Tomorrow is September.  HOLY SHIT!

Popularity: 1% [?]

This last week has been pretty weird. Monday I was at work until about 10pm with Andrew because he was prepping his cyclocross bike for the upcoming winter commuting months. I gave him a ride home in the Mobile Van since he had 2 bikes here. We had a beer or two and some food and I came back to the shop and then rode home. I was in bed shortly after midnight. Not too bad.

Tuesday, Mark R came over to the shop after work and we ripped his commuter (97 Bianchi Eros) down to the bare frame and rebuilt it with all new Campy Centaur (with Record hubs and shifters). I gotta say, the Campy Ultra-Torque crank/bb’s are T-I-T tight! Anyway, we hooked up his ride and then split. I think we left near midnight, so I crashed out around 1 or 2am that night.

Wednesday, Molly came to the bikeshop. I’ve been working with her on her website for a while and we needed to do some more tweaking, so we did. Til 10ish? I don’t know about that one, because I stopped at the local watering hole on the way home that night. OOOOOPS! It’s one thing to stop by your local watering hole. It’s another thing to have the cook start chatting you up when he’s off cuz he recognizes you. It’s totally another thing to have an off-duty bartender include you in 2 rounds of shots cuz you’re sitting at the bar next to the cook (and cuz he recognizes you). And then it’s something else entirely when the active bartender says, “You like gin, right? There’s a bug in this one, so I can’t serve it, but I’d totally drink it myself, except that I hate gin. Tonic for you, right?” Oh shit…yeah, hook me up.

That night was all about me getting home just after last call, which is 2am in WA. Needless to say, my output on Thursday was pathetic. We actually got done what we could, but we had to order a bunch of parts for a bunch of repairs and Friday was looking like it was going to be FULL.

It was. Matt and I have taken to talking in a NY Italian accent at the shop, and holy shit we both suck at it. Add to that the fact that I’ve been having a long week, and my mouth was NOT working right at all. At one point I had a hammer in my hand and I was trying to speak, but I must have started the same word or sentence like 3 times and got nothing but mush-mouth, so I got pissed and said, “I’m having a bad talking day!”, and I (thought that I) tapped the top of the hairspray bottle with the hammer. NOPE. I NAILED it. In fact I nailed it so good, the finger-nozzle-thingy broke off and it started spraying all over the place.

Well, me being quick on my feet, I grabbed the can of AquaNet* and ran outside with it. Matt was laughing like a stoned hyena, and Dean was just shaking his head. I’m sure he was thinking, “These assholes work for me? I’m fucked.” It’s now a good 5hrs later and my legs feel taut. I got so much hairspray on my lower legs that my shins now look like they saw a ghost. Or maybe like they sing for The Cure. Whatever…

* AquaNet is the best friend of 80s hair metal bands and bike shops everywhere. It’s equally capable of teasing your hair straight up into the nosebleed seats AND sticking the slipperiest plastic grips to the smoothest handlebars.

Popularity: 1% [?]

My sister is in Egypt. She’ll be there for a year, and I hope to go visit her while she’s there. She’s only been there for a couple weeks, if that, but it would seem that my 10 or 11yr old niece (I don’t know her age cuz I’m a shitty uncle) is adjusting very well.

You remember being that age, having your parents ask you if you’d done your homework? Yes, I did my homework. Are you sure it’s all done? Yes, my homework is all done! However long that might go on…we’ve been there.

My sister was asking her daughter if her homework was done, and the reply was, ‘I swear to Allah my homework is done.’

1500 Bonus Points to Michaela for that one. You go, girl!

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’ve been using the term ‘douche bag’ a lot lately in my emailings to and from friends. I’ve come to realize/notice that while the various auto spell-checkers don’t seem to like my last name, they are absolutely fine with the term ‘douche bag’.

So that got me to thinking. And after enough thought, I started laughing good and hard. The thing is, somewhere out there in the infrastructure that serves our daily lives on the internet, there was, at one point, a person or persons, who was/were tasked with discerning how words and terms are supposed to be spelled, so that spell-checkers would be able to function more effectively while we emailed and wrote essays and reports and letters and all kinds of bullshit like that. And one day, somebody came across the term ‘DOUCHE BAG’ on that day’s ToDo list.  I picture a very bland, possibly uptight person who may have very little in the way of social skills (a geek) being the very person to come across that particular entry and having it not even register in the (in my mind) normal Beavis & Butthead way…  “Hehehehe, check it out, I got ‘douche bag’.  That’s awesome!”
And now I’ve put it into the written word on a website, and it’s lost its humor. BUT, it was funnier than shit earlier today. Awww, fuck it…

Popularity: 1% [?]

My friends Brent and Kate had a little chitlin the other day. Ruby Maximus Excelsior Medusa Neville Hinson (I THINK that was her full name??!!?!) jumped out of Kate’s nether regions fully formed, like Athena, and is now a construction worker downtown. Check it out!

I went over there to see her last week.  I also brought my new guitar along to show them how much cooler and more valuable my Les Paul was than their silly little human baby.  The cool thing though, was that when I played, the baby reacted to the music.  And when Kate had to run upstairs to do something, she left me and the baby alone downstairs.  So what does one do in a situation like that?  You play songs from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.  You know, songs like Mother and the kinda scary one that goes, ‘D-d-d-did you see the frightened ones?  D-d-d-did you hear the falling bombs?’.  Ruby never cried or fussed or anything.  Not like Rosman’s daughter.  One time, when Piper was a tiny little chitlin, Rebecca asked me if I could hold Piper while Rebecca ran to the store real quick.  Sure, I can handle that.  As soon as the door closed, for the entire 10 or 15 minutes, Piper cried and shrieked as though she were in the presence of Evil Incarnate.  Man, that was stressful.  That was also 5 or so years ago.  Piper still takes a few minutes to warm up to me, but not Ruby.  I’m gonna bring my geeeeetar over there more often, I think.

Way to go, Hinson/Neville clan.  You got a neat little package there.  Take care of it, or I’m gonna take care of you!

Popularity: 1% [?]

You know what’s total and utter fucking bullshit?  My friends.  Not all of them, just MOST of them.  Which ones, you ask?  How about Mark, Aaron, Dave, Shanna, Dave, Dave, Kristi, some other ones, and now Brent.  Why are they so full of shit?

Cuz they have kids.

Mind you, I don’t mind kids.  In fact, I love kids.  Other people’s kids.  However, since all of these kids are in various stages of development, and therefore various different ability levels in the mimicry department, I now have to quit cussing when I’m over at MY friends”s’s'ss houses.  What kind of bullshit is that?  They are MY friends, and so I should be able to CUSS at them, or with them, whenever I want, but NOOOOOOOOOO, little ears are always present.  Jesus christ, it’s bad enough if there’s a girlfriend asleep upstairs who’s going to wake up and be a complete raging bitch because we’re being way too loud watching Star Wars or playing video games or some crap at 2am, but KIDS?  I can’t not cuss, dammit!!!

Forget it.  It’s over.  I’m gonna go nibble on a sawed-off and be done with it.

Ta-ta…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Today I was on the phone with a vendor, asking them for product information and whatnot.  I placed an order for a pair of bike lights, and at the end, when all of the business had been conducted, the nice lady on the other end of the phone asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”  So I said, “I wish I had a pony.”

That earned me about 2 full seconds of silence.

Sometimes you just gotta spice it up.  Try this:  Call your favorite pizza joint, and order whatever you want but throw one outlandish ingredient in there.  “Yeah, could I get a large deep-dish, olives, onions and acorns?”

Try it…

Popularity: 3% [?]

Have you ever been out of place? Stranger in a strange land? What do you do? As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

So why do some folks from other cultures still try to haggle with you when they’re in America? If I go to their homeland, I’m going to try my hand at haggling cuz I know that if I just pay the price on the tag, they won’t respect me. They’ll think that I’m some self-important American who thinks that he can just buy his way through life and get whatever he wants. Besides, if you’re in another country, why not try to get a taste of what their culture has to offer. But guess what? [More]

Popularity: 3% [?]

Oh…there are a number of reasons that ChewyKolchuk.com truly sucks. Let me enumerate just a few of those ways…

1. There are a couple of people who actually read this site. I know that Dave Pearson and Jason Thompson are those two people because they are the ones who email me and say to quit being a loser and start updating. A few days ago, I thought I was ahead of the curve when I started this very post. However, being the dingdong that I am, I saved it, thinking I’d get back to it and embellish/polish/perfect said post before letting the world read it. Guess what? I got a “you’re a fucking loser, update your fucking site” email from Jason. So there’s one way that I’ve attained Suckness.
2. I’ve been working with Molly for months on end now. She and I have been trying to get her website off the ground, and the reason it’s taking so long? Uhhhh, cuz I suck. I’ve been so slow at getting her wishes implemented that now all the resources that I was going to use are gone, cuz the lifespan of ANYTHING on the internet is about that of a mayfly. There’s Reason #2 that I am Capt Suck.
3. Hmmm, I KNOW that there are more examples of how suck I am, but for some reason those are the two big ones that stick with me. Maybe that’s cuz my memory sucks too.

Popularity: 3% [?]