Strap in.

I thought it would be a LOW KEY day, but I didn't expect my HULKing Canadian friend Steve to show up. He came over to my apartment in a mood because of our mutual friend Rod. I said, "Look STEVE, ROD JEERS all the time. It's not personal."

To help calm him down, I put on his favorite song by IRON, MAN I can't remember the rest of the name, oh Butterfly. Steve sat, removed his string-wrapped hat with the U.S. flag--he calls it his CAP TWINE AMERICA. He took something out of his bag, a musical toy with alphabetical keys. "I bought this for my kid. Each letter makes a sound." He press the 'I' key and it screeched. "HAWK, I," he explained.

He played some others, and I winced when he hit 'E'. "TONE 'E'? STARK man," I commented.

"Oh," he cleared some lint from one of the speakers. "That's 'CAUSE LINT BAR TONE. Now it'll sound better." He played it again and it sounded good this time.

"Hey, does it do two letter blends like 'TH' OR 'sh'?"

Steve shook his head. "No. Here let me show you the other thing I got." He went to set it down on my coffee table, but the surface was covered with my Roman soldier figurines and my dog Nick's sheddings. Steven moved over a pile of hair. "NICK FUR, EH?"

"Yep."

"Mind if I clear a figurine?"

"NAH, TOSS A ROMAN OFF."

Just then, my phone rang, and I saw it was my Dad calling. "I should take this."

I answered, "Hello, Dad."

"Hi. I had a couple of things to remind you about. One, tomorrow is your sister's mock wedding to celebrate her divorce. You know, the one where everyone dresses in black?"

"A BLACK WED... OH, now I remember. What was the other thing?" I asked.

"I got a truck load of bitumen I need to put in the metal bin next to that tiny hill. I'd like you to help me FILL COAL, SON."

I remembered that the tiny hill was covered with colorful wildflowers. "Don't you worry that we'll MAR WEE HILL?"

"It'll be okay. Maybe you can bring your friend Brewster to help."

"Sure." I hung up. "Well, there goes my afternoon. Sorry, Steve I gotta pick up Brewster and help my Dad."

"Just give me your opinion on this." He pulled out a model of a Swedish fighter plane. "It's called a Viggen."

He must have forgotten my aversion to aircraft of all types. "AIR? ICK, SELL VIGgen I say. I really have to go."

I left Steve to lock up and picked up Brewster to head over to wee hill. But when we got there the place was covered with kids and a big marque that read: 'Third Annual Kids Fun Day'.

I smiled. "Hey, BREW, SEE BANNER. We can't shovel coal today after all."

"What should we do?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I just got the Avengers on Blu-ray, want to watch that?"

Yes. All in Seattle, but yes. And I can get recommendations for tattoo artist in other cities, if you need.

Cool, I just mainly want to get a feel for how much what I have in mind would cost (so I can start saving up) and how difficult it would be to find someone who can do it well. I'll message you with the details after work tonight.

What the hell are interns for?

We have a (text) PDF table that we need in Excel format. Because PDFs do what they do, there's no simple way to convert from one to the other. IF THERE WERE, I'D DO IT MYSELF. I've been asking him all week to give me a usable spreadsheet, and nope. Attempt #1 had a new row for each line of text (so if a row of the table was three lines long in the PDF, the excel spreadsheet was three rows for that data). I asked him to make sure it was a legit table in Excel, and not only does he give me a zip file of five spreadsheets, one per page, he tells me, well, he could have made them five worksheets.

IT IS ONE TABLE. WHY FIVE ANYTHING? MAKE ME AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET. SINGULAR.

Now I still can't easily see all the information, and turns out--all the hard returns are preserved, and so resizing rows and columns is pretty useless. I explain this to him, mentioning that on Monday I can get the original spreadsheet, but I'd hoped to have it manually converted by now...

He is agog at the idea of cleaning those up, so I'll have to search and replace my damned self.

I know they don't teach sense in university, but my plan to take him to lunch and talk about his career goals just evaporated.

If it's not pun thing, it's another.

No idea if it would help, but I'd be happy to give it a shot.

Ok, thanks. profile addy good? I can send you an invitation via email. Anybody else working Duolingo wanna join the party?

Pix, the tattoo that Allyson got on her neck looked really vibrant and well done--you could drop her a line too. I think it might have been in your neck of the woods.

NEED TO GET OFF SELF'S ASS AND GET SECOND TAT.

Gud, Gud, Gud.

Check out this couple's movie poster wedding announcements.

You know what? Those are cool and all, but I have had it with all the escalation of this shit. Not that I'm getting married anytime soon, but damn, son -- we will have some generic invitation, and it will be FINE.

Not that I'm getting married anytime soon, but damn

Just when are they going to get around to forcing everyone to gay marry, anyway?

Gud, Gud, Gud.

There's nothing wrong with a couple of puns.