Hump Day

As I left the house this morning, I saw a bright, shining star up in the sky. And then I thought perhaps it was a burning plane crashing down. It was so bright, it was hard to look at. I kept watching it as it fell. It reminded me of an skit from a really old episode of Saturday Night Live, involving Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd:

"What the hell is that?"
"Yeah, what the hell IS that?"
"What the hell is that?"
"Oooooh, I know what that is."
"Oh, yeah."
long pause
"What the hell IS that?"

Anyway, the light went out, leaving nothing but a long tail of smoke behind. It was a flare.

Just as it went out, someone fired another one. By this time, I was in my truck and driving to work, watching this odd sight out my window, instead of worrying about the road because, let's face it, I'm the only person for miles out here.

By the time I reached 'town', as we like to call it when we get to the "Reduced Speed: 45 mph" sign, there were 6 smoke trails in the sky, with one burning flare still going. And I'll be damned if I could figure out where the hell the person firing the flares was.

What good do flare guns do if they shoot up so high that no one can figure out where the hell the person who fired them is? I mean, sure I may be aware that someone is firing flares. They may be hurt and in need of help. They may be lost out in those woods somewhere, with a bullet from a deer rifle in their ass or something. But if I have to use the flare to figure out where they are, they're shit out of luck. There's just no way.

Did you ever wonder why The Professor, with all his amazing inventions that he made out of coconuts and Mary Ann's bras, never made a simple flare gun to shoot whenever a plane flew by on Gilligan's Island? Speaking of that, why didn't he ever 'make' Mary Ann? What kind of men were those guys on that island, with both Ginger and Mary Ann being hotter than a July day in Texas, that not a one of them ever jumped on either of those girls? I don't know about back then, but these days if those girls were stuck on that island with such weak excuses for men, they'd start doing each other. Either that or they'd spike one of those coconut cream pies and get the guys drunk enough to have a little courage between them. And then there'd be some hot, hetero action, finally.


Maybe that's why the network cancelled that show at the height of it's success? Maybe the network executives and their Gunsmoke-loving wives just couldn't stand making a show where three single men didn't even TRY to jump on two smokin' hot single women on a deserted island.

Anyway, when I turned down the last street to go to work, half the Boondocks City police department was waiting for me.


"Uh, officer, I didn't even know she was only 16, I swear. I thought she was her older sister, Britney. Really, they look just alike!" I lied.


But as it turned out, they weren't there to arrest me. They were just there to block off the road that I needed to drive down in order to go to work. All I could see behind them was some truck with a hose and some guys watering down a foundation for reasons I guess only they and God understand. The cop directed me to drive down the highway to "the new road next to the new WalMart" in order to go around the whole obstruction.

How sad that WalMart, which hasn't even completed construction yet, is already a fucking landmark? That's how small this town is.

"Go down 3 blocks 'til you pass Jacob's old barn - it ain't there no mo', but he useta train Morgans and there's still a couple'a wagons he left behine when they done run off 'n got run over. Turn left at them thar wagons 'n go about, oh, say a tenth of a mile until you see a red Camaro with a sycamore tree growing up through the windshield and turn left thar. Then go until you pass the new WalMart and then right thar you get back on highway 93. Yup. That's hows you do it!"

Anyway, I took the road the cop told me to. It led me to a neighborhood we nearly bought a house in, which we THOUGHT was going to be closed off with only the original 2 entrances and no through traffic. Ah, but now there's a whole new WalMart road piercing it right in the heart that would have just PISSED US OFF if we'd moved there. I took that road and it led me to another damn cop.

"You have to go right," he said, motioning me to turn right.

"I have to go to work," I said, turning my wheels left.

"Oh, ok, go behind me," he replied. And then he waved.

Cops here will wave to you. I like this town. Even if they did once pull me over and yell at me for my habit of taking photos while driving. Past flaming accidents that are in the center of the road. With cops and firemen standing all around it. One of whom glared at me and my camera as I clicked my last photo. Then he jumped into his Chevy SUV and tore after me. Ah, but that's another story.

So I drove around the cop and went towards work, wondering why the first cop didn't let me go to my job instead of sending me to WalMart. A big 18-wheeler pulled from a neighborhood right in front of me.

"How the hell did YOU get past the cops," I wondered to myself. "Dammit" is was I said out loud, though.

And now I'm here at work. I was late. Hardly anyone else was here. The place is partly deserted for Christmas, and partly for people trying to figure out how to get here with cops directing everyone to WalMart. There hasn't been much blog traffic at all today. I visited ADW's fabulous blog and tried to get her to send me her address so I can send her a Christmas card, but she's having none of it. I tried to catch up on Marlayna's blog, but suddenly it's set to private and I'm not able to get in. I was just reading it yesterday, too. I visited Tug, whom I have never come across before. It seems everyone else has been to her blog, though, and someone I'm the last one to discover it. And that's only because she found me first.

This coffee isn't quite doing it. And my problem with my code in SQL Server still isn't resolved. I've been banging my head against this for days and it's frustrating me. Meanwhile, SQL Server has swallowed every last drop of memory my computer has to offer and it's wanting to crash real bad. Slowly but surely, I've had to shut down every other application. This browser is next.

Time to get back to work.