Back from the dark ages

We're alive!  Was going to blog about last weekend's adventure but the cable router got fried early on Tuesday and we've been living sans Internet for several days.  Finally, Comcast (Bless Their Hearts) granted us an audience Friday afternoon and replaced the router and, Voila!  We have Internet!  It was not pretty.  Suffering under inhumane conditions.  We had to read a paper to get our news.  I could not read the shenanigans of my favorite bloggers.  The wife and I actually had to engage in conversation during dinner!  Turned out to be rather nice & quiet for a while.  Although we did kinda feel like we were living back in the 80's.   

Long week.  Spent my Memorial Day weekend in Austin helping my son move out of apartment.  Was able to get most of his junk transported into some remote storage unit somewhere north of town (1/2 way to Dallas, I believe).  Took a few trips and some heavy lifting and creative stacking, but everything he owns fits in a 5-10 storage room.  It's one of those skills I picked up way back in the stone age when I was a poor, innocent college student was how to pack a 1969 Plymouth Fury III with an entire dorm room/apartment and cram it in a tiny space.  

Short week at the office.  Monday was a holiday, and Friday was a our company picnic/Family Fun Day.  I said that I like the style of the new management.  They kicked in for a family style party with burgers and dogs and all sorts of games for kids to play at.  Big hoop-te-do that even included a dunking book for the big dogs.  Nice to see they are humble enough to allow people to make fun of them.  The CEO & CFO and many of our esteemed VPs spent a lot of time in the dunking tank (all for charity).  My contribution?  I offered up an idea that, in hindsight, might have been left on the table.  Way back in my Army days, we had limited ways to generate funds for the company (bake sale, raffles).  One idea that generated a serious amount of coin was a "pie in your face" auction.  You could bid on a pie to put it in the face of your favorite Company Commander, XO (me), Lieutenant, First Sargent, Platoon Sargent.  If you got the highest bid, you won the chance to put a pie in the face of your intended victim.  There were a few privates & PFCs who dropped a whole month's paycheck to pie the First Sargent.

Anyway, I made the suggestion thinking that it would not get any interest but the CEO thought it was a great idea and was willing to do it first hand.  Needless to say, since this was kinda my idea, I had to be willing to take one for the team.

     

Got a wee bit messy.  I can't complain since a number of people higher up on the food chain than I took a lot more abuse.  Besides, we garnered another $2,315 for the Epilepsy Foundation.