for Lent.

I've Been Itching To Tell You..

If you have a "dry skin" issue, please try Eucerin's Calming Creme.

That shit's the BALM!  :-)

Oh, sure, boo the bad pun.

And every time I hear the word,
"balm", I can't help but think of one of my favorite Who songs; Athena!

---

Look What I Bought!

It's a little cock sucker!

Poissoning Myself

I'm not much of a cook, really. I know. ||_|

But, I'm Catholic, it's Lent, and I've given up eating dinner alone in restaurants for Lent, so I've got to figure out a way to do fish.

• I've had my tuna salad sandwiches.
• I've had my fish sticks.
• I've had my smoked salmon that I just needed to heat up.

Face facts: it's time to cook.

I'd picked up some individually vacuum packed tilapia fillets at Dominick's (Safeway) the other day, so this morning (Friday), I moved two of those buggers up to the fridge to thaw.

Over my lunch hour, I Googled a recipe, and came up with THIS ONE on RecipeZaar: Tangy Pan Fried Tilapia.

It had every thing I was looking for:

• Easy – I don't cook much. Baby steps here.
• Easy – Don't give me 300 ingredients all from obscure 3 world countries that I cannot find locally.
• Easy – I don't want to dirty every utensil I own making the damn thing.

Tangy Pan Fried Tilapia
(modified slightly from the original)

Ingredients

2 Tilapia fillets

1 cup Progresso Italian Style Bread Crumbs

3 tablespoons Inglehoffer's Traditional Dijon Mustard

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Tools

Large non-stick frying pan.

Kitchen tongs.

Large flat bowl for bread crumbs

Plate to hold fillets before cooking

Fork to spread mustard on fillets

1 cup dry measure

1 cup liquid measure

Directions

1. Remove fillets from plastic
2. Coat tilapia fillets in Dijon mustard.
3. Dip in bread crumbs to coat.
4. Heat oil in skillet on med / high
5. Pan fry fillets about 2 – 3 minutes per side. Flip only once
6. Remove from pan
7. Salt & Pepper to taste.

Review

Not bad. A solid B. I wouldn't know tilapia from orange roughy* if it bit me on the ass, but for my first stab at it, I certainly didn't poisson** myself. I matched it with a little green salad and a glass of rosé, and had a nice meal.

As a mustard lover, I was surprised that I could only detect the slightest hint of mustard. Maybe I should have gone with a zestier mustard? Next time I will probably add some cayanne pepper in with the bread crumbs and a dash or two of Frank Red Hot afterwards to spice it up.

And since I'm a blogger, and this is what we do, here's a video without creepy animated people…

* "Orange Roughy" always makes me think of the description of a painful and shocking poop. Like you see someone come walking out of the bathroom all ginger like, and they say, "Orange Roughy" as way of explanation. And now you will have that association in your head for the rest of your natural life, too!

** It's a French joke! MJenks isn't the only one who can make language jokes! "Poisson" = "Fish" and "Poison" = "Something deadly you ingest."

Followers – The Movie!

It's time for a little blog-keeping here at Scope-Tech.  And that mean thanking my newest followers.  Which I have to do in movie form, since I'm freakin' ADDICTED to making these damn things.*

I can't get text overlays or links into the video, so here they are again, in printed form.

Stylez @ Living The Dream Blog	Tara Wright @ Bite The Bed Bugs
Kathryn	CubsLDoit
Chaka Chaka's World	Jaime Kunzer

Once again, this blog would be nothing without you; the eyes that read the drivel I write, that sometimes watch the videos I make, and occasionally even comment.

* And "No" I don't plan on stopping any time soon.  Slowing down?  Yes.  Stopping?  No.

Tech-Tuesday – Busting and Breaking Bricks

I've been in the brick busting and breaking business for a very long time.  Roughly 30 years.

I started out on my Milton Bradley Microvision and the Block Buster cartridge that came with it.  (I would eventually have Bowling, Connect Four, and Sea Duel, too.)  I played this came CONSTANTLY.  I learned how it played.  I got better, and I was finally able to wrap the score over 999 (it was 1979 or 1980 – computing power was limited) on a single life.  And with that, my block busting career came mostly to an end.  For a while.

Then I got my first BlackBerry, and found Brick Breaker.  Hell yes, the King is Back.  For those of you who have never played, the goal is to use a paddle to bounce a ball off of of bricks, clearing the wall and then moving to the next level.  Some levels are easy, some diabolical.  Some offer a ton of power-ups (free lives, lasers, guns, etc.).  Some offer none.

Thru 3 different models, the game got better.  My game got better, too.  Recently I got to 33,950 and ALMOST cleared the round of 34 levels for the second time.  The second round is rough, because right off the bat, the ball starts off at high speed, and the bricks start advancing toward you every time you hit the ball.

Yesterday, I blasted thru the second round, and got to the third round and something odd happened.  While the bricks started advancing toward you, the ball doesn't speed up.  How could the third round be EASIER than the second?  And same thing with the 4th round (shown above as "3x").  I have since rolled past 77,000 and am still going strong.  I've read on-line that that's it.  The rounds don't get more difficult, and the levels just repeat over and over again.

I think I'll roll it up to 100,000 and then just waste my lives, lock in that as the high score, and go into semi retirement.

And start playing Word Mole again.  ;-)