James Doohan: March 3, 1920 - July 20, 2005

As my friend Spencer just pointed out, my finger has obviously strayed from the pulse of the Star Trek community.
Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott passed away last week, and my lack of recent TV viewing had left me grossly uninformed.
We'll miss ya Scotty.

StarTrek.com Obituary
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My brother's cat...

... is so fluffy, that little tufts of fur are sprouting from between his toes.
If you were that fluffy, you'd sleep like this too.

word

Granola is crunchy

I’m at work, eating handfuls from a 1kg bag of 5-grain maple raisin granola that I keep in my desk drawer. One of these bags will usually last me at least 3 or 4 days, and is so much better than the little overpriced bags of chips that my coworkers all buy from the vending machine in the lunchroom. I’ve got an entire filing-sized drawer that’s dedicated to tea, fruit/veggie juice boxes, crackers, etc. Some neckless dude at a nutrition shop once told me that the best thing for keeping your metabolism up is to eat lots of small meals throughout the day, rather than stuffing yourself with 2 or 3 big ones. So instead of eating a breakfast or lunch, I just snack a half-dozen times.
The only downside is that every week or so I need to make a trip to the grocery store in Armstrong to replenish my supply… and it’s impossible to walk from the parking lot to my office, while carrying a couple bags of food, without some asshole exclaiming “what’d ya bring me?” Will those stupid at-work phrases ever grow old and die? I say at-work because nobody talks to their friends, family, or strangers on the street like that… just the people that they see every day at work and don’t have anything intelligent to say to. “Workin hard or hardly workin?” There’s another frickin gem. Somebody said that once back in 1926, his chums thought it was hilarious, they all told the story to their families that night at the dinner table, and it was passed down through 3 generations of factory and office workers.
Well, its 16:25 now, time to go home. Another day, another dollar.
Kiss my ass.

Damn dogs

I’ve got some tomato plants in my brother’s greenhouse. They were germinated on a window sill before I moved, and then transplanted to a large container just last week. They’re now sitting in a layered blend of perlite and peat moss that should hold lots of moisture while they bake under the toasty plastic sheeting. I looked at them yesterday after work and decided that they had adapted quite nicely and could probably handle a shot of fertilizer. Out came my bottle of fish oil emulsion. Originally purchased for the hydroponics setup I had built for growing tomatoes and cucumbers during the winter, it was packed away when I discovered that fish water wasn’t something you wanted anywhere near hot lights inside your house. It was however perfect for the outdoor greenhouse. I mixed up a jug and added it to the veggies, and poured what was left into the other various plants, then went inside to play Warcraft. My brother came inside a little while later, after having just gone out for a smoke. He says to me, “How full was that bottle of fertilizer?”
His landlords have three dogs, two of which are barely a year old and still very much in shit-disturbing puppy mode. One of them went into the porch and dug around the plants, and tracked the concentrated scent back to the bottle. She then packed it out to the lawn and chewed the cap off, leaving a big puddle of brown goo on the grass. My brother arrived just in time to take the wrecked bottle away and chase the dog off. I wasn’t too terribly worried about the dog or the grass, since it was all organic… but we used water to dilute the shit outta the puddle anyways, soaking it down into the turf.
Later that night I’m laying in bed (in my tent) when there's a curious noise outside, poking my head out the door reveals one of the dogs excitedly nosing the patch of grass where the spill occurred. "Oh well, go nuts mutt, I’m going to sleep."
This morning I roll outta bed, climb outside and stand up to stretch. The patch of lawn looks different; rub the sleep from my eyes and step closer. It almost looks as if somebody went at it with a small shovel, but there are no nearby piles of removed dirt. Not only did the dogs eat the grass, they ate entire mouthfuls of turf and soil. Does concentrated dead fish funk really taste that good? Is it worth plugging up your digestive system with a couple pounds of dirt and rocks? Hopefully I’ll never really know.

Twas a sad time indeed for Mr. Thomson

Here's an HTML version of the poster sheet that I've pinned to the bulletin boards at work.
I didn't bother getting fancy, since it was printed in black & white.

Click here

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