lunar eclipse

i chased the moon last night in an attempt to get a great photo for the site. the shots came out blurry. i was disappointed. but it offered me the opportunity to think...

i wondered about previous generations of hats--pagans, for instance. i don't know anything about that lifestyle. but i wondered if there was some magical, mystical celebration which took place in stone henge because of the lunar phenomenon in ages past.

i wondered about little south american tribes still living in 10th world conditions and pondered the reactions of the elders of such a thing, or the children. did they think the gods were for them? against them?

the moon was so brilliant that i thought it took up the entire sky, but in my blurry recapturing of the moments, i realised it was small and the sky was vast.

i have this fun, new thing i've been doing where i go to the first movie that's showing when i get out of work.


here i am eating a pretzel. i know it looks like i'm hyperventilating. i just wanted to keep my pretzel safe from germs. i'm not trying to breathe here, people. i mean, i am. you know what? nevermind.

here i am watching the movie. it was a little strange for my taste. it had good reviews and bad reviews and all i have to say about it is... "whaaaaa...?" you know... i prefer movies that have happy endings. this one did not. i left it and my soul felt a little tortured.

here i am sort of wiping away a few tears that came to rest on my little hat-cheeks. it was so sad. one little lie and two worlds were torn apart. horrible.

i obviously needed a pick-me-up afterward and so went to minsky's with the gang.

everyone else is a little camera shy, so i kept getting my photo taken. i have to admit, it got a little old after a while.

except for the waiter, who seems a little scary.

i ordered the fabulous garlic cheese bread for an appetizer. it was amazing! loved every bite of it.

for the entree, i shared the 5 cheese pizza with another person. it hada lot of rosemary on it, which i prefer in my calzones, but i'm not complaining. i think the rosemary added a nice element.

afterward, everyone sat around and talked. i was a little tired. so, i eventually excused myself.

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!

i passed a guy on the highway this morning. he was standing on the edge of the road, pretty close to the metcalf exit of I-435. he was holding up a cardboard sign that said, "STRANDED," in green magic marker.

now... i understand that there are random bits of garbage polluting the edges of the hi-way. i can see that he might have picked up the carboard in a nod-to-macgyver-moment. the thing i cannot wrap my little hat brain around is this:

where did he get the marker?

seems to me that everytime i need a marker, i am "s.o.l." i can barely find a pen when i need one, much less a magic marker.

i so very much wanted to swerve over the three lanes and ask the man where in the sam blessed hill he got his freaking marker, but the traffic was insane (more insane than these ramblings, if you can fathom it), so i opted to stay in my lane and be driven slowly mad by the plaguing question:

where did he get the marker?

p.s. the guy shown above is a financial analyst. don't let those sign holders fool you. next time, ask them where they got the marker.

someone exactly like me! only different!

i met another hat yesterday! his name is george-with-a-j! he looks just like me! only, he's a little more colourful. and he doesn't have any arms. or legs, come to think of it. and he has a little curly q on the top of his head. :) i met him at a party at the dot's! i was helping out in the kitchen and lo and behold! there was someone else helping too!



i think we did a great job setting up! the dot disappeared and entertained guests with her band and we got everything rolling:



i know it doesn't look like a lot, but we totally fed twenty people! there was more stuff on the stove. beef. yuck.




after dinner, the other guests worked in the kitchen and george-with-a-j and i hung out in the dining room with our hot chocolates and chatted. if you're wondering how he managed to drink his hot chocolate, i'll tell you: he adds lots of marshmallows! we exchanged numbers and i invited him over to my house for the evening tonight. i have a fun bbq out in the back yard. he said that would be great and we made a plan for george-with-a-j to head over tonight.



saying goodbye was interesting. have you ever hugged another same-sex person and sort of put your heads in the exact same place? like... you lean to the left and they lean to the right and then you're trying not to kiss and you have to turn your face away? yeah... we had one of those moments. that was a little... creepy and awkward. i mean... we're two heterosexual hats, here. yeesh! just didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. (*shudder*)


i have to be honest, because of our strange hugging predicament the night before, i was a little worried that george-with-a-j wouldn't show up for dinner tonight. he was a little late and he didn't call. i kind of hate that, but... he's new and eventually, i will explain to him the gilbert rules. anyway!!



yup. there he is, coming up the walk. somehow, he managed to avoid all the doggy poo floating around in the yard. the mail lady didn't (she was really late coming by today) and she actually MADE ME STOP what i was doing--even though i OBVIOUSLY had company and clean her shoes.



at least i didn't let the dog eat her. you would think that would have made her happy. but no. so.. there i am with the clorox disinfectant. she held the shoe for me like i was incompetent or something. but we did manage to get it cleaned.


then, george-with-a-j and i went into the back lawn and sat down to a nice fire i had going in the fire pit. we had a couple of post-psycho-mail-lady beers and enjoyed the fire and the smells of burning flesh (okay, i do eat some meat--yeesh!).


eventually, after some scraping and flipping, the hot dogs were ready. no laughing about the cans. i'm the tallest hat in my family, by the way. and the tallest hat in the office. remember the monitor on the phone books? yeah, well... don't you forget it. the meat was great. the beans were delicious. george-with-a-j and i really had an awesome time together.


but as with all good things, there must be an end at some point. not sure what's up with our apparent predisposition toward awkward hugs...? interesting. hmh. i'll have to ask the tall blond what she thinks. she has pretty good gaydar.

car troubles

so... today after work, the tall blond's headlight fell off again. happens all the time apparently. because i'm the man of the house, she asked for some help with fixing it. i rewired the lights, but we just could not get the headlights to stay in place. i know it looks like i'm not doing anything, but trust me, i am. (i can't believe i'm typing this or even showing you photos of this, but i KNOW you wouldn't believe me otherwise). she duct tapes everything together. EVERYTHING. an apparently, everytime her headlights fall off, she just goes out, gets more and duct tapes those onto the car, too. like, my day wasn't hectic enough!



while i was in there, i decided to check her tranny fluid. apparently, she let it go completely empty a while back. blonds! she left the funnel in the car, which was nice. and the levels seemed to be okay. so, i guess that was good. whoever decided that women could live on their own or drive cars had obviously never met the tall blond girl.


here it is. her car with the new headlight. the scrappy strip to the far right--that's where the old duct tape flew off the highway this morning along with the old headlight. fortunately, her brother had the foresight to stockpile new headlight materials for her. if he's so good with cars, i don't understand why he doesn't just fix it (really!) for her. anyway... after all this time working with the duct tape, i recalled an email from earlier today which she sent out from my email address (not too bright that one) where she told someone she could be creepy and tie me up and duct tape my little mouth shut.


so, i hit her in the head with the frying pan and tied her up and duct taped her mouth shut. now, who is whose daddy?!?!?! hahahah! totally kidding, man. i don't hit chics. i convinced her to pose for this photo. i thought it would be funny. and that bump on her head is from the accident, NOT me.



man, this camera is cool! i'm off to watch more gilmore girls and RE-lax. i'm exhausted.
-hat
p.s. those gilmore girls are cute! ;P

oy vey! this day has been weird!

there i am, sitting at my computer, trying to work. only, over the weekend, something crazy happened and i lost all access to everything. the network shut me out! i called our IT guy and he said, "Gilbert who? Gilbert Hat? We don't have a Gilbert Hat working here."

Really?! That's not what my paycheck says.



Then, sans the computer, I had to give an enormous production meeting. I had this beautiful PowerPoint presentation all worked out and put together. There were charts. There were graphs. There were pictures of happy employees and elated customers! But no! I couldn't use my happy little PowerPoint presentation. I had to use the dry erase board and those stinky little markers.



And NOW!! I have THE WORST headache on the planet of the history of the universe of the world. Stinky markers. Stupid job. Silly IT people. I just want to go home and go to bed.

What a Week!

my mornings usually start with me lying around in bed. i think about getting up, but sometimes it takes a few minutes for me to actually do it. my bed is a really nice futon in the office downstairs. there's a great deck just outside the glass doors (you can't see them here). sometimes, when i wake up, i like to go outside and sit on the deck and breathe in the new day. it's great to be alive!



i work in a fairly fast paced environment. a lot of my day is spent sitting in front of the computer. it may not seem like that big of a deal, but let me tell you! it's a lot of work! as you can tell from my picture, i'm the tallest hat around, so i have to put the monitor up on phone books when i work.



sometimes, i like to sneak back into the break room and catch the latest from the wall street journal. friday had some interesting articles. anti-mormonism was compared to anti-semitism. i have some views on that. for now, i'll keep them to myself. my favourite part of the morning is the pape. it's great. but eventually, i have to get back to work.

there are times i have to do a lot of running around. right here, this may look like i'm just answering the phone, but it's not true. i mean, i am answering the phone. but, the call is for the owner of the company. so, i have to write down who is calling and what company they're with and why they are calling--a lot of times, the owner gets cold calls which he refuses to take--and then i have to run the post-it all the way back to the owner's desk. he'll give me a "yay!" or "nay!" and then i'll run back to the phone and either transfer the call or get their number and shoot the big guy an email.

after all that running around, i usually like to head into the break room for a diet coke. there's a tall blond girl at work who says i'll die from drinking all this diet soda, but see all those bagels back there? she eats them with lots of cream cheese. so. now who is going to die young? aspertame or clogged arteries? you tell me.

getting home at night, the work doesn't seem to end. there are dishes to do, life to take care of.

but there's always an opportunity to relax when everything is done. my favourite song is "in the secret, in the quiet place." not sure on the actual name, but i just love the picking pattern i've got going on for that song. i could sit and play for hours. that's me at the dot's house, jamming to the praise choruses.

hello, my name is hat

hello. my name is hat. i am a native of cincinnati, ohio, but was abandoned in kansas city missouri a few weeks ago. it was one of the lowest points of my life. my close friend and companion of a very long time just left. and didn't say goodbye. it was such a low point, in fact...


that for the first few weeks, i crawled into the rocking chair with a blanket wrapped around me and drank a lot. i blew my nose a lot, too. i was so devastated. who does that to a hat? just leaves them? it was horrible. just horrible. but then one day...


i got up. made myself some tea and sat down to the great oswald chambers and decided to let things be what they would, carpe diem, i say!



i did some much needed laundry, as you can see. and i got on with my life.


hi, my name is hat. i now live at the sparrow's nest in kansas city, missouri. and this is my story.