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Because I love you all deeply, hard, and rough:

Ychromes and Alumni – Between Us.mp3

Sorry I’ve disappeared this week; I’ve been hoping to get some pictures uploaded from the festivities of the weekend, but kept getting roped into things (Jared was still in town Monday, so we hung out, and yesterday I helped The Maj pick up some Christmas decorations and a tree), and tonight I have rehearsal so it’s probably not happening then, so who knows when I’m going to have time to get them edited and posted, and I know how much you all miss my run-on sentences when I fail to post, so I figured I’d throw something up today and get to the pictures whenever I have time.

::deep breath::

So here’s what went down over the weekend after I stopped spraying greasy liquids from my posterior. Saturday night was the Ychromes a cappella concert, and this year is the 10th anniversary of the existence of the group, so they invited as many alumni as could make it to come back and be the guest group. So Friday evening we had a 2 hour rehearsal and ran through our set-list, realized that we sounded freakin’ amazing, and rolled back to Hearndom II to get our drink on and our snack on. Hearnwife was kind enough to hook us up with sweets and savories galore, and we fired up the Karaoke machine and partied until we could party no longer, and everyone crashed at about 4am.

The next day we were supposed to have rehearsal at noon, so of course we managed to stagger back into Newark by about 1pm, and then rehearsed until 4. We made sure we had opportunity to sing in the stairwell, and drop red Trabant trays down the steps, and then we rolled to Iron Hill for some grub and brews. We had sound check at around 6pm, had a few swigs of Old Granddad, and sat down for the first part of the concert at 8pm. We went on around 8:25, did our set, sounded totally diesel. (Another thing I have to do is get the recording edited and uploaded; with any luck I MIGHT get that done tonight after rehearsal, but don’t hold your collective reader breath.)

After the concert we kicked the Deer Park for a while, and then the after-party at Noah’s which was so packed with people we could barely move, so we gave up and headed back to Hearndom II again where we stayed up until 5 am.

I got up at 8 and went to church. Singing on 3 hours sleep, following a weekend of singing and yelling and karaoke and parties, equals HORRIFICALLY BAD TIMES. I sounded like I’d spent the whole weekend getting punched in the throat. On the plus side, God forgave me all my sins, so I’m told I can get into heaven now, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Sunday afternoon we went to Courtney’s and watched football until 1am.

Tomorrow: I may have pictures. I may not. We took like a hundred of them, so hopefully I can find 20 or so that are extremely highlarious. I may also have mp3s of the alumni set, assuming I can figure out how to get them all edited (I think I’ll have to download some software, ’cause what I have isn’t going to work) tonight after rehearsal. WORD.

(Of course, now Blogger is having router issues and I can’t update my blog. Argh. Lovely. If you can read this, I haven’t burned anyone.)

CHRISTMAS CHEAT!

So I’ve been sick for the last few days, staying home from work, alternating between shivering under 4 or 5 blankets and stripping to my sweaty skin to take cold showers and ease the hallucinations. Normally, not going to work would mean “good times,” but unfortunately the aches, pains, and feverish delirium have negated not having to do work. Additionally, the modern technological age means I can still get voicemails and emails, and periodically R2D2 comes into the room to project a hologram of my boss giving me the evil eye. So all in all, I’d have to say the past few days have sucked like a Bissell.

And don’t get me started on the explosive diahrrea. Oops . . . uh, be right back.

[15 minutes later]

Okay, sorry, had to um, I had coffee brewing. That’s it, that’s the ticket, coffee! Or tea. I don’t remember.

Shut up.

Anyway, I’ve managed to catch up on most of my DVR viewing, and I really hope that HW already watched last night’s “Scrubs,” because I accidentally deleted it after watching it today. If she hasn’t watched it, I should probably get out of town. Anyway, all the saved up episodes of “Family Guy,” “The Daily Show,” “The Simpsons,” are watched and deleted, which clears out some space on the hard drive for tonight’s episode of “Drawn Together.”

Plus, I was able to watch one of my favorite all-time films, Miller’s Crossing, featuring Marcia Gay Harden in her only hot role. (She’s reasonably pretty, but she looks like she wears dentures and she has lips like The Joker. Look, I’m not being mean, I’m just saying, have you ever seen her and Jack in a room together? Or a Lakers game?) Lots of good gore and violence, plus a plot that’s harder to follow than a fleet-footed Chinese intelligence officer in Shanghai. (I’m clearly too sick to come up with worthwhile analogies over here. Give me a break.)

Best of all, I’ve been able to catch up on sleep, in between replying to emails and listening to voicemail messages from people who may or may not ever get a call back from me, depending on how much I hate them. (I usually hate them a lot.)

Tomorrow: Christmassy pixtures! Yay for CHRIMMAS!

Quick, very short update on my insane dream situation. Saturday night’s dreams were shaped by a strong dose of Nyquil (I have a cold), and were brought to you by the letter L.

Dream #1: I am rehearsing the Mass of the Children, by John Rutter, just like I did in real life back in October, except that instead of being the baritone soloist, I am the conductor.

And have not prepared at all. (Hardly surprising, really.)

So there I am, trying to round an orchestra and massive choir, including a group of 30-40 small children, into shape, and I’m bollixing up meters and tempos and basically screwing the whole thing up irredeemably. After a while, one of the older children takes the baton from me and banishes me to the front row while he conducts the piece perfectly.

Dream #2: I am in Las Vegas with my wife, on a Sunday. Why I am there, I don’t know. But we are scheduled to fly back home Sunday evening, but I haven’t had time to do any gambling. This is unacceptable.

Luckily, just then Milo shows up (I don’t know why he was there either), and it turns out he has an extra plane ticket for a flight back MONDAY night! Sweet! So we stay.

Those of you who are mathematics majors have probably noticed that my wife and I consist of two people, and yet Milo only has the one extra ticket. This does not occur to us until WHOOM the dream shifts to the next morning, and suddenly we realize that HW has no means of getting home. (In reality, I think we all know that HW would have taken the flight home with Milo, and my ass would have been hitchhiking east, but in the dream, that didn’t occur to me.)

We frantically try and figure out a way to come up with the money to buy Sarah a short-notice flight home, while still leaving enough cash to gamble a good bit and not go too far into debt, and then I wake up ’cause one of my cats farted on my face.

What does it all MEAN, sports fans? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Repairing my own automobiles is sort of a hobby of mine, precipitated by

1. the enjoyment of taking things apart, getting my hands dirty, putting everything back together, and discovering with great wonderment that everything works as it should,
2. the need to demonstrate to myself, my wife, and anybody who happens to walk by that I am a MAN, dammit, and more importantly an ENGINEER, unafraid of anything that technology might throw at me,
3. the overwhelming desire to not spend $300 on a professional brake job.

Over the past week or so, I’d been noticing a disturbing grinding sound that my truck made when braking, mostly at slow speeds, and getting worse every day. So I stopped by my local Boys of Pep and picked up a set of front brake pads for $36.99, and yesterday afternoon set out to cut my knuckles a little, curse a lot, and bang the hell out of my driveway with a pair of plumber’s pliers.

Unfortunately, as much as I love my truck, Ford did not design anything on it with “easy repair by owner” in mind. For example: the oil filter is almost impossible to reach. It’s hidden behind a variety of suspension parts near the front left wheelwell, and though you can get a ratchet wrench with a filter-socket to it, you have enough room to turn the wrench approximately 7 degrees, which is barely enough to engage the ratcheting action. So after 3 or 4 minutes of fitting the wrench to the filter, you get to spend the rest of your waking hours toggling the end of the wrench like a lightswitch, like you’re throwing a rave under your truck and can’t afford a strobe light. Once it’s loose enough, you reach up in there and twist it off the rest of the way, usually pouring hot oil into your eyes. The brakes are marginally less eyeball-searing, but much more time-consuming and frustrating.

I started by attempting to jack up the truck, which is when I realized that my regular 2-ton jack doesn’t go high enough to get the truck off the ground. I fiddled around for a bit with trying to use thick wooden shims to increase its height, and decided that I feared death a little too much to bother with all that, and got the regular tire-changing jack out of the cab.

After I got the front tires off the ground, I realized I should have loosened the lug nuts on the wheels first, since as soon as I tried to do that, the front wheels started spinning freely. (Yay for rear-wheel drive.) So I jacked the truck back down a bit and started trying to loosen the lugs. Unfortunately, they had been tightened with Jesus Brand Super Godly Impact Wrench Of All Times And Whatnot, so I tried everything short of a blowtorch (which was my last resort) to get the nuts off:

1. Using my largest ratchet wrench, and banging on it with first a rubber mallet, and then a heavy hammer (which resulted in little more than a bruised finger and a scratched alloy wheel)
2. Using a smaller ratchet wrench with an extender, which almost stripped the nuts
3. Looking for the wrench that came with the truck for road-side tire changes, only to discover it’s missing, so in the event I have a flat, I better make sure my AAA membership is paid up
4. Finally putting my large ratchet back on and standing on it while bouncing

At one point I had to rotate the wheel 180 degrees, which of course necessitated jacking everything back up again, turning the wheel, lowering the truck, loosening the nut, and then jacking the truck back up so I could remove the wheel. By this point my frustration was so great that when a nice old lady from the down the street wandered up to ask if I could stop screaming the F-word at the top of my lungs, I replied that it might work better if I just beat her with a jackstand until she was deaf.

Speaking of deaf, remind me to tell you how I didn’t get the rotor off later.

Getting the caliper (the part that contains the brake pads. Remember the brake pads? The things I was trying to replace?) off was relatively simple, though the bolts holding it on required some elbow grease in the form of violently beating on the wrench with a hammer and almost breaking my thumb. Once I got the caliper off, I hung it from the frame with a coat hanger (letting it hang by the brake line has the unfortunately result of having the aforementioned brake line, um, break) and set to removing the rotor.

On Sarah’s car, a few taps with a mallet loosens the rotor enough that you can just pull it off and inspect/replace it as needed. On my truck, the rotor would not come off even after I sprayed it with WD40 and banged the hell out of it with a heavy hammer for about 10 minutes. After giving up on removing the rotor (it’s not strictly necessary to do so to replace the pads, but it makes it a bit easier), I realized that perhaps having my head inside the wheelwell where all this banging was going on was not very bright, because all I could hear was my heartbeat and a high pitched ringing noise for a good 30 minutes.

I pulled the old brake pads out of the caliper and noticed that, indeed, the inside one was worn down to the metal, which was the cause of the horrific noise that’s vaguely reminiscent of a dog dragging its ass on a driveway, if that dog was robotic and 37 feet tall, and your driveway was Interstate 81.

The next thing I had to do was compress the pistons; as brake pads wear, the pistons push out more and more so that the pressure needed on the brake pedal to stop the vehicle remains constant, so when you put on fresh (and obviously significantly thicker) brake pads the pistons need to be pushed back into the caliper a bit. The instructions I had from a website said I could, if I was careful, do this with a pair of plumber’s pliers. So I got out the old Channellocks and went to work, discovering of course that they weren’t large enough.

It was at this point that my frustration came to a rather significant boil. The truck, as it weighs almost 2.5 tons, needs some pretty strong brakes to stop. So the brake pads have something like 12 square inches of surface (compared to something like 7 or 8 for Sarah’s 3000 pound Protege) each, and the calipers actually contain TWO pistons. I’m carefully trying to squeeze one of the pistons back into the caliper, at the same time as I’m twisting the whole caliper around so I can actually see what I’m doing, while also repeatedly banging my knuckles on the unremovable brake rotor, and trying not to chip the piston, which is made of some kind of soft composite material.

Good news: the piston finally compressed.

Bad news: the OTHER piston simply pushed out another half inch due to the hydraulic action. Additionally, I chipped the piston a little bit. Also, I pinched the bejeebers out of my finger. Worse yet, the pliers have been thrown through my neighbor’s bay window.

At this point I wanted nothing more than a bottle of vodka and a large 8-ball of primo cocaine. However, without a functioning truck, I had no means of acquiring any of Columbia’s Finest (even assuming I wasn’t joking, which of course I was, since I don’t much care for drugs that cause your nasal passages to melt away and your kidneys to bleed), so I either had to fix the truck or wait for Hearnwife to come home and share some of that quality heroin she stores in the hubcaps of her car. (The cops never think to look there. At least until they read my website.)

After squeezing a bit at the other piston (scratching its surface a bit), I finally hit upon a solution: open the brake fluid bleeder valve! Once I do that, it should release the hydraulic pressure that keeps me from pushing the pistons back into place, and then I can put the new pads in, reinstall the caliper, bleed the brakes properly to clear out any air bubbles introduced by the process, and go get a cold one.

Raise your hand if you think it worked out quite that easily. (Put your hand down, dumbass, I can’t see you. It was a joke.)

Any attempt I made to try and get the brake fluid to go into a container was fruitless, as it sprayed all over me, my truck, my driveway, and my extremely weak dignity. I was, however, able to squeeze the piston back in enough that it appeared I would be able to put the pads in and fit the whole thing back over the rotor.

WRONG!

The pistons still being at uneven heights, the pads wouldn’t fit in exactly right, and they still weren’t far enough apart to fit over the rotor. I ended up having to stick various things (ratchets, ratchet bits, my wang, chunks of wood) between them to pry them further apart, and FINALLY managed to squeeze them over the rotor and bolt the caliper back in place. HW came home right about then, and she helped me bleed the brakes, and I went for a test drive: all was well! I am still a MAN, and more importantly, an ENGINEER.

Except, of course, I only did the driver’s side front wheel. The other wheel will have to wait until I have more free time and have replenished my supply of Valium.

Tonight: major Christmas decorating at Hearndom II!

Today: Poem about Christmas decorating!!!

‘Twas 3 weeks before Christmas, and all ’round the house
Hearn and Hearnwife were working, with cursing and shouts.

And so, Merry Christmas! We wish you good cheer!
And may nobody call out the cops like last year.

There’s something wrong with my face.

(Oh, you’d noticed, had you? Smartass.)

And for once I’m not talking about my hideous acne issue. (I’ve had the pores of a 14 year-old since I was, well, 14, and the zits show no sign of clearing up after 12 years.) Folks who see me on a daily basis probably have heard me complain about this, but I am low on one of the more manly human characteristics: body hair. Except for what’s on my scalp, and a prodigious collection around my wang, I’m largely hairless. Even what hair I have is totally lame; for example, the hairs on my chest all point UP. And don’t even get me started on my nipples (the left one has all of 6 hairs of varying lengths; the right one is completely surrounded by a tuft of growth thick enough to be seen through tshirts). Also, I don’t get any moustachio hair that’s not thin and completely blond.

Some of you are probably somewhat grossed out. This pleases me.

Anyway, I bring this up to share with you a new project: sideburns. I can’t technically really grow any, because my beard stops roughly 3/8″ of an inch from my natural hairline, but I’m planning to grow my hair out anyway, so I’ll just let it grow down over the part where there’s no facial hair. I wanted to share with you my progress after approximately one week:

What do you think? I think I’m well on my way to a stylish new look. I’m contemplating the possibility of getting some Rogaine to see if I can inspire some growth in there, although I hear that steroids can have the same effect, and Lord knows I’d like the opportunity to get all buff and sexy and get the chicks.

I mean, get A chick. My wife. That’s the ticket, yeah!

I’m gonna let these things grow for a while longer yet, despite protests from Sarah, who thinks they look pathetic. Although, this rather gives me an idea; perhaps I should grow some other insane facial hair until HW promises to let her bangs grow out. Ah, blackmail and bribery: the foundations of any successful marriage.

BTW: The guys at Free Range Human appear to be alive again. Those turds.

A buddy of mine sent me an email generated by some company containing helpful tips about workplace etiquette and safety. Since I know we all could stand to be a little more safe at the office, what with me constantly getting emails reading “Matt, I accidentally stapled myself in the eye again. What am I doing wrong?” and “d00d i t0tally peed in the coffee mak0r agin lol” and “So I plugged in my laptop like I always do, and suddenly my pelvis exploded! Any thoughts?”, I thought I’d share some of the highlights with you.

• Distraction is the number one cause of accidents on stairways. Remain alert.

  I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched someone heading up the steps, and you see that glimmer in their eyes that signals they’re not thinking about the laborious process of upward-walking, and BAM a stair-squid gets them. Happens every time.

• Most employees use elevators or escalators every day.

  Not me. We don’t have any escalators at my office, and whenever I get into an elevator with someone, I become horrifically flatulent. I’ll risk the stair-squid, myself, rather than trying to explain to someone what I could possibly have eaten to produce a gas that caused their cotton-blend shirt to dissolve.

• Never attempt to hold an elevator door open with the hand or foot. Closing doors can pinch and cause injuries.

  True story: I once watched a man attempt to hold a door open with his arm, and the doors closed on it, and then the elevator moved up 2 floors, causing his hand to become severed, and now it lives on the 5th floor of the building, feasting on unwary NT engineers and it’s like 8 feet tall now and it roams the building at night looking for its owner and we call it Carl.

• Do not run. Walk.

  Luckily, we have a nice pool guard here that reminds us of this every 15 or 20 seconds by blowing his whistle and yelling. Normally we’d be somewhat irritated by this, but Steve just looks so damn dreamy in that little red Speedo.

• Use Safety mirrors where appropriate.

  I keep one with me at all times, one of those little dentist mirrors like SWAT team guys use to see if there’s a bad guy around a corner. Anytime I approach a bend in the cubicle hallway, I crouch real low on the floor and carefully stick the mirror out to see if anybody’s coming. If no one is, I carefully stand, dust myself off, and proceed around the corner. If someone IS coming, I carefully conceal myself in a corner (I wear cubicle-colored clothing for this purpose) and whimper quietly until they pass.

• If attacked, make a scene. Use your voice if you are in trouble. An attacker doesn’t like unwanted attention.

  Additionally, it’s a righteous way to avoid work; anytime a coworker or manager comes within 15 yards of my cubicle, I immediately start screaming RAPE and set off my personal alarm. If they continue to get closer, I break out the pepper spray. Sure, it won’t get me very many raises, but my personal safety is much more important to everyone, I’m sure.

• If you, or someone you know, is assaulted, find out what resources are available.

  I’m not sure what resources they’re talking about here; ideally, the main resource that I’d like to have is a large caliber handgun concealed in my pants BEFORE anyone tries to assault me. But afterwards, I guess maybe a bottle of scotch and a few hugs would be okay.

• Pets (of any kind) are not permitted in the workplace.

  What about invisible ones? Are they okay? ‘Cause my two beautiful invisible bunnies, Hass and Pfeffer, ain’t going NOWHERE without ME.

  That’s right. I’d give up my job for my invisible rabbits. AND YOU ALL WOULD TOO if you could see how cute they are, but of course you can’t, since they’re invisible. It’s so unfair.

• Pencils carried in the pocket should point down. Do not carry pencils behind the ears or with the point toward the palm of the hand.

  It’s definitely preferable to take the point of a pen in the solar plexus than in the palm of the hand. I mean, if you hurt your hand, you won’t be able to write, and then you’re USELESS to the company. On the other hand (har!), my buddy Bob accidentally stabbed himself in the stomach with the pencil in his pocket when the stair-squid tripped him; he was able to staple the wound shut and continue working until 6pm, when his boss told him he could drive himself to the hospital, where they removed his spleen, which had graphite poisoning. That’s a REAL employee, right there.

• Remember that hot water from “Hot” taps on water fountains is extremely hot; avoid splashing it on the skin.

  Oh, if only I had known, I might still have an epidermis!

• Be aware of symptoms such as sneezing, itching, watery eyes, headaches, etc., especially if they subside when away from the workplace. These symptoms can indicate problems ranging from insufficient outside make up air to contaminant growth in the air handling system.

  Well, I dunno about that stuff, but I’m usually in a pretty horrible mood from the moment I walk into the building until I leave. Hm. I should see a doctor so I can identify exactly whom I need to sue.

• Last, but certainly not least: Horseplay is hazardous and is prohibited on company property.

  What about sheep play? Or golden showers? Are blumpkins out as well? Man, that’s no fun.

I know those rules may seem hard to remember, but just keep this in mind: a little safety-sense will GREATLY reduce the number of eye-gougings and gunshot wounds at the office.

I think HW is mad at me.

And here the younger portion of the audience is thinking, “I wonder what she said to him?” To which I (and every man with a long-term significant other) reply: HA. HA HA HA. Hold for a moment whilst I repair my split sides with duct tape and crazy glue. Wait, no, not yet: my guffaws continue unabated.

Okay, much better.

Anyway, what I was getting at, in that lengthy paragraph of drivel that spewed forth from my brain like goo from a toothpaste tube being run over by a Peterbilt, is that when a woman is mad at you, she’s not going to come straight out and TELL you that she’s mad at you. The reasons for this are two-fold:

1. If she tells you, then SHE is “a bitch.”
2. If she DOESN’T tell you, and you never figure it out, then YOU are the insensitive clod that should have KNOWN something was wrong.

So no, she hasn’t said anything. But her behavior of late has been very bizarre. For example, recently she has started replacing toilet paper rolls. Normally, this would be a good thing, as her ancient habit has always been to get a fresh roll out and then just sit it on top of the john (this is the way it’s done in her family because certain members thereof have a tendency to play with the paper if it’s properly mounted on the dispenser, and we all know who you are, SuZann).

However, she has strangely mounted the new rolls such that the paper is dispensed from the BOTTOM of the roll, instead of the top. Which is just disturbing. I mean, what person in their right mind would want to dispense paper from the bottom? It’s harder to tear off, for one thing, and aside from that it’s just frickin’ UN–AMERICAN. I guess it might make it harder for the cats to play with the rolls, but we only have one cat that does that, and she’s the same one that treats the entire basement as her personal bathroom, so she’s about one more warm puddle removed from a ghastly demise.

Also, she (Sarah, not the basement-peeing cat) has taken to locking the front door, which is nice in that it makes us safer from the violent cretins that walk the streets in our neighborhood, except that inevitably she only locks either the knob or the deadbolt if I’m not home. This is like putting on half a condom: probably technically safe, but if you’re going to go to the trouble, why not go the whole way? Plus it drives me nuts when I come home, get my key out, put it in the doorknob, realize it’s unlocked, try to open the door, and bash my forehead against the door because the deadbolt is still latched. (I tend to lead with my head when I walk because my skull is impervious to injury.) It goes without saying that this happens most frequently when my hands are full of various jaunpiece.

You could also argue that she demonstrated her anger a bit more clearly when she stabbed me with a meat fork on Thanksgiving, but in our house, violence is a manifestation of great love, just like when we scream insults at each other and cause the neighbors to call social services.