Strange Things

My knitting mojo and my blogging mojo seem to have run off somewhere together.  But all the so-called experts say to keep writing, even when it seems like you have nothing to say. 

So, here goes...


I have a plug in on my blog called Site Meter.

It's a hit counter.  Now, I don't normally pay much attention to Site Meter.  In their weekly summary, they show that my blog averages about 6 hits per day.  I was getting really discouraged, until Blogger started putting hit counts on the dashboard.

Those numbers are a little better.  They vary, of course, but most of my posts average 20 views per day.  But I noticed that two posts have over 100 hits each.

I can't figure out what is so special about those two posts that they got so many hits.  They aren't political, or deep and philosophical.  One is about getting seed catalogs in the mail.  The other is about letting my car battery run down. 

The very next posts are back down to my normal 20ish hits.  Curiouser and curiouser. 

By the way, I got a couple more seed catalogs since I posted the other day.  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

I think I'm going to try something different this year.  I'm going to start my plants in seed trays, like I usually do.  Only this time, since it doesn't stay cold much down here, I'm going to put the seed trays outside.  That way, if it happens to dip below --say 40'-- I can just bring them inside for the night, and put them back out after it warms up.

Maybe that'll work. 

The bad news is, someone seems to have gotten ahold of my credit card number.  I came home from work from the credit union saying I needed to contact them.  When I did, they said that there were some suspicious charges on my card that I needed to verify.  Turns out I didn't make any of them. 

My credit union is really good about monitoring for fraud, so as soon as the first charge went through, they put a lock down on my card, so the other two charges were not authorized.  They cancelled my current card, and are sending me a new one, but I'm just wondering how my number got out there.

I haven't used my card at any place new lately. Nothing on any place like e-bay or anything.  Just the same old places I'd been buying stuff at for years.  Amazon, Netflix...and that's about it. 

I did buy Cody a gift card from Barnes & Noble, and I renewed my NRA membership, but you'd think those places would have good internet security.

I'd like to buy some of that LifeLock protection, but it's like $300 per year.  They have a cheaper version, but it's not much more than what I could do for free.

In the meantime, I'll just keep an eye on things. 

Sporks and Alexander

I was there at school, eating my cheesecake.

I had three of those little cheesecake tarts to eat with my lunch.  I ate the first one, and it was so creamy, and grahamy and good.  Then I threw my fork away.

I started to eat the second cheesecake, and realized that I had no fork.  I got up and went to the rack near the drink machines.  You know, where they keep the salt and ketchup and stuff.  They have a container of sporks there.  I got a spork and ate my second cheesecake.

Then I threw my spork away.

I started to eat my third cheesecake, and realized I had no fork, nor spork, neither.  I got up to the rack and got another spork, and ate my third cheesecake.

Then I woke up to the sound of driving rain, and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why I kept throwing my spork away.

And I went to work in the rain, and somehow managed to set off my own car alarm.  Then I got to work and tumped over my lunch cooler, and that's when I realized I'd forgotten to put a drink in my lunch.  Fortunately, I had picked up a couple of dollars before leaving the house, so I could get a drink out of the machine.

I got halfway across the parking lot and had to turn around and go all the way back to my car, because I'd left my coffee in the car.  I was just glad it was in the car, and not on the kitchen counter at home.

By this time, I was starting to feel a little like Alexander, and it wasn't even 7:00 AM yet.  I wish I could say that things got better, but they didn't.  The day just went downhill from there.  The only redeeming thing was a new episode of The Big Bang Theory.

And that I have a new appreciation for sporks. 

First Finished Object

of 2013, and I'll bet you can't guess what it is!

If you said a hat, you're right.

How'd you know? 

Now that Christmas knitting is finished, and things are getting back into the normal routine of day to day living, I intend to get back to work on my WIPs.

If only I can remember where I put them all.

Sick

as the proverbial dog, barking like the proverbial seal.  And yes, Mr. Fever finally showed up.

I'm going to take a hot bath, then lay down for a bit.  But I'll leave you with something to ponder:

Just Stuff

I'd planned on posting yesterday about my goals for the new year, but I didn't. 

After listening to Talkin' Cowboys,
finishing The Handmaid's Tale
starting Walking Across Egypt
and watching three episodes of Gray's Anatomy via Netflix

time just got the better of me. 

So I didn't. 

But I'm here to tell you now that my goals for this year are pretty much the same as my goals for last year.

Don't buy yarn.
Knit from stash.
Pay my debts down.

I did pretty well on all three goals last year.  I didn't buy any yarn at all until August, and what yarn I did buy was for specific projects.  The vast majority of my knitting came from stash yarn.  And I did pay off one of my credit cards completely. 

That is the best feeling in the world, I'll tell ya.  Sending off that very last payment.  Too bad the government will never know that feeling...

This morning, I got up and my car wouldn't start.  My battery was dead.

I didn't tell anyone at work what happened, because I didn't want anyone to know how silly I was.  But I'll put it here on the internet so the whole world can see. 

When I got home yesterday evening, I was so tired, and so sick, and I don't know where my mind was.  I got out of the car and walked into the house...

and left my car door wide open.

All night.

Needless to say, the dome light ran my battery down. 

I sent a quick text to one of my friends who drives past my house anyway, and he stopped and picked me up.  Since he works later than I do, I found another friend who drives by my house anyway and she brought me home. 

I got James' battery charger and put it on my battery.  I left it until the light said Full Charge, but I didn't try to start it.  Hopefully it'll start in the morning.  But I shot a text to my friend letting him know what was going on, so I have backup.

Just in case. 

Gloomy Days

I got the last of my Christmas decorations taken down today.  The house always looks just a little sad for a few days when the decorations first come down., and we move into the gray winter days of January.   


What makes the gloomy, gray winter days just after Christmas a little brighter?

Seed catalogs in the mail!

Now I get to spend the next few weeks planning my flower bed.  Deciding which flowers I want to put in this year.  Do I want to try a rose or not?  If so, which one? 

How do I want to lay out my bed?  I know I want Zinnias and Four O'Clocks, but where, and how many?  Marigolds?  Yes, but which varieties? 

Oh the planning and scheming! 

Of course, the downside is that I have to sit here for three months, looking at my frozen ground and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

In the meantime, I've got some very confused daffodils coming up.  

It's going to be an interesting year. 

What A Dreary Day

It has rained all day long.  And I do mean All. Day. Long.

Needless to say, I did not get out of the house.  Well, except to run get the mail during the only 15 minutes of the day during which it was not raining.

So, what did I do?

I started taking down the Christmas decorations for one.

I finished a scarf for another.

I'm a little bummed, though.  You know I used to make all these scarves for a charity called Scarves From The Heart.  They deliver them to cancer patients at a treatment center near where they are located.  But when I went to the website to get the address, apparently they've dismembered, or  disbanded, or disengaged, or whatever charities do when they shut down.  Whatever you call it, they aren't there any more.  So, now I need to find a new charity to send my scarves to. 

Speaking of scarves, I just realized I never showed you Beverly's finished cowl.  I can now that she's got it.

She really, really liked it.

Oh, and I should probably show you the rest of my Christmas presents, too.  I'd saved a few to open on Christmas morning.

And here they are:

Oh, and my sister sent me some bear sausage.  Well, something like a slim jim, only made with bear meat.  I haven't opened them yet.  She also sent me some of that really good fireweed jelly that she makes.  I'm almost tempted to move to Alaska myself, just to get some more of that stuff.

My younger brother and sister in law sent me a gift card to Amazon.com, so what did I do but buy a book.

Uglies, by Scott Westerfield.  

Everybody gets to be supermodel gorgeous. What could be wrong with that? Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

It is the first of a series, but I haven't bought the second book yet.  Next up on the reading list is The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. 

I'll let you know how it goes.

A Few More Christmas Memories

I was still feeling nostalgic today, so I got out the home movies from my childhood and watched a few of them.  What memories they brought back!

When I was three years old, I got a doll stroller. Apparently, I thought it was great fun to run down the hall pushing the stroller, then letting it go, while I stood there laughing as my dolly careened out of control.

My Mammaw had a nativity set.  I don't remember us having one in our house, but Mammaw did.   When we would go over to her house, she always had the figures spread out in a lovely little tableau that frankly, just didn't make sense to my childish logic.  I would move the pieces closer, inside the stable, crowded around the baby so that they could see him.  Because that's what they'd really be doing.  They'd want to see the baby.   Mammaw got on to me about it one time, and I said, "But Mammaw, they want to see the baby.  They can't see him way out there."  She never said another word, but she'd put them back after I had gone home.

We got a Pong game the first year it came out.  You had to wire it into your TV where the antenna hooked up.  It was harder to play than it looked.  It seems so primitive now, but it was all the rage when it came out.  

Even though our family was by no means wealthy, we got some pretty cool toys.  I know a lot of people talk about being disappointed that they didn't get what they wanted, but I don't remember ever not getting what I'd asked for.  Christmas was always good at our house. 

I wish I had some old photos to go with this post, but most of them were ruined in the hurricane.  I think a lot of the original home movies were destroyed, too, so I'm glad my dad and I took the time to transfer them to video.  I had my copies here with me, so they're still OK.


Well, I've enjoyed this trip down memory lane.  I hope you weren't too bored walking with me. 

Weirdness

So, my baby brother and his wife sent me an Amazon gift card for Christmas.  I've bought a couple of books, and was sitting all snuggled down in my recliner reading, when I heard this weird buzzing sound.

Thinking at first that my DVD player had gone crazy and was spinning the disc spinner thingy, I turned it off, but the buzzing noise continued. Then I thought it was my old movie camera, so I made sure it was turned off.  It was, and the buzzing noise continued, still.

Listening carefully, I realized it was coming from outside.  I opened my front door, and it was a car horn.  My first thought was that the people across the street were being annoying.  They do have a teenager, after all.  But no, it wasn't coming from their house.  It was coming from Cody's truck. 

You know, my son Cody, who is in Texas right now.  Not that he would have known what to do anyway.  He's not very mechanically minded is he.

My first thought was to disconnect the battery, but I had to call James --who is also in Texas-- to tell me where a wrench or channel locks or something is, because all my tools have mysteriously disappeared. 

He tells me to take the fuse out, but I don't know where the fuse box is, and it's too dark to try to find it.  Then he tells me to disconnect the horn wire, but I don't know where the horn is.  So I finally get a wrench and pull the negative battery cable off. 

And finally, we have blessed quiet once again. 

Then I texted Cody and told him his truck was demon possessed. 

Seriously, though, I hope it's something that can be fixed easily and inexpensively.  He needs his truck.

A Christmas Memory

When I was a child, I'd always wanted to have my Christmas tree in the front window of my house, so that I could see it from the street.  Our house just wasn't designed for this, though.  Our living room did have a big window, but it didn't face the street.  It faced our next door neighbor's garage.

One year, I asked my mother if we could put the tree in front of our dining room window, but it was small, and high up, and you really wouldn't be able to see the tree that well anyway.  So, that was a no.

Once I was grown, and got my own house, I had a large front window, but trailer houses are so small, and it would have been a major undertaking to rearrange the furniture to put the tree there, so I just didn't.

But that one Christmas...that Christmas of 1998, I decided that by golly, I was going to have my tree in that front window, no matter how much of a major undertaking it was. That was the year I fulfilled my childhood dream.  That was the year I had my tree in the front window.

That was the year we had no electricity on Christmas Day, because that was the year of the big ice storm. 

I remember it like it was yesterday.  Christmas was on a Friday that year, and I'd saved enough vacation to be off of work for that whole week.  The storm started on Tuesday.

It had been so hot all day, with a strong South wind blowing.  It was so strong that I had to close all my Southern facing windows, but that made it miserably hot inside the house.  We were watching A Muppet Christmas Carol when the wind hit.  I could hear it coming, screaming like a banshee across the pasture, and when it hit, the whole house shook.  The temperature dropped 20 degrees in as many minutes.

Sometime during the night, the rain started. 

By the time we woke up Wednesday morning, there was already a pretty heavy layer of ice on everything.  Cody was down with a cold, but he really, really wanted to go out and knock icicles off of stuff.  I bundled him up well, and let him go out for about 20 minutes, then made him come back in and drink hot chocolate.

As the day wore on, and the rain continued to fall, I began to hear branches creaking and popping.  I opened my front door and looked out, just in time to see the entire top of my across the street neighbor's tree fall out.  About 15 minutes later, James came knocking on my door.

"You and Cody come stay with us until this is all over."

I'd already put Cody to bed, but it seemed the better part of valor to get him up and go next door.  After I'd gotten him settled into bed over there, I helped James hook up their generator.  About an hour later, the electricity went out, and didn't come back on for 5 days.  It took even longer for the temperature to get above freezing.  It was so cold that we used Beverly's screened porch as an extra freezer.  Seriously.

Since James had to go back to work Friday, we decided to have our big Christmas dinner on Thursday, but because the stove and microwave were running off the generator, it took longer than normal to cook everything.  By the time we got done cooking, we were all too tired to eat, so we just had our Christmas even snack stuff and reheated the dinner the next day.


That evening, Christmas Eve, we opened the gifts that we would normally open with Beverly and James.  I had to run back to our house to leave a note for Santa, letting him know where Cody would be that night.  Well, Santa got that note, because he brought Cody's presents to the right house.

You know, back in 1998, that's when times were good.  We got lots of presents that year, and they were all at our house.  I'd got a big garbage bag, and would trudge to the house and get a load of gifts.  We'd open them, then I'd go back and get some more.  It took about 5 trips to bring all the presents over.  In a way, it was good, because we were able to make the excitement last a little longer.  In a way, it was bad, because by that time, I had caught Cody's cold, and was getting sicker by the minute.

As if that weren't enough, James had gone back to work that morning, so I had to run out and check the generator oil, and keep it gassed up.  But Michael was on his way.  They lived in Atlanta at that time, and were coming for a visit.  They had to wait until Christmas Day to come, because one of them (I don't remember which one) had had to work Christmas Eve.

I tell you, I was never so glad to see Mike as I was that day.  By the time they got here, my fever was up to 102', and I was miserable.  But now that he was home, he could check the generator, and I could just lay on the couch and be sick.  Which I did-- for the next three days.

Also, we invited a single mom to come for dinner, because she didn't have any electricity either.  She, her older daughter, and a friend came.  They had been cooking stuff on top of their wood insert, so they were glad to get a real meal.  My mother had sent me the first few of the Left Behind books, and the daughter grabbed the first one and read the whole time they were there.  I don't remember where the younger daughter was.  She may have been with her dad that year.

After our electricity was back on, James took the generator out to their house and hooked it up for them so they could have some heat.  When theirs got turned back on, he took it to another house, and so on until everyone had power again.

 Which brings us to today.  What with the young-un all grown up and gone and all, I was feeling pretty nostalgic, so I dug out my old home movies and watched a few of them.  While it was fun looking back at times past, without those movies, all of those Christmases past just seemed to run together.

Except one.

There is one that stands out, vividly in my mind.  The one that happened in 1998, the year Cody was 5.

The year we had our Icy White Christmas.

Music Monday

In the winter of 1863, America was in the midst of a great and terrible Civil War.  A war in which brother killed brother, and fathers fought against sons.  The nation was divided, and on the verge of falling apart. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had recently lost his wife in a house fire, and his son-- who had joined the army in defiance of his father-- lay severely wounded.  It was in this context that Longfellow, in his despair, wrote a poem he called Christmas Bells.  We know it today as I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day. 


I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,

and mild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."
Today, our country face much the same despair as in Longfellow's time.  We are as divided as we have ever been in our history.  We are facing almost certain economic collapse.  There is corruption in our government beyond what our forefathers ever could have imagined.  Indeed, we already live under more tyranny than they fought to overthrow. 

And there is an undercurrent of unrest among the population, leading some to believe that we may be facing another civil war. 

Yet, we have the same hope that existed in Longfellow's time.  God is not dead nor does he sleep.  The wrong shall fail.  The right prevail. 

With peace on Earth, good will to men.

You Know What

gets under my skin?  I mean seriously under my skin?

A bunch of self righteous hypocrites who walk around with armed bodyguards 24 hours a day telling me I need to give up my 2nd Amendment rights.



Give up your own guns first.  Or at least stop making such ultraviolent movies that glorify guns and killing.  Or praising cop killers in your nasty rap lyrics.

Then you can talk.

Hypocrites. 

Christmas Time Is Here

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you would have noticed the frenzy of baking that took place all day yesterday.  And that was because Christmas came early in the Fine Martial Family.

Since everyone was leaving today, scattering hither and yon, we had our family get together yesterday evening after James got off of work.

We had food



And we had presents.



A lot of presents.

And the ubiquitous family photos, of which I managed not to get one of Cody and myself.





And we had Shelbi's boyfriend Jacob.



Then we got down to opening presents.










I didn't take nearly as many pictures this year as I usually do.  I got enough to prove that Christmas came, then I decided instead to just put the camera down and enjoy the time spent with family. 

Today has been kinda weird, in that it feels like the day after Christmas.  I did save a couple of presents to open Christmas morning, but here is my loot from last night:




From left to right, a bottle of perfume --Soft Musk, from Cody (in the orange box)
Cookie mix in a jar, from Mike, Dennise and the girls
Candy-- we all got a stocking with candy
A short handled hammer from Beverly and James
A Book --Scientific Facts from the Bible--from Cody
And a couple of hot pad/pot holders from Beverly and James...

 And looky!  Looky what I got!!!

 

FEET PAJAMAS!!!

I didn't sleep in them last night, but I did wear them around the house this morning until it warmed up some.  I really do like them, but I'm almost afraid to sleep in them because they are fleece.  Night sweats and fleece feet pajamas simply do not go together.  It's supposed to get cold again next week, so I may try to sleep in them one night.

That was it for our Christmas get together this year.  If you want to see the whole album, it is here:  Christmas 2012.

The bad news is, I didn't get any of my siblings' presents mailed.  You know, there was that whole end of the world thing going on, and I sure wasn't going to go to the post office if the world was about to end. 

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Whatsoever A Nation Soweth

It's been a week, but most of us are still reeling from the horrific tragedy in Newtown, CT last Friday.

Amidst the constant bombardment of the left blaming the guns, and the right blaming gun control, and people blaming the lack of mental health services, still others blaming the lack of prayer in schools, and everyone blaming almost everything except the one man who actually did the killings, the main question being asked is, "How could this have happened?"

How could this have happened?  How did we get to this point?

While there is never just one reason, there is just one answer, and though it isn't an easy answer, it is a very simple one.  It can be found in the 6th chapter of the Book of Galatians, verse 7.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a man soweth-- whatsoever a nation soweth, that shall it also reap.

If we really want an honest answer, we have to look at the seeds we've been sowing in our nation.

We sow certain seeds when we teach our children that the only reason they are here is because billions of years ago, the right two globs of slime just happened to bump into each other somewhere in that primordial soup, and all life on earth sprang from this accidental collision, and because all life came from the same source, human life has no more value than that of a dog, or a worm, or the cockroach we stepped on in the kitchen this morning.


Then we take it one step further and we shut down construction sites, and logging operations, and energy exploration, and family farms and entire industries, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and making life more difficult and expensive for everyone, because we feel that human life has less value than that of a bird, or a slug, or a minnow, or a tree.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

And because we're all just here by random chance, there is no Creator, and because there is no Creator, there is no accountability, and because there is no accountability, there are no consequences, and because there are no consequences, there is no right or wrong, so if it feels good do it, and if it's right for you, it's right, and people ought to be able to live the way they want to, and "DON'T JUDGE ME!!!"  Don't you judge me...

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

And we demand the right to kill our children at will under the guise of women's health, and we kill those children in the most cruel manner possible, dismembering them alive in the womb, or by dragging them most of the way out of the womb, then stabbing a hole in their tiny heads and vacuuming their little brains out, and we now advocate retroactive abortions so that parents can kill their babies up to age two without repercussions-- or up to age three if the child is perceived to have a handicap.

And we are so bent on killing our children that if one of them happens to survive an abortion attempt, no medical care is given, and the littlest, weakest, and most helpless among us are left to die on a bare metal table, gasping for breath, cold and alone.  And a nurse walks by and shuts the door so that one has to be disturbed by the dying baby's cries.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

And we make movies that glorify violence, and murder, and we say the gorier the better, and in our movies and songs we make criminals out to be heroes, and the greatest heroes of all are cop killers, because we teach that cops, and thus law and order and good and right, are somehow wrong, and if that isn't enough, we make violent and gory video games so that our children can participate in that violence first hand.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

And we have somehow bought into the lie that disciplining our children will stifle their fragile little self-esteems, so we let them do whatever they want, even encouraging them to misbehave and somehow, through that bad behavior, "find themselves".

And we've bought into the lie that unless our children are perfectly happy all the time, we are failures as parents, so we become their pals instead their parents because we want them to like us, and we give them everything their little hearts desire, and indulge their every whim, and our child must be the special one, so we have mothers murdering teenage girls so her daughter can have that spot on the cheerleading squad, and we have daddies shooting little league coaches because his son wasn't getting enough playing time, and we have parents killing teachers for giving their precious darling a failing grade. 

And our kids see this.  Our kids see our example, so we have children killing each other over t-shirts and tennis shoes, or because he was wearing the wrong hat, or because the music was too loud.

And we have Columbine, and we have Aurora, Colorado, and we have Virginia Tech, and we have

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

Then we sit back and act all shocked and surprised, and wonder how could this have happened when our children end up becoming exactly what we've taught them to be.

Be not deceived, God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a Nation soweth, that shall it also reap.

Whatsoever a Nation soweth, that shall it also reap.

We're reaping, my friends, exactly what we've spent the last 50 years sowing.

You're Not Going To Believe This

But first, let me say that this post probably won't be appropriate for small children, so proceed with caution.  Now, on to my story...

It all started yesterday.  There was this guy hanging around the line.  He looked familiar, but I can't really remember ever having seen him before.  I looked at him a minute, trying to place him, but couldn't, so I went back to work.

After a couple of minutes, I noticed him waving.  Thinking he was waving at someone behind me, I ignored him.  The next time I looked up, he waved again.  I looked behind me, but there was no one there.  Again, I ignored him and went back to work.

One more time, I looked up and he started waving.  "What???", I finally asked him, not knowing what he was waving for.

He walked over to my brazing stand and said, in a very snotty, condescending tone, "Make sure you're using your purging gas.  You act like no one has ever told you that before."  Because apparently I was supposed to get that out of him indiscriminately waving his hand around...Nevertheless, that was entirely the wrong thing to say.  "No,"  I replied.  "I was just wondering who you are." 

He told me that he was the inspector over our line for the rest of the week.  Knowing I only had 2 days left, I decided to just ignore him until our regular inspector got back after Christmas.

Which brings us to today.  I was at my stand, doing my work, minding my own business, off in my own little world, when I look up and see this guy just glaring at me.  Face all scrunched up, neck poked out, eyes squinted.  The works.  I guess he was trying to intimidate me.

It didn't work.   Dude, I have a CAT.  I get that look a thousand times a day. If you want to intimidate me, you're going to have to do better than that. 

But, seeing his attempts at making a face, I kind of did a double take, then burst out laughing.  Still giggling, I went back to my work, still bent on ignoring the kid.  At that point, the guy -- now remember, I had never seen this guy before yesterday, and had been ignoring him ever since-- but he walks up to me and says,

"Is there a reason you're staring at me like I have a dick growing out of my forehead?"

"What?", I asked, incredulous.

He repeated, "Is there a reason you're staring at me like I have a dick growing out of my forehead?"

I guess that's where the expression peckerhead comes from.

"What makes you think I was looking at you?" I asked.  "I never said anything to you.  I wasn't looking at you.  I wasn't thinking about you."

"You were staring at me," he insisted.  "You shouldn't stare at people.  It's rude."

"Wow, you do have an inflated opinion of yourself,"  I said.

"Inflated?  I'm just doing my job, " he said.

"Then go away and do it, Little Temp", I said.  (The guy isn't even ADP.  He's a temporary employee.  If you ask me, temps shouldn't be given positions of authority over full time folks.)

The more I thought about it, the madder I got, so I went and turned him in.  When I told the supervisor what he'd said, he dropped his pen.  He couldn't believe that this kid had said that, and agreed with me that it was totally inappropriate.  He came back and told me that they'd taken him up to HR and had a "conversation" about the situation.

Later, my friend Billy came up to me and asked what I'd done to the auditor down there, so I told him the story.  He laughed and said, "I told him 'You're lucky she didn't beat your *** into the ground'."  You have no idea how hard it was not to do that... 

He came back later and said, "I'll bet you he doesn't say anything else.  They chewed him up one side and down the other."

So, that was my excitement for the day.  I spent the rest of the day trying to force choke my group leader, Fernando.

He has an amazing resistance to the power of The Force.

And the skinny little inspector never came back to the front of the line.