Wednesday, July 23, 2008

New Member of the Les Miles Fan Club

I officially became the newest member of the Les Miles Fan Club today. No, this doesn't make me an LSU fan, but the quote was "Price"less and the comments are even better.

http://blog.al.com/rapsheet/2008/07/les_miles_on_alabama_a_lot_of.html

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Heat, Moving, and Roaches...Oh My!!!

Wow! what a past 4 days it has been. I feel as if I have gotten a glimpse of what Hell is like. As many of you know, Sarah and I decided to take the plunge and buy a house. So we purchased this lovely 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house that has a lot of charm, great back porch, stunning master bath, quaint bonus room, and ROACHES! If you know me, roaches are a close 3rd on my list of things i hate behind University of Alabama and Snakes. Well we decide to move in on Saturday, and I think that Satan decided to leave the Hell door open in Memphis just for us. After 4 blistering hours in the heat, pitting out 3 shirts, and drinking 14 bottles of dasani water without urinating, we finished. Little did we know the "fun monster" hadn't attacked yet. So genius me, we decided to get the house painted before moving in. Of course, the painters didn't finish and we had to stack all our crap in the middle of each room. It looked like our stuff had been corralled like cattle in the middle of the room. Next, we decide to move the fridge into it's spot, but apparently the old fridge didn't want to leave his spot, so we decided to keep the new fridge plugged in the wall in the living room until Mr. Old Fridge wanted to leave. At this point, i am thinking..."it is as hot in this house as it is outside in Hades", so i go check the thermostat and the needle is past the 90 degree mark in that white area that has no numbers. I'm guessing it was 103 degrees from my estimation. At this point we decide to head to Starbucks to get some iced coffees so we don't die of a heat stroke. this was probably the best part of the day. After some unloading and a couple of hours of more sweating, we finally go eat dinner. After this, my parents and Anna head back to Jackson, and wish us the best of luck. Sarah and I had enough by then and went and rented Definitely Maybe, which helped sooth my soul as we watched it in the sauna of a bedroom. if you can imagine, we have 3 big huge fans running in our room, watching a movie on a mini tv, and laying on the bed in 103 degree heat. Needless to say, their was no cuddling going on that night. So after a night of tossing and turning and sweating through the sheets, we get up and start day 2 of the blissful thing they call Home Ownership. i had enough of the inside and headed out and did yard work all day. It was actually cooler out there too. After we had done some miscellaneous things all day, we got hungry, but wanted to watch the ESPY awards. there was only one problem...the cable was not on at our new house and we had to go to the old house. so off to Pei Wei we go. We pick up some General Tso's and Egg Rolls, yes Maggie those things you should have had at your wedding reception, and head over to the old house. It was the closest i have felt to being in a frat house since being out of college. We sat on yard chairs in the bedroom, eating take out, and watching the ESPY's on our 8" TV. This has definitely been the highlight of the past 4 days. Just when I think it is getting better, we decide it is time to go back to Hell to go sleep. So we walk in the house and head to the bedroom to prepare for another steamy night's sleep, and i don't mean "steamy" in the intimate way. On our approach to the bedroom we discover ROACHES in the house. Again, let me remind you that Roaches are #3 on my most hated list, behind UofA and snakes. I immediately go and get the Raid can and start spraying. I use 3/4's of the can spraying around the house. I feel this was an adequate amount. Before going to bed, i complain to Sarah about how bad i hate roaches. She tells me not to worry about it and let's just shut the bedroom door and create an invisible Raid fence around our room. Finally, we get to bed and i begin a long night's sweat, and dream about Roaches. So after sleeping for 4-5 hours, i start to get comfortable and the thermostat is registering back in the printed numbers, not the white section past 90 degrees, my dream slowly turns to how sarah and i are living out the American dream of having a house with a white picket fence and big thanksgiving dinners on the the table every night. Then it happens...I feel a tickle on my foot. I wake thinking it is Sarah, but it is not. I sit up and push the covers over and think i see something dart under the pillow. At this moment I am hoping that i am still dreaming. I then proceed to pick up the pillow and it is a freaking ROACH. I jump out of bed faster than Tyson Gay can run the 100 meters and start beating the bed with the pillow. Sarah wakes up and screams "GRAY!!! STOP IT. WAKE UP, WAKE UP. QUIT DREAMING!!!!!!!!" I exclaim to her, "NO!!! IT'S A ROACH! I TOLD YOU SO!!!!" I proceed to knock the roach out like Mike Tyson and then sit and rest so i don't have a heart attack. It is now 5 AM and i decide enough is enough and head to the shower and put on my clothes and go to work to cut my losses. I program the Cook's Pest Control number in my phone and call them every minute until they finally open up at 8 AM. I meet with the guy yesterday and i tell him that i want enough chemicals in and out of my house to kill a small dog. Needless to say, we will not be sleeping in the house again until next week after the spray has been applied. Meanwhile, i know you are worried about our air conditioner, i think i got it covered. all it needed was a little Duct Tape. You know what they say if you can't duct it... I'll let you finish it. Please if you have any new home stories, pass them along...We need the humor.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Subarus...

Sarah and I just returned from our annual trip, if you can call it that after only two years of attendance by me, to Ashfield, MA. I think I could probably live up there during the summers because the weather is so nice. One thing that I didn't like or maybe I haven't caught onto yet is all the Subarus up there. I thought the only person who drove a Subaru was Alex Holt. Is there something I don't know about these things? Do they have dent resistant panels like Saturns? All of them have these hippy stickers on the back, so I am thinking that they have some sort of transparent film around them that keeps the pot smoke in when the cops pull them over. Maybe the All Wheel drive is just that good. I just don't know. Does anyone have answers? Alex are you out there, if so, please shed light on this? I am very interested.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

"The Exclamation Email !"..."Urgent or Ridiculous?!?"

"!" How many times have you seen this attached to one of your emails? I know it means "urgent", but is it really? When I get these emails, I am so excited to open it up. I always think that is is going to be something like "you have just received a bonus for all your hard work", or "our client is very interested in your product, and would love to place an order for 100 of them to be overnighted." In all actuality the evil "!" only stands for "Ridiculous." So what have I started to do to these horrible "!" emails...DELETE THEM! This is probably not the best business practice, but you would delete them too if you got emails like the following:

Background for email #1:
At the building next to the one I manage, there is a retention pond. During late winter and early spring, we have geese that come to make their home at the pond. One day I receive this email:

"!" Dear Management,
Please get your geese out of the parking lot. As I was driving into the lot this morning, I almost hit one goose and then I had to wait on another one to cross the road making me late to work. If this continues, we will not be renewing our lease at the building.

Analysis for email #1:
-How do you want me to go about taking care of these geese? Run around with a shotgun and shoot the birds? I am sure the Memphis Police Department will be fine with that.
-Last time I checked, geese are migratory birds, so how are these "your" geese?
-The threat of not renewing a lease over a goose making you late to work. Plain ridiculous! I guaranty that you will not be basing your new lease decision on one goose. I mean let's see how this lease negotiation would go:
Tenant: "Well Mr. Landlord, we feel that geese crossing the street and making us late to work constitutes $3,000 off our monthly rent."
Landlord: "You know you are right about this Mr. Tenant, we will go ahead and discount your monthly rent b/c the goose has caused problems for you once in the past"
Yea Right!

Solution for email #1:
DELETE!

Background for email #2:
We have recently installed some speed bumps at our buildings. The new improvement to our parking lot sparked this email:

"!" Dear Management:
I don't understand why you installed new speed bumps in your parking lot. I think they are horrible and they cause me to have to slow down in my corvette so I don't scrape the bottom of the car. These bumps could result in serious damage to my vehicle and I am requesting that they be removed immediately.

Analysis for email #2:
-What part of speed bumps do you not understand? Why they are installed? What their purpose is? By the question you asked, it is hard to believe that you are really employed by a professional company in our building?
-"They cause me to have to slow down" I don't think I have to even comment on this statement because it is so Ridiculous!
-Sure, I will get out there with my jack hammer today and remove the very speed bumps that we put up b/c of people like you. I will get right on that.

Solution for email #2:
DELETE!

If you feel the same anguish that I do when you get that "!" email, please pass it along. After we collect all the ridiculous emails, we will take them to Microsoft and lobby for the "!" email to be changed from "Urgent" status to "Ridiculous" status.