OK, so I posted this last year, but I figured in honor of national talk like a pirate day, I'd repost it. Yeah, I'm lazy. Years ago (1991), I was a part of a GASP (Gilbert And Sullivan Players) production of The Pirates of Penzance - The Slave of Duty. It was my first attempt at community theater and it was a lot of fun. In honor of National Talk Like a Pirate Day, I dug out some OLD pictures from that production and scanned them. So, here you go - Pour, O pour the pirate sherr...

Next week, I'm going on a TDY trip to my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio for to take part in a TAIR trip. TAIR stands for Total Army Involvement in Recruiting. I'll spend the week going around to schools and trying to sell the Army and more specifically, the Defense Language Institute. I'm looking forward to it. I mean, free trip home and a week away from the office! Woohoo! So, if you live in Cleveland and you read this blog, shoot me an email or leave a comment. My Ecosys...

I came back from 11 refreshing days of leave yesterday. The running joke all day was, "Oh, by the way, this/that/the other came up while you were gone and it's your job to work it. Now, the reality is most of it was really my stuff that had just piled up while I was gone, but it was still funny for everyone else to let me in on each piece of information a little at a time. I found out that I have lock up duty this week. That's fine, because the last time before this recentl vacation, I ...

I burned the last of my use or lose leave for the year last week. It was nice. I didn't think about work for 11 whole days and I got a fair bit of WoW in. Yeah, I'm still feeding that addiction. I did get out in the sunlight and away from the keyboard, though. I'm not that far gone. My wife got off early on Saturday and we packed up the dogs and headed up to Lake Tahoe. It was kind of a last minute planned thing, so I had to scramble to find a pet friendly place. We didn't want to s...

I sometimes use a Magic 8 Ball in class. Usually, I will use music and a hot potato style game to give the students something fun to do. When the music stops, the person holding the Magic 8 Ball will have to do whatever task I've set up. Mostly, I use it in grammar sessions and it gives the student a chance to use the new grammar with each other while keeping a sense of randomness (it's not random, I watch and make sure everyone gets a chance to be holding the Magic 8 Ball), so they don't ...

Fairly hectic day today. Started out at 0630 when I woke up with a minor headache. Normally, not a big deal, but today, I had my reading comprehension DLPT. This is my annual Korean test and based on my scores, I get paid up to $2400 extra a year. Reading is my strong suit, though, so I wasn't too worried. If you're a long time reader, or just a back page digger, you'll know that I scored a perfect score on the reading test last year. I took a different new form this year (there are...

I usually listen to the Bob and Tom show on the drive to work. I like the morning laughs. Especially since most of the radio stations around here are lame. Well, I also got some laughs from the commercials this morning. The first was a commercial that was promoting the music from a group named COQ-ROQ. I first laughed because they spelled the name out just like that and I thought it was a funny way to get a potentially offensive name out on the radio. The really funny part was ...

As the title says, I've been fairly busy lately. I actually feel a bit guilty that 4/5 of the articles on my front page have to do with fantasy sports updates! That's just terrible, considering I post them about once a week. I have had plenty to write about. Just haven't. I had duty over the weekend. I had planned on posting then, but when I got in the mood to type, my driver was trying to sleep and I didn't want the clickity-clak to be annoying, so I just read some stuff and commente...

just a test to see if i can post to my site from the forums.

My wife woke up a little late for work today. I got up with her and when I asked if there was anything I could do to help her out, she asked me to make coffee and drive her to work. I said OK and headed for the kitchen. Once the coffee was ready, I got one of the car mugs and poured her some coffee. I then looked for the cream and sugar. I don't put any of this stuff in my coffee, so I don't know where it all is sometimes. I found the creamer next to the coffee can in the cupboard and...

I was checking out my referrals for Ironforge is not a safe city! . I got a bunch of referrals from totalgaming.net and society gaming, which I thought was pretty cool. But the referal I got that really surprised me was from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) . I figure it has to do with the use of the word irradiated in my original post, but I can't figure how even that makes sense. Oh, well, it's better than all the referals I got for "peeing in a cup"! ...

I bought my tickets for the vacation on CheapTickets.com. It was a last minute thing and I was able to get a decent deal there. There were two problems with that course of action, though. The first was that I flew four different airlines and none of them were United (with whom I have a frequent flyer account). That wasn't really a big deal to me, but I would have liked to rack up a few miles. The second was that my entire trip home was on America West. These guys were built for chea...

So, I was a week late for the actual reunion. I was still lucky because two of my friends were still able to make time to visit with me. We went to the same restaurant/pub that they had the original reunion at. I got there just minutes ahead of them and circled the place for parking. There didn't seem to be an actual lot for the place, but there was an empty lot across the street, so I parked there. Just as I got to the front door of the place, both of my friends pulled up and honked to ...

So, last Thursday, after resting a few hours and visiting with my mom for a bit, I got into the rental car and drove down to my dad's house. It was about a four hour drive down. When I rented the car, I told them that I wouldn't leave Ohio. This became a bit of a problem because I forgot that I-77 runs into West Virginia a little north of Belpre, OH and that was the way I had directions to go. So, I had to stop in a rest area and figure out what road would connect me from I-77 and Mariett...

I didn't have access to the net for a lot of my vacation. Well, I did, really. I just didn't want to spend too much time glued to a chair in front of a monitor when I could have been visiting with friends and family. So, now I get to play catch up and hopefully my memory holds! This little trip was kind of last moment and as I detailed before, I got the dates messed up. Since it was last minute, my wife couldn't rearrange her schedule to take me to the airport. So, on Tuesday, a buddy...