It's here...and done!

Just as fast as it arrived, it's finished. The 2010 Census.

After an evening of food and drinks with Becca & Josh in from College Station, Texas (much more to blog about there). I found the 2010 Census in my mailbox! Thanks for the heads up Gleason!

Apparently, your response is required by law so I'm not sure why the government wasted so much money of tv advertisements and mail teasers, which totally worked on me.

I started my census survey at 10:43 pm and was finished by 10:47 pm. I sure do wish they would have picked me for the 4 hour census, but there is always 2020.

And remember, postage is paid for, so you have no excuse for not sending yours back right away!

Go 2010!

It's coming

The 2010 Census is almost here! Today in the mail I received this teaser telling me that the census should arrive in my mailbox sometime next week.

I can barely contain my excitement. Census Fever. Do you have it?

Happy Birthday Abby!!

Many of you fine "unfiltered nonsense" blog readers out there might know that today is my birthday. Well, believe it or not, I have the honor of sharing this special day with my awesome niece, Abby.

While eating a "birthday lunch" together we discovered that I am double her age and she is the same age I was when she was born. There was also about 3 minutes where we tried to figure out if that would ever happen again mathematically and then we talked about cow farts.

She's was the cutest chubby cheeked little girl,

and she is growing up to be a beautiful young lady and quite the artist. I couldn't be more proud of her!

Can't you totally tell which self portrait is hers? And to top it all off that is all drawn by her writing her name over and over, no straight lines, just the word abby over and over and over. Amazing, right? Also amazing is that a girl in her class looks like Marilyn Monroe, or a least that's what I thought until she told me that was actually a drawing of Marilyn, not a classmate.

A K-State fan and all around ham ;)

But watch out, she's taking her drivers test on Tuesday and I have no doubts that she'll do this when driving for reals too :)

Happy Birthday Abner! I love you!

Who ya gonna call? GEESE POLICE!

In the corporate world of suburbia we have lots of ponds and geese. I don't know why, but these stupid birds never leave and during the spring/summer months they become a real nuisance.

Most of my beef with these birds lies in the fact that they stand in the middle of the road and won't move for minutes at a time, even when you honk the horn and yell at them. It's illegal to hit them with your car and they are big enough they can scare you into submission. My secondary beef with them is that they poop in the parking lot and right in front of the door entrances to my building. There have been many mornings when I'm late for work and they or their green poop is in my way.

However, I have a co-worker that had a run in with one last year and apparently they are also a very aggressive fowl so she has this comical (but probably legitimate) fear of them. It's running joke in the office.

Guess what someone saw in the parking garage today. A truck with a canoe strapped to the top of it and the words Geese Police painted on the side of the truck. That's right. I think these birds have pissed off the wrong people and now they are going to pay.

I will now spend the rest of the day looking out my window trying to see what the Kansas City Deputy Dogs do.

If any of you out there are looking for a new career, I suggest looking into a franchise, many corporate office parks could use the services I'm sure. And as an added bonus you can have this slogan painted on your vehicle, "Call us to get the FLOCK OUT!!"

**UPDATE** It's like a geese ghost town outside now. I didn't see any of the action go down, but there are no geese to be found anywhere outside. The Geese Police don't mess around. Stay on the straight and narrow, birds.

A lesson in traditions

As many of you know, there is a very exciting game coming up in the next 20 hours or so. My beloved Kansas State Wildcats, lead by mafioso Frank Martin, will take on the KU Jayhawks.

There is already a lot of "chatter" on facebook about the upcoming game and one post featured a youtube video of the KSU student section at Bramlage (you will never hear me refer to it as the Octagon of Doom) doing the Wabash Cannonball. The quality of sound wasn't that great on that video and I was left really wanting to hear the band blast that ditty out so I went to youtube to find a better version.

Imagine my surprise when I found this:

I'm not really sure where I thought this song came from or what it was about or how it became a K-State tradition, but I did not see this coming. It was much like the feeling I had when Becca and I realized that the band's name was not Haulin' Oats, but rather two dudes names, Haul and Oats.

If anybody of importance at K-State reads this blog I would like to encourage you to make this part of orientation or at the very least offer a 1 hour credit course that covers university traditions. You should probably also closely monitor the Wabash Cannonball Wikipedia page.

To any college friends who tried at some point to impart this wisdom on me, I apologize for acting like I was listening (doesn't this seem like something Steve Kirk would have known?). Clearly you were trying to teach me something important and I should have put down the beer.

Where's my wood?

Today is my 5 year anniversary at work. I can't believe it. It feels like twice that long. (that's what your suppose to say in regards to anniversaries right?)

(excitement in picture might be exaggerated since it's a Monday, but now you know what my cube sorta looks like.)

According to about.com the traditional 5 year anniversary gift is wood. There are no new pencils in sight right now, but technically I am bumped up to a nicer PTO package so I'll take a day off sometime soon and buy myself some wood. On this auspicious occasion though, I'd rather reflect on what the 5 years has seen.

• One company buyout.
• Two CEO's, randomly enough though the same CEO that was here when I started is now again the CEO.
• I've had 3 different Directors (but to be fair, I was only under the first one for a week), 2 different Managers
• 2 different job titles
• 5 softball seasons
• I've worked in 2 different buildings
• had 4 different cubes
• 3 or maybe even 4 computer upgrades
• 2 office chairs
• 2 name tags and
• 1 business day trip to Chicago on the company dime.
• I've laid out something like 107+ directories, had only a handful of meltdowns, worked with some client's I would swear were smoking crack when they edited a proof
• and made countless friends that have made the time fun.

So thanks for the steady income and saving me from a life of retail work at Target.

Music Monday

With the continuation of winter weather, I'm trying to will it away with "happy, sunshine music."

Seriously, if a 1,000 year-old groundhog can "predict" 6 more weeks of winter, my silly little blog can surely cancel 3 of those weeks out, right?

Here's Sarah Buxton, Lawrence Kansas native, with "Outside My Window."