Titans win; I'm right again.

It's a heavy burden, being right so often*. I'm not trying to show anyone up, I'm just constantly vindicated in the long run. I can't help it. At work, for example, whenever we're trying to figure something out down in the shop, Dale's always wrong. He just is. Not just in the shop, but out in the field as well, on a PM or a maintenance call. Whatever he decides is wrong, which is why I usually override him. Because I'm right.

In this case, I was right about the Titans benching Kerry Collins and starting Vince Young. Of course, everyone else in the United States of America was right about this as well. They were oh-fer almost half way through the season, there was just no reason at all not to throw Young in there to see what he could do. Two losses later, they finally did, and what happens? Two straight wins.

Young showed his comeback is legitimate, outplaying fellow first-round draft pick Alex Smith down the stretch. Young has been clutch twice in as many weeks, getting the Titans (2-6) in the end zone when it mattered.

So yeah, I'm right again. You're welcome, head coach Jeff Fisher. I know you read this blog.

Anyway. We cooked out on the grill this afternoon, and I stuffed myself way, way beyond any reasonable level of... um, eatingness. I still feel like I'll never have to eat again. I put eight pork chops, five cheddar-stuffed kielbasas, and a monstrous smoked sausage on the grill and burned them over fire until they tasted good. Haley and Jenny roasted some potatoes in the oven, and cooked some sweet corn in, well, in the microwave. We cheated a bit on that.

But it was all unbelievable. One of the best meals I've had in a long, long time. Jenny tweaked the grilled pork chop recipe we made up last weekend, and she absolutely nailed it. Pork perfection. The potatoes, as well, were fantastic. I love red potatoes to begin with, but they cut, seasoned, and cooked them to a state I'd characterize as perfection had I not just used that word to describe the pork chops. We ate outside on the back porch by the grill as I cooked up some extra meat for leftovers and Richard burned the shit out of some beer brats. Topped it all off with a dessert recipe of Haley's: baked bananas with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter, served with ice cream. Addictive would be a good word for it.

We fed five tonight and still have plenty of leftovers. Best of all, we bought most of the ingredients at the local Aldi for a song. After two trips there, I'm definitely an Aldi convert. Even better, I noticed that they use industrial batteries in their pallet jacks, talked to a couple managers, and I think we can get some work there. So it was a win-win-win weekend. Because I was right. Don't doubt it, just believe it.

*My egotism in this post is generally fictional; Jenny is so smart that she routinely makes me feel like an imbecile, consistently reminding me that whatever I think I'm at expert at, someone else knows more. Except about football. And my job. And Quake.

Picture time.

Here's some catfish we baked a few weeks ago. Fresh garlic and parsley, dried sage and oregano, and other stuff I don't remember. We added the recipe to our cookbook, because it was so good you'd have thought one of those fish had been the reincarnation of Buddha.

This is what my cayenne pepper plant looks like now. It used to cower under the shadow of that tropical whatever-it-is on the left, and now it's practically a tree. There are too many peppers on it to count. Whatever I don't eat I'll dry and crush to make my own fresh cayenne pepper seasoning. I'm like a fucking farmer or something now.

I love this picture. I mean look at it. It was raining, and she's so cute, collecting rainwater for the plants instead of tapwater from the hose. What can you do when faced with such adorability except take a picture of it?

Wish I was home.

So I'm at my mom's house, watching the NBA finals while watching the dogs. My mom's in Birmingham helping out with my granddad, who had a brain tumor removed a couple weeks ago. He's doing really well, but his kids are keeping an eye on him until he fully recovers. They're taking it in turns, and unfortunately my mom's turn came up when one of her dogs, Lucy, is really sick. I don't know what's wrong with her, but just checking in on them and letting them out and feeding them and whatever has turned into a full-on dogsitting gig. I'm spending my second night here, and apparently my dog YaYa isn't taking it so well. I knew she liked me, but I didn't think she'd, you know, miss me. I love that dog.

Anyway, Lucy here has been sick for a while, but with my granddad ill and with my step-grandfather dying last week, my mom hasn't done anything about it, and now Lucy's getting worse by the day. In a sense, I don't blame my mom, but in another, more accurate sense, I really do. But there's no point in assigning blame, it's just important that she's coming back a day early (tomorrow) to take her to the vet.


Meanwhile, I'm finding it hard to sleep. I miss Jenny terribly, and I'm not used to sleeping on that little twin bed in the guest room. I slept on it last night, and all afternoon at work today my spine felt like it was going to wrench itself out of my body and strangle me for making it bend down so I could acid-adjust forklift batteries all goddamn day. So I'm wide awake at 10:30 and I think I'm going to be late to work tomorrow. If I work the full 8 hours I'm pushing overtime anyway, and god knows they don't want that to happen. Anyway the manager isn't going to be there tomorrow, so fuck it. All I have to do is make a few trips out to West Memphis to pick up some batteries.


Anyhow. I gotta try to feed Lucy again and take them out once more before I sack out. If you're reading this, Jenny, love you! See you tomorrow afternoon.

Another snow post.

Here's a short (very short) video showing just how much Yaya enjoyed last weekend's snowfall.

It's hard to see her, but she's standing right in front of the door. Way to live life to the fullest, dog.

So it snowed here. A lot.

We never get snow here. In general, we'll get one appreciable snowfall per winter, usually less than an inch. But for some reason last weekend we got our asses handed to us (in snow form). Here in Raleigh we got around 6 inches; here's what it would have looked like if you were me and were looking through our camera at our front yard Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning:






Three days later it was sunny and 70 degrees. But it was great while it lasted. Also, someone around the block from us built a snowman right next to the street with great big boobs. Didn't get a picture, you'll have to take my word for it.

At last, I am home.

So yeah, haven't posted in, what, three months? See, it really wasn't my fault. I went on a backpacking trip to the Ukraine in June, and somewhere outside Odessa I got lost. Damnedest thing. Spent two months living off the land, Survivorman-style; you know, trapping game, building shelters out of twigs and leaves, etc. Figured out how to start a fire using only some copper wires I pulled from my cell phone, a flint, and kindling. In retrospect, I should probably have just used the phone to call for help; I had a decent signal. Live and learn, I guess.

Eventually some hikers found me, but they were lost, too. Long story short, I had to eat them.

Afterwards I found a stray bear cub, his mother had been shot by poachers. I raised him and he helped me hunt and defend my makeshift shelters from predators. After we hunted down the scoundrals who shot his mother and exacted revenge (we killed their mothers), I turned him loose into the wild. I won't lie, I cried: a single, manly tear ran down my cheek as I watched him follow is kindred into the woods.

Finally, I decided that enough was enough, tore down my most recent shelter, and started the long, torturous hike out of the Ukrainian wilds. I headed due north until I found a road. Determined to follow that road until I reached civilization, I stopped only every two or three days to build a fire with what was left of my cell phone and sleep for a few hours. After several weeks I finally found what I'd been hoping for all these months: people! Unfortunately, it was only a small mining outpost, with minimal contact with the outside world.

Anyway, I ate them.

So I continued my trek along that deserted road until finally, after what seemed like eons, I found myself back home, here in Memphis. I have no idea how I got from eastern Europe to Tennessee, but one of these days I'll Google Map it.

So anyway, I've moved into the Raleigh house with Jenny, I have a full-time job servicing forklift batteries, and things are going pretty well. The end.

All slack, all the time.

But you don't care.

So yeah, haven't posted in a selfishly long time. After the usual spiel of schoolwork, Real Life, etc., I got sick. Horribly, evilly sick. Some ungodly combination of strep and flu. My one and only Jenny caught it taking care of me, so now I'm at the Raleigh house for a few days taking care of her and hoping/guessing I have leftover antibodies that will keep me from getting it again.

Been playing some games lately, mostly Quake III with Jen. That girl has got some deeply buried bloodlust or something, I've never seen someone so unused to shooters take to a game like this before. "Don't shoot Lucy, that fucking cunt is MINE." That sort of thing. Fucking awesome. Also playing Psychonauts after finding a rare retail copy for 6 bucks at Big Lots. God, what a great game, though Yahtzee wasn't kidding about the crazy-ass difficulty curve. I'm at the very end, and a sudden onslaught of jumping puzzles is making me want to start over from the beginning to have some actual fun again.

There's more to tell, but I really need to get to bed. Jenny takes some looking after when she's sick, and I can't do it passed out.