BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Okay, folks…

You’ll be seeing something new on the blog posts these days… It looks a little something like this:

In fact, there is probably an icon just exactly like this one sitting just below the title of this very blog post. Uncanny, eh?

Well, you see, it’s like this… There is a plug in for WordPress which allows your blog posts to be converted to audio via a text to speech converter. Granted, it isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. For instance, it pronounces E K as Eck… and when I write one of my thoughtful pauses into a post… one which should sound and read something like a long hum… the converter stumbles over that with a hrrrmmmmm as you just heard.

I suppose this all means I will have to start adjusting my spelling on some things… However, I have already noticed that it doesn’t necessarily pronounce some normal everyday words all that well. And, I am not about to start spelling things phonetically just for the sake of the converter.

Still, like I said, although it isn’t perfect, it is a far cry better than the garbled phoneme spewing “Doctor Sbaitso” program that came with the original sound cards back in the day… read, prehistoric computer era.

But, what makes it totally excellent and incredibly cool is the fact that it now allows Brainpan Leakage to be listened to as well as read. This means you can subscribe to B L via Odiogo… the service that does the conversion… and download the entries as MP3’s or as sound files on your iPod. If listening is your preference, of course… Me, I prefer reading, especially since I stick pictures and even an occasional music link in my posts.

Either way, you’ll probably still want to subscribe to the notifications via the blog itself. That way, you’ll be able to click your way over here and read the entry whenever the text to speech converter stumbles a bit.

Anyhow, you can do the audio subscribing thing below. Or, you can find the same link in the Networked Blogs section of the menu on the right side panel.

Okay… I have some other words to write, so I’ll sign off. And never fear… Just because I am rambling now, it doesn’t mean the schedule has changed.  The next installment of… let’s see if this works… Maa waage… still deploys tomorrow.

More to come…

Murv

… ADDENDUM: Well, I edited this after the sound file had been generated, so if you listen you will notice that a couple of sentences are skipped… Also, my Mahwage substitute didn’t fare any better… Oh well. Apparently machines can’t speak with a lisp.

… ADDENDUM 2: Apparently the service re-gens updated versions of the file… I did not know that. Way cool.

Part 5 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: So I Have This Idea…

…And I’m, gonna get maie air air reed…

Okay, old song reference, I know. I’ll stop singing now.

Unfortunately, Tom Hanks wasn’t available for my bachelor party… He was busy building his career as I was preparing to embark upon this odyssey.  But, that really didn’t matter. Given that at that point in history we weren’t on speaking terms – and we aren’t right now either, for that matter ,(probably because we’ve never met), I figured I’d just find someone else to arrange the entertainment.

But, let me back up a second…

In the last blog, E K finally said yes to the big question. While you would think that I would have jumped up and run around the room screaming, “She said YES! She said YES! WooHoo, she said YES!” – a very logical assumption given the circumstances, mind you – the reality is, I didn’t. Truth be told, it took something on the order of 30 seconds, maybe even a full minute for it to sink in that she had given me an answer that was vastly different, and diametrically opposed to the one she had been giving me to date.

Now I had a problem. No ring. Yeah, back when I had originally broached the subject I didn’t have one either… I had just been winging it. Given the answers I had been getting, I hadn’t been in a hurry to go purchase one either… Fortunately, my frugal live-in girlfriend turned fiancee didn’t mind. I think that just for grins we ended up using a cable tie, or piece of string, or something innocuous that was laying around the shop at the time. I doubt she even has it anymore because she’s nowhere near as sentimental as me, but watch her read this blog and prove me wrong. If she does, I’ll be sure to let everyone know…

(Just as an aside, for the record, a few years later when things were no longer so tight, I saw to it that she received a full blown engagement/wedding set with as much gold and as many sparkly rocks as I could manage in a tasteful ring…)

At any rate, now a snowball began rolling downhill, and it just kept growing…

For one thing, we made arrangements to take E K’s parents to dinner, whereupon I asked her father if it would be okay for me to marry his daughter. Yeah, I know, old fashioned, but even though it seemed to surprise him I think he appreciated the gesture.

Then, we were in the middle of buying the house, which as noted in the first of this blog series, was a fixer-upper from hell. I suppose we were just in such a hurry to get out of the duplex – not because it was a bad place, mind you. Not at all. In fact, it was actually very nice, and the landlord was a great guy too. You see, it’s just that the lease had a “verbal-handshake” rider saying no pets.

I can see the question marks now… Yeah, Kathy’s cats… explain that one, Murv…

Well, you see, we had signed the lease on the duplex and were in the middle of shaking hands when the landlord said, “Oh, I forgot to ask, you don’t have any pets do you? Because, they aren’t allowed…”

At this point, E K and I simply looked at one another then turned to him and lied through our teeth. We had been looking for an apartment for what seemed like forever, and this was the first one in our price range that hadn’t rejected our application due to my rocky credit history and hers as well – you see, she wasn’t delinquent on anything, but having been married and at that point not officially divorced just yet, her name was tied to her ex-husband’s debts, which made it look like she owed way too much to way too many folks to be able to afford an apartment.

So, re-acquiring the earlier thread – we bought ourselves a fixer upper. Being twenty-somethings, giddy in love, and in a hurry to get out of an apartment before we had to sign another year long lease, we probably didn’t inspect things quite as closely as we should – and, by the same token, probably paid far more for the house than it was worth, which is most likely why they accepted our offer immediately with no qualms whatsoever… But, oh well, live and learn…

Here’s the thing – we had set the date for our wedding to be October 31. Halloween. Samhain. Not the traditional sort of date, but hey, given that on that night the veil between the worlds is said to be at its thinnest, relatives and friends who had already gone over to the other side (i.e. croaked) would find it much easier to attend… Hey, works for me.

At this point, all manner of things were in motion – for one, we were beginning to wonder if we were going to have to postpone the wedding for legal reasons. It seems the attorney handling E K’s divorce had been ditzing about, and while it was one of those uncontested, sign on the dotted line, thank you very much, goodbye sort of divorces, the legal eagle had been postponing and postponing getting the paperwork filed. She seemed to have a bit of a procrastination issue. Rule number 1, never use an attorney who advertises in the TV guide. Yeah, I’m not kidding… But, in this case it wasn’t EK’s “frugalness” to blame, it was the ex-husband’s militant stinginess. There’s a huge difference… But, I digress… The thing here being, in the state of Missouri you have to be  legally divorced for X number of days, (I can’t remember the actual number), before you can remarry. Or at least at that time, (back in the dark ages), that’s the way it was. I’m not sure what the statutes are these days.

Fortunately, the procrastinating mouthpiece finally got off the pot , or sh*t, or whatever she needed to do that she had actually already been paid to do.   The old marriage was dissolved and we ended up meeting the deadline with something on the order of 3 days to spare. So, that was all good.

Now came the new money issues… Obviously, since Kathy had been married before her parents weren’t going to pop for a wedding, even if they could have afforded it, so it was all on us. And, we had just bought a house, so we weren’t exactly flush with excess cash. We looked at halls, and even hotel suites, to rent for a reception but just couldn’t hammer them into our budget, no matter how hard we tried or which corners we cut. So, we finally made a decision… We would pour our limited funds into fixing up the house as best we could in the interim, buy some food, and have the wedding right there in the living room…

Yeah. Stupid eh? Well, we were young. Give us a break.

The problem we faced now is that by the time we reached this decision and had officially closed on the house, we only had about 30 days to make this happen. Somehow we did… (Remind me to tell you sometime about running a floor sander for hours on end…)

Of course, in the pictures you will see over the next few installments, it is obvious that things are woefully unfinished – no baseboards, partially sanded woodwork, and don’t even get me started on the kitchen, which remained untouched as far as remodeling for a few years. We were concentrating on the living room and dining room, since that was where things were to take place. The rest was, unfortunately, temporary storage for the time being…

So, where did this leave us? Obviously planning a wedding and reception, but it also left us being our own caterers as well. And, being the eclectic, bizarre folks we are, we didn’t want all the traditional wedding food one has , in Saint Louis, at least.  That being tasteless roast beef, baked mostaccioli, and green beans almandine. No, we just had to be different. Therefore, our menu ended up consisting of a spiral cut Honey Baked Ham® from none other than the Honey Baked Ham® company themselves. In addition, we also served veal parmigiana, and apple-rice curry. Erin, remember Erin from ComputerTrend, the busty blonde? Well, Erin’s husband was actually a restaurant manager at a local country club so he loaned us some extra chafing dishes they had laying about, which was a huge help. With that, we were almost finished with the menu save for several large boxes of assorted heat and serve hors d’oeuvres, also purchased from HBH… When we placed that order the guy at the counter called into the back, “I need x y number of boxes of Whores Duh-Vores…” E K had plenty of fun with that…

We ordered up a keg of beer,  and I even picked up everything I needed to make sauce for the veal patties. We should have been set, but we weren’t…

My dad dropped by for a visit and asked how things were going. Beaming, we told him all was good, and outlined the menu choices. He nodded, grunted, then asked, “So what kind of cake are you getting?”

Kathy and I looked at one another. Then we looked at him. Then we looked at one another again.

I said, “Uhm…uhh…”

Kathy said, “I guess we aren’t. We can’t afford one.”

My father raised an eyebrow, then snorted and said, “Bullshit. You can’t get married without a cake.”

With that, he reached into his wallet and withdrew a 100 dollar bill and handed it to Kat while adding, “Let me know if it costs more.”

And so, we went “cake shopping”… This was new to me. Even with all my experience with restaurants and diners, (on my mother’s side of the family) , I had never been all about the baking end of things… So, I did what any self-respecting man should do… I gave in to whatever E K wanted, listened closely so that if she needed help making a decision I chose whatever it sounded like she was leaning toward, and voila… We had a cake…

At this point all of the guys reading this are probably doing a rundown – “Lemme see… ya’ got ham, ya’ got beer, ya’ got cake… Yep, we’re good.”

If I had to guess, however, I’d say you women readers are most likely all pretty antsy at this point. I suspect – though I may be wrong – that you’re probably dancing around in your seats, shaking your fingers at the screen, and muttering, “But… but… but… what about… but…“

Do you mean, “What about The Dress?”

Yeah, I figured as much.

So, yeah… We also had to go wedding dress shopping. Yet another new experience for me, especially since I was wholly unaware that the groom was in any way involved in the selection of the dress.

Okay… We’ve established that this wasn’t Kat’s first rodeo. In addition to that, our house isn’t all that big, (i.e. no room for a 90 foot long train), and we were out of money. Also, while she can be as girly girl as the next woman, she isn’t all about too much foo-feraw…

And so, we went wedding dress shopping at… wait for it… Kmart®. Yeah, “Definitely Kmart, definitely definitely definitely Kmart…” I think I might have even picked up a 3 pack of tighty-whities while we were there.

Now, before you ladies get together a mob to come after me, it wasn’t my idea. It was Kathy’s. But, let me tell you something, she picked out an incredible dress and couldn’t have looked any better in my opinion, and it came in at around 40 bucks. She already had a brand new pair of white heels, so no new shoes were needed in her estimation. See what I mean about her being frugal? Yeah… it amazes me too…

So… Now were were set. She had a dress, we had a menu, the polyurethane was dry on the newly refinished hardwood floors, and we even had rings… we’ll get to those in a bit. My best buddy, Scott Ruddle, (after whom Detective Benjamin Storm in the RGI novels is modeled), was tapped to be my best man, and Erin (remember Erin?) was to be Kathy’s Matron of Honor. We had a license, and we even had a preacher – Kathy’s father, who is a Baptist Minister…

The day was fast approaching, and little did we know all hell was about to break loose…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Mobile Bachelor Party…