Dear Johnny Carino’s Waitress,

I’m sorry I can not be more personal in my greeting, but you never told us your name. You were the short one with the northeastern accent (New Jersey maybe?).

Thanks for the great service. Our food was terrific (so let the cooks know I said, “Muy bueno!”).

In particular, I wanted to thank you for offering to box up our left-overs for us. Your idea of putting my wife’s shrimp scampi into the *lid* of the box rather than the bottom, was really ingenious. This was the only way you could defeat the well engineered lip around the box that would have kept the olive oil and butter sauce *inside* the box. By putting the goods in the lid, you insured that we could enjoy the aroma of garlic and butter for days as it coated everything else in the doggie bag. Our refrigerator will remind us of our great dining experience for days to come.

I can’t thank you enough for granting me the slippery sensation on my fingers when I discovered that my to-go box of steak had a wonderful sheen of olive oil all over it. I wish you could have shared our laughter as we found that the olive oil wouldn’t even rinse out of the sink (where I placed said box after dripping oil across the kitchen floor) without a good dose of dishwashing soap. Ha ha haaa wheeeee

Thanks again,

Trint

One of my fondest memories growing up was watching Sesame Street. And of all the weird and wild critters that lived on that avenue, my favorite was Ernie. I still have my Ernie cookie jar (Seriously!) and can sing “Rubber Ducky” with the best of ’em.

Good ol’ YouTube brings us another Ernie Classic: Banana in My Ear.

The way this web project is going, I feel like just such a duck.

If a duck only has one leg, does he swim in circles?

I just ran across a clip on YouTube and for the last two and half minutes I was five years old all over again, grinning wide-eyed and singing along with my old pal Ernie. If watching this clip doesn’t make you smile then you need to have your smiler examined.

Rubber Ducky!

Just before my project got insanely busy, I was sent a link to “The Show with Ze Frank”.

Now, let me be very clear about this. Ze is very much a liberal (politically) and I disagree with his stand on many issues. If you are easily angered by opposing views, don’t click the link. Also, Ze is a potty mouth. If you are easily offended by crude language (Yes, girls, I’m talking to you.) don’t click the link.

His sense of humor, his talent, and his zany originality blow me away. The Show is now one of my daily reads. Ironicly, my good friend Randypants (who is a strong Christian and shares most of my political views) loves The Show too. It’s just that funny.

So anyway, with all those disclaimers in place, don’t click here.

Having just worked 16+ hours a day for the last week and a half (including Saturdays) to meet a very unrealistic deadline and then having that deadline pushed back a month, this quote seemed appropriate.

If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.

I snuck (sneaked? snucked?) out of my cage just long enough to let everyone know I’m still alive. My whiteboard says (in big, threatening red letter) “2 WEEKS TO GO!” even though, I only have one week and two days (not counting the weekend, which I will probably spend working too).

Anyhoobers. I know I’m missing out on all kinds of yummy news stories this month, but darn it, if I don’t get this project done, they’ll take away my web-guru card and I won’t be able to blog at all!!

I promise to be back at full blogging velocity sometime in early October. (Notice how I kept that really vague. I didn’t even say which October!)

Can I just tell you, I hate being sick. I don’t have the energy to yell about it or anything, but if I did, whoo, what a fit I would pitch.

I started feeling “weird” last Wednesday around the time I showed up at church. My voice was kind of froggy. By Thursday at lunch, I was officially “ooky” and went home early from work. Friday, I fought through the violent, phlegm-filled coughs and actually got some work done, but as soon as I got home, my wife grounded me to the couch for the weekend.

I like TV, but I hate commercials. I also get really grumpy when 100 out of our 120 channels are airing something about terrorism and/or the 9/11 attacks. (The other 20 were either trying to sell me exercise equipment or teaching me the best way to cook squid.*) We still don’t have anything that resembles a TiVo, despite my best efforts, so the weekend was pretty miserable. I watched two movies (Bewitched: 4 grins, Brothers Grimm: 3 grins) and about five episodes of Star Trek TNG. I slept a lot during the day but not much at night.

Now it’s Monday and I’m back at work, still all snotty and coughing, but alive in spite of it all. The show must go on, and in my case, “the show” is a web site that needs to be done by one-October whether I feel like it or not. Three weeks to go. *sigh*

* These statements are false generalizations, but when I’m sick, I can not be held responsible for the truthiness of my writations.

These Jack Links commercials, “Messin’ with Sasquatch” are hilarious. But this one… It’s just “eww!”

Messin’ with Sasquatch: Water Bowl

You may know that I have now entered “crunch time” at work. I have roughly four weeks to complete a ground-up redesign of a web site that currently contains several hundred pages. To help myself remember to look on the bright side during these next few weeks, I’ve given myself the following WBQotW.

The more you cry, the less you have to pee.

If the stress becomes too much and I break down in tears at my desk, great! I just saved about three minutes worth of bathroom break for the day!