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Facial Hair for a Good Cause

No sooner did I get done complaining about 5-blade razors and their advertising when I receive the following notice in my inbox at work.

Be a Man 08

Yes.  That’s right.  Finally, a reason to eschew shaving for a whole 2 months.  It’s kismet, right?  I have never actually attempted to grow a beard at any time in my life… mainly because I’m facial-folliclely challenged.  I’ve always wanted to be able to have the whole Magnum PI ‘stache or maybe even the Sonny Crockett 5 o’clock shadow, but since each hair on my face has a mortal fear of all the other hairs, they only grow singularly.  Thus, instead of looking tough and cool or even manly, I look patchy.

I did mention this was for a good cause.  Well, a co-worker and buddy here in the office was in a car vs. motorcycle accident last week.  Worse than that, while he was on his motorcycle, he was hit by a drunk driving ex-con who was running from the police (and also hit a pregnant woman’s car as well).  News story here and here.  The good news is he is going to be ok.  The bad news is he is in bad shape and has a tough road ahead of him to get back.  Here is a short list of what he’s fighting right now:

Broken Scapula (shoulder)
Broken Collar Bone
Broken Mandible (jaw)
Several teeth were damaged
10 Broken Ribs and punctured lung
3 broken vertebrae  – but thank God – no spinal cord damage
Extensive abrasions and bruising

He has been in the ICU for the past 4 days and probably has a couple more.  Then the long road to recovery begins.

So, we’re growing our facial hair company wide and the entry fee goes to help Jeff get back.  How can I decline that?  In case you’re interested, here are the contest rules.  Also on the Jeff benefit front, there has been scuttlebutt around here about a benefit party with all proceeds going to his recovery.  If there is one thing the Wirestone really knows how to do, it is good parties for even better causes.  I will post the information on whatever we come up with here, so if any of you dear readers want to come out and have a drink for a good cause, you’ll know where to go.

Anyway, you’ll see some updates from this thing as we go along.  And yes, I did get Jess’s OK to embark on this adventure before I agreed to do it.

From Monday on, just refer to me as Patchy McGee.  Who knew facial hair could be so exciting?  Well, except for the well coifed gentleman in the above picture, that is.

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Does the World Need 5-Blade Razors?

I have something I need to complain about so bear with me.

You have undoubtedly seen those commercials for that fancy new 5 bladed “Fusion” razor and how superior it is over the Mach3.  (View One Here)  More blades!  Closer together!  Less irritation!  Shave in 1/8th the time!  Get more sex!  You can’t miss them… I think there is one played every single commercial break.  If you were to judge by the shear volume of those commercials, you would assume that 5 blades are right next to the wheel and the electric light bulb in terms of importance to mankind, and in contrast, if you’re shaving with only 3 blades, you are an uneducated troglodyte who would be better off basically ripping the hair out of your face by the root.

The only problem?  THEY ARE BOTH MADE BY GILLETTE!

It has taken me this long to put the pieces together and I own a Mach3.  Essentially, they are spending millions of dollars, advertising against themselves!  Anyone else find that supremely stupid?  Anyone?  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Tiger Woods… I love ya buddy, but if I have to see another lame ass commercial of you, Federer the crier and that head-butting soccer schmuck I’m going to lose it.

I think my only recourse is to boycott all Gillette razors.  Gillette, you have angered me.  In result, you have lost me as a customer.

Whew… I feel better.

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Seasons of Boise – Panoramas

Well, with the recent end of summer, I have completed my one year view of the Boise skyline and its reflection in the seasons.  For your viewing pleasure, may I present the following.

Fall – October
Fall Panorama - Boise

Winter – January

Winter Panorama - Boise

Spring – March

Spring Panorama - Boise

Summer – August

Summer Panorama - Boise

If you click on each image above, you can go to the flickr.com page and view the larger image (just click on “All Sizes” button above the picture).

I think I might try to get some of these printed, matted and framed all nice into a single piece and perhaps try to sell one or two.  Jess and I have already promised the first two to our parents as thank-yous for the whole wedding thing and everything they’ve done.  The cool thing, is that I can print these anywhere up to 32 inches wide.  I’ll have to see how they look.

Hope you enjoy.  If you love Boise as much as I do and are interested in printed copies of these images, please contact me.  Maybe we can work something out.

Enjoy.

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Waiting at the DMV

The cliché is absolutely true. The is no worse wait than at the DMV. Holy crap. This is torture.

See here is the story.

Jess’ drivers licence expired a month before the wedding and instead of renewing it just to change her name later she just waited until post wedding.

I, being the good husband, told her that I would go with her to get mine updted at the same time, seeing as it’s 4 years and four addresses ago.

Now we’re stuck here. Could be for a looooong time. Been here 10 minutes already and 4 only numbers have been called. “Now serving 103”. Well shit. I’m 129.

Ugh. This sucks hard. If we don’t make it out of here alive someone send a search party.

Posted from my iPhone

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Married!

Well, we’re done. Literally and figuratively. Jess and I are partied out, hung over, exhausted, yet very very happy.

Big, big, BIG thanks to all who made it to the ceremony and reception. You all made it 10x better than we could have imagined.

We’ve got family over and more on the way, so I’m off to more mingiling.

We set foot in Maui in exactly 27 hours and 17 minutes.

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Weddings and Other Stuff

Woo hoo… a regular blog post.  Hey, I’ve been busy, cut me some slack.

First off, a wedding update.  We were able to clear the final major hurdle in this whole process this week.  We finally have someone to actually marry us.  Which is a big load off the shoulders.  Who knew that judges would be so hard to get a hold of, especially if you don’t have an “in” with one of them.  Luckily, we were able to find retired Judge Richard Grant who had nothing better to do that afternoon and graciously agreed to officiate.  Whew!

From here on in, everything else is minor detail stuff.  The big stuff is all locked in.  We got registered, but I don’t think we beeped enough stuff.  Got a lot of people coming to this thing…  (Macy’s and Bed Bath and Beyond, in case you’re interested).  T-minus 44 days and counting.  (46 days until Maui).

News this past week here in the Valley is that all 7 Round Table Pizza‘s just up and closed one day.  No notice given to even the employees. Normally, this wouldn’t register on my radar, but since three of my top 5 favorite pizzas came from Round Table, I was and still am quite upset about this.  When I was single, I ate Round Table once a week.  Seriously.  Now, I know we have Idaho Pizza Company, which split off from Round Table years ago, and is similar pizza, but its not the same.  I still can’t quite believe I won’t ever have their pepperoni, or King Author Supreme or Montague’s All-Meat Marvel whenever I want.  I am legitimately pissed about this.  I can’t even describe.  Well, next time I’m vacationing anywhere near one, you can bet what I’m going to pick up. *sigh* I do know this… if they keep playing TV commercials for it, I’m gonna be PISSED.

In other personal news, I have somehow slipped in to a vortex of horrible minor personal choices.  Lemme explain.

In recent months, I have had the absolute worst luck in picking minor shit.  For example, at any store where you have more than 1 checkout lane, EVERY SINGLE TIME I end up behind the person who is trying to use 19 coupons, can’t find their checkbook, need 27 different price checks, or some other reason to waste as much of my time as possible.  It is uncanny.  And it seriously is every time.  It’s gotten so bad that I make Jess pick when we are together.  It’s the only way we can get out of the store within this century.

As a corollary to this, is my channel surfing has gone down the toilet.  I’ll be on one channel, and flipping through the DirecTV guide seeing what else is on.  When I pick something and navigate to it, without fail that channel will be on a commercial.  I don’t know how I do it.   It is exceptionally frustrating.  Jess can back me up on this, it has gotten ridiculous.

Boise State and Peak Broadcasting finally announced who would be taking over for the longtime voice of the Broncos Paul J. Schneider.  Bob Behler comes to BSU from UMass, and seems like a well seasoned play by play guy.  I’m sure he’ll do a great job, but I’m still a little off kilter.  I mean, Paul J has been an absolute fixture here for 35 years.  It will take me a long time to get used to hearing someone else calling BSU games.

I’m sorry.  I love Paul J.  I know he wasn’t always the most accurate announcer in the world (to be kind) but dammit he had the voice.  My entire life has been spent listening to him.  I really hope Behler does a great job.  He has some huge shoes to fill.

House has been coming along.  We’re getting fairly settled.  We’ve got fewer work men coming by the house fixing things.  Fewer boxes full of stuff we might need soon.  I’ve been wrestling with our sprinkler system since one of the stations is a pain in my ass.  Half of the station is a marsh complete with standing water, while the other half is drying out and the grass is dying.  So, I’ve been fighting with it trying to get the right amount of water and everything.  I think I’m getting close, but I’ll probably need to get that big station broken into 2 different ones.  Ugh.

One downside to living in a new, fancy subdivision?  Door to door salesmen.  Gaaa…  I haven’t lived in a place where they are so thick like they are at our new place.  Damn.  If it ain’t the security system guy it’s the pest control guy.  The problem is that we’re so used to having various workmen come by the house, I have to answer the door just to be sure.  BANG, I’m caught in their web and I gotta spend the next 10 minutes trying to extricate myself from their elaborate sales-pitch web.  Plus, since we have a regular old window in our front door, I can’t even peep out and neglect to answer the door when I notice its a sales guy.  Well, I guess I could, but even I can’t be that big of a schmuck… of course, it would be pretty funny to walk up to the window, wave at the guy, then walk away from the door.  Maybe next time.

One week.  I can’t wait.

Well, that’s all I got for now.  Happy 4th of July everyone.

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36.8

Some recent random bits as I recovered from Vegas this past week. Check back later for more on that. I will say however, Vegas is a lot more fun when you win.

I filled up with gas yesterday. My previous tank which was the first one since the new commute to work was finished. Here are my stats. I filled up on 5/19. I went 412.6 miles on 11.2 gallons of gas. For those who are bad at math, that works out to 36.8 miles to the gallon and almost 4 full work weeks. That is AWESOME. I was amazed by that. I got almost 100 miles more on this tank than what I used to get on good tanks. Gotta love the Chinden commute with its few lights and long straights.

I spent the first hour of my workday this morning dumping coffee down my shirt without even noticing. The lid on my travel mug was not fully snapped in as I blissfully splashed my brand new shirt with coffee. So that was fun.

Is it wrong that I took exceptional glee in Big Brown’s total meltdown at the Belmont? It’s the same sort of joy I would get of seeing this car smash into the wall at 200 mph. The only thing that could be better would be seeing UPS stock take a major dump. Sensing a theme here?

The built-in TV cabinet is finally fully complete at the house. It looks great. I’ll have to post pictures.

Speaking of the house, the rose bushes that were part of the landscaping that came with the house have exploded. No, not literally. But, the sheer volume of yellow flowers that are on these things is incredible. Not only that, there are still about as many buds that have yet to start blooming. It is absolutely amazing.

June is almost half done already. Good lord how time is flying. T-Minus 2 months and counting until the wedding. Getting into crunch time here.

That’s all for now… check back later for pics of the cabinetry and roses. Happy weekend, everyone.

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Vegas Evolution

Las VegasI love Las Vegas. In fact, I’m heading there again with my groomsmen tomorrow for a long weekend of male bonding time. This will be my 10th trip to Vegas in my 13 years of being “of age”. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of things come and go down there. One thing you can be sure of, is that every time you go, it will be different. There will be new and amazing sites and old familiar ones will be gone. It’s just the way Las Vegas is.

There have been changes in Las Vegas that have been for the better, but there are also ones that have been for the worse (at least in my eyes). And, in honor of my trip this weekend, I would like to detail some of these out for you.

First the changes that I really like, in no particular order.

Continue reading “Vegas Evolution”

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Creeping Civilization

Slowly but surely, everything is starting to come together… and don’t call me Shirley.

In the past week, we’ve had the new refrigerator delivered as well as the washer/dryer.  More importantly, we also got internet access set up.  That all happened last Monday.

We spent the rest of the week, unpacking some boxes, moving still more random crap from the old house, and fighting off exhaustion.  We had to spend the entire week without TV because the builder was going to run more coax cable for our DVR’s for free.  If DirecTV did it, they would charge $75 an hour.  So, that was a no-brainer.  But, with the way schedules worked out, DTV couldn’t come until this past Saturday.

I spent the entire morning hanging around the house while the guy did his thing.  From 9am to 1pm.  But, he finally finished and we were back with TV again.  Hallelujah!

Jess equated living without satellite/cable to living in those days before remote control. We were able to watch DVD’s but that was like having only a single channel.  And, if  ayou wanted something else, you had to physically get up, make a decision as to which DVD to throw in, then make that happen.  Lots of work when all you want to do is  shut down the engines and veg out.

Speaking of TV, supposedly the builder’s cabinet guy is coming out today to install the net A/V cabinet in the living room and finally fill in that ugly hole.  However, nether Jess nor I are all that confident that he’ll show.  We have not hear word one from anyone concerning this.  Even so, old Goldy girl is locked into the bedroom just in case.  I’ll let you know if it actually happens or not.

This past holiday weekend, we FINALLY got the rest of the stuff out of the old house.  It is completely empty.  It was cleaned last Thursday and we’ve got the carpet cleaners coming this Thursday.  Should be all ready for the renter to move in June 1.

Of course, we still have the storage unit to deal with, and not to mention the garage FULL of boxes.  *sigh*

One other thing we crossed off this past week is we got Jess her new lawn mower.  She was quite excited, so while I cooked up steaks and mashers, she was mowing the lawn with her new “personal pace” Toro mower.

On the wedding front, we have made progress there.  We have gotten the invites all bought and everything.  A friend of Jess’ is going to address them since apparently she has good handwriting.  Fine by me, means I don’t have to do it.

We also got registered yesterday.  We’re not totally done, but we spent about 5 hours at Macy’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond.  Macy’s wasn’t that much fun, because we spent the time trying to figure out what the hell we wanted… specifically in terms of design type stuff.  Towels and sheets and that sorta thing.  That was NOT fun.  Making all those decisions was tough.  But, I suppose we can always return stuff, right?  Not to mention that all that crap is wicked expensive.  We both felt way guilty scanning some of that stuff.  But, as Jess said, nobody says they gotta buy it, right?

Bed, Bath & Beyond was a lot more fun.  That was picking out all of the cooking stuff I want.  That was the stuff I really care about.  Spoons and spatulas and pans and whatnot.  Good times.

We still have to register for more stuff… I don’t think we have enough on there to give our guests the variety to choose from.   The paperwork we got from Macy’s told us that for the number of people we’re inviting, we should have upwards of 250 items at various price points on our register.  Gaaa!  When we left Macy’s we 48 items.  Needless to say, we have some work left.

Scoreboard time…  Old house empty.  Storage unit still full.  Kitchen stuff mostly unpacked at new house.  Most everything else still partially or mostly in boxes.  We officially have TOO MUCH CRAP.  Hopefully cabinets done today.  Re-grouting still needs to happen on the master shower.  Some other various little fixes need to happen too.  We still haven’t met the “community director” lady to get our pool keys and whatnot.  We also got to buy a bunch of stuff for the house, area rugs and runners, water softener, shelving for the garage, a garage fridge/freezer, decorations for walls, blah blah blah blah.  It is never ending.  Wedding wise, locale and time is set. Menu is finalized.  Photographer is locked in.  Invites are done and ready to be sent. Dresses and Tuxes are done.  Honeymoon is all squared away. Registering is well on its way.  Flower meeting this week. Cake decisions still gotta happen.  We still need an officiant (yikes).  Working on decoration stuff now.  Excuse me, I need a nap…

We just keep plugging away.  Maybe someday we can actually get the place whipped into some sort of shape and put together a decent wedding…

Stay tuned.

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Seasons of Boise – Spring

Spring Panorama - Boise In the midst of everything, last week I was able to take some pictures to continue my year long series of the Seasons of Boise panoramas.  I really wanted to get trees just beginning to be green while still having some snow on the mountains.  I was also hoping for a slight tinge of green on the foothills as well.  I was also hoping that there would be some flowering trees in the park, but it doesn’t appear to be any.

Spring has sprung, and thus, #3 in my series.  View the whole series here: http://flickr.com/photos/jasonhaberman/sets/72157603859304411/

Can’t wait to get the summer shot and complete the thing.  Gonna look way cool on the wall.

Who knows, maybe I can make a buck or two off of these…