The work red-tape beard is still present as of this typing. I survived Capital Planning last week, and mid-year performance reviews, and the new desktop equipment should arrive tomorrow. That's the good. The flip side is that Lacy's leave of absence starts next week and we don't have a replacement lined up. And the kicker is that Merrell's second senior manager resigned last week - that's two this month. Both would affect me at least a little - one's the reporting guy, the other was production support. The worst is that Doug P. is interested in one of the spots. Can't blame him for looking for bump up - he certainly deserves it. That's a huge impact to me crew, though - yikes. I think we have a solution worked as of today and minimizes the damage. Fingers crossed.

It's been a wet one in Houston this week. Flash flood warnings again tonight, and 2-4 inches possible tomorrow. Wish some of this would go up to DFW - the family crew up there is starving for rain. Well, at least their yards are. It's been quite a damper on things, too. Too wet to mow the yard (not a bad thing). I'll be glad when Fall rolls around. Despite the weather (or maybe because of it), I'm trying to get back into the gym - twice this week so far. I was doing very good with this in 2006 right up until the Turkey trip.

Not a lot of movies since the last post. You, Me and Dupree was last weekend, and was okay. I generally like Owen Wilson. Disposable, but fun. TV is standard summer fare. The evil Fogal family got eliminated on Treasure Hunters. Amen. The talent-show things are really annoying me - they're all over the place. Thank goodness for Big Brother: All-Stars. I only watched during season 6 (last year), and don't know many of the people. And to be honest, this season hasn't been great ... until this week. The Power of Veto competition was insane this week - ending in Kaysar and George shaving their heads and George agreeing to eat slop for 60 days to stay in the game. That was topped by Evil Dr. Will's speech at the ceremony. Unbelievable. And from the internet stories and links, what CBS showed was the mild parts. Thank you Jokers Updates and YouTube. And a suggestion to CBS - your ratings might not be so low if you actually showed what was going on in the house instead of the cleansed/primped version. And how about putting the live feeds on a HDTV sub-channel?

Interesting to watch the teaser news clips today. Fox just ran a promo about Lance Bass of N'Sync coming out as gay, stating that he's saying "Bye, Bye, Bye" to girls. Followed by the Washingto Supreme Court reversing a lower court ruling declaring a gay marriage ban unconstitutional. Equal rights aside, the "Defense of Marriage Acts" label that gay marriage opponenets have chosen just bugs the crap out of me. The divorce rate in the US has never been higher - depending on where the stats come from, the likelihood of a new marriage ending in divorce is between 40 and 50%. My new brother-in-law is on marriage #3, and my cousin is going through a divorce from hell after the husband cheated on her throughout the 17 year marriage. The people trying to defend marriage need to start defending it against those who can already get married.

Enough seriousness for tonight...

Office rains...

and when it rains, it pours. Okay, so today is day #1 of Imran's leave of absence. Scheduled for 3 months (although it could be shorter) while his mom has surgery overseas, it's the first staffing pain in the ass. Soon to be followed by Lacy's leave on August 1 as she moves across country. Those were the knowns. But of course there's more. This afternoon after talking over some project stuff, Doug lets it drop that he saw the position in Merrell's group left open by Jimmy's departure two weeks ago and he's interested in it. So now I'm torn. From Doug's perspective, I don't blame him at all. He's insanely capable, and could do a good job in any spot. It's a bit of a stretch for him to jump into a senior project management spot directly from DBA work, but I'd bet on him. On the other side, I have issue with how Merrell runs her team. Frequently patronizing, oftern micro-managing, and just odd. And I can't help but take it personally when someone that works for me would consider that a better career spot. Enough of that.

This week is quite hot in Houston - the car thermometer read 101 yesterday when driving around, and that doesn't take into account the humidity. Really gets in the way of doing much outside of work and crashing on the couch in front of the TV. At least it's not as dry as Dallas - sounds like they're going to be even more rationed starting in August.

TV Review of the day: Treasure Hunters
Rating: two drinks

A summer-season ripoff of The Amazing Race with a little promise. The host is an emotionless zombie who was apparently too busy to actually be present for any tapings - all of his bits are delivered via video over the (queue product placement) MOTOROLA RAZR phone. The challenges, while not *that* difficult, are more challenging than the more recent AR series have had (the earlier Race's had more mental puzzles). TH also sports the team that became my most hated the fastest - the Fogals. This team (two parents, one daughter) lost me in episode 1 when the father (a preacher) waxed poetic about whether they would be able to lie during the course of the game. Ten minutes later he swam under another competitor who was struggling to tread water and stole the clue out of the box she was holding on to. Nice. Topped off by prayers imploring God to help them in the game. Like he doesn't have more pressing things to watch over. Their annoyingness has been reinforced on subsequent shows by the insanely dramatic whining of daughter Kayte (yes, that's how her name is spelled). But I'm still watching. :)

Movie Review of the day: Leeches!
Rating: An entire bottle of vodka

This gem was on Sci-Fi yesterday afternoon when I got inside after mowing the yard. Now I love a good, bad movie. Honest - Cannibal Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death is a classic, plus anything that's been overlaid by Mystery Science Theater 3000. According to the IMDB, Leeches was filmed in just 6 days, and it shows.

The basic premise has something to do with a college swim team taking steroids, and either the steroids create the leeches, or it makes the athletes taste good to the leeches. Either is just an excuse to show as much hot guy skin as possible. Swimmer in the pool, hot guy in the shower, dude swimming in the lake, etc. - it's probably the most homoerotic thing I've ever seen on basic cable. At one point I could see the fishing line that was dragging the "leech" around the corner. And the closeups when the college kids were being attacked were actually hand puppets. If you make it through to the end, watch the last scene where the survivor goes into the labratory and check out the camera angle combo with the skeleton and the tubing on the table. Hilarious.

A true gem for anyone who loves bad movies or wants to see college guy skin. Even then, watch with a strong drink in one hand. Truly unbelievable.

Beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Wow - 6 weeks and no activity here. Time to resurrect things. Not that many people actually look at this (but then, that might turn out to be a good thing). Post to come soon (while I watch BB7 tonight).