Woody Cavenaugh

I grew accustomed to the stores being in full Christmas mode the day after Thanksgiving. I am struggling with the stores being in full Christmas mode the day after Halloween. I was completely unprepaired for the stores being in full Christmas mode the week before Halloween.

Oddly I have less trouble with folks decorating their houses for Christmas on Thanksgiving day. I still struggle with the folks who decorate their houses for Christmas the day after Halloween where they unload one color light and put up another. Down with the orange, up with the red and green. This was going on over on Hicone road and all I could do was stare in disbelief. Smashed pumpkins on the highway, Santa on the lawn. Now it all sounds like a John Meloncamp song.

Don't mistake me, I am all for the season of giving attitude lasting all year. I just wonder how often these folks have to replace the bulbs in their lights. Not to mention how the season of giving is giving them an outrageous power bill. More power to them, I say, at least they aren't beign somber.

Posted by at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our dog Jake had been gone a week when suddenly or corgie "Bud" stopped being a quadroped.

There was much lamenting on our part and more than a few doses of baby asprin hoping the situation would improve when finally Monday came and he could be taken to the vet. He had rare moments of mobility during the weekend where he went strait out to do has bathroom business. That done, he could barely get back inside again before he was once again immobile.

Our vet is a very good one and he laid it all out strait for us. It could possibly be botchulism, except for the fact that we are talking about a corgie and have this really nice X-ray showing calsification of the spine. The spine irritated the spinal cord which swelled and caused the visible signs. The good news is Sara was sent home with anti-swelling medication and a stern warning. Bud should improve, if he does, no jumping, hopping, or taking steps on stairs. If he gets better in the short term we won't have to worry for a couple of years. If it doesn't improve we have to worry in the short time.

It apparently isn't a matter or wether or not we will have to put him down so much as a matter of when we'll have to put him down.

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I keep forgetting that sometimes I need to take a step back and look at things from another prespective. In this case Opera and IE. Wow. I knew the old blog was looking frayed around the edges in Firefox, in the other two browsers I tried it looks downright decayed.

I think its time to go find some new templates. I think I'll try to find something ad friendly, perhaps in three colums. Ads on the left, content in the middle, navigation on the right.

Oh yeah, I have everything else to do also....this could be a while.

Patience friends.

Posted by at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Props to Mario who made this bunch of hooey enter my radar range.

Woody took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Wants to make a favorable impression and be recogn..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Like him I will post my results below so you won't have to go somewhere to read it for yourself.

Your Existing Situation
Needs, and insists on having, a close and understanding relationship, or at least some method of satisfying a compulsion to feel identified.

Your Stress Sources
The situation is regarded as threatening or dangerous. Outraged by the thought that he will be unable to achieve his goals and distressed at the feeling of helplessness to remedy this. Over-extended and feels beset, possibly to the point of nervous prostration.

Your Restrained Characteristics
Demanding and particular in his relations with his partner or those close to him, but careful to avoid open conflict since this might reduce his prospects of realizing his hopes and ideas.
Able to achieve satisfaction through sexual activity.

Your Desired Objective
Wants to make a favorable impression and be recognized. Needs to feel appreciated and admired. Sensitive and easily hurt if no notice is taken of him or if he is not given adequate acknowledgment.

Your Actual Problem
Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on his resources. This sense of powerlessness, combined with frustration that he cannot control events, subjects him to agitation, irritation, and acute distress. He tries to escape these by stubborn insistence on his own point of view, but the general condition of helplessness renders this often unsuccessful. Is therefore very sensitive to criticism and quick to take offense.

Posted by at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned today the real reason why men love the smell of leather on women.

It makes a woman smell like a new car. :)

Posted by at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As someone involved with a non-profit where money is always an issue I keep my eyes open for opportunities at fund raising for my org. The other day I spoke to someone who had worked in a program out of the Greensboro Coliseum and I though I would share in the event that others are looking for ways to raise funds for their groups.

As you probably already know the Coliseum is like a boat that the city owns. It is a hole in the city into which they dump taxpayer's dollars. In a way to help the community and help stop the hemoraging of hard earned dollars they created a way for groups to volunteer at the concession stands during events. This means that there are fewer people on the payroll. In return for volunteer hours the groups get a percentage of the gross of their concessions. Pretty sweet deal when the beer is six dollars a cup!

In order to be included everyone who is in your group must take a class on how to sell beer, and pay about $318.00 to the coliseum for "insurance". Your group sells all it can and at the end of the night a staff member takes your cash drawer to the back room where they count it. You get a percentage of the gross of what you took in minus whatever the drawer is "short". The person I talked to said that the first night they were "short" slightly more than they were due to make so they got nothing. The second time they did it, the eight of them brought in for their organization $40.00 total.

They had a problem however completely unrelated to the cash flow. Apparently someone who was paid staff requested sex from one of the volunteers who said "no". The staffer reported to the person in charge of the volunteers that this particular volunteer was practiving a "devient lifestyle". Faster than you can say "sexual harassment", the volunteer was told they were no longer welcome. While this was going on one of the volunteers was told they looked "racist" by a regular paid staffer.

The lesson here, if you are trying to raise funds for your organization and someone asks you for sex you say "Yes daddy." I am sure there may be another lesson in here but I'll let you work that one out for yourself.

I gathered that the offending staffer got in big trouble with the higher ups and that's a good thing that reflects positively on the coliseum as a whole. But the person I talked to, was unsure if their group would return. They didn't want to put any of their volunteers in a position where they had to trade integritity for an opportunity to possibly make money for their group. So in a bid to make money for their org, if they don't continue, they will have lost a bunch of money instead.

Your milage may vary. Me, I'm going to pass on this opportunity. In my opinion if what I was told was even half true it is too high a risk for me.

Posted by at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thursday night we came home and there was no dog Jake. There was much yelling for Jake, but he did not appear. The next day, Sara called the pound to see if they had been around picking up dogs. Ours is a very dog friendly neighborhood far far away from the pavement, and the vehicles that drive quickly on it. Most dogs in our neighborhood therefore have a free run of the place and they are a big happy puppy family. The pound said that they did not come our way because there are never any complaints from our part of the county.

Looking around more than half of the dogs seem to be missing. Now it is Monday and only one AWOL dog has returned, and that one wasn't Jake. That dog keeps a low enough profile normall that I still haven't seen him and instead don't mind taking Sara's word for it.

I am going to choose to believe that just like the way Jake wandered into our lives and adopted us because we were better than his previous home, he has once again upgraded to an even better family who has no corgie. It was a good five years and you will be missed...even by Bud.

Posted by at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Downtown Fencing Club fielded six eligable fencers for the Junior Olympic Qualifiers held at the Greensboro Sportsplex this weekend. Thanks to the outstanding talent in our club we are proud to announce that one third of them qualified to compete at the Junior Olympics in Denver Colorado! While we're talking about fencing and really good stuff, check out this shiney new Division website.

Needless to say, we're proud of all of our fencers, none disappointed us. Well, OK, maybe Tommy... ;)

Posted by at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Carousel Cinema hosted the Greensboro screenings of Horror Fest this year and of the 10 films the festival showed, nine were available in Greensboro, and I saw five of them.
I watched in no particular order The Abandoned, Penny Dreadful, Wicked Little Things, The Hamiltons, and The Gravedancers.

Of these, my favorites were Penny Dreadful, Wicked Little Things, and The Hamiltons. Penny Dreadful and Wicked Little Things were worthy of major release and full priced tickets. The Hamiltons, suffered on the big screen because it was shot in DV (and you could tell). This movie is DEFINATELY worth renting.

The other stuff, eh, not so much.

I am thrilled that the theatre picked up this festival so folks in Greensboro could see movies they might not normally see on the big screen. I was doubly thrilled to note that many showings were sold out. It had been my plan to catch one of the ones on Friday night, but it was sold out before I got there. I went home, bought my five tickets online and lived happily ever weekend.

Posted by at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received a small slip of paper in a legal sized envelope. The note was from my doctor regarding the core samples collected from me last week. I call them core samples because the last time I had holes placed in my body this deep and this wide I had had my wisdom teeth removed. The good news is this time I'm not vomiting blood, the bad news is this time the holes come in fashion colors. I have finally found a shade of green that isn't flattering on me. I haven't seen it myself as it is behind me, but from Sara's expression it is a shade I should avoid in the future.

At any rate, the contents of the note is why I'm writing this. It read, "Irregular but harmless". I like that. Irregular but harmless. My friends have been saying that about me for years but its always nice to have a professional opinion on the matter. Somewhere deep in the bowls of a government database exist a file, my name, ID number, address, height, weight, work information and the words, "Irregular but harmless". I'm almost inspired to get a tattoo.

Posted by at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Great Woosh took place Friday night and Saturday. That is the day that most of the leaves fall from most of the trees in a great wooshing sound. I was home wondering if I would live or die, and what would actually take my life. Would it be the cold, with its wild fevers, and much blowing of the nose?
Would it be the "irregular cells", samples of which were removed from my front, back and side? I'll know more about that level of paranoia in two weeks when I am told what level of paranoia I ougt to have.
Would it be the mild infection in two of the three new deep holes I'm sporting?
Would it be the cats who watch me so carefully? I'm pretty sure if I had dozed off in the living room they would have eaten my lips and eyeballs first.
Would it be the boredom, trapped as I was in a house without any movies with pirates in them?

I made due with what I had as best as I could. A year ago, my mother in law gave Sara and I the extended boxed set collector's edition of the Lord of the Rings. It was high time I opened the box and found out what all the fuss was about. Actually, it was quite good. Those hobbits, they have a very "touchie feelie" kind of culture don't they? If they were human, they'd probably be called fairies regardless of the hair on their feet.
After that, I watched Dragon Heart, Walt Disney's The Three Musketeers, and Walt Disney's animated Robin Hood. What great voice actors!
Then I went to bed where I fevered, dreamed strange dreams, and staired at the walls a lot while the wound on my back throbbed in time to my pounding heart. I've had better nights, in worse places.

Now I am at work. I'm not sick, but I'm not well. Hopefully today will not be a day requiring thrilling heroics. I don't feel like I could pick up a car if it were dropped on me. To make matters worse, I'm wasting away to near nothing. 289.4 lbs, its a wonder I have strength left to carry my own ego along. Credit where credit is due, just like the poem about footprints in the sand, I believe my ego has carried me this near a week gone by.

Did I meantion that Sara bought me an axe for Christmas? My father has already mounted it on a four foot handle, it is a perfect size for my right hand, and sings like an angel. My wife loves me!

Posted by at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been home sick these past two days, and I hate it. Mostly because when I'm sick it gets hard to keep my dreams and my reality separate. So this was my day.

Sara made me get up and get ready for work. Then she made me get unready and go back to bed. While I was up I got a headache from coughing, so once she left, I took a dose of Tylanol PM and went back to bed. I figured sleep was the best thing.

I am not sure how many times she called me from work exactly but the message I think I got was that Tylanol was a bad thing, and sleeping was wrong. It was just as well I guess. In my dreams everything sucked.

I dreamed I was a loser in college. Not like me or Earl Hicky (My Name is Earl) loser, more like Charlie Brown loser. People kept me around because it gave them something to be amused by, and I stayed around because bad friends were better than no friends at all. In my dreams, everyone was either laughing at me or being mad at me or both. Cameron was mad at me because I was too sick to go to fencing and she had to do it all by herself. Some frenchman who was good at tying bows onto chairs was mad at me because I tried to tie one back that had come undone, but failed entirely. Apparently tying bows on chairs is hard work and best left to the French. This girl who I wanted to impress kept me around because I was amusing. I took a course in wine and tried to impress her by taking her to a restaurant and ordering wine, but when I got there I didn't recognize anything, and then the bow incident happened, and we were asked to leave. While walking down the sidewalking, a car hit a puddle and covered me in mud. Over my only cloths suitable for eating in a restaurant. Instead of allowing me to go home with my dignaty intact, she had me join her and her friends were they went to an entirely different restaurant and she regailed them all with sad but true tales of my own misfortune. That time when the phone rang again and Sara was upset that I was asleep, I made it a goal to stay awake.

I went into the kitchen and had my morning coffee (twice microwaved) once de-buged. I hate gnats in my coffee. I wanted to watch a movie to help stay awake, but I wanted to watch a pirate movie and we didn't have any. How is it that I don't have any movies with pirates in them???? I checked my email and asked Kimi to just leave me a list of the stuff she hadn't done in PlanView yet so I could maybe come on Sunday and do it before the lady from PlanView came back. She replied that she didn't know what I was talking about. That is good news, in my dreams, we weren't ready to go live in PlanView yet and I was dreading trying to get all he homework done while sick. I don't remember where were are in PLanView right now, but I am glad that we are up and running, and I have no homework to catch up on.

I almost fell asleep on the couch but the cats came around me and patiently waited for me to sleep so they could eat my lips and eyeballs. I think I may hate cats. Either way, I woke up really quick and put on a pot of coffee so I could stay awake.

While awake, I realized that the house looked really bad, so I tried to do a couple of things so Sara wouldn't be mad when she got home. I think she was planning to bring me food. I haven't eaten yet, so if she does bring food, I will be able to eat it all, and she won't have another reason to be mad with me.

I think I did dishes, because that is the sound I hear. Or at least it is the sound I think I hear. It may be the cats roaring, or my stomach growling. At any rate Sara is here, and I'd better try to be good and well, and awake. I need coffee. I also need movies with Pirates in them so when I am sick again, I can have something to watch. I still don't know how I made it to this age without having a movie with Pirates in it.

Hmmmm...egg drop soup...

Posted by at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I ate an 8 piece box of Bojangles for lunch today. Chicken used to be the one thing guaranteed to bring me joy. It did not fail me and for two whole hours I was almost normal.

Even chicken hates me now.

Only one thing left for it. Road trip.

See you in a few days.

Posted by at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I worked until 12:30 last night and here I am again. My chi is going north and south right now. I'm so out of sorts that I put on white socks with a yellow t-shirt! Damn.

I should just be lucky I remembered to put on shoes....I still don't know why my underwear fits funny.

Posted by at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its late, let me be introspective.

I hate taking risk. I've always hated taking risk. That's probably why I wasn't big into sports when I was a kid, and also why I dated so little. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. My life is pretty much defined by sticking to the sure thing, and I'm not complaining. On the contrary, I find it a badge of honor. But sometimes life makes risk impossible to avoid, and sometimes events occur to remind you that all things are connected, and they aren't equal.

I don't take risk in the car.
I don't take risks in relationships.
I don't take risks with my career.
I don't play the lotery.
I realized today that though I love fencing, I hate competing. Ironic huh?

You have to look at it from my perspective. For the sake of argument lets assume that all things are equal for a moment. If a tournament has an event with ten people in it, and I am one of those people, I would have a one in ten chance of winning the tournament. Those are pretty lously odds. Ten percent chance of winning, 90% chance of losing, and that's if all things are equal! However, life doesn't work that way, things aren't equal. In an event with ten people, the talented ones, in good health, between the ages of 14 and 25 have the best chance of success. If you are some combinition of older, slower, and or less talented, your chances of winning go into the toilet. If you are more than one of those, your chances of failure overflow the toilot all over the floor in a great reeking pool of "loser". It is from this wet and stinking place that I write this, so you know I know what I am talking about.

I only bring it up because only a few hours after it occures to me that I hate competing, I crack open a fortune cookie and it reads, "The only people who never fail are those who never try." 'Dem's good odds. That's excellent advice, and the cookie was fresh and crispy too. I win two times!

The other option is to compete without trying to win. That's what? Throwing the match? Wasting everyone's time? Wasting my own time? A new definition of insanity? Personally, I think the risk is too great.

Posted by at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)