Hey –

Guess what?   We went through with IT!

The pastor showed up, the parents gave their blessing, hell, even I was only 20 minutes late or so…. all in all, it could hardly have gone off more smoothly.

Great thanks to everyone who got us through it and helped to make it as spectacular event as it could be.   (Although, seriously, the fireworks were a little over the top…)

Now, we sit in paradise… more on that later, but OMG, I have NEVER in all my travels, been in a place like this.

So, go back to work.   The beach beckons… 

r.

We were discussing the training we’re putting together for tomorrow night, and I was on the call to provide some technical insight as to what to expect during the training, when the conversation abruptly turned to "Cerveza Preferencias".

I never heard a consensus on the actual question, but what was made abundantly clear was that the guy running the show would bring a Keg of beer.

40 people.  2 hours of training.   1 Keg of beer.

While interesting, that in itself isn’t the funny part.

The funny part was when some guy on their team mentioned that the venue for this training, he was pretty sure, wouldn’t allow them to bring in Cerveza’s.

At which point, this is actually what he said…

"DAMMIT, I KNOW we’re not allowed to bring in anything, so if we’re not allowed to bring in ANYTHING, we may as well bring in a DAMN KEG."

…and no one could find a way to argue with that logic.

SO, tonight ends the final unknown.   And with its successful resolution, I can now make it public that, as you no doubt have heard rumors of, I am scheduled to get married on 11/08/2008.

To a woman.

An incredible woman.

But I couldn’t say anything before now because, like Robin Williams in "license to wed", this guy we’re trying to have marry us has a 100% track record.   Never had a divorce in any marriage he’s performed.   And he has to interview us before he agrees.   3 meetings.  So we were very much on the examination rack over the last few weeks as we completed his rigorous pre-nuptial examination into every aspect of our lives.

At the end, although he did concede that with us lying so much to him, he really couldn’t tell, he did, ultimately, agree to show up and marry the two of us.

Whew.   It’s not easy keeping the story straight when you don’t even know what questions he’s going to throw at you, but Kara and I did it.   If that’s not better than his stamp of approval of our honesty, then I don’t know what marriage is about.

No, actually, we were completely honest while keeping in the funky KaRand groove we’ve settled into over the last couple of years in which a sense of humor is so totally necessary that to show up without one guarantees an immediate dismissal.  Fortunately, this man of the cloth (I don’t know what you call one of those whose affiliation is Lutheran, but I’m sure someone will let me know), is also not completely unarmed when it comes to the style of quick wit communique employed by me and my future better half, so in keeping with everything that’s gone good for the two of us since we met, Mr. Oscar Bene-vidade-something will definitely be marrying us and dining at our expense afterward.

I can’t tell you how excited we are about that.   The Justice of The Peace, and I’ve met him, under less than desirable circumstances, was NOT our first choice, although he was an alternate.

So the KaRand train is in full motion — and like Kara told me on one of our first dates, it’s a Good Karma Train, and if you feel like gettin’ on — we’d be happy to take ya!

Much love,

r.

So we’ve received a box from UPS with the Bed Bath and Beyond logo on it.  I should also mention it is also covered with stickers that say "Fragile - Handle with Care."  The stickers are red with big, bold, white letters that are invisible to the "team" at UPS charged with the safe delivery of said Fragile Box from the BB&B warehouse to my porch.

The left side of the box is completely caved in.   The sticker going around it that says "Don’t sign for this if I’m broken" is just barely hanging on by a thread.   One of the corners is bashed in with holes ripped viciously through the cardboard on 3 sides….

… the thing is, I didn’t have a chance to "not sign" for it because the UPS guy or gal just dropped it on the door mat, knocked as lightly as he or she could and then took off as fast as that brown van/truck thing could go.

So, I want to open it to see if whatever’s inside is intact or destroyed, but if I do that, then I may be destroying the evidence we’d need for UPS to give us some insurance money.   Then again, if we don’t need the insurance because it’s not destroyed, then opening it would be a grand idea.  

My head’s been going in circles on this thing, it’s like I really need to see what’s inside before I can decide if I want to see what’s inside.   In a way, it’s very Quantum.   Much like Schroedinger’s Cat, the contents of that box are both intact and destroyed right this second.    They will remain that way until they are observed.   At which time, popular quantum notion holds, two parallel universes will be created.   Depending on the vibrations of the tiny strings that comprise all known matter, I will then either be conscious in a universe that contains the boxes contents intact or the one in which the boxes contents are salvage.

Which ultimately means that, like fishing, when I go to open the box, I better be "holding my mouth right" if I want to wind up in my preferred universe; that being, of course, the one in which the boxes contents are intact (it’s a big box.)

Or, maybe I wimp out completely, and let Kara open it when she gets home.   Then the fate of the universe lies on her shoulders and not mine.

That may be the best plan. 

Be a lot easier if this was Schroedinger’s Cat instead of a box from Bed Bath and Beyond.   I hate cats.

Once again, my Elite status with American Airlines has failed to get me into First Class.  It has, however, gotten me into a reclining exit row seat, which, as all seasoned economy class jet setters know, is the next best thing.

I’m sitting next to the trophy wife of a family of 5 who’ve secured the rest of the row.  She’s advising the middle daughter (there may be 10 years difference between them) across the aisle as to the wisdom of pulling out what she thinks she might need for the first 20 minutes of the flight out of her carry on and then storing it in the ‘overhead bin’ until ‘the captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign.’   Solid advice, I think, if not somewhat obvious.

"Mom" has heeded her own advice too.  She’s packed a folder.  As we’re taxiing, she begins to peruse the contents.   LAX is NOT their final destination.   I know this because inside the folder is a 232 page dossier containing every possible detail about what must be the mother of all vacations.  I see "Fiji" on one sheet; "Sydney" on another.   She flips through page after page of itinerary details.   Every child has a separate one, evidently, and she’s made copies of each which she folds and places into 3 envelopes and distributes to the pack across the aisle.   She continues flipping and I’m amazed to see one page of just names and social security numbers (5 of them).   There are photocopies of drivers licenses, passports, credit cards, pages detailing airline gates, times, even side notes containing the type of jet for each leg of the journey.  Brochures stapled to pages of notes, print outs of hotel web pages, one page listing every US embassy in the world; it’s all rather amazing, I think.

"Well, you obviously didn’t plan this out very well," I say, as she’s packing it all back up into seatback pocket in front of her.   She starts to turn to look at me and I realize this could very well turn into something that might cause a really long conversation so I fold my arms across my chest and close my eyes.

Predictably, she doesn’t attempt a reply and I settle in for the flight wondering exactly at what point do excessive organizational skills cross the line into OCD, quite sure I will never be at risk of becoming a victim of either.

–  One of my clients (the one I usually quote).   Re:   My recounting of the "work function" at which I sat (unknowingly) next to my fiances boss and, well, you can imagine what a nightmare that turned out to be.

"No problem.   I like ‘funny people’."

– my fiances boss in response to her (the fiances) attempt at damage control over my ‘ability to behave’ the night before.

SO, I don’t know what I did… I was trying to put on my comfortable, lightweight, extremely breathable footwear which are very sandal - like, but which I will not call sandals for fear of sounding a little lite in the — y’know what?   nevermind –  when something slipped and I hit the cord of the fan (which was on) in the bedroom, causing it to shift slightly right (my right, your left) and clockwise (for you, counter) and before I could really even register that this had happened, the thing (as in the fan, not the cord) starts sputtering like a . . . I don’t know – it was like the sound you’d hear if you were to take something pretty inflexible and shove it into the path of something rotating really really fast, but not really moving in any direction – so every rotation caused it to hit whatever you had shoved into it over and over, really really fast-like. It was that kind of sound.

The next thing I know, I’m reaching for the fan to figure out what’s causing it to make this sound, because I don’t see anything poking into the front of it, but I can hear this sound and it’s a pretty distinct sound, y’know, but then I stop for just a millisecond to confirm in my head that I’m not hearing something that SOUNDS like an object of some type shoved in the way of turning fan arms, but what is REALLY intense sparks of high voltage electricity spitting out from something I’m about to touch, and I do a quick visual, y’know, just to confirm that I don’t see anything that might be spitting out electricity (or anything else for that matter) and that’s when it happened: from out of nowhere, the fan attacked me; in fact, as if anticipating my worst fear… it started spitting at me.

My first thought was that the fan had come apart and all the little things flying toward me were fan casing shrapnel chunk pieces or something, which, I’ve watched enough tv to know, is usually quickly followed by the razor sharp spinning blades themselves. My second thought was that if that were about to happen, having more room between me and the source of these vicious flying death fan razors would be a lot better than if I were to continue my “approach vector”, so I backed off. But it was too late — the stuff started pelting my face.  Instantly I reached up to protect my face from the flying fan shrapnel and, at the exact same moment, jerked my head down to keep as much of my face as possible out of the fans line of fire (no, I haven’t actually had Navy SEAL training, but you’ll never convince the fan that I haven’t), and then I’m noticing that the blast radius created from the flying death fan shrapnel is actually quite wide for a little room fan (even if it is labeled “Turbo”) and in fact, I’m basically in the middle of a whirlwind of spinning flying fan shrapnel, but it doesn’t hurt! It’s like the fan sucks so bad that it’s missing with every shot, I think. Only then I realize it’s not missing – I’m just not FEELING anything.

Whatever ammunition that fan had been stocking up on, there was plenty of it and it was being flung fiercely in my direction. I knew this because I could see two on the bottom of my t-shirt and a cluster of 4 locking onto my right knee, so, right then, I instinctively moved into action with a quick pivot off my left foot (your right) in an attempt to spin out of the blast zone and I think the fan must’ve assumed this was me preparing to cobra-strike it with a can of soon to be opened whoop ass that I must’ve reached over and snagged from the nightstand in mid spin because at that exact moment, the noise just stopped. The blasts of fan death funk slowed almost to what I was pretty sure would be a complete stop, but, remembering how quickly the fan had launched its attack in the first place, I considered it completely unpredictable and, therefore, had no intentions of taking any chances.   Continue my spin back around, I’m nearly out of what was a freakin’ fan forced DMZ in my own freakin’ bedroom and that’s when I saw it.  

Tracing a vicious arc through the exact spot my head had been just .003 seconds ago, I saw one last huge blast of death fan funk. If it had been the 4^th of July, this shot would’ve been the finale.  In a last ditch effort to take my head off, the fan mustered everything it had and let loose with the mother of all fan shrapnel death funk razor floating volleys straight at my head – only, as I mentioned, my head wasn’t there anymore. The fan had not calculated on my cat-like reflexes and years of quiet fan combat training all leading up to this day, so it missed the mark. But it was close. So close that as my head snapped around to finish off my body’s pivot — the only thing that had saved me from taking this direct blast, I found myself at eye level, close up, and travelling at almost the exact speed as The Last Blast and that’s when I realized, cuz by that time, it had switched to slow motion and with me and The Final Projectile moving at an identical trajectory in the same direction, it was almost like we’re both standing still in terms of my being able to analyze the flying death funky fan bullet shrapnel thingy and I did said analysis from this enhanced visual perspective at that time and suddenly everything started to make much more sense as I realized the composition of the death fan’s arsenal.

It was dust. Good old-fashioned, grade-A, 100% pure American made dust.  And had there been more of it, that little fan may have gained the upper hand just from smothering me alone, but my preemptory, and timely, swipe at the cord inadvertently caused its premature attack.   I’ve always had more than my fair share of luck; this was no exception.

Of course, I don’t intend to tell the other resident of this room the same story, cuz she’d freak.   To think she’s been sleeping in the same room with that death crazed turbo air mover, mainly for the sake of white noise, and all the while it’s been planning its ultimate conquest — that would freak her right out.  Instead, when she gets home, undoubtedly she’ll see some trace of the carnage in the bedroom because, well, that’s pretty much what she does is find stuff I haven’t cleaned up all that good, and when she does see this, she’ll say, "hey, what happened in the bedroom?"  

At which point, I’ve already got it figured out, I’ll reply casually, but oh so coyly, "Oh, yeah — must’ve left something behind when I was cleaning up the fan… y’know — figured it was about time.   Just doing my part…." and as I say it, I’ll slowly fix my steely gaze directly in the face of that death fan knowing it’s only a matter of time before it gathers its forces for a second attack and knowing that on that day, as on this one, I’ll be there and I’ll be ready.

If, by the time that thought continues its journey across my frontal lobe, some other person hasn’t advised of another crisis involving their inability to convert kg’s into lbs properly, or some other greatly exaggerated use of the word "urgent", then I usually type in randnix.com just to see what I used to write about.

And I always feel like a shitheel® when I see someone who commented on how glad they are I’m back blogging — only the comment was put into moderation like 5 months ago and I haven’t blogged since.  I don’t even really remember when I put comments to be moderated.   Why would I moderate someone’s comments?   What was I thinking?   Or is that the default?   How can I build the systems that run the Fortune 500 and not know anything about why my blog comments are heading into moderation with no intelligent thought or action on my part?

These questions weigh heavily on my mind for about 6 seconds before I come up with another great idea (usually involving a can of great tasting-less filling, Miller Lite!  The beer that’s NEVER watered-down, so you can RAISE it up!)

How’s that for what we call in The Biz, "Product Placement"?   I expect an official spokesperson agreement in the mail any day now.

Actually, not to detract from what is unquestionably a great beer, Miller Lite, the ONLY beer bringing you a better, bolder summer where you could win a 105th Anniversary Edition Harley-Davidson Motorcycle ®, I’d like us to be serious for a moment, as I’ve recently had some revelations, or insight, or discoveries, or maybe just common sense that I never had before — I don’t know — but it’s about something, I think, a lot of us take for granted and we shouldn’t (and, no, I’m not talking about the Award Winning Taste of The Original Light Beer, Miller Lite!)  I am talking about something far more biological in nature: 

Poop.

I know what you’re thinking — we really don’t need to reduce this blog to just a bunch of shit jokes in a post.   I agree.   I have no intention of making light of the situation — or even including a single feces joke.

Although. and this isn’t so much of a joke, but it is one heckuva funny story, I did watch a movie once in which a character had been labeled a "Fecal Freak" because of something he did "on the inside" (those of you who’ve served time like me will know the meaning of that), and I decided I should reserve the Internet domain "fecalfreak.com" only to find it already reserved and then we called and found out who reserved it and then called him to try to buy it, only we got his secretary instead, who, until that day, had no idea her boss owned a domain called fecalfreak.com –  it’s a really hilarious story…  but, as I said, I’d like us to be serious for a moment.

The reason for my newfound respect about the subject of. . . well, poop… is that I recently met a man who definitely did NOT take the subject for granted in the same way as, I believe, the rest of us do.  He is 3 years old and he was at my house when he needed to use the bathroom and someone tasked me with the job of taking him there.

May I just say, you already know more about the outcome of this particular task than I did.   I figure:  point the kid to a toilet (and kudos to him for the potty training) and I’ll skip out until it’s time to lift him up to wash the hands.   (I’ve been in enough public restrooms with partial family units to know that’s the big persons job.)  But then, suddenly, I’m holding his little hand and we’re in the situation room and I look at the bowl and realize that it needs configuration for the specific job at hand and I realize that I have no information about what the job at hand is, although I did make some earlier assumptions that it was pretty simple… assumptions I was desperately hoping WERE true, but which I now knew I had reason to question.  So, not knowing this particular little mans family’s use of vernacular in this situation I sort of grab the seat of the throne and say, stupidly, "Uh, what kind do you have to do?"

He really seemed to consider it for a minute.   Then, cruelly, I thought, he said, "I have to poop."  The words echoed through the mostly porcelain room as I tried to grab something from my past that might promise some sort of clue as to how to get through what was about to happen.

There was nothing.  

I looked down to then see my guest fumbling with his shoe… the left one, and although I knew things were about to go downhill fast, I really didn’t see the significance of the shoe fumbling, so, as one who believes there are no dumb questions, I asked, stupidly, "uh… what… are you doing… um, with your shoe?"

"I have to take off my pants so don’t get poop on them," he replied flatly.

I have to say, I had to consider that point for a moment.  I mean, as to a matter of safe precaution, the logic can’t be argued.   On the other hand, it’s also a little rare for this exercise to go wrong in that area, in my experience.   Then again, we aren’t dealing with my experience, because, hell, I’m a seasoned pooper (seriously).  Ultimately, I decide — "Go With It" and then I lean down to help the kid with the left shoe because he didn’t seem to be having much luck with the quadruple knotted, cross-stitched, glued-down and welded together knot someone had tied for him, and I didn’t know what kind of time frame we were working against.

What happened next, and I don’t feel that comfortable admitting this, scared the hell out of me.   We no sooner had the shoe off, than the left pant leg dropped; he expertly scooped that away leaving just the one pantleg (the right one) and the one shoe still on (the right one).  I no longer had a job to do here, it seemed, as he was racing on to this next bit oblivious to my presence (although another job, I could feel dawning in the back of my mind, a very bad one, could soon wind up in my court depending on his amount of training and my amount of bad luck.)  Then he began to (and these are the only words I can think of to describe it) reverse mount the porcelain thrown.  I mean, here he was, safely in the sanctuary of poop, naked from the leftside down, in perfect firing range, and he was mounting in, what I believed to be, the wrong direction.

Presumably being in a position of leadership here, I, of course, froze wide eyed and found myself with absolutely nothing to say.  Well, maybe I did say something, honestly, I don’t remember.  I may have asked him why.   I may have gasped.   I don’t think I fell down; I don’t really know, but I would swear, as impossible as it sounds, the next thing I hear, as he’s reverse-climbing Mount Evershit is, "I don’t know why you guys always want to do it backwards…"

At which point, the dawning realization of my next task, the bad one, had taken firm hold on the left side of my brain, and the right was still struggling with the idea that this little man thought I was the weird one for not adopting the reverse-mount approach or even questioning it and, when that happens, I know, from my visits to the therapist, it’s because your mask of sanity has not just slipped off, but is so far downstream that you won’t see it again unless it’s for sale used at a bait and tackle shop you happen onto — so I ran.   I ran like the wind.   I found the first woman I could find and pointed her to, what I now call,  The Site and mumbled, "I think he may need help…" and then I just gave up on the sanity bit and shrunk hopelessly into the couch as I realized that maybe he’s not the one doing the reverse-mount.

Maybe it’s me.

…because where else can you find Herb flavored Trident, and Chocolate flavored Dentyne?

Actually, maybe you can find that anywhere — it’s just that in Dallas I never find myself at a place offering a bunch of it at the till. 

Speaking of tills, the room safe is a new model.  It’s about the standard size of a room safe and slightly smaller than the average till.   So, figure, maybe, 1 foot by 1 foot (although, admittedly, it is pretty deep.)   Nevertheless, after 14 mostly sleepless hours trying to get here, I found myself intrigued with the notion of exactly what audience they had in mind when they plastered the inside door with the warning sticker:   “WARNING - DANGER OF SUFFOCATION”