Midnight rambler

Not the song but it's after midnight, and I want to ramble (so's I can work on Time Machine in the morning- got that Friday OT, doncha know?), so here's what's on my mind.

Animals- Chased off Mr. Raccoon sans his buddy again last night.  Just gotta love the, "Yeah, waddaya want?" look he always gives us.  This time, though, I caught him first, and Scrappy found himself caught between a hard sniff and a howl and ended up going, "snork, snork" for two or three minutes before I got him calmed down.

-Today was a smorgasboard of critters at the bird feeders, and I had a really great shot of the chipmunk on the feeder eating and a ruby breasted chickadee on the top of it watching.  I can't share it with you, though; apparently the last time I charged the battery I hit the release on the memory card, and didn't figure out why it kept telling me "not more storage remaining, would you like to delete pictures?" until after it decided to delete them.

- The reason I was snapping pictures (or trying to) was that we had our first visit from this guy:

This is, believe it or not, a red-bellied woodpecker.  "Red Bellied?" you say?  So did I.  Apparently back in the good ol' days, naturalists shot birds before studying them, and apparently somehow the belly becomes redder post mortem.  Go figure.  Anyway, I had a real good picture of him too, but it was likewise lost in the great memory card scandal.

Sports- First I would just like to say vis-a-vis the game 2 between St. Louis and San Fran in the baseball playoffs:  Matt Holliday is a horse's ass.  I sinxcerely hope that next year when it won't cost a playoff game, the first Giants pitcher to face Holliday hits him somewhere that will put him out of action for as long as he incapacitated Marco Scutaro with his dirty slide.  I haven't liked him since three years ago when he signed with Oakland and played just bad enough that we were forced to trade him to St. Louis, then decides, okay, I can play like an all star again.  Go eat a steroid burger, you bum. 

I wish you could play against Ty Cobb, Matt.  You'd go home crying to your mama when HE got done with your lame self.

- This morning (actually Wednesday morning, er, Wednesday night their time..or is it...) Lokomotiv had their game with Avtomobilist Ekaterinburg.  Seven and a half minutes into the game, the home team was up 2-0, but back we came.   Florida Panther deneseman Dmitry Kulikov netted his third goal of the year with 5 seconds left in the first.  The second period we netted 2 goals on just 8 shots, with Yegor Yakolev scoring his 2nd and Nicklas Hagman his 5th to give us a 3-2 lead.  However, Ekaterinburg tied it halfway through the third, and it was off to OT yet again.  But this time it never went to shootout, as Kulikov got his second of the game with one tick remaining in the OT to give us a 3-2 win.

Kulikov's literal last-second shot for the win!

Work- Yes, this is the first of the dreaded "manditory OT" weeks, and I have to work Friday.  You couldn't tell it by what I'm doing, though.  Me and two other guys, in the company's interest of moving newbies around to all different places, got sent to the box making area for what they call e-commerce.  And it is dead.  How dead?  We each got took for tours tonight of the new part of the building that they are just starting to move into- just to kill time.  You see, we can only make so many boxes ahead due to space constraints.  And the area they need the boxes in has been verrrrry slow.  To top it off, third shifters start drifting in at about 11 PM. so we have a good deal of time where nobody really has anything to do.  But, I guess it's their money.

- Coming home two nights ago on I-69 (for out of towners, the Big Kahuna of Ft. Wayne's roadways), I got behind a rather slow gentleman (speed limit 70) and moved into the far right lane (of three) to go around.  At this point, he speeds up just enough to be in my blind spot.  And there he stays, even when we began to approach an area where my lane was barrelled off due to construction.  I had to do eighty to get around him before I started barrelling the barrels- at which point he slows back down and I never see him again.

Until last night going home.  This time I am already in  the far right, with a slow semi (barely doing 60) in front of me, when he creeps up out of nowhere, achieves my blind spot, and hits cruise control.  I'm not of a mood to deal with his (or her) idiocy, so I drop back and drift into the far left lane with an eye to passing the both of them.  Luckily, I held off.  This utter moron then speeds up to reach the semi's blind spot and begins to ride there.  Yes, he was purposely (although outside of suicide by road rage I cannot guess what that purpose was) driving in a SEMI'S BLIND SPOT.  And what happens when that semi wants to move over, say when the barrels from last night are swift approaching?  Yep, it's kinda like that old joke about  the 800-pound gorilla.  I really thought I was going to be desperately trying to avoid his remains, but he managed to finish shitting himself long enough to get outta the way.  The semi would have never saw him.  I could see someone being a jerkwad to cars on purpose.  But to a semi that doesn't know your there?  No, this guy had some other issue.  Either that semi or another subsequent one must have settled that issue for him, because tonight I saw not hide nor hair of the dipstick.

Time- it's taken me an hour to write this, and I'd still like to throw some food down my throat.  Enjoy, and see ya on Time Machine!