Where the Hell Was I?

(Up first, updates from the Bugs & Cranks side of life:

And up second... well, you'll just have to read on to see that, now, won't you?)

My apologies for being somewhat scarce this week. Or, if you prefer, 'entirely absent'.

In my defense, it's not especially my fault. In addition to the usual workplace madness, my pesky pooch, the demands of the missus, ...

(First up, a bit of news from the B&C front:

Now let's move forward to this week's look back. Onward and backward!)

" I can only conclude that there are some real perverted pieces of personry out there -- and that I've written some pretty oddball combinations of words that probably shouldn't be considered legal in the English language. Or this state. Or possibly humanity as a whole."

One of the many kicks I get from blogging -- most of them to the groin, as it turns out -- is browsing through the logs to see what searches are bringing people to the site. Every so often, I'll highlight ...

(Lots of baseball buzz going on lately over at Bugs & Cranks. To wit:

I've noticed something odd around the office lately. Maybe it always happens, and I've just begun to notice. Or maybe it's a new strategy for influencing peoples' behavior, or covering one's ass via email. And maybe it's high time I actually told you what the hell it is I'm referring to.

Fine. I'm getting to it. You don't have to be so pushy about it.

"I've never been sure how to feel about 'warm regards' in the first place. Are these regards that were in the oven, and have now cooled enough to touch?"

The thing is this: I've noticed that as the amount of work requested in an email increases, so does the length -- and warmth -- of the final signoff. It has little to do with the actual gratitude expressed in the body of the message -- some people gush profusely for a small favor, while others ask for the moon without bothering to offer thanks -- but always the last line before the signature reveals the magnitude of ...

I mentioned earlier that I recently saw my doctor, and was bamboozled into submitting to a full physical exam.

Well, maybe not 'bamboozled', exactly. It was for my own good, I'm sure. And there was neither bamboo nor booze involved, so far as I know. Certainly not both. This is not some sort of voodoo tiki doctor I'm going to here. Moving on.

"I'm surprised they didn't send some burly guy named Vinny to work some blood out of me in the meantime. Some of these HMO docs are hardcore."

At any rate, part of the deal in getting my foot healed up was submitting to a battery of lab tests. I told the doc fine, I'd run by the outpatient place near my house the next morning. Or the day after. End of the week, at the latest.

Later that day, our house went on the market -- which is a whole other extended saga, but suffice it to say that having holes ...

(The Bugs & Cranks train rolls on. In the station this time:

Now, back to the nonsense.)

A couple of weeks ago, I called the doctor's office about the ouchy foot problem I was having. The receptionist, a shrewd little minx, heard my complaint and replied:

'Well, as long as you're seeing the doctor, we'll just sign you up for a physical exam, too.'

I agreed, partly because I hadn't had a checkup in a while, and partly because it didn't seem like she was giving me much choice in the matter. And the last people you want to piss off are the staff who work with doctors. I watch Scrubs; ...

I may have mentioned (ad nauseum) that my wife and I are in the process of selling our house. We've never sold a house before, having popped our proverbial real estate cherry on our current abode.

(No. Don't try and picture that. You're only going to hurt yourself.)

Not knowing quite what to expect from the process, we naturally expected the very worst. We figured we'd wind up with seller agents without the requisite experience -- "What is this 'condominium' word you keep saying?" -- bloodthirsty cutthroat agents on the other ends, and ridiculously difficult buyers, if any at all.

"We braced ourselves to have the house spend months on the market with zero interest, then to endure a contentious negotiation where we'd be forced to give up half our furniture, the car, the dog and a rented parking spot in exchange for a tiny fraction of our asking price."

We braced ourselves to have the house spend months on the ...

(Two bits of B&C goodness since last time:

Now back to your regularly-scheduled dose of drivel.)

I've been told that I give lousy directions. This is surprising to me, for two reasons:

A. I'm a reasonably eloquent guy.

I'm sure Hemingway or Oscar Wilde could get you to the Home Depot down the street more compellingly, but I like to think ...

Apologies to anyone who tried to leave a comment over the weekend. A wee little technical problem -- fixed now, I'm happy to say -- kept all of the programs on the server from working. Including the posting scripts, which is why the 'Weekend Werind' was also rather conspicuously absent. But all the hamsters have been properly fed now, and the duct tape doubled up on the corners of the server box, so we should be good to go again.

"I either need to stop turning around, or find body parts less likely to hold long grudges."

Just don't shake the screen too hard. We're not exactly working with Deep Thought here, after all. It's a fragile system.

Speaking of 'fragile', I had a semantics discussion earlier today with my wife. Or tried to, anyway. As usual, she cut through the language difficulties to tickle the crux of the matter directly. Here's how it went down:

I've been having some troubles ...

(Bugs & Cranks goodness that I neglected to mention last night --

Now back to our regularly scheduled nonsense.)

The dog is officially a load.

Oh, she's always a handful. We're used to the 'handful' routine. The walks, the feeding, the begging for Snausages and peeing on just the right particular corner of the lawn -- that's old furry hat by now. And we nursed her through several months of lymphoma ...