Dumping Grounds

OK, at the prompting of Liz, (who as I said before, has all the good blog ideas) I actually looked at my access logs for the past couple of weeks.

Oh. My. Lord.

I estimated my readership at 8. Heck, I could name them: Bobby, Teresa, Heidi, Jennifer, Liz, Alan, Lisa and me. 8 people. Including me. And I rarely visit my own site, as I am already pretty familiar with what I have written. Alan visits rarely. As do Bobby and Teresa. Comments, as rare as they are, get e-mailed to me.

I expected that my logs would reflect this prediction. I thought that my prediction was accurate.

All I have to say now is, â??Who in the hell are all you people?â?

Last week alone, my site had 12,521 hits, for a total of 1,645 page impressions. Now, let’s erase some of those numbers… I host a message board for a group of friends who I play an online game with. So I figured that 99% of that traffic was them. There are about 20 registered users of the message board.

But wait… I had 188 unique visitors last WEEK. And 50 of those people visited more than once. That number is WAY higher than the 20 registered users on my message board.

So, maybe people are finding me through search engines… after all, some of my stuff probably indexes well. â??Classic BMW sucksâ? and my religion stuff (a new one coming, by the way, I’m almost finished with it) I figure gets traffic from Google.

So, again I say, â??Who are you?!?!â? Drop a comment to say hello. I am about to post several open ended, thought provoking entries that you may want to respond to. Heck, just drop me an e-mail to say hello. I’m genuinely curious as to who is reading this stuff… and more than a little creeped out, too.

Is there any more annoying sound in the whole world than slurping?

I just hate it.

Horns honking and tires locked up on the radio are a close second and third (and should be illegal), but slurping sends me into a near murderous rage. I turn the radio immediately for any coffee commercial. No, I don’t drink coffee. Does the slurping make it taste less like shit? Or do people do it JUST to annoy me?

And soup? What is so difficult about placing the spoon IN your mouth? Why do some people see the need to slurp it, little tiny bit by little tiny bit? It’s gross. Stop it.

Courtesy of Liz (who finds all the cool stuff… ok, not ALL the cool stuff, but she finds her share…) we have the D Magazine list of â??52 Things Every Dallasite Must Doâ?

While I am a little surprised my number of things done is as low as it is, I must admit, I have Liz’s 4 beat My count is 35.

The ones I have done are in bold, and my little commentary will be italic.

1. Go to Southfork Ranch (home of â??Dallasâ?) - Heck, I have lived near the thing almost my whole life. Not that big of a deal, actually.
2. Praise Jesus with Bishop TD Jakes
3. Listen to the concert organ at the Meyerson
4. Go to Nasher - OK, I give, I don’t even know what this is.
5. Eat at Reunion Tower - Doesn’t 90% of all Dallas go to Antares for their prom?
6. Ask for ketchup at the Stoneleigh P - Dunno if there is a joke about the ketchup or not. But yes, I’ve been there.
7. Go to OU-TX - Even with my distaste for Longhorn fans, I really should do this once.
8. Ride roller coasters at Six Flags - Ridden every one of them except Titan, and I just have not been out there since it was built
9. Wear a tie to the Trail Dust - Been there, done that… this list is getting a little â??touristyâ?
10. Join the cast of a reality TV show
11. Go to the Meadows Museum - I have even been back since I graduated.
12. Unwind at the Inwood Lounge
13. Go to the Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot 3-mile fun run or 8-mile race - One of my better times in a 5k
14. People watch at the Pavilion (at the Byron Nelson)
15. Spend an evening in Highland Park (shopping)
16. Go to Texas Stadium - Been several times, but never played there
17. Eat at Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine in Arlington - OK, I have never been to the one in Arlington, but I have been to 3 other locations
18. Go to Cabaret Royale
19. Eat at Sonny Bryan’s - Been there, wasn’t impressed.
20. Spend a paycheck at the State Fair - Been, and even spent a lot of money seeing Pat Green and the Dixie Chicks, but I don’t think that qualified as a whole paycheck.
21. Gender guess at the annual Oak Lawn Halloween block party - Close, but no cigar, on this one. I have been on the DORBA smut ride, which had a stop over in a rather interesting bar in the Oak Lawn area, which had everyone guessing.
22. Add to the spectacle of the Cattle Baron’s Ball
23. Boot scoot at Billy Bob’s Texas - Best I have seen there was Robert Earl Keen
24. Sip tortilla soup at the Mansion
25. Survive the Carpenter-Stemmons Merge
26. Get free advice at White Rock Lake - I have run around it, ridden a bike around it, and run into some pretty odd folks there… I think that qualifies.
27. Go to the Plano Balloon Festival
28. Hang out with the wild things at the Fort Worth Zoo
29. Fly a kite at Flagpole Hill
30. Lunch at the Zodiac Room at Neiman Marcus downtown
31. Get something chicken fried at the original Black-eyed Pea
32. Visit Dealey Plaza - Worked down the street, been there countless times. Best time was after the X-files episode describing how the smoking man did it… everyone was looking at the sewers.
33. Go to the Ballpark in Arlington - Was at Kenny Rogers’ perfect game, and most recently Opening Day this year.
34. Visit the White Elephant Saloon
35. Go to Neiman Marcus at Northpark - <yawn>
36. Grab a stool at Highland Park Pharmacy - Fun. Once. for historical significance.
37. Strike a pose at the Dallas Arboretum
38. Get an e-mail from Mark Cuban - I wrote him, and I can say that the â??Mark answers all his e-mailâ? myth? BUSTED.
39. Feed your Tex-Mex fix at El Fenix - Too many times.
40. Speed on the Tollway - Me? Speed? Never.
41. See the ivories tickled at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
42. Make a (temporary) friend at Lone Star Park
43. Make your mark at Adair’s
44. Stroll the stately homes of Swiss Avenue
45. Become art smart at the Kimball Art Museum - Yes, like all true Dallasites, I go to Ft. Worth for my culture.
46. Go to the Neiman Marcus/Adolphus Children’s Parade
47. Take a handout at the farmer’s market
48. Eat the breakfast of Champions at Mecca - Wasn’t impressed. Preferred Barbec’s
49. Spend the day at Sandy Lake - Not since elementary school, and I don’t feel like I was missing much.
50. Shop Stanley Korshak - Worked directly across the street, and never bothered.
51. Attempt a triple toe loop at the ice-skating rink at the Galleria - OK, I have skated there.
52. Learn how to be a bona fide cowboy (with ropers, boots, wranglers, etc.) - Well, I own all of the above… so I guess I qualify.

Disclaimer number 1: Not work friendly. There’s going to be strong language. You have been warned.

Disclaimer Number 2: All names have been removed. Most people who read this know what I am talking about, and virtually none of the people I am talking about read this. But I’d prefer this article not be particularly â??Google friendly.â?

<sarcasm>So, this is a week I have long been looking forward to</sarcasm> I actually was looking forward to yesterday, which was the annual â??Get up damned early in the morning, drink beer, play golf, and then go to Rangers opening day extravaganza.â? It was fun. My golf game is amazingly bad, I uttered more f-bombs than I have in the past two weeks, but it was fun anyway. The Rangers, you would think after 21 opening days in their new ballpark, would have it down, but no. Parking was a disaster, concessions were a disaster, incompetence abounded. But it was fun anyway. Weather could not have been better. Didn’t get to my seat until the 4th inning, and the Rangers blew a late lead due to some spectacularly bad pitching. Alfonso Soriano is a true butcher in the field, but it was fun anyway.

But then, Tuesday.

My company has rehired an individual I don’t particularly care for. It’s not that he is a bad guy, he’s not. He’s actually a nice guy. But he is a reminder of one of the most singularly unpleasant periods of my whole life. I would be complete without ever seeing him, his sister, his mother, his father or anyone who shared his name ever again. He causes bad feelings to well up inside me just by appearing in the room. I dislike entire cities(in part) simply because his family lives there. You see this coming, right? You know where this is headed, right? Today was the very first time that both of us have been in the office. Well, he comes up and greets me like â??Mr. Fucking Cheerfulâ? and tries to strike up a conversation. To my credit, I didn’t tell him to bite me, kiss my ass, or any other colorful epithet that ran through my mind. I simply acted busy, answered in noncommittal guttural tones until he left. Mercifully, this did not take long.

Then, of course, I got to spend 4 ours in a meeting room with our new client (who I happen to like personally, by the way) about my favorite subject EVER… Weddings.

Oh yes, I love weddings. I love being in them, I love watching them. I sometimes just go up to the church and crash random weddings because I like them so much.

You believe that, right? Sure you do.

I could not possibly care less. Hell, I didn’t care about MINE, and in hindsight, I probably should have cared even less than I did. I just don’t give a shit about weddings, receptions, dresses, destinations, hotels, ceremonies, tuxedos, flowers, cakes, or any of that other crap that has no bearing whatsoever on whether a marriage will be successful. I do care about alcohol (which I guess could have a negative or positive effect on a marriage), but guess what, we didn’t talk about that.

So, after unsuccessfully searching for some way to kill myself quietly (so as to not disturb the meeting… never say I am not respectful), I was finally released and made it back to my desk. And here I sit, writing this.

The day is only half over. I really, really hope that there’s not another surprise lurking around the corner.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM Absolutely nothing in the above will keep me from doing a good job for my client. Simply because I am uninterested in the subject matter does not mean that I cannot provide them a sound solution. /jumps off soapbox

but ever since I wrote last… I have been in my car. Really.

All this week in particular, I have felt like I was on some practical joke TV show. I keep expecting Aston Kutcher to jump out from behind a stop sign to tell me I have been Punk’d.

I have been surrounded by stupid drivers, slow drivers, and suicidal drivers. And I do mean surrounded. And they team up. Slow in front of me, stupid on either side, and suicidal crawling up my ass.

My average commute this week has been 25 minutes longer than normal. Each way. It took me over two hours to get home last night. This is unreal. And to be honest, it’s so incredibly frustrating that it is having an effect on my health. Two and a half hours a day of staring at someone else’s tailpipe while not moving is more than any human being should have to endure. Pull out my thumbnails, please, just let me drive 50mph.