It seems rather unlikely that two things would happen on the same day, that you thought would never happen in your entire life, and you’d forget to put them in your daily blog, but that’s exactly what happened yesterday.
Without further ado, here they are:
- Andy Griffith—yes, Andy Taylor, Sheriff of Mayberry, that very one—called me yesterday, and
- I hung up on him.
Well, actually, it was a recording of him, espousing the virtues of Bev Perdue, Democratic candidate for Governor of North Carolina.
I worked from home this morning, and went to vote during lunch time.
I vote at the Method Road Community Center, which is about two miles from my house. Imagine my delight when I pulled up to a plethora of available parking spots—and got one in the shade, even.
Inside the building, the last names were divided into four lines, and of course, the only line that had anyone in it at all was the one that included the last names beginning with M. I was about to find out why.
Finally, the one person ahead of me walked away with her authorization slip, and I stepped up. I gave the woman my driver’s license and my voter registration card. She flipped the book to the last names beginning with Mc and started going through them. I patiently waited [not my strong suit] to see if the Mc entries ended up being before the Ma entries or after the Mz entries as a sort of “special case,” or if they were going to be between the Ma and Me entries (assuming there are no Mb or Md entries).
She read through all of the Mc entries—as if she were going to find Martin in the midst of them. She didn’t flip to the beginning or end of them mind you, but read each one, looking back and forth at my name and the list. [Those of you who know me, know that by this point, I am starting to get very impatient.]
She got to the end of the Mc entries, where I saw the Me entries starting, and she started going through those! [OMFG. You know I am about to explode at this point.] She got all the way down to the Mev entries until I just very irritatingly say, “It’s Martin. M-a. The M-a entries are before the M-c entries.”
She flipped back to the pages with names beginning with Mag, and started going down the page, one entry at a time. Okay, at this point I just blatantly started helping with the alphabet. I looked at the end of the page—still an Mag entry. “Next page,” I said.
She started going down each entry again on this page. “M-a-k is at the bottom. Next page,” I said.
We finally got to the Mar page, and she got to the bottom of the page where there was an Marg entry and she threw her hands up in the air as if it was the last chance to find it and it wasn’t there. “It’s M-a-r-t,” I said, “next page.”
Gee, I wonder why there was only one person in the line when I came in and why it took so long for her to get through. Deity forbid they got busy there later in the day.
With all that said: 
Subtract out the alphabet soup quagmire, and I was in and out of there in, literally, two minutes.
I met Kevin (av8rdude) at the gym at just after 4:00. Today was an all-cardio day for me, which I started off with my usual 5 sets of 15 reps of crunches.
I listened to my Retro Remix on my iPod, but got totally sucked into the subtitles of the Oprah show today, which was her interview of Ba-ba Wa-wa.
Today’s workout statistics:
|
Cardio (Elliptical) |
60 |
1174 |
After my workout today, my blood pressure was 117/69. Loved that.
The weather was so absolutely incredibly gorgeous that I couldn’t not get my lounge chair cushions out of my storage unit and lie out on my deck. I put my Bose SoundDock out on my deck, and Eva Cassidy on my iPod serenaded me right to sleep.
About 30 minutes later, I set up my laptop (love that wireless router), and fixed me a little dinner of appetizers, consisting of slices of Swiss cheese, slices of Gherkin pickles, and diced mesquite-marinated chicken chunks, along with a Diet Coke.
Walking in the house to do that, I noticed a pile of sawdust on the mat in front of my door, and looking up saw a perfectly round drilled hole, about a quarter-inch in diameter in the center of the door frame above the door.
www.ehow.com says that these are the four steps in getting rid of a woodpecker:
- Place strips of reflective tape or aluminum foil on the guttering.
- Scare the woodpeckers by hanging a colorful wind sock, “scare eye” balloon, or aluminum pie pans near the area they are drilling.
- Purchase a model owl or hawk and place near the area of concern.
- Hang plastic, metal or nylon mesh sheets over the drilling area.
I can’t see myself doing even one of these things.
I met my grad school friends at Mitch’s Tavern at just after 9:00 for their end-of-semester, about-to-graduate, let’s-tie-one-on gathering. The cast included: Nate, Jeremy, Andrew J., Brian, Rebecca, Andrew A., Alex, Sandy, Lindsay, Tyler, and Jenny. I brought my diploma in with me just to whet their appetites for what was in store for them.
When we were finished, but before we asked for the check, I went up to the bartender and said, “How much was the tab for that big party over there? Less than a $100?”
“Oh yes,” she said and said the amount.
“Put it on here,” I said handing her my card. I gave her a nice 20% tip, too.
The place was teeming with political groups as the results of today’s NC Primaries were rolling in, and I had to walk through the middle of the area where Janet Cowell (whom I voted for, yay!) was giving a little victory speech to her peeps.
I dropped by karaoke at Flex for about an hour.