All I Was Missing Tonight

After the fish fry tonight, I returned home and settled in on the recliner with some hot chocolate. Throw in some christmas cookies, a big ol' fleece blanket, a couple of bowl games in hidef, and my night was almost complete.

I gots to get a house with a fireplace someday. For some odd reason, the upstairs tenants don't much like it when I start a fire in my living room. Bitches.

So instead, i finished my idyllic night with some beer and PS3 time. Pretty good night in my book.

Bout Damn Time

Nort finally got one. He didn't steal mine when I was crippled, but he finally got his PS3.

Now if he would just get some games for it, the world would be a better place.

Safety Tips

Long over due...

• I may joke about getting old, but something has got me spooked. I used to be a night owl. Like, textbook night owl. Up till 2 am, no sweat. Sometimes I'd cheat, and nap from 11ish at night till 1 am, then stay up till 3 am, then go 'back' to sleep. It really didn't help when I was getting called out for work at God only knows what hours. But I'd been like that for as long as I could remember. And it wasn't just the staying up late. I'd sleep FOREVER. And I'd sleep in, no matter what time I'd go to bed. Fall asleep at 4am? I'd sleep till 3pm. If I zonked out at 9pm? I'd still sleep till 3pm the next day. And soundly too. Thunderstorms, alarm clocks, and even Nort sneaking out of the room in Vegas wouldn't wake me up. But something happened three weeks ago that I can't figure out. It all changed. I'm exhausted by 9 or 10 at night. And when I go to bed, I'm pretty much asleep right away. And the worst part... I'm usually up by 7 or 8 am..... without an alarm clock. I don't get it. It was a one day turn around. One Monday night, I went to bed at 8pm, cuz I was exhausted. I woke up at 6 the next morning, made some eggs, and that was it. Mine eyes are tired as I type this. Help me. I don't know what to do about this.
• I guess the moral of the story is, 'be careful what you wish for'. I actually used to curse my insomnia, but now, I kinda miss it.
• A few TV notes: Drew Carey sometimes looks completely natural as the new host of The Price Is Right, and other times, he looks frightfully terrible. I wonder what Barker acted like his first few weeks. ESPN is losing a great analyst in Parcells, and yet they keep Emmitt Smith on the air. It bothers me that they pay Smith to be on the air. He may be one of the 5 best runningbacks of all time, but he's not comfortable in front of a camera. And he can't speak competent English. "Blowed out" is a good phrase to keep repeating on national television. I can't believe they couldn't find someone better, star-power name be damned. And along the ESPN lines, I also hate that Skip Bayless and Woody Page get to collect checks from them. Bayless is a cartoon when he hosts the "Hot Seat", and Page is worthless on the morning shows. It makes me wanna barf that the people in charge of ESPN don't see how bad some of their 'talent' is. And can they tell Stephen A. Smith to stop yelling at me? I know I'm a NBA newbie when it comes to following the sport, but I haven't done anything wrong yet, so stop yelling.
• And as much as I hate ESPN, they are right about one thing. This is the greatest week of the year, as it's Bowl Week. Love me some college football!
• If I could skip the part where you have to work 80 hr weeks, often unpaid for a couple of years, then work 80 hour weeks at very terrible pay, and skip the part where I'd have to move 8 times in the next 15 years... I would SO be a college football coach right now.
• "We are who we thought they were!!!" I need a lawyer type to solve a riddle for us. Why is it that in the Coors commercials with Parcells and Green, they've 'photoshopped' out the team logos from the shirts and hats? Coors is the official beer sponsor of the NFL. Samsung is the official TV manufacturer of the NFL, and yet they have team logos in their commercials... so why doesn't Coors? I can't figure that one out.

Okay, this has gone on long enough for tonight. Get off my lawn, I have to go to bed.

Holiday Punch

Here's hoping from the offices of Know What I Mean that everyone had a great holiday. Even you too, Lee.

Things were pretty quiet around the world headquarters, but it was with an air of wonderment, knowing that every holiday from here on out won't be the same. We got to see Issac, and he gave our home office a test run for when our new employee arrives. So while we looked ahead, it was a great to have most of the fam around, like old times. Becky and Joe were in from NY, and Nick and Laura came in from Chicago. On Saturday, we hit the annual x-mas/birthday/any reason really celebration with Sarah.

But the festivus continues, as Nick and Sarah come in from Omaha tonight, and Ashley and Debbie come in from Florida/Texas respectively tomorrow. Throw in a family shower on Saturday, and going to see Jeremy in Holiday Punch after ( which everyone should go see ), and I'm gonna be one tired mo-fo when this week is over.

But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Best On Fark Today

Every Little Bit Helps, Right Nort?

Updated, per Nort's request...

Down The Stretch They Come!!!

Too close to call, but we're all getting a little thirsty.

Not A Repeat

Here's the radar a good 5 hours after the last one. It won't stop. Every single freakin flake is a slow death.

God help us.

Oh C'Mon!!!!

I'm gonna have to have a talk with someone about this.

Dear Kids...

To those of you that thought it would be fun to knock my snowman over last night...

FU.

I realize I wasn't a saint of an adolescent, but c'mon. Knocking a snowman over? Really? You have nothing better to do? With a world full of PS3s, the Internet, WoW, porn, sports, sledding, and skirt chasing... you chose to beat up a man made of snow.

I'm glad you felt all mighty after you kicked his ass. You know, cuz you're badass enough to take on something that doesn't have a heartbeat. Enjoy your time doing gateway crimes. We'll see how much of man you are when you're in PMITA prison in five years.

I must be getting old, because today, I feel like pummeling you little bastards just like you abused my snowman. What if I had made that with my son? He'd be devastated today. I wouldn't be able to explain to a child that the world has little gutless pricks like you. I wouldn't be able to explain that the same person that thinks he's badass for knocking over a snowman, would run like hell if I would have stepped outside during the act.

For you guys, my door is always open. Come back to the offices of Know What I Mean, and introduce yourselves. Let's see how badass you are then. If you can kick my ass, I'll make a snowman for you everyday so you can keep your street cred by sodomizing it in front of your friends.

Jackasses.

And Then There Was One...

With snow that hasn't stopped, and the flakes are getting bigger, my army has pretty much gone undercover. You can only see the tops of a just a few of the guys poking out of the snowcover.

So I thought maybe it was time to make a snowman that couldn't be covered by the snow. And that's not a way of tempting the snow gods, cuz if this one gets covered... we might all be dead.



And here's one for perspective. I'm 6'3".

Couldn't Help Myself

B.O.B. wrote a humorous comment response to my snow plowing issues.

Dear Mr. Kuflax ....
Please be advised that you should have quit while you were ahead. We have now put you on our Do Not Plow List. You had better start hoping for an early spring because you won't be seeing any concrete before then.
Sincerely,
Tosa

So if you don't ever check the few comments I get, here's the response I placed:

Dear Fine City of TosaB.O.B...

Please be advised that your idle threats carry no weight. Seeing how you did such a bang up job plowing in the first place, your threat is simply a description of the situation I CURRENTLY face - not one that could be imposed upon me further.

It's like Nort biatching about the Packers not benching Favre last year. Say his bellyaching got so loud the Packers called him to tell him that he'd never be the head coach of the Packers if he kept it up. Well, he's never gonna be the head coach anyway ( cuz he would have a penchant for benching lock-hall-of-famers ), so he might as well biatch about it till he feels better.

So I appreciate your effort, but go back to what you do best, which is NOT plowing streets correctly.

;)

kthxbye.

Sometimes it's just too easy.

Oh, For F*cks Sakes

Enough already.

I understand it's winter ( well, not really for another few weeks technically ), and there's gonna be snow... but c'mon. A day off maybe??? F*ck.

Mutually Assured Destruction

The gov't will tell you ( the same gov't that can't correctly plow the streets ) that they have nuclear weapons, "just in case". You know, we don't ever want to use them, but we have them if we ever need to use them.

Well, I finally got my weapon against mother nature. It's a beast, and I hope that I never have to use it, but I have it, 'just in case'. My parent's neighbor moved away to somewhere warm, and I am now the proud owner of a monster 46.5hp snowblower.

Even in first gear, this thing moves. It literally pulls you along. Okay, maybe the nuclear tie-in was a bit much, but here's hoping that this works like the umbrella theory... if it looks like rain and you bring an umbrella, it doesn't rain. So here's hoping after this morning, now that I have a snowblower, it won't snow anymore.

Yeah right. Nort might die if it didn't snow this winter. And I don't want to be responsible for that. Click here for an oldie showing Nort's appreciation for the winter. Someday I'll move somewhere warm.

Along the destruction theme, my snowman army put up a good fight, but they're losing to of all things... the wintery conditions. They're freakin' snowmen, and they're holding up about as well as Napoleon's army did marching into Russia. Here they are before I went to bed last night. I would show you a picture of them this morning, but it just looks like I have the most uneven yard on the block, as the snow has covered most of them up to their heads.

The ultimate camouflage I guess.

An Open Letter To My City

Dear Tosa,

You have been located in the fine state of Wisconsin for over 170 years, so by now, the weather patterns of this area should not come as a surprise. But while I have become accustomed to the lack of urgency the city places on snow plowing, your behavior after this last snowfall is unacceptable.

I understand that while packed into a major metropolitan area, the city size and budget restraints do have their limits. While it is disheartening to see that neighboring cities ( including the exponentially larger Milwaukee ) seem to get a head start on their plowing activities, I have let that slide, knowing that eventually you will get the job done. I do not know the extent of the budget, but perhaps you have chosen to have a few extra police officers, instead of an extra snowplow, thus slowing down the snow removal process. This I am okay with.

But I'd like an explanation as to what happened this past weekend. While there are many disadvantages to living on the same street as a school ( traffic, parking, running over little kids ), one of the perks is that my street is usually one of the first to be taken care of in a snow storm. This weekend was no exception, which I was happy to see.

Happy to see that is, until I noticed that my fine city has decided to NOT plow the WHOLE street. Why on earth would you only plow a swatch right down the middle of the street? Did we run into budget problems that I don't know about? Was there not enough salt to cover all the streets? ( for those of you reading that aren't from Tosa - I'm not kidding. They've left 8 feet of snow on the streets next to the curbs on both sides of the street ) The plow did come by my house twice, once in each direction. I know this, because I was outside making snowmen at the time.

So I guess my question is two-fold. One, why was this done? And two, what do we do about it now? Since the temperatures have dropped to unacceptable levels, the snow you left on the street has now frozen into a six inch thick, eight foot wide solid ice block on both sides of the street. Thank you for that.

Last time I wrote about you guys, the flickering street light outside my house was fixed the next day. I'd like this taken care of in a timely fashion as well.

Kthxbye.

I Was Sober!!!

IM exchange between me and Nort this evening. We were discussing how sweet the job of Packers president has to be, and what our career paths would have to look like to get the job in 20 plus years. Then the convo diverted just a bit....

Matt Kuflax: you know what would be fun, on a non-management role?
Matt Kuflax: cutting the grass every other day
Matt Kuflax: imagine in June, how sweet that would be
Nort: yea - but that's a lot of pressure, and I could never keep those lines straight
Matt Kuflax: lol
Nort: my sister wants to know... how drunk were you went you made all the snowmen?

I never got to ask Nort why he wouldn't be able to keep the lines straight... but anyways... Since that wasn't the first time someone inquired as to my level of intoxication on the night of the snowmen army, let me issue an official press release to state that I was in fact, sober. Maybe a little dehydrated, as I had just shoveled all that heavy snow out of the driveway and sidewalk, but I was stone cold sober. Please refer any follow up questions to the snowmen, as I have 49 witnesses that will be happy to testify on my behalf.

Window Seat, Please

Not mine, and like Nick, I'm prolly gonna catch hell for this.....

but overheard on 670 The Score this morning

"If the if the Redskins lined up with 10 men on D to honor Sean Taylor, shouldn't the Buffalo Bills TE have just stood still to honor Kevin Everitt, the guy who got paralyzed?"

Thanks to Nort for pointing that one out to me ;)

Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

Only Calvin and Hobbes could make me enjoy the first snowfall of the year.









As always, click on a pic for a larger image. And if you didn't know that the title is stolen from a C&H book title, shame on you. If you don't know about Calvin and Hobbes... well consider this your third warning. ( only like two of the five readers I have are going to understand that reference, oh well )

And I woulda made more of them, but it got late, and it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be to make almost fifty snowmen that are only a foot high when you're 6'2". Maybe in a few years, we'll get the new employee to do it for me.

Inspiration.