So it’s been 48 weeks since my last post so I think it’s about time for another one. Just got back from WorldCon in Denver and I have to say, they were a lot more fun when I was younger. Maybe it was because we went alone or because I have matured and no longer find the immature rutting at past WorldCons amusing any more (that cant be it). We did sneak into the Tor publishing party and that did bring back memories of Ben and I stealing booze from Bantam books party back in 92. Still a lot of fun but a lot of work as well. Liz was trying to track down agents and editors for her manuscripts and I had to act, if not professional than at least not embarrassing. Well We did have a good time and we are thinking of going next year, but we had a better time at dragoncon.

So what can I say about Albuquerque? Well I like it here, the people are nicer (and thinner ) than Georgia, I can get Green Chile on demand and no one at work has told me I’m a sinner yet. Liz has started her Masters program and has to work as a student aid for a Micro Econ class of around 180 students. So far all she has to say is “Boy freshman are stupid”. Still trying to get a feel as to were we can hang out but we do know that Bart’s Tiki Bar is not it so the quest continues. Liz’s Mac went all wonky about two weeks ago so we went to the Apple store got her a new one. As she is a student we got a new iPod with it unfortunately it was 2 weeks before the new ones came out but hay it was free. We also got scanner with is and old pictures will fallow.

Ok listen up Monkies!

The new address is.....

6431 Los Pueblos Pl Nw
Albuquerque, NM 87114

We'll be there on July 2nd!

ROSWELL, New Mexico (AP) -- Businesses here have been cashing in on the UFO craze for years -- paintings and replicas of unidentified flying objects and space aliens adorn downtown buildings, and even the McDonald's and Wal-Mart are UFO- and space-themed.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/27/ufo.park.ap/index.html

This Might be better than 2 Hours locked in a room full of dead Rubber Aliens with Fire Ball, Game Boy and a Camera……. But I doubt it.

The person buying our house was supposed to have the building inspected on Monday. Well Monday comes and goes and we hear nothing so we assume all is well. Yesterday we Liz comes home and the Dog is freaking out so Liz lets him out of his cage and he’s off like a shot. It’s at that point that Liz realizes that she’s not alone and the dog is off doing his protect the master thing. Well she gets up stairs and the building inspector is cornered with a 50 lbs dog sitting in front of him, dude was lucky, Reggie is not a mean dog but can get over stimulated. Anyway Liz asks why he had not called first and he says somebody should have, no shit Einstein and as it is your ass that will end up shot, bitten or other wise abused it should have been you. As you’re not supposed to be around when monkey boy is checking out your home Liz goes to the bookstore.

On my return from work I get home after this zero has gone to find a cabinet in the garage has been pulled off the wall and the Furnace has been partially disassembled and not reassembled. Liz is beside herself with anger. The guy shows up unannounced, breaks shit and takes apart the furnace and leaves with out so much as a sorry note. Well I call the realtor and unload on him and he tells me he’s going to get the dude to com back out and fix every thing.

Well today we get the report from this bozo ant the worst this on the report is that the jetted tub has three jets not working. So we go up to the master bathroom and fill up the tub and turn on the pump and sure enough three are not letting water in. So Liz reaches in and opens them, problem one corrected. There were a couple of other minor issues, dripping shower head and deck railing needs to be looked at but the guy was a tool. I mean like an Allen Wrench and not like a hammer or something usfull.

http://greateratlanta5.georgia.remax.com/listings/listingdetail_r42.aspx?LID=31552932

OK so the house is up for sale.....

OK, so Liz wrote a book, nothing major, a little light sci-fi weighing in at just over 120,000 words. Well she had it professionally edited got it back on Monday. Now she has to review the recommended changes, make the changes she wants and resubmit it for final editing. Once it gets back the second she ships it off to the publishers and prays that they like it. On of her professors told her that he would get it to his publishing rep and in turn she would get it to somebody in the sci-fi department or something like that.

Any way as a result she wants a new computer, an Apple computer to be more specific. She says it’s to help her write and for school. She has decided that she wants a MAC PRO because she can hook up two 30 inch monitors which are just too cool! Anyway I have a question on computers, were going to get the base model Mac Pro and add a video card that will drive the two big monitors. Now after spending the money on the box I’m kinda scared to dump even more on the 30 inchers when for the same price as on 30’ we can get two 23’ monitors, so should we get 1 30’ and upgrade later, get two 23’ and not keep up with the Jones’s or bite the bullet and get the two 30’?

So a few months back Liz decided to take up shooting as a hobby. She went out and got herself a Sig Sauer Mosquito, a 22 caliber pistol that the same size and operates that same way as their P220 pistol, the same model that the Secret Service carries. Well after putting a few hundred rounds through her Mosquito Liz has decided that its time to get a full sized auto. She really likes the Sig P220 but so do they, at just shy of $900 they not flying off the shelves. But thankfully the new XD pistols imported by Springfield armory, has caught her eye. These pistols represent some of the finest Serbo-Croatian engendering since the Yugo, well actually a lot better than that. Any way the XD runs about half the price of the Sig and comes with a holster, 2 magazines and a holster for the magazines. One of the reasons Liz likes this pistol is because it’s cute, this of course offends the alpha male in me but that are good looking guns. Liz is leaning towards the 9mm compact but I like the standard 45ACP, but maybe well get both. The really funny this is Liz is unsure of color options the darn things come in Black, Black and polished steel, OD green and Tan and Liz can make up her mind between Black and steel or Tan, it seems that even in pistols there’s room for a fashion statement…..

Ok so I’m going to Albuquerque on the 6th of April for the weekend. My mom moved there late last year and we are going to check out her new house, the university and places to live. That and finally get some descant Mexican food. So unless the university is run by a bunch of asshats well we will be moving in time for Liz to begin classes by August 20th.

SO reasons why I hate the south…

Liz is currently working for Yamaha and they are paying her $12 per hour as a temp, which means they are really paying more than that to the temp agency. Well Yamaha starts talking to Liz about starting a call center and wants her to be in charge of hiring a staff and running the show and asks her what she would expect as a salary. Well her current salary is something over 25K a year, she used to make 30K as a phone monkey at Sprint before she got a Bachelors degree. After a little research we determine that for the Kennesaw area the job that they are asking her to do pays between 40-75k. So when they ask her to submit a resume she fills out the expected salary range as 40-50k. Deer in the head lights time they were thinking more in the neighborhood of 25K. They had forgotten that Liz was competent and would look into what an entry level manager would make and when they found out they could not get her on the cheap they dropped the idea..

Merging and driving in general, they all drive like it’s the Daytona 500. People will and I mean all the time be cursing in the fast lane and swerve across like 6 lanes at 85mph to make an exit. The driving is so bad that when Georgia went to the Feds and asked for more Highway funds to widen the interstates the feds came in a reviewed the request and it was denied because the Feds said the majority of the traffic problems were not as a result of the size of the high ways but rather that there were to many accidents and offered to increase the states budget for drivers education. This offer was declined and a bill was offered in the state senate to allow driving on the shoulder during rush hour….

Dumping of waste anywhere and everywhere. What do you do when you build a house and you have all these bits and peaces of wood and wire and other scrap at the end? Why you dump it in the lot next door. My coworkers have no idea why I get up set when the cable guy comes and installs new service in my neighborhood and throws 20 or 30 feet of coaxial cable over the fence to the forested property next door. When the crew that repaved the ally dumped a 4 foot high mound of pavement on the side of the road I called every day for a month to get it cleaned up. Or why I yelled at the people that dragged their charismas trees twenty feet out there back door and dumped them. People hear are pigs and don’t see the mock there wallowing in.

Money, people throw money away. I don’t mean by doing stupid things like booze and hookers I mean they take money out of their pockets and throw money on the ground. You know I don’t like carrying a pocket load of change but I get home and put them in a jar and I have $20 at the end of the year. I mean I have seen people walk past the Salvation Army lady ringing her bell stop at their car pull out a pocket full of change and throw it on the ground while getting their keys. I know it’s a minor thing but it’s an indication of a pervasive attitude that the little things just don’t matter. In every aspect of life they ignore the little things and every thing ends up being more complicated as a result and the funny thing is they never learn and always make the same mistake next time around…

I got more but you need to be in the room with me to get the full benefit of the venom I have for the south…

Reno said yes

So Liz got an acceptance letter from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Not the top of her list… well it was actually at the bottom but the list but they did sweeten the deal. They offered her an assistance ship. She has to give them 20 hours a week in return for a stipend and no tuition costs. Now the only one to hear from is Reno Nevada. Than we still have to see if assistance ships for Road Island and Reno will be offered. So as of now Albuquerque is the top of the list. Also as a result we will be heading out west for a week or so 2 check out the school some time soon as they have to have an answer by April 15th…

Over the weekend Liz and I attended the International motorcycle show in Atlanta. This was both stimulating and aggravating at the same time. The stimulating part came from the Italian Sport bikes for the most part. Liz has always been a huge fan of Ducati and Aprilia but this year she got a look at the new Moto Guzzi’s and Husqvarna Dirt bikes decided she liked them as well and so do I. I then went looking for the new Buell Ulysses and found three of them on display and not one was set up so I could throw a leg over the damn things. They were laid over almost on their sides like they were going around a corner really fast, kind of odd marketing for bike that’s meant for dirt road use. Anyway there was some guy laying on the ground trying to get his butt in the seat and the frame it was bolted to was groaning and the nice Buell factory reps were freaking out because this guy was either going to hurt himself or the bike and they wanted none of that. They also had no idea how to get this mook to get off the bike with out being rude and were standing in a huddle looking concerned. That’s when I over herd one of them say “Maybe we should have brought on for people to sit on”. Pure genius…. Well we walk around and look at the new Air stream Base camp trailer, supper nice for hauling stuff and staying in. Can haul a bike, or even BallSpitters to an event and have a nice dry, or air conditioned, place to stay. We also looked at a motor home that hauled a couple of bikes in a rear garage that could also double as BallSpitters but the $255K price tag put that one off for a few decades. The bummer of the show was the new KTM Super Duke, a naked sport bike that’s been out in Europe for a couple of years and is new to the US for the 2007 model year. The reason it was a bummer is because KTM was a no show. They had no bikes at the show at all, zip, zero, nada…. Really a bummer that bike was on the short list. So here is the question should I get a

BMW F650GS http://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/bikes/bike.jsp?b=f650gs

Or

The URAL Gear UP? http://www.imz-ural.com/gearup/

Bad news Duck boy, Maryland said no thank you...

Does anybody know how to go about selecting an editor. And what’s the going rate?

Liz got an Acceptance letter from Road Island yesterday. Now were just waiting on Maryland, New Mexico, Reno and Massachusetts. Or a Job offer from Yamaha…

So Liz and I went to a Super Bowl part last night and we had a pretty good time. The party was being thrown by one of the women that Liz works with and it was pretty fun with too much food and a giant screen TV that seems to keep the Jones’s happy. Well most of the people there were my age…. Note: most of the people I know that are my age are kind a boring. Well this group lived up to my expectations. Guy number 1, he was in charge of the pizza, not ordinary pizza but deep dish Chicago Pizza. Guy number 1 was polluted before the game started or food was served. He kept going on and on about how you haven’t had a deep dish white pizza until you had one of his white pizzas. Verdict? I’ll let you know if it makes it past my colon, the mans idea of a white pizza was to visit the local cheese shop and put 2 pounds of five different white, or at lest yellow, cheeses on a soggy crust and baked it for an hour. That and some grilled onions….Nasty. Than Guy number 2, oddly enough he was guy number 1’s brother comes by and notes my HD shirt and we start talking about motorcycles. Not all that odd until I find out that most of the people that are at the party work with Liz at Yamaha, and I’m the only one in the building that owns a Motorcycle… OK so than comes guy number 3, you guessed it the other, other brother. I think he’s the smart one, tells me the other 2 are morons and I should avoid them like the plague. All this time Liz has found the only people that are under 30 and the three of them are talking shop…. Yamaha boat motors, but hay they were all good looking so I hung out there. We left at the end of the 3 quarter with the Bears facing defeat and Liz losing that warm all over fuzzy feeling she had for Yamaha. It seems that the other two girls were bagging on the company because of lack of promotion possibilities. That’s when I reminded Liz that all three of them worked on the same department and she was the one that was meeting with the district manager next month for lunch.

On a side note Liz has gotten addicted to Halo, the Video game…. The original… At first I thought it was cool, the wife is really getting into something I like…. It’s still pretty cool except she has no interest in any other game, even Halo 2 or playing online so we have been playing Halo over and over again, she still loves it but I’m a little board… and advice? She was up till 4 am killing Elite’s. I say Elite’s because she does not like the Flood and restarts the game when she gets there. She has beaten the game on Heroic and we have cooperative played through Legendary. But she hogs the xBox! I cant ever go on line and play the new games!

So it’s update time. Me, I’m working at Bank of America and part time at Best Buy, which is working out rather well because I can get over time at BOA and best but only works me once every other weekend and I still get my employ discount. Liz is in school prepping for her masters and working part time at Yamaha. The Yamaha gig has gone big time in a weird way. Liz started there a few months back doing temp work, you know filing, answering the phone and general scut work.

Well a month or so ago they asked her to work with sales doing refunds. So now the sales people bring her the accounts that are buying boat engines and have a coupon or get a special deal and Liz updates their billing. Well she started that job when the lady that was doing it went out on sick leave for minor surgery. The day before she started Liz and the lady went over how to do the job and showed Liz the 6 month back log on her desk. The lady was out for about 3 weeks and when she came back Liz had all the accounts current and was delivering same day response to the sales department. Mind you the other lady was full time and this was her major responsibility and Liz working 15 hours a week had caught up a 6 month back log in 3 weeks. Well the sales department was thrilled beyond words. The lady who was doing the job before Liz got there was less than happy.

The sales department asked if this could be Liz’s responsibility going forward and her boss said ok. That’s when the lady piped up saying it was her job and not some temps and was told to sit down shut up and be happy she still had a job. So Liz is doing great and has her first office enemy! Ok so that was about a month ago and the sales department has since found out that Liz worked in a call center at one time and start asking her a lot of questions culminating last week with Liz being asked to help develop a script to be used by sales to gather information on prospective customers.

That was last week, on Monday Liz has a meeting with her boss and is told that they are hiring a bunch of Temps to make the calls and they want Liz to run the hole thing, that’s when she gets told that sometime in late February or early March her boss want to take her to lunch and to meet he District manager.

So she asks me how much money she should ask for…..

xBox 360 good......

Gears Of War goooood.....

HD TV with 5.1 surround sound via optical cable that makes the HOLE DAMN HOUSE SHAKE!

Very very bad after the honey goes to bed…….


Gears Of War still gooooood