1 January 2000 Happy New Year everyone!!!!!!! Val and I had our traditional New Year's Eve grilling of hamburgers last night and watched 25 hours of CNN. We should recover from both those events sometime around March, the grilling having produced frozen limbs (one day we're gonna remember that grilling out in January is generally a bad idea) and the watching of CNN producing a dramatic lowering of IQ (though I have to admit that the commercial with the AFLAC duck was pretty cool.) Just to bring you up to date on a couple of things... The Jim Spawn is out of the crock pot and making Jim's life miserable. Aaron, as he was named over the objections of Jim who wanted to call him Oberon or something else indicative of the evil underworld, weighed in a a bit over eight pounds, but was something like 23 inches long. Leigh apparently tried to push the thing out for six or seven days and finally gave up, allowing a team of surgeons to physically extract the monster baby. Anyway, Aaron is adapting very badly to the new world around him, continually screaming for food, crapping all over creation, and barfing up a storm -- all over Jim -- though I suppose that such is what babies do best. IHOS was for the most part destroyed by Hurricane Floyd this past September and will have to be reconstructed in the spring. We are finally going to build the brick patio with the little fence surrounding it complete with flower planters and gargoyles. As soon as spring rolls around, we will be purchasing a new table and umbrella along with about a dozen chairs to handle the increased traffic. The Babes in the Apartment Across the Street have moved and left us abandoned. We hope they will stop in from time to time as soon as it warms up. Billy Bob, aka Thumper, has moved back in upstairs and has been abandoned by Katie-Kins who has moved back to Maryland leaving Thumper to dream of sheep. Scruffles has completely forgotten the purpose of the litter pan and continues to leave us presents throughout the house. Greg no longer lives next door, but we do see him from time to time. The last time was sometime around October when he was up at about 17,500 pounds and standing about 30 feet tall. He needs to get a bigger truck. That's it for the time being. I'll see you again sometime around April or if something large happens like a volcano erupting in Raleigh or a herd of vultures taking up residence on the roof. |
6 May 2000 Opening night of the Year of the Yak could not have been better. Well, had Dave been farting just a bit less it perhaps would have been more enjoyable, but after the third or fourth time most of us had the olfactory receptors on the inside of our noses burned off so it became bearable. It is important to first note who was not here. Jak was not here. Jak was in Oklahoma either attending a friend's wedding or waiting on a transplant list for a new testicle. We will get the full story when he returns. PJ was not here. PJ has moved to Atlanta and we had no way of contacting him for the IHOS 2000 opener. Then again, we just made the decision this afternoon so he really did not have enough time to get here. Then again, he COULD have dropped everything he was doing and flown into Raleigh to attend. We will chastise him for his laxness the next time we see him. Greg was nowhere to be seen which, in itself, is surprising since he has now grown so large that he has his own measurable gravitational field. The last time he flew, an unanticipated solar eclipse occurred over the northeast US and some fortuitous physicist was able to absolutely confirm the existence of gravity waves by measuring the flux in a pool of molten cadmium. Now...those who were here... Chad stopped in first with his t telescope and we checked out the crescent moon shortly after sundown. While we were looking, Ed and Gail dropped in with little Murdock in tow. Murdock is still happy to see us even though he has been having some hip problems of late. They were also accompanied by Mary and her primary bone (whose name escapes us at the moment,) along with their dog Yo. Yo is this monster dog that has great difficulty in keeping still.Picture a light colored, short-haired Lab on crack. Well, he smelled Scruffles, who herself was plastered against the screen door having detected several dogs outside. Yo walked over and pressed his nose against the screen. Scruff was on the inside pressing her cat nose against the screen. Then something happened. We're still not sure exactly what it was, but the best was to describe it is that Scruff exploded. Not in anger or anything metaphorical, but literally exploded. She let out a noise that reminded me of a steam boiler bursting or Dave letting loose with a tight fart.Scruff's fur flew off her body and she spit out about two gallons of stuff from every gland and opening in her body. Yo appeared to do a reverse 360 and instantaneously ended up about ten feet away from the door wondering if the majority of his skin was still intact. But no harm was done because... We have a new screen door. I got pretty tired of Scruff clawing her way through the screen twice a year, so Val and I went out and bought a serious screen door (which by the way can be purchased at the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. The screen is something like 28 gauge steel reinforced with carbon fibers and Kelvar. It is absolutely guaranteed to be cat proof. And it is. Not only could a cat not claw here way through it, I seriously doubt that a barrage of 50 caliper machine gun fire would even dent it. Major door. Jim was the next to arrive, though Leigh, Dawson, and the Jim-Spawn, Aaron were not with him. It is not because they did not want to come over, but it would have been too dangerous for them. Today was Kill The Slugs day and the entire front yard is still chemically active. Not a single creature that alights on the ground is presently living within about a 60 yard radius of the front door. Next to appear was Billy Bob, aka Thumper along with Kevin, his roommate, and Jo. Jo is into horses. We are not sure whether she is a show judge or has some sort of Katherine DeMedici complex, though. Kevin, of course, was in typical Kevin form this evening. He managed to go for several hours where no three sentences uttered in a row had any cohesive bearing on one another. His most memorable outburst of the evening was when he exclaimed, "I saw a yellow T-Bird today." We started to dig into the thought processes behind that one, but we all became very frightened at where the conversation was heading, so we dropped it. Kim and Dave showed up next. Dave has almost made the complete physical transformation to a Jackson Browne look-a-like; all that remains is an ass implant. Kim is looking as lovely as ever and was once again hemorrhaging, a ritual occurrence each time she shows up at IHOS. Since Dave was farting almost continuously, we put him in one of the older chairs that is slated for disposal. Actually, that is the end of an era since the Dave chair is one of the only two original IHOS chairs left, the others having bit the dust over the years. Indeed, I just tossed out the original Steve Throne today since it was becoming extremely dangerous to sit in. The Val throne will be replaced in the coming week as it is about to go to ground. Andy finally popped in very late after attending a wedding that lasted until almost midnight. He did not bring donuts, though, and Val is rather upset with him. She was looking forward to donuts all day. Jared, aka Don, was nowhere to be seen, presumably tied up eating donuts. Several IHOS firsts took place this evening. We had the first IHOS slovenly drunk of the year who was so trashed that he kinda hovered near the dumpster for a while until his friends deemed that it was safe to place him in the car and take him home without suffering a barfarama. We saw the first Puzz of the year, which for those who don't remember, is some sort of flying creature that looks like a piece of fuzz with an attitude. We even had a bit of culture thrown in our direction. Jack, Clint, and Dillon wandered over with a single, lit candle, stood before us, and sang Kumbaya in some pretty, nice harmony. We gave them a standing ovation and an offering of three bloody eyeballs, one for each crooner. The bloody eyeballs, buy the way, used to be contained within a squishy bag, but the bag broke, spilling a dozen bloody eyeballs all over Val. We have been giving out the loose bloody eyeballs to those who do something notable as a prize. We still have one bag of bloody eyeballs left and will need to get some more before too long. The rest of the evening was filled with Fun With Balloons, Fun With Laser Pointer, and Fun With Open Flames, all of which kept us amused while the Fun With Open Flames kept us on out toes. Jim Report: one Jim |