Hot Stuff

Sorry for not posting for almost a whole week. I'd say that I was too busy, but that wouldn't be true. In fact, I took time off on Thursday and Friday as I just didn't have anything to do at work. so what have I been doing? Mainly spending too much time playing Galactic Civilizations II (did I mention how much fun it is to design new spaceships?), and working on some Tunnels & Trolls articles for a gaming magazine. Yes, I am back to messing around with the second-oldest fantasy RPG game in existence. Much fun, but I do lose track of time. One of the things that I like to do, other than playing games, is to make fun of the company I work for. It shall remain nameless in this post, but you can probably figure it out pretty easily. This last week was the annual "focus on Information Technology" campaign, entitle "US IT delivers hot stuff." To reinforce this slogan, they gave us all gift bags of "hot stuff," as you can see below.

This is the gift bag from the front...

...and this is the bag from the rear.

My favorite item in the bag was the jar of salsa, labeled "salsa" (the truth in advertising people strike again!) with no notation of who made it or where it was made. The label only says "salsa" and then lists the ingredients. That's it. Maybe it is mystery, communist salsa! Or maybe my company is so cheap that they wouldn't spend more than 10 cents on a jar of salsa. The Hot Tomales were good, though.

Electricity and Bugs

The weekend was a little more interesting than most. Friday afternoon I lost power, as the feeder line for my part of the county went down. I had been planning on paying my parents a surprise visit on Saturday afternoon, but since I had no power and therefore couldn't cook dinner on Friday, I decided to head over on Friday, instead. I live 20 miles from them, you would think I would see them more than once a month. Anyway, on Saturday I drove down to Shaw Nature Preserve in the morning and hiked around for 3 1/2 hours. I learned that when you get to the park at 7:30 AM, you get to be the guy that takes out all of the spiderwebs on the trails. I literally take out 30+ webs, and at times had spiders riding on me. That wasn't cool, but I did hike to the river for the first time, and that was neat. I got some good pictures. Another thing that wasn't cool are the five chiggers currently embedded in my ankles. I guess I didn't spray enough Off! on my shoes and socks.

Later on Saturday I went to my friend Art's house to play some Shadowrun, and then on Sunday was church and The Gathering, which was interesting enough. All told, a more active weekend than I usually have, but sometimes you gotta get out and do stuff, man.

Yo Joe!

We have a Trader Joe's in St. Louis now. When I lived in Virginia, there were a number of Trader Joe's stores around the area, and they were hugely popular. It is a quirky grocery store, at heart, but they produce a lot of their own products, and they have a number of unique organic and free trade foods available. The St. Louis store, on Manchester Blvd. just west of I-270, is small in comparison to what I am familiar with from their other stores, but I can still get Virgil's root beer there, so I really shouldn't complain.

In other "interesting grocery stores" news, I finally made it into a World Market yesterday, as well. Now that is an interesting store. My favorite were the bottles of Russian wine, with the lables completely in Russian, such that if you couldn't read the language you would have no idea what you were buying. I was able to get some blackcurrant juice there, however, so I shouldn't complain. Seriously, you just can't get blackcurrant at any of the local chains, so I'm glad I found a place that has it.

Good Citizen Day

I am declaring that yesterday was Good Citizen day for me, as I gave blood at a Red Cross blood drive in my office building, and I voted in the Missouri Republican primary. My main concern there was that my pick, Sandra Thomas, get the nomination to run in November for the state auditor position. This makes sense because she is an auditor and a CPA, and therefore actually knows how to run an audit, as opposed to the usual politicans we get in such jobs. She may not win, as she was running neck and neck with her primary challenger and not all votes have been counted yet. We can hope, though.

And the blood giving was not much fun, as always. When you have a phobia of needles, giving blood is difficult. It is a good thing to do, though, and they like my blood because I have a consistently strong red blood cell count, so I try to give every few months. The things we do to help our fellow man.

We Are a Nation of Wusses

I don't always agree with Mike Celizic, but I usually do, and I totally agree with his latest article. International competitions are super important, and we should pursue them with all of our country's assets. This is what chapped my hide during the World Baseball Classic, when George "I'm a big crybaby" Steinbrenner told his players to not compete because they might get hurt. You can always get hurt when you play sports, true. But thank you, George, for not noticing that the USA, and other countries, should have access to its best players when playing on the world stage. Quit yer whinin' everybody, and learn to take a hit for the team.