It was a good night.  Saturday the 13th.  Lots of friends and lots of family.  I told my wife i didn't want any gifts but people brought some anyway.  Mostly gift cards and some cash but my present was everyone being there and having a good time.  Here is a list of physically tangible presents:

A "40 SUCKS" sucker
A hat that also states that I am now 40
A pair of boxers that eludes to the fact that i am now "old"
A halloween decoration (This creepy witch thing that has red glowing eyes, kicks its legs and laughs maniacally)
The Flying Monkey t-shirt shown above.
2 Kohl's gift cards (which bought me the Zombie t-shirt shown above at the insistance of my kids and a pretty fancy rice cooker.)
A Borders gift card (with which I purchased The World Without Us and Ghost Hunters for my wife)
Finally some cash which i may or may not spend on a Tivo (haven't decided yet)

that's more than i wanted but I appreciated  everything.

On an unrelated note:   I've only gotten on Frankenputer a couple of times in the last few days and all that time was spent trying to catch up with things going on here.  I don't know if I can keep up.

Here is another collection that I had forgotten about.  I was doing a deep cleaning of our basement and came across a sealed up bag.  As soon as I picked it up I knew what it was, it was my coaster collection.  Most of them are from Germany and a couple are from Spain.  79 all together not counting duplicates.  Mixed in the bag was some proof of my vacation in Spain but I'll post that later.

Scary I'm getting older moment:  These coasters are older than some of my employees.  YIKES!

I don't really consider myself a collector of anything.  My Grandmother on my father's side kept everything.  My dad keeps alot.  I'm trying to buck the trend and not keep much, even though my wife still calls me a pack rat every once in a while. 

That being said here is my shot glass collection.  It started a long time ago and has been slowly  built up.  It used to be our collection but my wife thinks that since we have kids we should not collect such things.  Part of me says yes this is not a good thing to flaunt in front of the kids.  The other part of me says it is an inexpensive way to get souvenirs from places we've been. Besides it's not like we're doing shots of whiskey or anything else.  If you were to come into my house you would never see this collection.  I dug them out of the buried box in the basement that is only accessed after trips.  

I always try to find the goofiest or most unique shot glass I can find.

Cheers!

The following is an attempt to give everybody out there a a leg up in understanding me.  Some of you already know most of this information or have figured it out already.  This is mainly for those of you out there who know or may be confused about where i am coming from.  I hope this is helpful.

1)  I'm almost 40 but I still think and act like I am a teenager most of the time.

2)  I don't take things too seriously.

3)  I was raised Protestant but I'm not religious and I am not political.

4)  I'm concerned about being egotistical.

5)  I'm a jokester.  In person I usually pull people in by acting serious then when I have them I turn the tables.  It usually catches them off guard and adds to the light nature of what I was going for in the first place.

6)  I am thick skinned.

7)  I can't tell a joke.

8)  I can be moody.  You can tell if I am mad or not interested because I will say nothing

9)  I'm almost too blunt for my own good.

10)  I respect words and don't like to waste them.  Ironically enough I'm a bad speller and my grammar is atrocious.  One of my favorite quotes is  "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt"  I probably should apply that here more often.

is it ketchup or catsup?

For the Biggest, Tallest or Most Interesting Building Group:

By far the most interesting piece of architecture in the town where I live

For the Larger Than Life Icon Group:

I hope this qualifies as an icon

For all:

I posted the website because it gives some facts about this thing and you can order a t-shirt too.  Also, I didn't want to get out of my car and take a picture of it myself because people who do that tend to get laughed at, especially by me.

My first summer in Europe my roommate and I decided to go to the Spanish coast town of Loret De Mar.  Loret De Mar is tucked away in the northeast corner of Spain not far from the border of France.  We left Mannheim Germany on a bus with a minimum of clothes, a modest amount of money and plenty of booze for the journey.  The trip on our double decker tour bus seemed very short and after all these years I still recall nothing worth noting except for the first sight of the sea side town.  It was beautiful!  We had made prior arrangements through a German travel agent to stay in a hotel that we had picked out based on just a picture and a price.  It looked decent enough.  It was affordable.  It was close to the beach.  That's all we would need or so it seemed.  As we came down the street we noticed a hotel that was very nice and our first reaction was "Hey we lucked out!"  what we didn't notice that in reality our hotel was the one right next door.  It must have been the ugly, unwanted and neglected sister of the first hotel we laid eyes on.  To add insult to injury the hotel on the other side of ours was also very nice.  We laughed but told ourselves that we were not here to spend time at the hotel, we were going to be beach bums.  We dropped our bags in our room which was actually smaller than our barracks room.  Ugly decor and a turn of the century bathroom only added to the charm.  We laughed again.  We had no air conditioner, two very small lights, a bathroom door that wouldn't stay shut and a safe. The safe will come into play later.  I would mention we had beds but they barely fit the definition of being a bed.  Being on the second floor we did have a balcony to sit on and enjoy the view of a balcony on the adjoining  nice hotel.  It was a mere five feet away.  After cussing the travel agent we grabbed some money put the rest in the safe and took off to see what this town had to offer.  We stopped at a restaurant and grabbed some lunch.  At this point we realized something, we had more money than we could spend in two weeks here.  Our lunch would have made the ancient Romans proud.  Plenty of food and plenty of drink all for about $7 each. We already paid for the hotel and travel and we still had about $70 each to spend per day.  We lived like kings!  One bar had all you could drink for $10 all night.  We found this walk up eatery that had shish-ka-bobs loaded with huge chunks of meat and wonderfully seasoned pieces of bell pepper and onion, about a pound of food for two bucks.  We giggled like school girls every time we spent money because we knew we had plenty of it.  At least for the first week.  Right about half way through our two week vacation we came back from the beach to get cleaned up for the night.  As we got into our safe we were horrified to find that our money was completely gone, stolen.  We tore the room apart looking everywhere two or three times to no avail and the staff of the hotel had very little concern for our situation.  All we had now was some money that we had taken with us to the beach.  From this point on we have about $1.50 each to spend per day.  The bus wouldn't pick us up for another week and we had no way of getting more money.  We set our priorities.  A bottle of rum could be had for about $5.  The hotel we stayed at had a free breakfast, of which we had not taken advantage of up to this point, that consisted of one roll or croissant and all the coffee you could drink.  So we had all we needed for the next 6 or so days.  We became true beach bums.  A roll and coffee in the morning and a bottle of rum every two days. We were pitiful.  It was about two days before we were to return to our home in Germany when we hit our low point.  It was late in the evening we were out of rum and we were hungry, very hungry.  It's one of those moments where you say to yourself "I WILL NEVER GO HUNGRY AGAIN!.  As we sat in our room discussing what we were going to eat when we got back we heard something hitting the windows on the door to our balcony.  Something was being thrown to get our attention.  We opened the door to find two girls in the nice hotel next door throwing Gummi Bears to get our attention.  We talked to them for a while and they even asked for us to come over.  We tried but apparently  the nice hotel didn't want  any of the derelicts from the Hobo Hotel next door coming into their establishment.  So we used more nefarious means to gain entrance to their room, we hopped the balcony rail.  No sooner than we were able to get both feet firmly planted on their balcony the hotel security was there to kick us out.  We returned in defeat to our hotel and back to our balcony.  By this time the girls had lost interest and no longer wished to talk to us.  This is where it gets really bad.  We both looked at each other.  Then we looked down and without saying a word we both bent down to retrieve the Gummi Bears.  We took the half dozen or so Gummi Bears into our room, shut the balcony door and proceeded to eat the food that was literally thrown our way.  I call it food because that is what it was to us at the time.  we would eventually be able to use that as a humorous story to tell our friends but at the time it was very serious.

Two mornings later we were back on the double decker tour bus heading east to Germany.  This time the trip seemed so much longer.  All we talked about was what we were going to eat when we get back.  Somewhere half way though France and between talk of hamburgers and pizza we stopped at what would we would call a truck stop here in America.  As we sat on the bus my room mate realized that he had some French Francs left over from two weeks ago.  So we dug it out his suitcase and ran inside only to realize that all we could afford was a popsicle.  We each got one and it was better than Gummi Bears.  On a side note, the girl working the register helped us realize that the stereotype of a rude Frenchman, or woman in this case, could actually be factual.

We returned to the base at the worst time.  The banks were closed and the mess hall was not to be opened for another two hours.   Plus, our mess hall was closed this weekend and we would have to walk down to the other end of the post to another equally disgusting mess hall.  But to us at the time it was not disgusting but more of an oasis.  We were the first ones in line.  Chow never tasted so good.  We ate until we were sick which didn't take much since our stomachs had shrunk in that week.  Even as we struggled to walk back to our barracks without losing what we had longed for we still made the vow to "NEVER GO HUNGRY AGAIN!"

Well we painted the walls Saturday.  No more tic-tac-toe games on the walls going up the stairs.  This graffiti was left because we couldn't seem to scrub it off and we knew we were going to paint it over anyway.  It just took us longer than expected.  The foyer and the walls leading up the stairs was painted this flat golden color.  it looked nice enough but the wife wanted change.  So we, she, went with "shy blossom", it is this kind of pale green.  When we were putting it on I thought this is a horrible mistake.  I left for work and she finished painting.  When i got home I changed my mind about how i felt concerning the new color.  The old color fit in well with the 100 year old stained staircase.  the new color made the ornate staircase jump out and say "Look at me" not in a bad way though.  As i looked at the new paint job with relief i slowly turned around and took it all in.  As I turned i noticed that  the stained glass windows we have surrounding our front door had the same color in it as the walls. It was perfect it looks terrific.

This leads me to my second thing:

When I left the house natural light was flowing through the stained glass and the primary color filtering in was a gold color.  But when I came home and it was dark outside the artificial light bouncing off the glass produced another completely different color scheme.  I don't know much about the properties of stained glass, so, is this normal?  or do we have some freaky alien glass?  the house was built in 1906 and best I can tell the stained glass is original.  There is one pane that was lost before we moved in and I would love to replace it but I don't want to if it will not produce the same unique effects as the original.

Please note:  I copied this verbatim spelling errors and all, which is very hard to do by the way.

May 1989

1st - went to BFV to help Dave get his speakers but once again he couldn't get them cleaned room
2nd - got speakers finally did AORPS all day bought more CD's ordered tickets home
3rd - More AORPS got some paperwork done on tickets
4th - SGT'S time cleaned TA50 went through PCI
5th - went to fest bought some stupid stuff had fun though(Dave, snively, shortman, stoll, smitty)
6th - went downtown this morning did some window shopping didn't see any windows worth buying.
7th - GI'ed room all day how boring
8th - sat around tank all day long replaced a vision block that's about it SMAJ went through rooms today we did real good
9th - Smitty got a 186.5 on the board amazing! did nothing worth noting all day got reservations for flight
10th - SGT's time did map reading classes with pete, smitty & stoll  Watched Fish called Wanda for the 3rd time in 2 days with dave, mike & smitty
11th - did a land nav course that took all day met platoon at Shutzenhaus afterwards when back around 6:00 and immediatly fell asleep
12th - Had C.Q. today night with SGT Harding he's pretty cool one on one
13th - went to the bank today got paid came back fell asleep went to fest saw Matt & Elaine closed out beer tent got home about 230
14th - spent day playing with camera went down to fest again with smitty, dave & mikeleft about 11:30 mike & smitty have got to work tomorrow
15th - went to Heidelberg to pick up money for plane tickets cleaned room & chilled out all afternoon & evening
16th - went & paid for airlinetickets pick them up Friday Carsey brought over some wine coolers tonight
17th - went out to LTA to breech an obstacle of 3 tank ditches that took all day moved out at 0500 fell asleep early tonight
18th - alert!! only muster got off early about 200 went to BFV fest with smitty hit on a MP I guess you have to live dangerous sometimes!
19th - missed squadron PT oopps! spent morning hiding out went & picked up tickets AHHHH! stayed home got some sleep
20th - went to Tates about 430 for a bday party got back about 1030 tried to knock over road sign with my hand
21st - vegged out in room attempted to clean room didn't do to good a job.
22nd - washed tank all day long to get ready for some grade school to come look at it went to fest with dave and his friend Will & Brooks didn't even stay at beer tent went to PStreet
23rd - had CQ with SGT Essary Ahhhh!!!
24th - slept all day until 400 talked about politics tonight with dave. Boring!
25th finallized packing today basically just goofed off had going away party for Dave, Smitty & myself signed out at exactly 1201
26th - Start leave airplane survived terror-in-the-sky. arrived in St Louis & greeted by Ma, Pa, JC, Jason & Samantha went to Craig Watsons party with JC & Jasonlegally got served in USA legally got fucked up too
27th - went w/JC to St Clair Square.  Bought real clothes.  Went to Gary Ranek's home and partied w/J>C>, Jason, Gary, and various other fucks including "Mary" AAAAAAstayed at J.C.'s home J.C. was trashed & I wasn't feeling to shabby
28th - Relaxed! got Nintendo game and played Nintendo! yahoo!
29th - 31st - BRAINDEAD

I took a on-line "assessment" tonight.  The company I work for is having all of the management staff take it to see who is right in the head to continue up the corporate ladder.  The first section was all math and word problems.  I had 50 minutes to complete this section I did it in half the time and finished it with the highest of confidence.  The second part is the psychological profile section.  No time limit but more stressful in my mind. 

First, they tell you "There are no right or wrong answers", yeah right.  If there were no right or wrong answers then the "test" is pointless.  I know how these things work and I am hip to their ruse.  Which leads me to my first conundrum.  Do I lie and give the answer I know they are looking for or do I tell the truth?  My answer: tell the truth. 

Second, the questions are typically very vague usually no longer than a complete sentence.  Most of the questions are repeated numerous times, just worded differently.  Some are odd, some are straight forward and others are down right silly  Some examples:
-Do you cry easily?
-Would you prefer to be a miner over a florist?
-Would you make someone else look bad to help yourself get a promotion?
Would anyone intentionally answer "yes" to that last question?

Lastly, the answers are way too narrow in their parameters.  I had three choices for each question:
-Yes
-?
-No
Another example question:  Do you often find yourself tired?
I know a answer of "no" would not be truthful for me.
An answer of "yes" would be truthful but what they don't know is that I am tired because I have 4 boys all under the age of 8, I work late hours and get up early in the morning to take care of the brood.  Any information after the "yes" is not taken into consideration.  Many of the questions would fit into this catagory.  Also, what is with the "?" answer?  You could only use this "answer" 10 times.  I used it zero times.

All this leads me to believe that I will be trapped in a middle management position until I die or go to the nut house which ever comes first.