For some reason...

I can cut board exactly to the length that they are supposed to be. Measure twice, double check, draw a line, check the line, eye up the cutting blade once, and then once more, and EVERY time, the shit comes out wrong.

Regardless of all that, I have used my new table saw to build a new workbench, a workbench that is, as far as I can tell, nearly level. Its a fine workbench. I made it exactly as high as the table saw so I can use it as an extension if need be. Or at least I tried to make it exactly as high as the table saw. "Exactly" is such a subjective term when it comes to how I build stuff. I'm sure I'll get better at that.

Its not completely done yet, but alas, its past the dreaded 11:00, quiet time. I don't need to hear my neighbor bitch about how I was hammering until all hours of the night. Eff him though, his crap ass dog is barking as I type.

After my workbench is done, I'll have a good start to a nice little workshop in my basement. I bought a new light to put up that will greatly improve the lighting, and a big ol plastic shelf unit to hold all of my tools so I can get them out of the kitchen, and somewhat organized.

The materials for the bench only cost about 40 bucks. Compared to a bench that I could buy for 40 bucks, mine rocks, even if it has a certain endearing crookedness to it.

I swear to butterflies that this actually happened.

Tao=God, Tao=everything, Butterflies in [everything], therefore swearing to butterflies=swearing to god.

I was sitting at quiznos, and at the table next to me there was this conversation:

Girl "They had a nutritionist lady on good morning America, and she said that eating a red hot chili pepper in the morning will curb your appetite!"

Guy "Really?"

Girl "That's what she said, a red hot chili pepper will curb your appetite and help you loose weight because you won't be as hungry!"

Guy "Wow, I can't believe it!"

OK, I paraphrased a bit, but that's the jist of it. So all this time, I've been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and fresh fruit to curb my appetite and loose weight, and I could have been eating red hot chili peppers instead? Holy moly, that's sooooo easy. That's it, I'm getting on the red hot chili pepper diet bandwagon.

Why the hell are people always looking for an easy way out? Peppers curb your appetite? C'mon lady, even if they do, no nutritionist in her/his right mind would ever recommend eating nothing but a pepper for breakfast.

Eat your freaking breakfast. Have pancakes, or peanut butter and jelly, or a fruit bowl, or a fiberful cereal and your stupid appetite will be curbed. When you get hungry again, eat a piece of freaking fruit! What's so hard about that?

Chili peppers. That made my decision for me, I'm cancelling cable.

Disclaimer: Any personal injury resulting in the accidental ingestion of a red hot chili peppers CD and/or jewel case or insert is the responsibility of the eater, and "Grinchin it up" takes no responsibility for said stupidity.

Edit: I actually found a link to the book, http://www.enotalone.com/article/4163.html. Jeebies, I wish I had a "before" picture of myself so I can write a book about how I lost 50 lbs on the peanut butter and jelly diet. Then I can go on oprah and get rich.

I once knew a girl...

who I was always excited to see. We had fun no matter what we did, never fought, and could talk for hours about nothing, or something, or a little of both. I wasn't good enough to hold on to her, and she left me. I'm over it, it was many years ago, but the fact that for the time that we were together we had a great relationship remains in my mind.

I hear a lot of things from people about my view on relationships. For the record, my view on relationships is that "Its not supposed to be hard, somewhere out there someone exists that will just fit me, and overall a person should make your life better and easier."

I feel this way because I know that its true. I hear all too often how relationships are supposed to be hard work and compromises. Why? and if that is true, who the heck would want to deal with it? Why would I want to be in a relationship with someone who expects me to change to make the relationship work? That would be like buying a DVD player, and then having to buy the lazer sensor, spinner motor, and dive door separately before it would work. Man, I want my DVD player to work "out of the box", don't you?

I blog this today, because 2 comments were made to me over the last couple days that irked me a little.

One friend said "You really need to come to my show on Saturday, I have a feeling that some day you'll be saying, 'hey, if I didn't come to your show, I wouldn't be married and happy!'"

First off, about 2% of the married people I know are actually happy. The rest are constantly bitching about how they can't do what they want, and their wives spend their money. Secondly, I'm sure that I won't meet someone that makes me happy in a bar, because *gasp* big daddy don't drink. Thirdly, and this is a big thirdly, I AM indeed quite happy in my life. Its a simple life, and I haven't met a person who has had anything to offer it to make it better.

A guy at the gym made a similar comment about marriage. It seems like people think that marriage is step 12 in some program. That its the end of a path, the point at which your life should change, the point that we should all be working towards. I disagree.

I don't care how many people tell me I'm wrong, or how many people tell me that my hopes are too high, or ambitious. I've already had the good fortune of meeting at least 3 people that met my requirements. Mostly, I didn't really realize it at the time, but I know that they're out there.

Its saturday, and that means Quiznos, and then I'm going to do whatever I want, at my leisure.

Have a nice day.

Thoughts for the day.

As I was pulling out of wegmans, waiting for a car across from me to either go straight or turn so I could turn, I had a few thoughts cross my mind.

1) Nice turn signal, idiot! Why don't you clue the rest of the world in on your grand freaking plan to either go straight or turn? Why keep it a secret? The rest of us want to know too!

2) Hey, she's kind of cute, I guess she gets a free pass, you don't really have to use your turn signal if you're cute.

3) Ooops, my turn signal isn't on either.

4) We have something in common, I should say hi.

5) No, I think I'll just blog about it.

Have a nice day.

Chrismas keeps getting more annoying.

Year after year they find new ways to make christmas get more annoying. I'm not a fan of midgets, everyone knows that. They're creepy. They're small, disproportionate, and talk funny, and some people say they carry bubonic plague, but I think that's a rumor. Why the heck are there so many midgets in commercials these days? Midgets are filling roles that are usually resevered for cute things, like puppy dogs, and children.

Elves? Please. Midgets suck. They're not "cute" because they're little. Put antlers on a cat or something, now THAT is cute.

You are not going to believe this!

Its the most fantastical, terriffico, super-amazing thing to happen to me in 3 months!

Blogger remembered me!

Why does Peyton Manning lick his fingers so much? I can't imagine that it tastes all that good, nor do I think that it helps him grip the ball, but he's always licking his fingers. I don't get it. I do some wierd things, I'll admit that, but I don't lick my fingers, and as previously stated, see no benefit in doing so....unless there was wing sauce on them or something...Does Peyton Manning have wing sauce on his fingers?

holy moly

This is robo-raptor. I'm going to get another one for myself. Its waaaaaay cooler than my dinosaur.

http://www.roboraptoronline.com/watch.html

Toys for Tots

As I was getting my saturday quiznos (as opposed to my thursday quiznos), I noticed a toys for tots truck parked outside. I thought "what would the mountain goats do?". Well, they would say "when chances fall in your lap like that, you gotta recognize them for what they really are.". So, POW, its off to pants'n'at. OK, ok, there isn't a pants'n'at in the area, so I went to target.

My original idea was to buy toys for girls and boys, but I thought, man, I don't don't really know anything about little girls, other than the few things I remember from my childhood. Those things are:
A) They're icky,
B) they have cooties, and
C) they don't like cool shit like guns and robots.

How do you buy toys for icky people with cooties that don't like guns and robots? You don't, you leave that to more experience people and stay within your depth, playing to your expertize. My expertize? Guns and robots! Yeah!

OK, so at first I thought, this is going to be hard, I don't know any little boys, and I don't know what kids are into these days. So I thought to myself, "what would I want?". Well, the one thing that I always wanted and never got was a remote control truck. I got a remote control car once, and that was sweet, but the problem with a remote control car in the winter is snow. You can't take it outside and you can't fully enjoy it inside, so you have to wait until spring. I passed the remote control cars by and got a big ol truck with big ol tires that will go on the snow(if we have any), it has flames on the side too, kids love flames on cars.

Secondly, my favorite toy that I ever got was a large robotic dinosaur. Sure, I mostly liked it because it had little rubber pieces on it that fell of and were good to chew on, but I also liked it because not only was it a robot, but it was a dinosaur as well. Back in those days, robots weren't cool. They took 2 steps and fell over. The spit foam things out of their mouths and had light bulbs for eyes. I fully believe that that's why they put the chewy rubber things on it. To make it fun.

So, I bought a robo raptor. It looks a lot more sleek and well built than my dinosaur, and there aren't any rubber things for kids to choke on. But again robot+dinosaur=success.

Thirdly, I decided to buy a gift for girls after all. I bought a shockwave transformer action figure! Who doesn't like transformers? They rock. They're not as cool as they were back in the day, but whatever. I'm sure she'll dig it (or she'll give it to her brother and play with barbies or something).

OK, me and the kiga are going for a hike at shades of death. Have a nice day.

In true me fashion...

...I'd rather be blogging than doing my final which is due by 5:00 tomorrow. I'm going to start right after I blog though.

Anyway, my first attempt at making general tso's chicken was what I would refer to as "a colossal failure", not an insurmountable failure, which is the worst form of failure possible, nor a miserable failure, which is mostly reserved for George Bush references, but colossal nonetheless.

I blame the recipe, because I followed it well. Its not that the end result was "bad" or anything, it was just different than what was expected. Its like if you send someone to the store and say "Hey, get me a diet rockstar", and they return with a sugar free full throttle. Its not that sugar free full throttle is a bad drink, its just inferior to diet rockstar in all imaginable ways.

Today was my 1 year health screening. I get to find out what good I've done for my body, but the bloodwork will take a week to get back to me, so I won't know until then. My blood pressure was kind of high this morning, but I blame that on the fact that I'm entirely too stressed out, and I was running late this morning causing me to rush and get all worked up and all that.

OK, on to that final...after I do a few more things.

I'm the proud owner of...

...a brand new wok. I always thought that a wok was just a fancy frying pan, but I think it actually made cooking easier. I made chicken curry stir fry. It was yummylicious. I actually followed a recipie, and at the end of the recipie I had something edible, and not a burnt gloopy mess. My stir fry tasted a lot like the singapore mei fun that I am hooked on, so I'm a little excited. Its also fairly low-cal. At just 300 cals a human serving(that's 1/2 of a matt serving) its high in protein and low sugar. Yay low sugar. Now, I need to find out what those stupid vegetables they put in the mei fun are. Bamboo shoots, celery? What the hell are those things?

Observations from tonight:
1) just because everything needs cooked, doesn't mean that it all goes in the pan at the same time....this was a brand new concept for me.
2) mmmm...curry.
3) you don't cook mei fun, you stick it in water and let it sit(how easy is that?)
4) mmmmmmmm...curry
5) small chicken strips cook faster
6) "glug glug" does not equal "a tablespoon" of oil...whoops.

I get to make it again tomorrow night. Then I'm going to find more curry recipies for the rest of the week. Yay curry!

Night.

/sigh

This'ere is funny, I don't care who y'ar, this'ere is funny:
http://www.doitlater.com/showMovie.php?23

The irony is of course that I'm researching my speech on procrastination which led me to doitlater.com, and now, instead of doing my speech, I'm watching funny videos, and blogging.

So...

...normally, I only blog about a select few things, or categories of things. These things include, but are not limited to:

1) The Tao
2) The Nissan
3) Stuff that ticks me off
4) Stuff that makes other people laugh.
5) Stuff that makes republicans the opposite of laugh.

Normally, folks would be pretty happy to not be mentioned in my blog. Actually, I know someone who knows someone who knows Hillary Clinton, and apparently, the first thing she says every morning(up until tomorrow morning) is "Whew, I made it another day without being in Matt's blog". That's only slightly exaggerated.

Anyway, apparently I was in err(the state of err, I have erred) when I neglected to blog what a great time I had on the date that I was on the other night(the happy feet experience). It was a zillion-gagillion times better than the "stupidest date of my life" that took place a few weeks ago.

So there, we can add 'good dates' to the list of things that I blog about.

I help people!

I already blogged my funny today, so here's a picture of me sanding while doing habitat for humanity. The irony is that my own bathroom needs sanded, but instead, I'm here sanding this bloke's hallway(looking damn sexy too). The people in charge of habitat for humanity think that the crack of 9 o'clock is a decent hour to be awake, for the record, I disagree, hence the look of quiet dispair on my face(you can't see that cause of the dust mask, but I lived it, and I guarantee that there is certain quiet despair).

The other day...

...when I was jiggling my key in my car door wondering why it wouldn't unlock, several things crossed my mind. I'd like to share a few of them, and in this order:

1) I need a nap
2) Back in high school, it wasn't really all that funny to make the retarded kid write bad words on the board because he didn't know what they meant.
3) Actually, it was a little funny, but I wouldn't do that nowadays.
4) Unless I was kind of bored and noone was looking.
5) oh shit, this isn't my car.

There you go, that train of thought is direct evidence that I'm overly stressed out. It didn't even look like the nissan, it was like a maroon malibu or something like that, but it was parked in the spot that I parked in the day before. I'm glad that the owner of the car didn't see me, that would have been tough to explain.

Have a nice day.

Happy feet?

Through an unforseen series of events, I ended up seeing happy feet instead of the fountain tonight. If you are going to see happy feet, just be prepared for a really strong message about fishing. The message was plopped ontop of an otherwise good movie, but it was so ungracefully delivered that the entire experiece just turned "strange" about halfway through the movie. I won't say not to see the movie, because it was enjoyable for the most part, except for the parts that seemed more like watching a poor little mouse try to carry an elephant up a flight of stairs. The movie should have been called "stop fishing you jerk-heads!".