A Self-Proclaimed Existence: January 2006

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Holy Hand Grenades!!

Somebody turn down the fucking wind. It's blowing more than a cheap hooker on nickel night.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Wow

It's been since October since I have swung a bat. Today, I remedied that fact.
Yes, I know it's January in the dead of winter. However since Kansas never got the memo about winter, it was was about 55 today. So my friends came over to get me for a little softball practice.
It was great. And surprisingly, I can still hit a little.
That's always a good bit of knowledge to know, especially, when taking the field after almost a week of being ill. I can't wait 'til I'm 100% healthy.
We're going to have a good time playing co-ed ball.

Friday, January 27, 2006

It's like riding a bike

Granted it took me a bit and I even questioned myself once or twice, but I did remember how to do math last night.
Not just math, but adding, subtracting, multiplication and division of fractions. I can do math like that. I can do geometry. I can do trig. However, I cannot do calculus.
Calculus raped me.
Twice.
The first was when I was a freshman at HC. I still had a fantasy that I was going to be a pre-engineering major. My belief was that I could handle calc at a college level. I was wrong. More wrong than I had been in a while.
For the first month, I held my own. Soon after that, I began to struggle. I received one of my tests back, with a nearly failing grade. Being responsible, I walked up to the front of the class to talk to the instructor, Will. I asked Will if we could sit down and go over my test, to which he replied "Sure. Let's do it this afternoon." That was fine with me as I knew that I could skip work for school related stuff. But at the end of the class, he called me up and said that he had forgotten an appointment so we'd have to do it some other time.
Fine with me, I thought, I'll go to work. At the time, I still worked in the maintenence dept of the golf course. At 1 ish, I slid out there, greased and gassed up my mower and away I went. I had been mowing the rough for maybe an hour. I was actually working on the right side of hole number 1 when I saw a single player strolling down the fairway. I saw where he had hit his shot, so I mowed around where the ball lay. When I got near him, I realized it was my instructor, Will.
Will had blown me off to go play golf. So, I did the most natural thing I could, I went back and mowed right over his ball, slicing it into two pieces. That bastard had blown me off. After my initial rage subsided (about a week later) I tried to schedule another appointment. This time he said he would be in.
I showed up at the right time. He wasn't there. He didn't show up after 10 minutes, 20 minutes or even 30 minutes. That's pretty much the point when I quit caring.
That was rapage one.
My second year at HC, I was stubborn enough to believe that I could still take calc and pass. That year, there was a different instructor by the name of Jonathan. This guy was a geek. An incredibly book smart geek, but lacking some serious social skills. Anyways, grades were pretty much based on weekly quizzes for him. He told us at the beginning of the semester that quizzes weren't able to be made up. Fine, I thought.
The struggles ensued. By December, I was fed up with the class. I wasn't the only one. All of the sudden, I found out that he had been letting the international students retake their quizzes all semester. All FREAKING SEMESTER. The quizzes that weren't able to be made up or retaken, had been at the international students disposal for 15 weeks. I told my buddy Warren who nearly knocked a light pole down. (I helped by kicking it. The light wasn't the same for a long time.)
Rapage two.
That's why Calc will never be my friend.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Much better today

Thanks to a healthy dose of OJ (and not the kind that kills people), ibuprofen, codiene-lace cough syrup, Vick's chest rub, and nyquil, my fever died a tragic death. From about 11:30 on, I was able to sleep peacefully the rest of the night, never getting extremely hot or cold.
Today, the only reminants of yesterday's day from hell are a touch of a cough and a bit of leftover fatigue.
Hell yeah, I should be ready to get my weekend on here soon.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Death warmed over

That's how I feel right now.
Everything aches, my head is stuffy, my throat feels like someone took 60 grit sandpaper to it, and my hands are like ice.

Dammit I hate colds.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Confused this morning

Which isn't that much of a surprise. For a second, I'm usually confused in the morning as I wake up and say, "Is that clock really right?" and even more popular, "What day is it?"
However, today's confusion was because my right leg was sore and my forearm seemed to have a bruise. Just for a second I couldn't figure it out. Then I remembered.
I fell up the stairs.
Yes. Up the stairs.
For those of you who know me, you know that I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I never grew out of the awkward stage. Yesterday, I took it to a whole new level. To describe the house that we live in, originally there was a basement apartment. That's where I spend most of my time, in the basement, where my room is located. I float between the living room and my room. There are stairs that lead up to the back door, then a 180 degree turn to a four more step up into the kitchen.
Anyways, I was walking up the steps to get upstairs when my foot caught on the step. That started a massive chain reaction of things, none of which were good. I tried desperately to catch myself. The action of my desperate flailing only led to crashing into the wall, bouncing off of the wall, crashing into the next wall, banging my forearm on the ledge, tripping on the next step, which caused me to go head first out of the back door, where I crashed into a chair and the table on the back patio. I was fortunate as I very easily could have put my hand through the glass table.
I was sitting there laughing weakly at myself, when I saw my dog standing at the back door. I swear he was laughing too. Getting up, I dusted myself off and proceeded to walk back in the house. Joey greeted me, and that little shit must have thought that I was playing because he had gone and found his ball. I ignored him and walked slowly up the stairs. My mother saw me and said:
"Well, that was a good one, wasn't it?"
She didn't see me, she heard it.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Breaking personal rules

I seem to be no longer adhearing to my creed. I realized this yesterday as I was headed to Hillsboro (Kansas, Jay) for a tripleheader of games from the Trojan Classic basketball tournament. The proper way to get to Hillsboro is to take county roads, which are paved, to arrive at the destination. As I was cruising over to the 'Boro, as we call it, I was surveying the fields around me and that's when it hit me.
I was in violation of my own rule.
Even if I was on a mission to broadcast high school hoops, I was still breaking the rule. A rule, which in fact, I had laid down and followed religiously for years.
The rule states that "Whenever one must drive in rural areas during pheasant season, one must have a loaded gun in the vehicle for SHP purposes." Part two (and possibly the unwritten part) was to have the gun loaded before backing out of the driveway.
SHP is a simple term for a rather illegal hunting concept. The acronym stands for Stop, Hop, and Pop. This concept has been used many, many times when we have caught pheasants or quail in hedge rows along the roads. Usually, we would skid to a stop, hop out of the truck and pop the bird on the ground, crash through the trees to grab it, dash back to the truck and get the heck out of there. It's a practice that's frowned upon by conservation law enforcement agencies, unless of course, you actually have permission to hunt the area in question.
Yesterday, I didn't even think about taking my gun.
How far I've fallen so fast.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Hmmm

Twenty hunters.
Nearly 100 acres that had not been hunted for pheasants.
Supposed (and possibly inflated) numbers of birds in the ground.
Temps in the mid 20's to start the morning.

We shot 12 roosters.
What went wrong? Several things, I think.
The first was our plan was WAY too inticate. Instead of spreading out and working the edges, we had two seperate groups meeting in the middle, with one bunch of guys not allowed to shoot at birds flying a certain direction. (Guess who was in that group? Oh yeah, I was.) There were also radios involved, which backfired as instead of having the "group leaders" at different positions co-ordinating everything, they were standing side-by-side. That didn't work. We had people not listening to the radio commanders.
The second thing was, the assumption by our "General" that these birds would react just the same as they did when it was only him in his deer stand. He was wrong. Gen. said that the birds will all go west rather than south. How did that work, you may ask. It didn't. The first rooster of the day went south, over the guys who were supposed to kill it. Granted the birds surprisingly did try to fly west, but they were sitting very very tight. Almost so tight that you had to literally step on them to get them to fly.
The third thing was people that didn't listen (i.e. my father.) Jar and I were following orders trying to cover way too much ground for two of us, while Don and my dad were so close that they could have been holding hands. Dad was yelling at me to slide his way which would have made the hole between Herb and I even larger. Now that I look back on it, I'm thinking we had birds skittering out between Jar and I as we struggled to cover about 70 yards between us.
The fourth thing was there wasn't a Shorthair Pointer in the bunch. I'm totally sold on German Shorthair Pointers. Hollie is such a joy to hunt with but that's beside the point. These guys all have Labs, and while I've seen some Labs point, none of these have ever pointed. Of course, that was assuming that they could even smell a bird as it's so dry that most counties around here are in a burn ban.
The fifth thing is that we had some colorblind mother fuckers in our group. There were at least four misidentified birds. People were calling out "Rooster" on hens. Guess what, it's not that hard to tell them apart if you see them flush within a reasonable range. Male pheasants have a dark head and a bright white ring around their necks. At one point I was in trees and brush, when I heard the group call out "Rooster." I jumped/crashed out of the crap so to have a clear shot. I saw a pheasant flying high, coming at me. I drew up, and as I was pulling the trigger, I realized it was a hen. Thankfully, I was behind it.
I think we'll have a better shot in two weeks as time is winding down in the season.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Kitten Indicent.

This entry is specifically for Jay.

The year was 1995. My sister and her tragic luck were on kitten number 3. Kitten No. 1 became deathly ill, so we took it back to the farm where we obtained it. It died shortly thereafter. Kitten No. 2 became depressed, wedged it's head between the fridge and the wall, promptly breaking it's own neck. That's when Kitten No. 3 came home.
Kitten Three was a small kitten, as kittens go. My sister developed a habit of taking the kitten to bed with her. This was the kitten's tragic undoing. I came upstairs on a typical morning to shower and get ready for school, as I was a senior in high school. Mindy was in 8th grade. After my shower, I heard my sister freaking out. Curiously, I entered Mindy's room. She was sitting in her bed, with tears streaming down her face. I asked what was wrong.
"The kitten is dead," she sobbed.
"No," I said. "It's probably sleeping."
So being the good brother that I try to be at times, I reached down to pick up the kitten to prove to my sister that it was still alive.
Boy, was I wrong.
That furry ball was dead. Stone dead. Checked out and wasn't coming back. I knew this because when I picked up the kitten, it was flat on the underside. Rigor mortis had set in. I said the only thing I could at the time, which was a bad case of my mouth running before my brain caught up.
"Wow, this thing is dead as shit." That statement only caused a new storm of hysterics from my distraught, murdering sister. The murdering part came about as I believe she accidentally smushed the kitten in the night. Accidental Feline slaughter was the charge and she was guilty.
Placing the kitten's corpse in a plastic bag, I took the kitten outside. Once outside, I weighed my options, I could place the kitten in the garbage but after a couple of days, the odor would permeate the neighborhood, or I could bury it. I did go with option two, digging a quick hole in the back yard out by the alley.
Granted, I was chuckling to myself about the whole episode while I labored at the hole. Being a senior in high school, I couldn't wait to tell my friends what had transpired. During our morning break, I filled my friends in with what happened to the kitten. Our laughter filled the commons. I thought that was the end of the kitten until fifth hour Pre-calculus. WesGyver, scribbled me a note concerning the kitten, which caused me to
A. Stifle laughter
B. write an epic poem back.
The masterpiece went a little something like this:

There once was a girl named Mindy
Who owned a very small kitty.
She went to bed with this cat,
Rolled over and SPLAT.
Now, flat is this cat without pity.

Through my ever failing attempts to stifle laughter, I passed the note back to Wes who did the only thing he could do, which was bury his face in his sweatshirt. He waved the note to Angela who was in front of me, which caused her shoulders to shake with laughter. She passed the note to Jaime, who read the note with a quizzical expression on her face. She looked at me, as tears were coming out of my eyes while I was desperatetly trying not to get yelled at by the teacher. She mouthed the words "Call me and explain," to which I nodded weakly.
Wes took the note and literally ran out of the room to show the rest of the gang. On my way to golf practice, Tim and I nearly wrecked as we were laughing about the whole poem/kitten incident.
About a month later, while Tim was over flirting with Mindy, he told me to recite the poem. How could I refuse a request like that. I recited the limerick, much to Mindy chargrin. In fact, it caused Mindy to stomp to her room and slam the door, all the while nearly putting my parents on the floor with laugther in the process.
Everytime that poem is brought up, it still causes laughter.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

A good hunt.

Today was a good day. The G-man and I decided to go chase quail, which we did. We broke four coveys of quail, although I only had shots at two of the coveys, it was very succesful as I shot three quail. The G-man shot one. We both wished that there was more moisture on the ground as the dryness probably hindered Hollie's ability to smell the birds.
I did learn that I need 7.5 as my shot size when I'm hunting quail, rather than the size 6 I normally use. Shot varies by size, the smaller the number, the larger the pellets are. In a normal shotgun shell, with size 6 shot, there is around 200+ pellets inside the shell. With 7.5s there's something like 437 pellets in it. Plus, the G-man doesn't load 7.5s which would probably lessen the power of the shell, a trait I could probably use when quail hunting. I have a tendency to absolutely obliterate quail every now and then. This has been well documented as I literally disentagrated a quail from about eight feet. all that was left was the head and a wing.
Today wasn't quite that bad as this bird still had some structure. I picked it up thinking that there would be enough left to make it worthwhile to clean. After I got home, my dad and I were looking at the birds which lead to this exchange.
Me: (while pulling out the quail in question) "Ewwwww."
Dad: "What?"
Me: "I punished this quail." (At this point I showed him the bird.)
Dad: "Yuck. Can you save the breast?"
Me: "Dad, that IS the breast."
Dad: "Oops."

Needless to say, that bird was a sacrifice.

Friday, January 06, 2006

I love Fridays like this.

I do. Fridays during hunting season have always been somewhat magical to me when we were planning a hunting excursion the following day. I really don't know how to describe it, but there is just something incredibly fun about knowing that I'm going to wherever in central KS to call a high school basketball game, all the while, constantly aware of the fact that in the morning, we're going hunting. Tonight I roll to Lyons, which is about 50 miles away to call two high school basketball games. Tomorrow, the G-man, my pops and myself are going to go spend the morning chasing quail.
Combining two of my favorite things, basketball and hunting, and I'm nearly giddy.

A Self-Proclaimed Existence