Roughin' It With Friends

An old friend text messaged and emailed yesterday. He is quite thorough. He now lives down in Arkansas working for what I like to refer to as Satan the Devil, you may know it better as Wal-Mart Corporate Headquarters. He used to live here in Stinkin Lincoln, in fact grew up here. His name is Josh and he is a subscriber to this blog and has the same sentiment for Stinkin Lincoln as I do, but for different reasons. His sister just had her first baby and he came back to get a look at the little rascal. While he is here he is going to go camping with Vanessa, me and some friends of ours. We are old camping buddies, so thinking about going camping with him conjured up some old memories.
One autumn a group of us went to Waubonsie State Park. It's was a chilly evening and we were gathered around the camp fire roasting marshmallows and talking. I can't remember what Josh said exactly but it was something in regards to my short, not-so-slim physique. At that exact moment, I just so happened to have a perfectly roasted, gooey marshmallow on the end of the stick in my hand. With one quick flick of the wrist the molten marshmallow was sent hurtling through the air towards Josh. It was one of those slow motion moments, where you can see Josh's smug look turn into terror as the marshmallow is headed for him. As it reaches Josh, it hits him square in his, how shall I put this... , zipper of his shorts. The gang around the campfire burst into laughter, that is everyone but Josh. You see, Josh is a die hard camper. When he goes, he views it as a challenge, he wants to actually rough it. How this pertains to the story is that part of Josh's roughing it means no change of clothes. Here he is with a liquefied marshmallow on his only pair of shorts. What to do? On this cool evening, he decides he must get the sticky mess off of his shorts. So, he goes off and takes a jug of water and washes off the goo, not even bothering to remove the shorts, none the less. He returns to the campfire looking as if he peed his pants. Laughter erupts once again. It's times like these that make me look forward to getting out of Stinkin Lincoln for a couple days, and enjoy the simple things in life. Truth be told, I would look forward to getting out of Omaha to do the very same thing. Ah yes, give me the simple life.

Traffic Part I

The word horrendous should be synonymous with "Lincoln Traffic". I am not talking about rush hour traffic, I am making reference to traffic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. I will explain. Growing up in Omaha, it was known as the 10 minute city. Virtually any part of the city could be reached in 10 minutes or less (unless you took 72nd Street). Now, not so much. But still, considering it's size, one can get around fairly quickly. For instance, last night I had a job at 108th & Maple in Omaha. The manager lived in Council Bluffs. When we got done I felt bad she had to drive "all the way back" to CB. But she said that it was really only about a 15 minute commute with the interstate. With that information, I figure it's around 15 miles or so to her house. Now here in Stinkin Lincoln, to go that far takes quite a bit longer. During non rush hour traffic, it takes me 25 minutes to get from my house to the Waverly I-80 entrance, which is about 15 miles, maybe a little less. Don't even get me started about how long it takes during rush hour. I have noticed that people here in Stinkin Lincoln have developed coping skills to deal with the traffic. They don't even realize it's bad. It's like a bunch of zombies behind the wheels of all these cars. They don't even know what to do when they have more than one lane of traffic to choose from. (Usually they just bottle everything up, so the non-zombies have to suffer) You will pull up to a red light, which happens at every intersection with a light (Apparently Stinkin Lincoln officials have not read the manual on how to time their lights), there will be two lanes of traffic to choose from, yet you will have 15 cars in the left lane and maybe 1 car in the right lane. I think to myself, is there something up ahead that is going to impede my ability to get over once the light turn green? No, the zombies apparently just do whatever the zombie in front of them does. Zombie see, zombie do. Well, it is apparent to me that "traffic" is going to be a recurring topic here in "Stinkin Lincoln". So, I will save the rest of this rant for later. Until then, remember, don't drive angry.

Stinkin Lincoln Defined

Well, I've done it again. With my lack of street smarts and an urban dictionary on hand, I've gone and composed something that can be taken the wrong way. Apparently "Stinkin Lincoln" in the Urban Dictionary is, "An EXTREMELY smelly bowel movement". I found this out when googling "Stinkin Lincoln" to see if I could find any pictures that might be funny to add to my dashboard. It took me a minute to figure out the connection, but then I got it. I am sure if you take a moment, you too will understand, especially if you had a set of Lincoln Logs as a child, or like me, as an adult. Though there are parts of Lincoln that smell very distinct, I would never refer to it as an EXTREMELY smelly bowel movement, mildly maybe, but never EXTREMELY. Really, Omaha is more reminiscent of a Stinkin Lincoln than Lincoln is. I will never forget that aroma coming from the packing houses by my grandparents house in South Omaha. That is a smell you will never forget. See, Lincoln isn't all bad.

New Frontier

Well, here we go. Up until the past few days, I thought blogging was a waste of time and udderly stupid. Now I just believe it to be a waste of time. But, here I am typing when I should be sleeping. What's the purpose of this blog. Well, I am not really sure to be honest. I guess it will define itself as time goes on. My initial thought is to give me a place to; 1. Vent my, how shall I put this, frustration with a small town that has gotten too big for it's streets. And 2. Reconnect with my old stomping grounds, Omaha. Omaha has certainly changed since I left 13 years ago, mostly for the better. But the things I miss about are still there. Zio's Pizza for one. The other day I found myself in Omaha to do a job with a couple of my employees. I told the guys to go to the job and get everything set up, and I would go and grab us a pizza from Zio's. As I am waiting for the pizza to get done, my right man, Juan, calls and says that the job wasn't expecting us to be there. It seems the district manager forgot to tell them they would be staying until midnight so we could clean their floors. Though I was frustrated, I used this opportunity to bond with my guys. They came over to Zio's, and we ate pizza and drank beer. A fun time was had by all. Well, that's it for today. I will do my best not to ramble on from here on out.