The Bat, The Hockey Stick, The Dust Pan

So first let me say that this story has been days in the making. Of course due to the seriousness of the events that I am about to unfold before you I was not very eager to place them on the ole blog. None the less this story is interesting enough and I knew I would sooner or later, so while I sit here on a late Saturday night being bored and wondering what makes the world go round, I thought I would tell you the tale of a bat, a hockey stick, and a dust pan.

This story really begins a week ago. Adam, JR, Karen, Chris, and myself were in the living room area when, out of the darkness, a bat comes flying through the air. Reacting how I do to most rodents, particularly flying ones, I began screaming and covering myself with a blanket. Before anyone laughs to hard at me I would like to mention that several other male members of this adventure party reacted in similiar fashions, so I was not alone. Meanwhile JR promptly knocked the bat out of the air with a smash brothers display box. The small creature landed on the ground and started making weird ticking noise. Karen began yelling for the poor little guy to not get killed, so her and JR picked the bat up in a shirt and carried it outside to release it. Obviously this may have not been the best idea, and if I know now what I didn't know then I would of smashed that little bastard then and there.

A day or two goes by without incident. I have been sleeping on the couch more and more during the summer because of the heat and the upstairs being unbearable. Early Wednesday morning I am woke up by Emma ( my chocolate lab puppy ) barking at the ceiling. There I sight my dear friend mr bat, back for another round. He quickly flies back upstairs where, most likely, his insertion point is hidden. At this point I decide just to go to sleep. This is another moment where if I knew then what I know now....

BARK! BARK! BARK! It is 7:30 am and I hear on the ground next to me a tick, tick, ticking noise. Emma standing about two feet away barking fiercly. Guess who was back and over stepping my personal boundries? The bat. I quickly leave my position on the couch and the little winged horror flies into my kitchen, lands on a high cabient, and begins monitoring me. He must of thought he was pretty clever watching me from there.

At this point I quickly decided enough was enough and action had to be taken even though I was deathly afraid of the bat, this new train of thought was mostly inspired by the thought process of my puppy possibly being injured by this wretch. I quickly grabbed my hockey stick that has been hanging out in our kitchen for some time, as I have yet to find a proper place for it. Using the blade of the stick I pushed the bastard into the air. Swooping around the kitchen and circling my head I quickly grabbed the lucky Smash Bros. display box that had found its way to the kitchen as well, and with one great swing I forced the little aviator into an emergency landing, where I quickly found our heavy metal shop dust pan and smashed my shortly acquainted friend. I removed the corpse of my ugly tenant and placed him in his own garbage back and set him in the dumpster outside. I continued about my day...

About an hour later I began to wonder if my puppy had had her rabies shots yet. As it turns out such a shot was not to be administered until about three or so weeks from this point. After explaining the event to the vet, ( my mom made this call actually) it was recommended that we get the bat tested. I couldn't say that no contact had been made between the bat and Emma since I had been asleep during the first initial encounters. Chris found the body in the trash can and took it to the local animal control department where they told us it would take three days to get results.

I didnt think too much about the situation for the rest of the day, or as Karen, JR, and Kyle came over. As it turns out though, as I learned the next day, Rabies can be spread from a dog to a person just by being licked, not to mention of course obvious ways like scratches and bites. Even if the dog is not showing symptoms.



For three days we had to sit and watch our dog very carefully hoping that the results would come back and relieve our fears. If the bat was found to be positive and carrying rabies its hard to say what would happen to Emma, I am sure it would be something along the lines of either a really expensive quarantine, or just being put down. Neither of those options were very good in my mind, not to mention do you know what a person has to get if they are thought to have rabies? Shots, not one, but six, six shots in the stomach. I started to think about how maybe Chris, John, Karen, JR, Kyle, and I could maybe get like a group discount on the doctor visit.

Luckily Friday the most relieving phone call came through around 4pm letting us know the bat was negative. I can not even explain how relieved I was. Its very weird looking at your former favorite little puppy with the thought that they were going to turn into a crazy zombie dog at any moment.

Good Grief

All the way to the apple store in twelve oaks to get my iPhones sound fixed and all they hadto do was clean it....

Sigh

At least I can hear now but while I sit here typing on a bench at twelve oaks I think maybe I could of just cleaned the thing myself....

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Overwhelmed

Its an over whelming, unexplainable excitement surging through every inch of my body.


A new song from Jack's Mannequin comes out tomorrow on iTunes. The song is title, "The Resolution" and you can currently check it out here on jack's Mannequin's Myspace. I know some of you are probably like, really Matt? really? On the contrary however I cant even explain how much I am anticipating this album to come out next month. I still listen to the last album, Everything in Transit, almost religiously. This little taste, this one song, a hint of whats to come, is already blowing me away.

I don't have a lot of anything else to write about at this time, but I had to say something about this, the pleasent surprise as I checked the Jack's Mannequin website, and the plans I have tonight, staying up waiting for the EP to show up on iTunes. I highly recommend you guys at least go check out the song on the myspace profile.

Excitement and Fear

Before I get into this post I should probably explain that I was promoted last December to a manager like position at Delta College Audio/Visual Department last November. I dont really manage much or anything, but often when the student workers find themselves over their heads, I am the guy they turn to, to bail them out.

That being said the fall semester is now only a few weeks away and our department is quickly realizing that our entire student staff is leaving, meaning we are hiring an entire new set of students. I've never really been around for this type of large turn over of student employees so it should be interesting. Normally we only hire one or two new employees, we throw them through some quick training the week before and if they run into a little bit of trouble, it is quickly corrected because we generally schedule them with someone that has some experience. However, with an entire new group of students that won't be possibly obvisouly. On one hand I am excited to see who we end up with. I'm hoping of course for some intellegent students that can catch on quickly, but you never know what we might end up with; Thats why I am equally scared. My boss already made a few jokes about buying a good pair of jogging sneakers for the first few weeks of the semester as I can only imagine I will have several nervous, panicked students calling for our help all at once.


The applications start flying in this upcoming Monday and we will start getting a taste of the what our options are. Hopefully all goes well, if not I might be investing in a good pair of Nikes and a large bottle of aspirin.

Its been so long...

Oh to write again....

Moments ago my head literally almost exploded as I tried to think of all the things that have happened since the last time I placed a few words on this site for the world to see. Almost everything about me has changed in some way and at the same time I feel the same. Its amazing to think about really, to watch a winding twisting road similar to a piece of spaghetti dropped on your kitchen counter, and to have at the end of it, something that looks very much like the beginning.

Things are not always the same of course...

Instead of trying to catch you up, and tell you all that there is of the past 14-16 months of an empty blog, I am just going to start with today. I am going to pick up and just go. No baggage, no regrets, nothing to drag out of the memory banks, just today, and today is calm.

Today I began by waking up to our puppy barking at me to go outside. Her name's Emma and she's somewhere around the age of five months. A chocolate lab that often appears more bear like than anything resembling a dog as she constantly gets into any food/trash/random items she can find. She is a funny dog though, refusing to go outside into our fenced off backyard without someone sitting with her, so there I spent fifteen minutes this morning sitting on my back porch.

I moved to the city sometime ago and it is still an interesting adjustment sometimes, pretending to enjoy your neighbors and wave to them as they wave on their way to the great world outside. Listening to the noises of cars, trains, and bicycles going by compared to the sounds of a calm country field. I only really sit and notice it during Emma's "potty" times as the rest of the day I generally stay inside in the comfort of my abode.

After Emma had done her business I came back inside to begin my morning routine of checking fantasy sports, random forums, facebook, all the usually things an iPerson checks. I started playing Age of Conan a few months ago, a new MMO that was just released. Its probably not the most productive thing to do but I enjoy it none the less. We, my brothers started playing the game as well, found some old friends from our World of Warcraft days and started a guild. The one thing I definitely think is interesting about MMO's and guilds in particular is when you are the leader of one, you quickly seem to have to drum up your manager skills or learn some quick. I suppose that's an upside.

I eventually made it to work today, nothing to interesting going on at the college today, except that the payment deadline for classes is going on. This is pretty exciting for those of us working on campus. All summer the halls have been sparceley populated, and now we get a taste of what its like to have people around again. I won't lie I made a few trips around to see the lines of people trying to get into the administration office and the cashier's office. I wanted to see what there was to expect of the entry level crowd coming in this fall. Beyond that my day is slowly dwindling down as I sit here and type away unsucsessfully stringing together random thoughts and pararaphs in this blog while I wait for the eight o'clock hour to approach. It feels good though, the writing that is, or typing in all reality. I think I am going to have to keep this up a little more often.

This weekend is the labadie pig gig in bay city, so I hope to attend that and I will be sure to write down anything note worthy and deliver it to you sometime monday. I might write before then though, you never know what each day might bring and what exciting story I might have. Until then, its good to see you reader.

For John