A Self-Proclaimed Existence: November 2007

Firefox

is a hater

test post for rusty

blah blah blah blah

Wow

I suck. This slow typing stuff has killed my desire to post. Sorry.

Hello Fall! literally

Welcome to the land of falling temperature. After playing golf today and not playing too bad after a three month layoff, (I shot an 86) we departed the golf course at 2:26. The wind, which had been howling steadily all day had suddenly laid down. I said to myself, “It’s gonna change soon.”
Sure enough. When we climbed in my dad’s only friend’s suburban (this year, we didn’t set it on fire) his thermometer read 70 degrees. I just happened to notice the leaves blowing from the opposite direction. By the time we had returned home at 2:46, it was 52. Eighteen degrees in 20 minutes.
It’s enough for me to go hunt in the morning I think.

The weekend

has begun.
Golf and basketball tomorrow.

Nuggets from my dad

We're driving from one hunting spot to another, and Don says "I'm sorry Sid but I don't mean to make fun of your wife, but why would anyone ever have a horse?"
And my father responded:
"Are you making fun of my horse? You should never have a hobby that eats. All they do is stand there and eat, and you maybe ride them once in a while. Then you have to put shoes on the fuckers. If they get sick, you have to call in the fucking vet. If Kath were to die today, I wouldn't even sell it, I'd give it away. Hell, I'd go let it loose. Charlie or whatever his name is, i'm not sure. I put up fucking hay for that thing. I got sweated wet. The only problem is that I'm not sure which one he is."

I laughed incredibly hard. He's insane.

You know

It would be a lot easier to post if this didn't take 5 seconds per letter.
Someone fix it!

UPDATE

Ginormous update time!
After wanting to kill WSU, my nearly homicidal rage has subsided thanks to a great meeting with my new advisor. We went over things that I need, and I’m actually closer than what I thought I was. Yes, it will still be Dec. 08 for grad, but I’m only 21 hours away. Unfortunately, I can’t fit everything into one semester because a couple of the classes are only fall offered. That’s fine and dandy with me, because thanks to a technicality, I was able to slip one class in and knock off 3 hours. I can taste the beer from the graduation party. Yes, there will be a party.

Secondly, I hate this weather. It’s too warm and too dry. Where’s the cold dammit? Seriously, I wore shorts to a basketball game on Tuesday night. There’s something wrong with this picture. Hopefully, the temp falls off the table and life becomes grand again.

Thirdly, last night was a riot. During the first game, Jen threw out her cell number challenging anyone to text message her so we could know we had listeners. We ended up with 4 people texting in which was great. We laughed, then Jen challenged the color guy for the second game, Lamar, to see if we could top the 4 messages Jen received. Oh we topped them. Lamar even started answering his phone during the game. He heard from Louisiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the visitors from Nebraska too! It was a hoot, and we’re going to throw the gauntlet down again, most likely second semester.

Fourthly, there are games tomorrow, birds to hunt and poker to be played tonight.
Wow. I’m busy and like it!

Tomorrow

I promise will be a giant update.
Now I'm off to watch KU

Almost

Forgot.
Whew, just slipped in under the wire. but i'm here.

Us 56, them 44

What a game! To bounce back and physically hammer a bigger team that whipped you by 19 (63-44) at their place, is a major accomplishment.

But one of our big guys went down and is most likely done for the season. Good kid too. Dammit. There’s always something.

For Jay

This is the link to hear me broadcasting tomorrow night. Games start at 6 and 8 p.m. CST.

That is all

My father

The topic of Big Brutus came up again tonight.
Big Brutus was the world’s largest steam shovel used down in southeastern KS, to strip mine. It was electrical and stands 16 stories high. My father has always wanted to go and stop by to see this monstrosity when we’re on our way to Arkansas. Of course, he’s been overruled by all of the family. It’s been a sore spot so much that Santa even leaves him stuff under the Christmas tree, taunting him.
Tonight, we’re playing cards over at Verne’s house and she says to my brain damaged father, “I’m still waiting for Big Brutus.”
“Oh yeah. We’ll go. Just you and I. I’ll be damned if anyone of my family wants to with us. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take them down there. We’ll take pictures and lots of pictures. We might even help them paint it too. The hell with ‘em.”
I’m convinced my laughter could be heard two houses down.

Hello Playoff

Thank you, University of Illinois.
Now, the screech of “Let there be a playoff,” can begin. I’ve always been a HUGE advocate of a college football playoff system since they went to the BCS. Granted KU is undefeated, but that should come to a skidding stop in the Big XII title game.
As for me, my day of sports is almost complete as I’ll be journeying about 8 miles to watch my favorite sport, basketball at 8 p.m. Next week, I’m broadcasting games via the internet on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon. Rock and roll!

ugh

So I’m beginning to get pissed because I don’t own a dog yet. The key word in that situation is yet. I have to graduate before I can get my puppy. I’ve got the kennel already picked out. It just so happens to be the same kennel that Gsquared purchased Hollie from. Simply put, Hollie is the best dog I’ve ever hunted with. A pooch half as good as her would be fun.
My reasoning about being unhappy because I’m dogless, is that I’ve got birds running around. Of course, this shitty warm weather isn’t helping either. I’m ready for snow. Send me some snow. Hell, just send me some cooler weather. I’m not picky, it could be cooler and sunny, it could be cold and cloudy. If you’re up for the trade, I’ll gladly swap out this 70 degree crap. Just let me know…

that was close

Whew!
Thanks to mmf, I nearly forgot to blog. Our first broadcast was pretty fun, both teams picked up wins, the girls 79-68 and the guys 102-67.
Should be a great year!

This just in

Breaking news:
I’m still getting fucked over by WSU. I’m getting the shocker and it’s not a pleasant feeling. The headlines will read something along the lines of “Student snaps at advisors for unadvising.” I’ll give them some damn advice. GIVE ME A STRAIGHT ANSWER.
Sweetbabyjesuswithacowlick. Imma fuck some shit up if I don’t get a good answer. I’m entitled to it dammit.

I’m almost convinced that the advising department is like a help search. Enter the key word and it just spits out the closest thing to, without ever answering specifics. Well what about the specifics? This isn’t going well.

More to follow. I’ll stay in touch.

Yep

Ok, I’m cold. But I’m not complaining. I love weather like this. My advising situation has not been resolved and I should be writing a speech. Instead I post to the masses or the three or four people who read my blog.
This speech shouldn’t be too tough, I just lack the motivation to work on it.

I hate you, WSU

Fuck you very much WSU.
Had I known this whole education process would have been so screwed up when I decided to transfer, I would have sold a kidney and gone to a small private school down the road. Surely, things wouldn’t have been so damn bad in the whole process of trying to get a bachelor’s degree in print journalism with all my transfer credits.
Wichita State was my choice because it was recommended by my advisor at HCC and also, the dept. head knew my uncle. It was affordable, a reasonable distance away and I thought I had the world in my hands. Yes, I figured I would have to take some classes, but thanks to their fucked up requirements, I didn’t realize it would be quite like that.
Yes, WSU is my third school. The first one was right out of high school, so I was lost like a loose pea in the universe. After a break, I went to Hutch Community College, where the journalism program is actually well known. I had a ball. From that point on, my advisor said to go to WSU.
My initial enrollment process taught me that I had to have 60 on campus hours from WSU to graduate. Fine and dandy I thought, no biggie as most of them will come from my actual major. Today I met with the dept. head who’s kind of acting like an advisor to me now, and he showed me that I only have 16 hours of my actual major left.
Here in lies the problem.
A person can get a bachelor’s degree with 124 hours from WSU. Now, I currently have 129 under my belt, with 6 more at the end of the semester. So that pushes me to 135. I do still have 16 for my major that I need to have the graduation requirements filled. Once those are completed, I’m up to 151 hours. Now I’ll have fulfilled my requirements for my major, my requirements for the rest of the stuff I needed, but I’ll still have 8 hours I need to occupy. My total will be 159 hours..by my count, that’s still WAY FUCKING MORE than 124. What the hell am I going to do with 8 spare hours of classes I don’t need? Why would I even try in these classes?
I’ve got a transcript review email being thought up so that we can see exactly if I can bypass some things. Money grubbing bastards. That’s what they are.
What I’m really afraid of is they’re going to say, “Oh but Rusty, you didn’t need this and this and this,” in which case my head will spin round on my neck several times and I may start speaking Latin. Seriously, I will be livid. My editor said to me “the only way you can be appreciated at WSU is to be 6-9, 240 lbs.” How true.
I hate WSU.

Peer Pressure

Yes, it was peer pressure.
My father instigated it too. I am susceptible to peer pressure and today I caved. We had been hunting for the morning, only seeing a few birds with one in the bag thanks to a shot by me. By now, we’re all kind of tired and dragging, thanks to heavy duty hunting this weekend.
So we’re cruising home. We have a rule instituted during pheasant season as we have always said, we’re not allowed to go out in the country without a gun. The chance that we’d stumble across a dumb bird rises exponentially without a weapon in the vehicle.
My pops had just unloaded his gun in the back of Jarbear’s vehicle. I had not because I know. I turned to him and said “What are you doing? You’re going to guarantee us seeing a rooster on the way in to town.” His response was something that tore us all up anyways.
We’re about a mile from town and I had just said “We’ll probably see a cock up in the hedge row by the house.” We no more got by the hedge row and dad shouts “There’s a cock right there! It was moving up towards the fence.” Jarbear pulls up about 200 yards to the field entrance. He turns around and my father pressures me.
“Shoot it out the window.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes.”
So I roll the window down, stick my gun out and get ready. Jarbear never even made it to a complete stop and I fired once. As soon as I shot, four more roosters took off from right there, birds we hadn’t seen. I try to jump out and grab the now dead rooster, but the automatic door locks have engaged. I’m juggling gun and door handle while telling Jar to unlock the damn door. My dad is grabbing the gun, when the door clicks open. I jump out grab the bird, jump back in and we’re off.
We get back into town and Dad offers up his judgment on the process of the SHP or Stop, Hop and Pop.
“That might be a new record. That only took about 10 seconds and a good time is about 20 seconds. However if Jarbear would have gotten the door open quicker, that could have shaved about 2-3 seconds off the time. I just thought if you were going to clean one, you might as well clean two.” (Kind of ironic because I clean everything. One time, after coming back from hunting two hours away, he asked me if I had shot anything. I said yes, I shot my limit. “Great! You can clean the one I shot that’s out in the garage.”)
And for those of you who might be thinking this is totally and completely unethical, we knew the people that lived there, so it was all good.

For the weekend, I shot 9 roosters, seven of them coming on Opening Day. I’m tired.

Highs and lows

My holy holiday has arrived and nearly passed as the sun is beginning to dip in the western sky. Personally, I’m thinking that I’ve never had so many highs and lows in an Opening Day.
I managed my average of 3 hours of sleep, so I thought I was doing well. I popped out of bed, raring to go at 4:30 a.m. Naturally; I needed some coffee, so I preceded to make a pot. However, my head was somewhere else and I made incredibly weak coffee. I promptly poured it out and made a new pot. Fueled by stronger java, I was ready to face the day.
Of course, Dad’s only friend was late. The alarm was not set, or so he said. We were hanging out chatting, when he finally called saying he was on his way. It didn’t matter as we got to the headquarters at 6. Thanks to DST being so late, it was still dark.
We spent 40 minutes catching and banding birds. This is when the first low of the morning happened to me. One of our roosters escaped the cage and was running around the pen. I grabbed a net so I could pursue the little shit. After a brief chase, I netted him but I didn’t have the net down completely and took a flying pheasant to the face. I now have a scratch above the left eye and scratch that stars on my nose even with my right eye, trails down to the end of the nose, skips a little and runs down and around my mouth. Many bastards laughed at me when I took the rooster to the face.
We released the birds in the two patches we were going to hunt and then the battleplan was drawn up, literally on a white board. Yes, there was much laughter. My role was to be the edge guy, trying to help cup in the pheasants. Gsquared told me one of his coworkers said “You’re going to reload shells tomorrow? (the Gman nodded) Is Rusty going? (Nods again.) Why even take shells?” My rep as a good shot is flattering.
The first high of the day was my first shot as I folded up a rooster with one shot and it landed on the green wheat field out by the ahead man on my side. The low was that it was my only shot I took in that entire field. I got a little pissed as no one listened to me and I ended up having to cover between 60-70 yards all by myself. I know birds were moonwalking past me. Ok, it was more than a little pissed, I was furious.
But, we continued to the next patch, a much smaller area. This time I experienced a high as I shot four more, including one above everyone after they had unloaded guns. One more patch later and I bagged two more bringing my total to 7, a very nice high.
Now, I’m tired and stiff, but all in all pretty dang good. Tomorrow..we’ll see what happens.

Officially

I am a moron.
Yes. Tomorrow is the DAY. I’m glad this nablopomo stuff starts now, I’ll be able to focus for the rest of the month.
I’m a tich flighty and having trouble concentrating. Oh well, it’s to be expected because I’m just like a 6 year old the night before Christmas.
The over under for sleep this year is 2.5 hours. Any guesses as to how much sleep it will be?

Halloween

Mission Accomplished
Halloween has come and gone. My sister (Fish) and I were completely successful as we probably inflicted psychological damage upon hordes of children. I guess we’ve become semi-infamous throughout the years. It’s hard to imagine that a simple sitting on the porch would transmogrify into a production of terror for the children of our town.
The Fish and I set upon our plan, with the aid of Limewire, duct tape, black spray paint, a strobe light and costumes. We encased the front porch in painter’s plastic, spray painted it so you couldn’t see through it. I also blocked off half of the porch with the plastic and hid behind it, in a gruesome mask. The Fish wore a Grim Reaper costume and held the candy in her lap. We had a red porch light, a strobe light as you came up the stairs and lit tiki torches helping to illuminate the yard.
I learned several things
- The neighbor kids are freaking annoying little shits. They bugged the hell out of us as we set everything up, by asking annoying questions about what we were going to do. The youngest said kept saying it wasn’t scary, yet backed up when kept coming towards her. Thankfully, the mother apologized for their bugging of us. I think it was after we didn’t scare them because they saw us setting up, that they got the picture.
- I bet we had two dozen kids who never made it up to the candy. They were too freaked out.
- Boys ages 11-13 are the biggest pansies alive. Sure, they talk tough, but when the chips are down, they run screaming like little girls. In fact, I’d wager to say that they were the majority of the kids who never went on the porch.
- College kids jump just as high as 12 year olds. In the space of three houses, I scared the same group FOUR times. One of them tried to hug me, but I wouldn’t hug back. She was so scared, I think she was actually tearing up.
- Just the sound of a revving chainsaw is enough to make your hair stand on end.

Perhaps the best kid of the night was the child of about 7 years old, dressed as a stormtrooper from Star Wars complete with light up lightsaber. He came up on the porch, took one look at my sister and turned around. I saw him hanging around later as I chased a group with my chainsaw. He was walking home and the Fish just happened to have a lightsaber much like his. I dashed inside, grabbed and caught up to him in the dark. When I fired the lightsaber up, he stopped and turned. He walked back to me and we dueled for a bit. After our duel, I bowed and took him up to the candy. It was pretty funny.
Welcome to NaBloPoMo!

A Self-Proclaimed Existence

Monday, November 26, 2007

Firefox

test post for rusty

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Wow

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Hello Fall! literally

Monday, November 19, 2007

The weekend

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Nuggets from my dad

Saturday, November 17, 2007

You know

Friday, November 16, 2007

UPDATE

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Tomorrow

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Almost

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Us 56, them 44

Monday, November 12, 2007

For Jay

Sunday, November 11, 2007

My father

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Hello Playoff

Friday, November 09, 2007

ugh

Thursday, November 08, 2007

that was close

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

This just in

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Yep

Monday, November 05, 2007

I hate you, WSU

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Peer Pressure

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Highs and lows

Friday, November 02, 2007

Officially

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Halloween

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