March 2006 Archives

Earlier in the week, I told you how I "accidentally" missed the emergency drill, and how it didn't exactly break me up because I know where the mailroom is. I'm there six times a day if not more. I don't need a drill to show me how to get there. Well, wouldn't you know it, yesterday an actual storm hit. Two separate Tornado Warnings, both of which caused the evacuation of the office into the mailroom. Nice.

The first time, I was in the break room getting a glass of water when we saw one of the local channels break in with a "Severe Weather Update". We watched Top Jimmy get his weather woody on, getting way too excited about the prospect of actual tornados, and basically decided to ignore it and go back to work. Then the sirens went off. And people freaked out. We went to the mailroom and waited it out. While we stood in there, I kept my mouth shut because even though I didn't take it very seriously and wanted very much to joke around, I know some people were quite upset by the storm and I respect that.

After we left, we headed back to the breakroom to see what Top Jimmy was saying, and where the radar showed the storm. It appeared to be headed away from us, so we went back to our desks. I was offered $25 to get on the PA system and scream out "Its coming right for us! Everyone to the mailroom!".

My mother always told me to save your money for a rainy day. My rainy day came Monday, as you read yesterday, when my computer died. So for the second night in a row, I busted out my old laptop and prepared to spend some of my rainy day cash on a new computer by buying someone's old computer on eBay. I'd much rather spend $500-$800 on a slightly used computer than $2500 on a brand new one that will be old real quick. Its good fiscal sense, really. So here's Day Two of the Great Polyfro eBay Mac Hunt.

***

You want to push my buttons, snipe me on an eBay auction I really want. Last night it happened again. Twice. The first time was nothing unusual. Last ten seconds I get outbid by some ass. Rending of garments, swearing of words, slamming of fists. Same thing second time around. The third auction for a PowerMac ending last evening I exacted some measure of revenge...

At 10:10 this morning, the National Weather System issued a nationwide weather drill (or maybe it was just city-wide? I dunno). The sirens outside went off, and the safety committee at the office had a goal to get everyone into the mailroom within 20 seconds.

Now, you'll recall that last year I took an excruciating 2 minutes to get there, stopping for a donut and a can of pop on the way. This year, I never made it at all. I had an "urge" to go to the bathroom at 10:09, and so off I went. I took my sweet time -- turns out the faucets in there are really limed up bad! -- and when I came out at 10:15, the meeting was over.

"There you are! You're supposed to be dead!"

"You would be all blow'd up!"

One guy was with me. He'd been outside smoking and missed it as well. "Easy now, he was in the Number Two shelter. Probably safer than the mailroom anyway."

"You bet." I answered.

I don't like practicing things. I like doing things. I quit playing organized sports mid-way through high school even though I was rather decent because I hated practice. Loved games, hated practice. I'll be in the mailroom in a scant 10 seconds in a real emergency. Know where it is. Go there everyday. But not in a drill.

You bet.

I know I promised you stories from the power outage at Hy-Vee when I was in high school. Then my computer died and instead of writing it last night, I spent hours trying to fix it and then, when I declared it dead and signed its death certificate at 9:47 PM Central Time, I spent the rest of the night on eBay trying to buy a new/used one. So those stories have to wait for tomorrow.

--

Last night the Great West Omaha Power Outage claimed a victim: my PowerMac G4 Tower. Shortly before 7:30 pm, the fan began to fail, and by 10pm the processor, hard drive and several ports on the back also failed. Its worth noting that everything worked perfectly until the power surge/outage/surge back on. Also worth noting that the surge protector blew up on the first surge and then subsequently failed to protect on the second.

Nice.

Saturday, the intent was to record a podcast at noon. To give myself sufficient time to get alive before the recording, I woke up at 9:30, which was a struggle considering the craziness of Friday night. Went to BK for the double-meat croissanwich, because I needed food like nobody's business and nothing fits the bill better than sausage, bacon, egg and cheese on a croissant. Hash rounds don't hurt either.

After running on the nature trail behind my house, I was sufficiently awesome'd to record.

So at noon, Cliff, Dick and myself are sitting around hashing out the show and as we go to enter the studio -- the back bedroom which has been converted into the eponymous Polyfro Studios -- I stop off at the bathroom. And before I can do my business, the light goes out. I finish in the dark, and come out asking if the power is out elsewhere. It was.

My immediate reaction was that the construction guys building a house across the street must have hit a line. My neighbor from two houses down had the same thought, and wandered out in his snappy sweatpants/hoodie/ballcap ensemble to inquire about what might have been done. The construction guys know just enough English to pack up their stuff and get the hell out of dodge before OPPD shows up to yell at them.

I grab my OPPD bill and made sure I'd paid it. I have had this problem of forgetting. But it was current. So I called the outage hotline, and kept getting "Network Busy: Cannot connect" errors on my phone. Clearly, the end is nigh. Try again. Same error. Try a third time. This time I get the automated OPPD computer voice dude thingy. Creepily, it knows my address without me telling it anything. I feed it information and am told a technician will be assigned to my problem. Nice.

We wait 15 minutes, and when its apparent that:

Because people love to twist the knife, the subject of the Qwest Center Robbery came up again last night. One good thing that came out of this was that it led to us telling stories of personal run-ins with referees. I'll tell the whole story sometime as this really deserves its own post, but one time I got T'd up and ejected for throwing the ball back to the ref "a little too hard", and then telling him (earmuffs, kiddies) he was about as consistent as a hard-on. Needless to say I was running laps the next day. Two miles, as I recall; one for the ball throw and one for the comment. It was so worth it though.

But one of the guys had a better story.

One time in high school, they were playing at Sioux City North and getting homered by the refs. He had had two clean blocks called fouls in the game, and the third time it happened, it was his fifth foul -- meaning he was disqualifed. He'd blocked the ball so well it went sailing into the wall adjacent to the hoop and ricocheted back. Should have been the first clue it wasn't a foul, as how can a ball possibly do that if it wasn't "all ball"? But anyway, the ball comes rolling towards the guy, like a pitch in kickball. And he's so had it with these guys he unloads and boots the ball. It goes flying through a pair of open doors and down a long hallway into the school itself. The ref goes to T him up, and can't find him -- because having got his fifth foul, he had ran to the bench already. That really riled up the ref.

I always loved to throw a fit when I'd foul out. What are they gonna do to you at that point? You're already DQ'd from the game. You're already running a mile for fouling out. I always figured I might as well get my money's worth.

You bet.

I was trying to decide what to cook last night when I realized it was exactly NINE MONTHS to the day since we were in Pittsburgh last summer. That's just ludicrous, but its true. And in a scant three months we'll be in San Francisco. But anyway, once I realized this, I made a sandwich burrito homage to the great Primanti Brothers delis in Pittsburgh. What did this burrito contain?

Chicken strips, french fries, lettuce, two kinds of shredded cheese, onions and ranch. It was like I was back in the steel city, except for the fact that it was a burrito instead of bread, and the fact that I was in my kitchen instead of in a Pennsylvannia deli. But still.

So I got into work this morning, and while I was waiting for the servers to come up I checked on the status of my iPod en route to me. Last I'd checked last night around 1am, it was in Anchorage, Alaska, having been in Shanghai earlier in the day. Much to my surprise, this morning it was on a truck out for delivery! Not only in Omaha, but on its way across town to me!

This was mildly exciting considering I ordered it Tuesday afternoon, and they had to custom engrave it.

Today I'm wearing a pair of "breathable" dress socks that are supposed to be light, comfortable and reduce sweating. Sounded cool, at least worth a try when I saw them at Super Target. But I have to tell you, they're more hosiery than sock. I mean, they're very nearly superhero-tights looking, and just as uncomfortable. It is sorta cool they form to the shape of my feet -- around toes and all, creating a webbed-feet look -- but its driving me nuts.

Plus they come within an inch of my knees.

I feel ridiculous. Which is OK, I don't mind that so much. What I do mind is that for a pair of socks that claim to keep your feet cool by being thin, my feet have never sweated this much ever. Actually, my feet don't sweat normally. They do in these things. And they're so thin, they stick to the bottom of my feet. Its annoying as hell.

Incidentally, if you can see your toenails through a pair of socks and its not because of the holes in them, is that a bad thing? I think its bad.

So I'm at Hy-Vee last night, buying supplies for the continuing "Gourmet Polyfro" series of dinners I've been cooking for myself lately. 1" thick Iowa Pork Chops, stuff to bread the chops, ingredients for a cheesy potato bake (with bread crumb topping!), etc. You know, the good stuff.

My neighbor stopped by as I was in the midst of cooking all this to drop off a letter that had been mistakenly placed in her mailbox, and she was astonished. Apparently most guys she knows, her husband included, can barely boil water for Mac&Cheese, much less prepare a meal such as the one I was preparing. What are you supposed to say to that? I'm sorry? Good thing you can cook? Quote Vanilla Ice from his movie "Cool as Ice" and say "Ditch that zero and get yourself a hero!"? I wasn't sure, so I just said "You bet." And then invited them over next week for an epic feast that will be so epic the word epic will not be sufficient in describing its epicness.

I'm being modest, but those chops and especially the potato bake were quite tasty. Very much so, as a matter of fact. The best part is I cooked up all three of the pork chops so I could chop up the leftovers and make burrito-wraps this weekend. Those will be phenomenal as well.

You bet.

Last night when I left work, I was apparently driving a little too fast. I mean, I always drive fast, but always on four wheels. Last night, as I turned onto Dodge heading west, I came around the corner and literally felt the passenger side tires lift off the ground. The momentum of the truck was nearly causing it to tip over.

That's right, I almost rolled The Colorado. Kinda cool.

While I was two-wheeling it for a second, my eyes glanced past the dashboard. The speedometer was somewhere in the 40s. Meaning I had taken a corner going 40 MPH or more, and managed to stay upright. Very cool.

Incidentally, I haven't been in an accident for a decade, and haven't had a speeding ticket in five years. Warrants mentioning.

My ViPod left Shanghai yesterday according to Apple, and because I ponied up $11 for the expedited shipping, it will be here on Monday already. After many of my readers emailed to tell me I was being ridiculous and over-thinking the whole engraving thing, I went with their advice and had it engraved with "You bet."

Now, I'm preparing myself to be disappointed. Apparently, not only will the 5G iPod no longer sync via FireWire (only using USB 2.0, something I do not have), it also does not come with a dock or even a wall charger. Chintzy. I believe I have finagled a way to make it work with my 3G dock, which I will illustrate here once the actual iPod arrives. But the prospect of taking 4 hours to move 38GB of music onto it is not exciting, especially when I can do it in 20 minutes on my 2-1/2 year old model.

Polyfro reader BanjoBo (that's his email handle) admonished me for ordering an iPod now, when all the rumor sites say a new "Touch Screen" version of the iPod is due to come out next month. Apparently its going to be nothing but screen, and when you touch it a virtual click wheel appears. Sounds cool, but I'm not terribly interested in watching video on a little tiny screen. If I had to ride public transportation every day, sure, but as it stands now, anytime I want to watch a movie or show, I'll just watch it on TV thank you.

No, the real reason I needed a new iPod is I simply have too much music. I was down to just under 1GB free on my old 40GB model. Plus, I want to be able to see the album art next to the title. So sure, it can play videos, but who cares? I just want it to be a music player.

You bet.

So last night after I get home about 7, I'm making a Jack's pizza -- Bacon Cheeseburger, if you must know -- and I turn on the TV. This show "Deal or No Deal" is on CNBC, a repeat of the Monday night airing from NBC. This show was addicting as Wang Chung the first time it aired in December, and especially for me, even moreso when it started again after the Olympics.

I'm not sure why I watch it, because the show gets me very upset and agitated, so much so that Ron Popiel's Infomercial for the Showtime Rotisserie finally has company in the pantheon of "Shows Max Can Watch for Two Minutes and Become Instantly Agitated".

Seriously, where do they find the people who come on this show? Its like a sociological experiment gone bad. If you walk into any casino in America and offer a gambler this choice:

-a GUARANTEE of $250,000

-1 in 5 odds of winning either $1 million, $500K, $100K, $5K or $1 (one dollar!)

all but the hardest gambler is taking the guarantee without thinking twice. But somehow, the people on this show consistently refuse to take the deal, buck the odds and wind up with less money. And it makes me angry.

I'll sit there and say, to NOBODY!, just to the TV, "Good lord, take the money!"

I spent my regularly-scheduled blogging time this morning writing a post for Be A Design Group that was subsequently usurped by another author -- he published a 25-word post on the exact same topic and managed to hit post one minute before me. I'd written a painstaking six-paragraph diatribe that was pretty hilarious, actually. It was only on the site for about 90 seconds -- I removed it once I realized I'd been beaten.

Anytime a post includes lines like "This latest logo makes me feel like I just listened to Wham's! "Careless Whisper" on repeat 17 times and have no energy left to throw up further.", its a winner. And if I'd been one minute quicker, if I'd spent one less minute worrying about the wording of the final sentence/nail in the proverbial coffin, you'd be able to read the rest. As it stands, you'll never get to read it, or at least, not in its original form. I was really rolling, and had some real whoppers in there. So I'll likely re-use, re-package or re-purpose most or all of it in other things.

So what I'm saying is you get no post today, because I wasted my time writing something that is now deleted, and have no time left for writing something here about 15 inches of snow, or criminal referees at a Creighton game, or things like that.

Actually, I will say one thing about that. My buddy Continental was sitting on the other side of the arena with his neighbor and watched the horror that was the last 2.6 seconds of the game. This guy is an impartial observer -- he did not go to Creighton, is not really a Jays fan, and doesn't even follow basketball all that closely anymore. But this is what he had to say in an email he sent me this morning:

"Hell of a game last night, eh? That's the biggest bullshit I've ever seen in a game of hoops. Seriously."

Yes, it was. The wire account read something like this:

<a href="http://www.polyfro.com/creiblog/">Go read my rambling, incoherent, angry monologue about it</a> over at the Polyfro Basketball Blog. Go, you.

What do you mean "Foul"? The only thing foul is you, referee Eugene Crawford!

Our promotional company sent us a case of re-painted (is that the right word?) M&M's in our colors (green and gold) with our company name printed on the side without the M. This was showing off a new process they have to re-brand candy for your company, which I thought was exciting. I saw the plastic gift boxes and said, "Ooh, Reeces Pieces! Awesome!"

...Then I discovered they were actually M&M's and was disappointed. "Can you do this with Reeces Pieces? M&M's are weak. Reeces Pieces are not only better, they're unexpected and would be more noticed. You bet."

"Nobody likes Reeces Pieces. In fact, you might be the first person who's ever admitted to preferring them to M&M's. You can't be serious."

I'm sorry. But its true -- Reeces Pieces OWN M&Ms. And its not even close.

--

OK, so I'm sitting on Apple's website today attempting to buy a new Jet Black 60GB ViPod (what I call a Video iPod), but I'm stuck because I can't decide on what to get engraved on the back. My current iPod was a gift so I didn't have this quandary. And my original iPod was literally the Original iPod, the first generation model back before they offered engraving as an option.

My readers know it reads "I got a fever, and the only Rx is more cowbell. -Max '03", quoting the classic Will Ferrell-Blue Oyster Cult sketch from SNL. This is tough to top, admittedly.

The inherent problem is that you're limited to 27 characters on each of 2 lines. 54 characters total, including spaces. Hmmm...that seemingly eliminates 93% of all great quotes.

Yesterday, I used a Jim Croce quote to tell you not to mess with me on picking the NCAA tourney.

And on the first day of the tournament, I correctly picked a remarkable 14 of 16 games. That's amazing, even for me.

I mean, 14 of 16? You bet.

The Atlanta bracket was perfect -- I picked Duke, George Washington, Texas A&M and LSU, and all four won

I was 3 for 4 on the Oakland bracket -- I missed on Marquette when Alabama pulled the upset, but correctly picked Indiana, Gonzaga and UCLA.

"You don't pull on Superman's cape,

You don't spit into the wind,

You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger

And you don't mess'round with Jim."

-Jim Croce

When it comes to NCAA March Madness Brackets, you could very easily change "Jim" to "Max" in that stanza from Croce's classic 70s tune "You Don't Mess Around With Jim". Because I am dominant at picking the brackets, so you don't mess around with me. Particularly in years when Creighton isn't in the tourney to cloud my mind.

At five o'clock on Friday, I was finishing something up at the office before heading home. Our place clears out at 5 on Friday, except for the few people sitting in the breakroom having a drink. Someone saw my light was still on, and from across the building, yelled, "Today Max is attempting his most dangerous stunt so far -- he's staying two minutes past five...ON A FRIDAY!"

So of course I stood up and yelled back, "Ooh yeah, put that on my review!"

--

Friday night, I fully intended to do absolutely nothing. I hadn't been home except to sleep since Sunday, and was rather looking forward to watching TV and not much else. I even turned down an invitation to Cliff's place to play Halo 2.

Three hours into that, I was bored silly. Turns out, sitting around watching TV is boring. So at 10:15 when my buddy Cody called to see if I wanted to meet them at the bar, I jumped at it. Even though the bar they were at was 20 minutes away.

That homebody stuff just ain't for me. So off to Maggie McCall's it was -- a bar I used to live literally a block away for four years and had never been to. There was a band called the Fishheads playing. Good band, based on a scale I'm going to invent right now and will never refer to again:

The Bell and TJ's on the same day

I didn't set out to discover whether this was possible. It just sorta kinda happened. You gotta believe me. Seriously, you don't get in the kind of peak physical condition I'm in by eating fast food twice a day.

I had a Board of Directors meeting for AIGA to go to last night, and before the meeting a few of the guys on the board usually make a taco run to Taco John's at 5 oclock since the meetings are at 5:45. I usually can't make it because traffic on Dodge is just too heavy to get there by 5 -- I'd have to leave by 4:30, which ain't happening ever.

So I declined the invite, as I usually do, and then at lunch after running my errands I stopped by Taco Bell and got a 1/2 Pound Beef and Potato Burrito from the Value Menu and an order of the Nachos Supreme. Good stuff. And I still got to eat Tacos (or burritos, really, but the name of the places are Taco Bell and Taco Johns so dammit, whether its burritos, enchiladas or tacos, you're making a taco run, technically. And yes, I'm clearly insane.)

After lunch, I was asked if they waited until 5:15, could I make it by then? Was that optimistic, or possible? I responded that I would likely still be full by then, and eating for sport is not really my forte (a lie) so I would decline. At the same time I sent that email, one of the other guys sent me one goading me into trying to get there by 5:15. Since I love a challenge, I gave it a try.

Outside my cubicle walls, dateline: this morning...

"Isn't this the coolest thing you've ever seen? Max'll model it for us! Won't he?"

I was ignoring them. I heard them, but I was trying to act like the map I was drawing in Freehand was consuming my concentration. The ladies got closer.

"I bet Max would look smashing in this ascot!"

Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.

"Hey Max, try this on for us!"

Ignore.

Now they're standing in my cubicle, holding something called the "Arctic Ascot", camera in tow, wanting me to model this, this...thing.

If you read this site regularly you know I'm game for anything, even wearing a green ascot, so...

I was nine years old, my brother just six when my dad took my brother and I to our first Twins game. I can remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was in early August of 1987. The Twins were playing the California Angels, and it was Reggie Jackson's final game in Minnesota; they had a ceremony to honor him during the game. Because we grew up in northwest Iowa and in those days, the only games on TV were NBC's Game Of The Week, neither my brother or I had ever seen the Twins with our own eyes.

The short, stocky guy who patrolled centerfield for the hometown nine that August day looked nothing like a ballplayer. As a matter of fact, he looked like any number of average people you might see at Target shopping for toothpaste and deodorant. He looked nothing like a ballplayer, yet he was the best player on either team, and we were both mesmerized by him.

Kirby Puckett had that kind of effect on just about everyone who ever saw him play. Thousands -- nay, millions -- of kids in the upper midwest became baseball fans because of Kirby. There were lots of kids who, like Kirby, adopted a leg kick into their baseball swing. He was flamboyant. He was exuberant. He seemed larger than life. Mythological, almost. He was one of the greatest players in the game. But to kids, maybe most importantly, he was diminuative in stature, not much bigger than them. Standing at just 5'8" and a robust 200 pounds, Kirby wasn't the imposing, intimidating figure Kent Hrbek was. He was a guy you felt like you could run up to and say hey to, and every kid who saw him did.

And the beauty of it was, Kirby made time for all of those kids. One day in 1989, my brother and I waited outside of the players entrance for Kirby, and Hrbek, and the other Twins to come out. When Gary Gaetti emerged, he pushed through the crowd and got into a waiting car, whisking him away, signing no autographs. When Kent Hrbek came out, he signed for every kid who asked, but he was such a big, lumbering fellow that many kids were too intimidated to approach him. But when Kirby came out, the kids swarmed him, forming a civil mosh pit and a giant almost group hug. He signed for every single kid.

He was our guy. And for my brother and I, we would only get to see Kirby play maybe 10 times a year -- a handful on NBC's Game of the Week, and maybe two or three times in person. Of course, this only grew his myth for us. Listening to his heroics on the radio instead of seeing them made us paint a picture of Kirby in our minds that was so much larger than any man could ever possibly be. Bigger than even Kirby could possibly be, as it would turn out.

Its good policy to leave people wanting more. To leave while you're ahead.

This is why I don't sing Karaoke very often. I'm good at it -- I never said I'm good at singing -- I'm good at Karaoke. Which are two totally different things.

Put me on stage at Carnegie Hall and my off-key rendition of "Mony Mony" complete with Billy Idol-esque sneer and the alternate lyrics would get tomatos thrown at it and by connection, me. But put me in a bar doing that routine and suddenly its a winner.

So that brings me back to the beginning of the post: leaving people wanting more. If I am awesome, nay, Awesome at Karaoke once a year, its dominant. I start doing it once a month, it becomes lame. Quite frankly the time two years ago that I brought the house down with "The Safety Dance" is still sating the appetite. I don't need to go do it, don't want to go do it, won't go sing again for some time.

So last night I was outside grilling a burger, and -- no kidding -- a pair of canadian geese did a flyby over my deck. Just like Maverick in Top Gun. (Kinda strange for February 28, but it is warm, so who knows?) Thing was, one of them crapped mid-flight, and it landed square in my grill, but luckily not on the burger. It started boiling immediately, and within a few moments it completely cooked away. I yelled out, "Goddammit, I want some butts!" just like the Colonel in Top Gun after he spills coffee on himself due to Maverick's flyby, and my neighbors were suitably disturbed. Probably because they hadn't seen Top Gun, nor the goose crapping in my grill, and just saw me yelling random things to no one.

No real point to that story I guess, except you know, a goose crapped in my grill, which makes me mad because now I have to clean it.

While I was eating a burger tonight, I turned on the TV and it was still on NBC from the previous night when I'd watched The Apprentice. And this game show "Deal or No Deal" was on. I don't know if you've seen it, but its mesmerizing in a morbidly moronic kind of way.

Essentially, 26 glamorously beautiful female models stand beside 26 suitcases which each contain a dollar amount from a penny to 1 million dollars. A contestant elimiCliffs suitcases until just one remains, and the idea is to end up with a suitcase that doesn't have something bogus like five bucks in it because whatever is in that last one is yours to keep.

All the while, Howie Mandel is on the phone with "The Banker", who makes you cash offers to walk away -- the amount is based on your odds of winning bigger amounts with the remaining suitcases. And your family and/or friends get to sit in a "friends and family" booth on stage to give you help. Of course, this is not like "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" where you actually might need a lifeline to help answer a question. The help they offer is yelling "Take the deal!" or "No Deal!" Like you need help deciding that. Its a skill-less game. I read someone who called it "Millionaire for people with an IQ of 75".

But here's the thing: you can't turn it off. Its mesmerizing. Did I mention Howie Mandel is the host? The guy from Bobby's World?

So yes, I just spent three paragraphs ripping this show. But the thing is, I can't wait to watch it again tonight. That, friends, is brilliant television.

This morning, I'm rolling down 108th from my house to work. When you're heading south at 108th and Blondo, it goes rather abruptly from 2 lanes each way into 1 just past the light. So every morning, I play this little game where I stay in the right lane as I approach the light, because there's no cars in it -- everyone presumably knows they need to be over in the left lane, so they stay there. Not me. I am not a sheep. I am not a follower.

And I blow off the line in The Colorado, flooring it and getting the RPM's up into the red, generally leaving the lead car in the left lane WAYYY behind me. Its great. It wakes me up. And when it works right, I know its going to be a great day. Occasionally, the left lane car is an ass and will try to keep pace to not allow me to get ahead. Usually I just punch it faster to still get in front, but there's only about 75 yards to do so. I win 95% of the time in this scenario. And occasionally, some other genius cramps my style and rides the right lane, which forces me to go left before the light -- with only 75 yards to get over, there's no time for two cars to make the pass. This pisses me off, because then I know its going to be a bad day. Luckily it doesn't happen very often.

Which brings me to this morning. Today, as I do every day, I was rockin' down the right lane, and pull up to the light. The car on the left is a 50-ish lady with American Flag stickers and Jesus fish plastered all over the bumper of her late model Toyota Camry. So I'm not worried about getting over, as this lady will probably ease off the line and gradually get up her speed to 25 MPH over the course of the next block. Except, the light turns green, and this lady blows me away! I mean, literally, she was 125 yards past the light before I even got through the intersection. And I had the gas to the floor. Unbelievable!

I blame it on Phil Collins.

So I'm not sure what kind of day today will be, as this has never happened before. But I'm pretty sure that however it goes, it'll be Phil Collins' fault, because his crappy song from "No Jacket Required" was on the XM radio at the moment I got beat off the line by Toyota-Camry-Lady.

You bet.