I Am Not Gay!

Homosexuals don't bother me a bit. Hell, I love me some lesbians, I think I might be one. As for the guys, the more the merrier, it just leaves more women for me.

I work with a bunch of guys that will tease you mercilessly if they think you might be the least bit homophobic. They will speak to you in a lisp, ask you if you need your stool pushed up, or offer to shave your hairy marmot. All in an effort to make you uncomfortable if you have a problem with homosexuals. It makes me laugh my ass off (no pun intended). Most of the times I've been around a group of guys, I've noticed this kind of behavior. I'm not sure if it is an attempt to smoke out the homosexuals or if it's just to aggravate the truly homophobic. Either way, I find it highly entertaining. Don't get me wrong. I worry that it might offend somebody of that sexual orientation, but my experience has been that there are just as many hetero jokes told by gays and most of them have a sense of humor and won't hesitate to play along. I could be wrong.

I was walking down the hall today when I heard my name called. CTRob was at the other end of the hall yelling my name.

"Chunk!"

"What's up CTRob?"

At the top of his voice he yells down the hall, "I wish I knew how to quit you!"

I laughed for thirty minutes solid. Tears were in my eyes. I haven't seen the movie, but like most, I have been exposed to the movie clips and advertisements. I thought it was hilarious. A known homophobe was standing in a doorway when it happened and I saw his face scrunch up in disgust. Of course, this made me laugh harder.

So that was the joke of the day. Any man I'd see in a crowd today I'd yell "Yo! I wish I knew how to quit you!" It got a couple of laughs.

So I'm moving down the hall with a patient and see the doctor I work with talking to the CEO of the company. This is where my mouth works faster than my brain. The CEO looks away from his conversation and makes eye contact with me. Before I could put the brakes on my mouth I blurt out "I wish I knew how to quit you!" The doctor knew what I was talking about, the CEO looked a little puzzled. I will let you know tomorrow if I still have a job.

I Suck

Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but I suck. I haven't blogged in a week and I was stunned that a few people were perturbed about it. It isn't that I don't want to write. I just lack inspiration right now. This includes HNT. I feel like anybody that reads this has already seen more of me than they probably care to see. Something will hit me soon and I will write about it. I'm just not one of those people that can relate the boring, mundane details of my everyday life. I'm sure you care that I took out the garbage, was late to work, filed my taxes, or washed the dog. I will try to think of something interesting to write about soon.

Super Bowl Baby!

I think I'm happy with the Seattle/Pitt Super Bowl. I like to see teams that never get to go. I rooted for Tampa when they won it, I rooted for New England the FIRST time. I just think it makes things more interesting when every year, EVERY fan can think "this could be our year." That's why I'm glad to see Seattle go. Pitt, well, you can help but like Bettis. Never complains, gives it his all, and just seems to be a genuinely happy guy. I haven't decided who to root for yet, but I'm leaning toward Seattle.

Thanks For The Shirt Rachel

Why am I half-nekkid? Two reasons. The first is Rachel sent me this shirt from Boston several weeks back. For the second reason, go here .

Plenty Of Time For Sleeping When You're Dead

Good grief. I just woke up from sleeping for ten hours! Now when I was in college, I would have scoffed at a mere ten hours. I remember going to sleep at three or four in the morning and waking up just in time to get ready to go out the next night, but now, at the tender age of 37, I don't really sleep much.

All of this sack time is the result of a great Sunday night! Little Miss Red Pants and I motored to Nashville to take in the Predators game

The Preds played well for two periods, but then almost let the hapless Penguins steal the game in the third. I have to say, that Crosby kid can skate! I had a great time at the game. Caught a t-shirt from the puck patrol, which really seemed to impress LMRP and there was a fight on the ice which got her so excited I thought smoke was going to come out of her ears. I commented on how blood thirsty she was and she said "Now you know why I like to kill things." Hopefully this referred to the fact that she is an avid hunter.

I was pretty distressed during the game because the last couple of times LMRP has either gone to a game with me or watched one on TV, the Preds have either lost or tied in games that have included some terrible bad luck. I had started to take it as an omen and told LMRP that if Nashville lost, she wouldn't be going to any more games. I'm glad they came through.

I submitted a bid during a silent auction that night and won! What did I win? This.
I know it's hard to tell, but its a puck signed by Marek Zidlicky! I've been juiced the last 24 hours trying to find the appropriate plaque for displaying my prize. I have a small collection of sports memorabilia that includes a Steve Young rookie card, autographs from Mickey Mantle, Peyton Manning and Isaac Bruce, and now my Zidlicky puck. I'm such a kid.

At any rate, I didn't get home from Nashville until late Sunday night and didn't get to bed until even later. I arose early to be at work at seven in the morning Monday, hence the lack of sleep. I feel much better now.

Drive it like you stole it.

Don't Drink The Baby's Milk!

My Dad is what I call a situational alcoholic. If there was alcohol in the house, he would drink it until it was gone, but he was too damn cheap to go to the liquor store for more. (This doesn't count the times when I was 10 or 11 and he would send me to the corner store for a quart of beer to drink while he watched wrestling.) I only saw him drunk once. Mom brought him home from a Christmas party. She came into the house to get me because she needed help getting him out of the truck. He was a pretty happy drunk, but I had a hell of a time getting him out of the Blazer because the poor bastard couldn't find the ground. His foot would come out of the door and just kind of wave around.

My Mom had to tell me about the other time he got drunk. I was around five or six. Dad was working two jobs to keep me and my sister in shoes and my baby brother in diapers. One night he didn't come home until really late. Mom had already gone to bed without worry because it was Friday night and he often put in overtime then because nobody else wanted it.

Dad stumbles into the bedroom and sits down heavily on the bed. The sound of his work boots hitting the hardwood floor wakes mom up and she asks him how his day went. He mumbles something unintelligible and since that's how they communicate, Mom just rolled over to go back to sleep. A short time later Mom is awakened by the sound of Dad running into walls. He is stumbling all over the place and she asks him what he is doing. He growls something about having to go to the bathroom and then she hears water hitting the floor. Mom jumps up and flips on the lights to see Pop peeing in the corner. She starts yelling and screaming, calling him a heathen and pulls the bed away from the stream of urine. He finishes and promptly passes back out on the bed. This is when Mom begins to suspect that perhaps her husband had been out having a little fun with the boys that night.

The next morning Mom gets up with my baby brother and is going through her Saturday morning routine. She looks out the window and there is a Volkswagen Beetle parked in the driveway. Since she drove a Bonneville and the other family vehicle was a pickup truck, she thought this was odd.

She carried my brother outside and found the Beetle open. Hoping to find out who owned the car, she sat my brother in the passenger seat and began to go through the glove box. She didn't find a registration, but she did find sixteen paychecks in a neat bundle, all with different men's names on them. While she was sitting there pondering the situation, the neighbor's seventeen year old son shows up.

"Mrs. King! Mrs. King! When did you get the new car? It's way bitchin'!! I wish I had a car like that! It's so cool! When did you get it Mrs. King? When? Huh?"

Mom took one look at Little Roland (who was actually six feet tall, a full five inches taller than his dad, Big Roland), one look at the keys in the ignition and formulated her plan.

"Would you like to drive it Roland?"

"Boy would I Mrs. King! Can I?"

"Sure Roland. Take a test drive around the neighborhood, but when you are done, park it around the corner for me, ok?"

"No problem Mrs. King!" And off Little Roland went.

Mom went back in the house and was giving baby brother his bottle. Soon, she heard a commotion down the hall and around the corner lumbers Dad. He is holding his head in his hands, but he has on his work clothes. He bangs around the kitchen not saying a word, pours himself a cup of coffee and goes to the fridge for a bit of milk. Bad luck, no milk. Stumped, he begins to eye the baby's bottle. He reaches for it and Mom tells him "If you touch the baby's milk, you will never be able to use that hand again!"

"What the hell are you doing up anyway? Do you work today?"

"Dammit," he slurs, "I work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I work everyday of the week."

Mom knows she has him on this one. "It's Saturday numbnuts!! Carry your drunk ass back to bed!" So, being well trained, Dad went back to bed.

According to Mom, the phone started ringing about ten in the morning. One after another, wives began calling the house wanting to know where their husband's paychecks were. Mom would tell them that she didn't know anything about it and they would have to wait until Mr. woke up and ask him.

The details are a tad sketchy after this. Depending on who is telling the ending, either Dad woke up and quickly realized that he had somebody else's car and all of his co-worker's paychecks, or the poor bastard spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why everybody thought he had their money. Either way, I never heard of Dad coming home drunk again.

Oh yeah, did you know that urine will warp the shit out of hardwood floors?

Important Announcement

'Cause anybody cares. No HNT for this week. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Legend Of Little Miss Red Pants

I'm sorry people. I didn't mean to build up the story of Little Miss Red Pants. It really isn't that big of a deal and is probably only funny to me.

My department had a Christmas party at our bosses house. I wasn't gonna go, but I got bored at home and decided to put in an appearance. I showed up about an hour late and things were in full swing. The drunks were drunk and the holier-than-thous were in the corner being catty. One of the newer girls was there. She usually worked nights, so I didn't really know her, but for the last three or four weeks she had been on the day shift learning to run the CAT scanner with CTRob. Now CTRob has a little crush on the new girl mainly because she likes to kill. Ducks and deer that is. CTRob is all about blowing Bambi and Daffy to furry or feathered little pieces.

Being a man, I have a pretty good idea what CTRob was doing at home. He was making what he thought was casual conversation with the wife. "She likes to hunt. Her husband is a game warden. They have a big tract of land East of the city." What he wasn't saying was that she was 26, blonde, and quite attractive.

Mrs. CTRob quickly put two and two together at the party and said fairly loudly "I don't think I've been introduced to Little Miss Red Pants." LMRP now has famous trousers at work and is often referred to as "Miss Red Pants."

At any rate, I didn't know LMRP very well and honestly didn't think about her much. She was cute, but she was married and any conversation that I heard from her was with CTRob and they were usually talking about hunting, so her husband was usually a topic. I leave the married women alone. I wouldn't want that done to me.

At the end of the night, LMRP was helping a co-worker out the door. JB had a bit too much to drink and was the official Christmas party puker. I held the door for them and LMRP looks at me and says "Call the hospital and get my cell number."

Needless to say, I had imbibed and beer or two and normally I would have blown a suggestion like that off, but I was intrigued. When the party died down an hour or so later, I left and on the way home called the hospital and got her number. When she answered I immediately asked "Exactly why am I calling you?" I can be so clueless sometimes.

Turns out, yes she was married, but not for long. She was living with JB and her divorce would be final in March. We've been dating and I'm having fun. However, having been through a divorce myself, I know how the bounce works. I just hope I'm not overly attached when she decides to move on to something better.

Little Miss Red Pants HNT

Yeah, there is a story behind the "Little Miss Red Pants." Might even tell it someday. Meanwhile, since I have no imagination, here is my HNT entry for tonight. What is Half Nekkid Thursday? Click the icon on the right to find out.

Unlucky Charm

My New Year's Eve was quite uneventful. The dogs and I sat around and listen to the sounds of rednecks trying to blow their hands off with illegal fireworks. Boring. New Year's Day I drove up to Nashville for the hockey game. It was a very disappointing showing for the Predators. It started off well with the Preds going up 2-0 in the first period when suddenly the Ducks put the biscuit in the basket for three quick goals. Smashville was unable to respond and the final score was 4-2, the Preds losing for only the fourth time at home this season.

Every game that I have personally attended this year has been a win for Nashville. I was getting used to it. So what was different this time? The company. Little Miss Red Pants went with me. Since she seems to be unlucky for the Predators, I don't know if she will get to attend another game. All I had at the hockey game was my phone camera and the pictures were bad at best so I substituted a picture from the Titans game we attended. Maybe we shall see more of her.