Every time  see a tattoo that is in a foreign language I first wonder what it says, but I also wonder if it really says what the person thinks it does? For example, I got an email from a friend who had some letters that looked like Greek in his signature line. I wondered what they were so I copied them and pasted them into Google translate. Google said it was Greek but the word was gibberish. So I asked him what he was trying to spell and it turned out he had one extra letter in his word. I just went to Google translate and put in the word faith in Chinese and eight different variations came up. If you get a tattoo that you think says “be strong” and they screw it up it could mean you smell strong! My suspicion is many people walking around with one of these tattoos would be surprised to find out what that ink on their posterior really says! I do like some tattoos but I am a big fat chicken when it comes to needles. So instead of having a misspelled word on me somewhere, I just stick to the stick on kind out of the Cracker-jacks box.

I read today that Martha Stewart is upset that Apple isn’t fixing her iPad for free. Steve Jobs gave her that iPad so Apple should fix it? It really baffles me when people who have a lot of money think that they should get things for free. It is an upside down world we live in, Apple will replace that iPad for about $250 dollars. I know because I just had one replaced because I sat on it. Martha Stewart probably makes that much going to the bathroom. I, low man on the totem pole, had to scrape up that money on my own while Martha thinks Apple should do it for free! It really gets to me to see this kind of stuff. Especially when so many people I know are struggling. I’m not talking about any redistribution of wealth, and I don’t begrudge Martha having made a lot of money. What I don’t like is celebrities whining when everyone doesn’t kiss their posterior. Hey Martha, I am working 40 hours a week, plus rebuilding the barn on my property that got burned in a fire, as well as running a non-profit trying to help others. All of those areas of my life could use some free stuff, but you don’t hear me whining!

Awe the corporate life! Working in a large organization always has its perks and downfalls. Depending on the culture of where you work, some or all of these things are a part of the daily hamster wheel.

1. The break-room refrigerator is always a mess. If it has a freezer it will be a giant block of ice in need of de-frosting. I alway enjoy the three or four popsicles which are buried in the ice. It is just a matter of how desperate you are for something sweet as to whether or not you will take a letter opener and try to free one.

2. The white noise will slowly fade from your mind. Unless you sit right under the unit putting it out. Then like sitting in a Laundromat it will just keep sounding like you forgot to empty the change from your pockets.

3. Meetings will aways start late unless you are the one running late. Meeting to meeting with no break in between are the norm. You have to hire people who attend the meetings so the others can get the job done. If you schedule someone to talk for fifteen minutes they will take thirty and if your company allows it, no one will be listening because they are updating their Facebook status.

It is bad enough that schools across america started teaching ebonics, we now have entire  subcultures who don’t even speak broken english. I am referring to the twits and texting crowd. I work in IT and we have more acronyms than any one else, but most of those are universal like USB or RAM. I can not read what some people write or what the send me thanks to the abbreviated world we are living in. I am a bad at spelling so just trying to get things spelled right is a challenge, don’t ask me to get this whole LOL/WT@/etc….. If you think about it, it is like we are returning to the telegraph, a series of dashes and lines that form a thought is transmitted, and the person on the other end has to translate and fill in the missing bits. The band named DEVO from the eighties had a theory behind the name of the band. They concluded we were De-evolving because of technology. As technology gets more and more ingrained in our lives we become less and less intelligent, to the point we are no longer are able to function without help. If you remember what kind of technology we had in the eighties, I would say they were kind of prophetic. And that is no LOL!

It is funny how connected my eye’s and stomach are. I expect the foods I eat to look a certain way. Anybody else remember when burger king came out with catsup that was purple and green? I tried to eat some french fries with purple catsup and all it did was make my stomach turn. That was the first time I couldn’t finish a container of fries.  There are just things I can’t get over with my food, call me a wimp but when my dinner still has its head, feet, legs or other non-edible parts attached I pass. The craziest food related moment from my youth was walking into my grandmother’s kitchen where my mother and grandmother sat eating pigs feet. The two ladies sat across from each other gnawing away at what was to them a delicacy. To me I thought I had walked into a national geographic special on the wild tribes of south america. Fearful I was next, I froze in my tracks and as they continued to eat, I slowly backed out of the room hoping not to disturb the scene. I have seen pigs feet on occasion and have never had even one thought of trying them, it could be that I might like them, but I don’t think it is the taste that makes me stay away! Some would say that is my loss, but I say I am willing to take that risk all the way to my grave.

I can not believe it! Snow on the mountains as I drove to work today. This can’t be happening? I have so much to do around my house and I thought I had more time to get it done. My grass is dead, it is growing in some parts but the little patch I want to grow is still brown. Snow isn’t going to make that happen. I still need to finish the barn, I have a few more doors to build so the animals will be protected. I need to re-stain the house. It won’t make it another winter without a coating or two. I have to build a new chicken coup, when is that going to get done? Maybe this is just an early prelude. You know one short little storm then it will return to eighty or ninety degrees? I won’t hold  my breath on that one. Today that snow made me feel like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I am feeling very late for some important dates!

Do you ever rate a day on a scale of one to ten? Yesterday was a three.  Not all that special a day. Not terrible, no cars broke down, fires or flooding. Just a day where nothing was going my way. I had big plans for yesterday, I was going to get a lot done. I had meetings planned that were suppose to get me answers for the projects I am working on, yet I got 10% of what I needed. I had such high hopes, but it was all for not! Productivity is elusive, especially if it relies on others. I keep seeing these books that tell me how to get the most out of my day but I can’t seem to get the others who can have a big influence on it to read the same book. Maybe today will be better, but then again if I am waiting on others to help me out it might be more of the same. At least it is Friday!

Today is an Apple geek Holiday! The new operating system came out for the iOS devices. I was in a meeting where several of us hit the refresh on our phones for ten minutes until one of us announced to the others “it’s available” Then as if it was a game we tried over and over to be the first one to have it installed. We texted each other updates on our progress, and since mine worked first I was victorious in showing it off to the others. As if the ten to thirty extra minutes it was taking for them to get it was an eternity we stood looking at my iPhone clicking buttons and sliding things back and forth. It didn’t matter I had it on my iPhone for a few minutes because I had it I was all of a sudden an iOS 7 expert. What do you think of this or that, as if my opinion was from years of study. This is the tech geek game. We all love technology and whoever gets it first gets to be the resident expert. For now, it is my turn!

I love listening to music. Not just rock but many different types, country some pop and even classical in small doses. Sometimes I try to listen to the lyrics to actually find out what they are saying. There was a song in the eighties about a kid named luka that apparently lived on the second floor. The tune was rather whimsical but when you listed to the lyrics it was about abuse. That kind of threw that song off for me. I was listening to the new Sheryl Crow song called easy on my way to work today. One line in the song says “We’ll put on bug spray and we’ll lose our clothes, Put out the lawn chairs and turn on the hose”. What? I know that song lyrics don’t have to make perfect sense but what is going on here? First, if you are going to take off your clothes shouldn’t you wait to put on the bug spray? I mean you probably want better coverage of those newly exposed parts? Second, I hope she is talking about the backyard because the last thing I want to see is the neighbors sitting naked in lawn chairs with the sprinklers going. And I hope they put a towel down because nobody will want to sit in those chairs at the next block party! I like Sheryl Crow, but I am going to have a hard time listening to that song from now on!

When I was a kid cartoons and shows were on TV in the morning and only on Saturdays. You might find one on after school but they didn’t stay on twenty-four hours a day. Especially in the seventies they had a sort of “glory days”. Some were really bad, Super Chicken or one of my favorites Underdog were the same episode over and over again. Someone is in trouble, Main bumbling character somehow saves the day with the help of trusty side-kick and manages to keep identity safe. Loved that! Other shows, now that I look back, were some sort of bizarre drug trip. Anybody else remember HR pufnstuf or Lidsville? Sid and Marty Krofft created a string of shows so weird they had to have been on LSD to create. People made of hats or semi-muppet creatures who were always in trouble and had never heard of a pastel color. These shows had drug induced coma written all over them. If I am ever over medicated during a medical procedure I am sure the dreams I would have would be of Charles Nelson Reilly’s evilly laughing at poorly built neon colored puppets. Thank goodness the seventies are over! My brain will never be the same.