We were graced by the presence of Governor Andy yesterday as he arrived to officially open the NY State Fair on “Governor’s Day.” Since NY Governor’s typically come from south of the 42nd parallel (what we up here refer to as “Downstate”), I generally get the sense that they’re somewhere between bemused and annoyed at having to come up here to the provinces and pretend to think we’re not a bunch of redneck hicks (when Ed Koch ran for Governor in 1982, he remarked to Playboy Magazine that if you live up here, you’re “…wasting time in a pickup truck when you have to drive 20 miles to buy a gingham dress or a Sears Roebuck suit…. This rural America thing — I’m telling you, it’s a joke.” Unfortunately for Ed, one of his staffers subsequently showed him a map of NY that didn’t come from the cover of the New Yorker Magazine and he realized that to be the Guv, you gotta get the votes of at least a few of us losers up here). They’re expected to choke down one of our famous sausage sandwiches, eat some Dinosaur Barbeque, and feign interest in the livestock (“that’s a cow, right? I think they had those last year, too.”).

Of course this is also an election year, so Andy’s challengers were all in town as well, including some Republican from Westchester who was here for the first time (because, like, why would he have ever come up here before?) and said his sausage sandwich had “a kick to it.”

Hah! The real “kick” from those things comes about an hour after you eat one.

As an indicator of how much chance this Republican has of winning here in NY, I will only say that the story in the lo-cal newspaper about his visit referred to him as Rob “Astorino,” “Astorin,” and “Astorinio” – all in the same story.

Also in town were Andy’s Democratic Primary challengers – Randy Credico and my personal favorite, Zephyr Teachout (and her middle name is ‘Rain’). Zephyr is a Forham Law PRofessor, but we aren’t holding that against her because she grew up on a farm in Vermont, and I must say she looked quite comfortable around the critters at the Fair (no sausage sandwich, but she got a rack of BBQ ribs and any chick willing to eat ribs in front of the cameras is OK in my book).

If anybody ever wanted to shoot video of me eating ribs, I’d have to let them know beforehand that was not gonna be a pretty sight.

This is the first time in many years that I regret not being a registered Democrat, because I’d really like to vote for Zephyr.

One fella who didn’t have to travel far was our own transplanted San Franciscan, Teamster, and perpetual Green Party candidate for, well, you name it and I think he’s had a run for it, Howie Hawkins.

Governor Snotball arrived early in the day, bringing with him about four inches of rain and lots of thunder and lightning. After that, things cleared up and got pretty nice (though rather humid, what with the sun boiling off all that precipitation). At least, that’s what I heard. I wouldn’t know, ‘cuz I was stuck inside my windowless office all day.

Speaking of which, I guess I better get ready to head back there today and get this really long week (five whole days, and all of them in the office – I’m really not used to this).

For those of you who are still here, have a good Friday and an even better weekend.

It is with heavy heart that I note that tomorrow is the start of the Great NY State Fair (Governor’s Day, so we’ll be graced by the presence of St. Andrew of Cuomo). This means that after today there are only ten more days left of summer.

Since I know you’re all wondering, let me start out by telling you that this year’s butter sculpture has been unveiled, and the them is “The Great American Milk Drive.” So there you have it.

Also announced is this year’s entry in the Worst Food Possible contest – the TwinX: A Twinkie stuffed with Twix wrapped in four slices of bacon, battered, fried, and drizzled in chocolate. I could maybe go along with shoving a Twix bar into a Twinkie, but wrapping it all up in bacon just doesn’t sound appealing to me. I guess I’m just weird that way.

I spent some time this morning putting my monthly income and outgo into a spreadsheet (I tend to start thinking about these things this time of the year as the school tax bill typically arrives during the first week of September).

No matter how detailed I try to be, I always forget a ton of expenses. For instance, it just now occurs to me that I left off dog food (which is probably about $150 a month).

Might be time to scale back on a thing or two, what with heating season coming up and all. At least I’ll be able to shut the pool pump off soon (just ordered the closing chemicals today, and the way the weather’s been, I’m not sure I’ll actually get back in again before we shut it all down).

We’ve had a brief respite from the “Deficit Reduction” plan for the past two months, but come September they go back to stealing 1.6% of my annual gross pay for the next 20 pay periods. So that’s nice.

Oh well, time to get back to work, I guess.

No doubt you’re as saddened by the news that Gilligan Gregory has been shitcanned from Press the Meat as I am. Sad, mostly because they replaced him with Chuck Toad. But I guess when you have to clear your selection through John McCain and Li’l Lindsey Graham as well as the Comcast Board of Directors, you’re choices are somewhat limited. Me? I’d have gone with Luke “Timmy Jr” Russert.

Hey, did you hear the shocking news from Ferguson? If you don’t treat police work (which once upon a time was defined as “to serve and protect”) like a full-on military assault, people will protest peacefully even after you continue to kill their unarmed kids.

Who knew?

Why cops in an urban setting wear jungle camo is beyond me. I guess ‘cuz it looks cool or something. Perhaps they should just go ahead and join the Army if that’s what they’re after.

So, like most people facing a day of work, I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how long it’ll be before I die. Our HR department just sent out an e-mail detailing “the importance of accumulated sick leave credits.” Among other things, you can use up to 200 days of credit when you retire to pay for (or at least supplement) your share of retiree health insurance premiums.

Basically, they take the dollar value of your remaining sick days and divide it by the number of months they figure you’ve got left to live when you retire and then that’s the monthly credit you get off your insurance.

So the goal is to retire with 200 days of sick leave (and not one damn minute more). According to the retirement system, if I retire at 62, I’ll have a life expectancy of 269 months – meaning I’ll be dead when I’m about 84-85 years old. As I review the impressive pulchritude that is my physique and combine that with the knowledge that my dad only made it to 74 and longevity doesn’t exactly run on either side of my family, I’m thinking 269 months is a bit optimistic.

Still, assuming the Republicans don’t completely nuke Medicare and Social Security in the next 10 years or so, I at least shouldn’t have to worry about health insurance as I move forward on the journey toward my ultimate demise, no matter when it happens.

Assuming it’s not going to happen today, though, I reckon I’d better get back to doing some work. TGIF.

I was gonna get up and bitch about having to go back to work today after being off for about 10 days. Then I saw the news about Robin Williams, and I guess I don’t feel like complaining about work. When I was a projectionist, we ran the hell out of ‘Dead Poets Society’ after having run the sneak for it a couple of weeks before it officially came out (one of the rare times the production company actually called after the show to ask about the audience reaction).

I remember seeing Robin Williams on several of his Tonight Show appearances. It was like watching an unstoppable force of nature – he was so fast and so funny it was exhausting just to watch. His stand up shows were no different (just longer and even more exhausting). He made a ton of exceptional movies (I even liked Popeye – so sue me) as well and I ran a couple of them back in the day – aside from DPS (where I had to teach one of my ushers that it’s “i before e except after c or even after what sounds like ‘see'” because he spelled it “Sieze the Day” on the side of the marquee – which I always like to think of as the Marquee de Side. Fun fact, a few years before DPS, Williams was in the movie adaptation of Saul Bellow’s “Seize the Day”), there was Good Morning Vietnam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen .

Ah, we were both so much younger back then.

I guess Robin found a kindred spirit in the late, great Jonathan Winters. I’d have loved to have been on the set of Mork and Mindy to watch those two together off stage. I think maybe to be that funny, you have to have a lot of pain in your heart.

And the world is suddenly a lot less funny today.

The weather around here hasn’t been horrible, but it hasn’t really cooperated the way we would have liked, what with the munchkins in for a visit. After a mostly OK day Monday, an unexpected (by me, anyway) downpour dumped almost four inches of rain on us in 90 minutes. Rather impressive. It rained a bit Tuesday night, and rained again yesterday afternoon as we attempted to celebrate four or five or something summer birthdays and it hasn’t been all that warm, either. Hey, it’s August here – let’s get some drought conditions going. We’ll be closing up the pool in about a month, ferchrissakes.

Otherwise, it’s been nice to have a few days off. I can’t really recall the last time I took a whole week vacation (not that it was probably all that long ago – I just can’t remember), so it’s probably gonna be tough to get back into the swing of things next Tuesday.

So I’m sure you saw that “Nearly 40% Of Those On The Government’s Terrorist Watchlist Have ‘No Affiliation With Recognized Terrorism Groups’” according to

Well, it’s Monday again. And not only the first Monday I’ve had to work since back in June, but also the start of a week of “support” duty for me. Normally this would be pretty depressing (and I’m not particularly thrilled about it), but this is a better Monday than most, since this is the start of the last week of my current life. So, hell, what’s one lousy week to get through?

Still, I’m quite exhausted today. But them I’m exhausted pretty much every day, because I don’t sleep for shit at night. And of course we all know that a study a few years back linked lack of sleep to an “early death.” There’s a thought that’ll keep you awake at night.

And now today there’s another study that says if you have a purpose in life, you’ll live longer.

In fact, people with a sense of purpose had a 15 percent lower risk of death, compared with those who said they were more or less aimless.

Not exactly good news for those of us wandering aimlessly through life because we can’t sleep. Oh well, as long as they don’t come out with a study that guys with a big beer belly and chronically high blood pressure are more likely to have a stroke or a heart attack.

Since the Ebola’s coming to get us all, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Every evening when I get home from work, I hang my backpack up on the wall of the garage and take out the various containers (for breakfast, lunch, and water) and electronic equipment (mp3 player, phone, other phone) that I carry with me for a day at the salt mines.

Every morning, I prepare all my stuff for the day, load it into my backpack, and then throw the backpack into my car. I did all of that this morning as usual. Or so I thought. When I got to work and grabbed my backpack from the seat next to me, all I grabbed was a handful of air.

Shit.

No breakfast, no lunch, no water, no mp3 player, no work phone. I’ve got my personal phone, thankfully, but that’s about it. Oh, and my wallet, which I reckon I’ll be needing if I want lunch.

It’s gonna be a long day.

I wrote up a very fine post this morning, and then I hit publish and got ready for work. Sadly, it appears to not have actually been published. It was a good one, too. Witty, charming, insightful…. Lost in the ether, now. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

I had to shut off the CNN video I was just watching. They were interviewing some freelance journalist who’s over in the Ukraine and witnessed the missile strike on the Malaysia airline flight. When he said there were body parts raining down from the sky and you had to be careful where you stepped so you didn’t step on human organs, I decided I’d had enough. So, was it the Russkies? Or the Russky-lovers? Either way, it’s Obama’s fault for not going to the border to look at Guatemalan child refugees. Or something.

Speaking of Obama and the Refugees (good name for a boy-band), the mayor of Syracuse wrote him a letter to tell him we’ve got room and would be happy to take some of them in. I have no doubt that this story engendered lots of vicious responses from Republicans and Teabaggers (the mayor being both a woman and a Democrat – oh, the horror!), but I didn’t read the comments. I’ve become pretty good and not scrolling to the comment section, though I wish they’d make you have to click a link to read them. I find that if I read the ones form the idiots it only serves to piss me off and then I start to reply and then I just don’t bother because trying to reason with these people is like trying to reason with a cat.

Speaking of cats, I think I mentioned that we had one that was gone for 3 or 4 weeks who I’d pretty much given up on until she wandered back in one day, and there was much rejoicing.

I’ve always been nice to her since I’m nice in general (or so I’d like to think) and I like critters (even cats, though truth be told, they aren’t my favorites). But I’ve tried to be especially nice to her lately to kind of encourage her to stick around because my wife worries about her. So two night ago I was in the process of being nice to her and she started to nibble on my finger (which she does) and then she proceeded to chomp down and sink her fucking teeth into my thumb she actually punctured it in the meaty part and through the nail (right at the bottom of the little half-moon part – aptly called the lunula).

This hurt. Alot.

“Gosh,” I said. “Why ever did you do that, you silly cat you?” I’m paraphrasing there.

By yesterday, my thumb was all kinds of swollen and my whole forearm was sore (with a red streak running from my thumb to my elbow). This kind of worried me, so I came home and had a beer or two. This seemed to help, in that I stopped worrying. Then I opened the bit up with my trusty exacto knife and applied alcohol from the outside. I’ve also been taking massive doses of oil of oregano and turmeric (on the orders of the boss) and rubbing tea tree oil on the afflicted area. Still hurts, but it seems better, and hopefully it’ll clear up because I really don’t want to have to go to the urgent care and tell them my goddamn cat my wife’s goddamn cat bit me, and to have them tell me my blood pressure is high.

Just give me some Amoxicillin. And, yeah, I have a primary care physician. I went to him once back in 2004 or so – I think his name is Seth, though I always think of him as Skippy. He seemed like a nice enough kid and he even offered to stick his finger up my ass, but as I was only looking for a referral to a Chiropractor, I declined.

Needless to say, I am no longer going out of my way to be nice to the cat. I’m actually going out of my way to avoid her, because when I look at her I have the urge to either strangle her or hit her with a 4-pound sledge hammer (which I keep handy on the kitchen table, so it’s pretty tempting to go send her to visit Boomer).

As I’m sure you know, the World Lacrosse Championship semifinals were last night, and the godless Canadians knocked the hometown Iroquois team out of the tourney with a 12-6 win while Team USA beat the Aussies 22-3. The Championship game is Saturday (but you already knew that).

Oh well, time to make some coffee. We were up late last night, and I’ve gotten off to a slow start. Good thing it’s Friday.

A quick glance at the sports page this morning tells me that the MLB All-Star game was last night. This means that summer is now half over (maybe even a little more than half). This sucks. There’s already about a half hour less daylight than there was a month ago, and as much as I’m looking forward to football season (at least until it turns out SU sucks again this year), I’d like to hold on to summer and daylight a bit longer.

I don’t really pay attention to baseball (other than to continue to be amazed that people are willing to get steroids and HGH and god knows what else shot into their asses, though that’s not strictly a baseball thing, of course) but like most of you, I have been following the world championships. No, that that soccer shit – the true American sport: lacrosse.

Yes, the FIL World Lacrosse Championships are currently being held in Denver in front of tens of fans. I watched team USA crush the Brits, 20-1, on Monday and was eagerly awaiting the game between my team – the Iroquois Nationals (including four brothers – the Thompsons – from the Onondaga Nation) – and the USA last night. Alas, they’re apparently having a series of godless killer thunderstorms out in Denver and the game was delayed until way past my bedtime.

Just as well, as the USA crushed the Iroquois 18-5. I blame on the late start (another t-storm delay) of last night’s win against Australia (which followed a one-goal loss to Canada the day before). Oh well, much like the soccer World Cup, and professional baseball, hockey and basketball seasons, these things go on for a long time.

I’m now a “dead man walking” in my group at work, as I’m ready to move on but am supposed to finish up a bunch of shit and teach the rest of the kids (or at least one lucky designee) everything I know (there just aint enough time for that). For this reason, my work from home privileges are being revoked starting next week as I was informed that it would be “easier” if I was in the office.

In other words, we no longer feel a need to keep you happy and are inclined to punish you for leaving.

Leaving but staying in the same organization (in the same building) and having to work with the same people is awkward. I’d prefer to just go and get on with my new life but I can’t. If I was going to a different company, it would be a lot easier.

Oh well, it’s my late day today but I guess I’ll go in earlier than usual so I can get a start on clearing my plate and getting on with the new era.