Another Round .. Happy St. Patty's Day

Chicago is not too far away from where I live .. and every year down there they dye the river for St. Patricks day. Yes, they dye the whole river green. Here's a picture:

When we took one of our first trips to Chicago after we moved here, we did the whole tourist thing. Took the bus tour of the city and heard all the interesting facts about various buildings and locations. One of the things they talked about as we cut back and forth across the city was the river. The river used to flow into Lake Michigan. Due to the polution of a city, the river was carrying too much harmful trash and polution into the lake. Since they couldn't really control the polution back then like they can now (this was in the late 1800's) they did the next best thing. They reversed the flow of the river.

Pretty cool yes? I thought so. My inner engineering geek was immediately intrigued. I was no longer listening to the tour guide talking about this shopping area or the building that Oprah films in. I was looking at the river and trying to figure out how exactly one would go about reversing the flow of a river. Yes, I actually researched this on the net when I got home because I had to know. They used a serious of canal locks to redirect the flow of the river into a new "Sanitary and Ship Canal" that they had designed for this purpouse. Thus preventing the flow of toxins and garbage into the lake.

I know you probably don't care, but I studied civil engineering and for quite a while thought that is what I wanted to do for a living. Then I got into computers.. and never looked back. I have several relatives who are civil engineers though, and while I was studying that subject, my uncle invited me to do an internship with a civil engineering firm that he knew of in VA. I spent the summer with them working on various construction projects with this company. My uncle was a big project guy with the firm he worked for. He was more into the planning end of things. Doing the evaluations and coming up with the solutions to the problems that he was presented. Many a times getting lost in his own thoughts despite anything going on around him.

This provided my cousin with ample opportunities for entertainment. There we would all be, my aunt, two cousins, myself and of course my uncle sitting around talking over dinner. At random times, my uncle would clearly just drift off into his head analyzing some project or issue he had to come up with a solution for at work. Just lost in his own thoughts, he would usually stop eating even and just kind of be staring blankly into space. Every time my cousin would see this, he would look at him and then quite loudly shout out "REINFORCED CONCRETE" and my uncle, hearing a work related term would snap out of his daze. Maybe you had to be there, or I'm just easily amused, but it was funny every time.

That was also the summer we developed a top 10 country music video countdown. Now neither myself nor my cousin really like country music, but that was back about the time that MTV stopped actually playing music on a channel called "Music TeleVision". Go figure. More Real World and Road Rules please! Anyway.. we were flipping through the stations one day and on CMT there was a video for a song called "God Bless Texas" and we happen to catch the part with hot chicks in bikinis around the pool. We were intrigued. The planets had aligned that day it seems and it was video after video filled with hot chicks. So we ignored the music and set out to rank the videos based on the quality and quantity of scantily dressed females. Hey.. this was important stuff we were working on here. Sure its no cure for cancer or anything, but once we had them ranked, it made our lives much easier. Now when we were watching another program, we could quick switch to see what video was on.. and then we could decide on its rank on the list if it was worth possibly missing part of the other program we were watching to make sure we caught a glimpse of the hot chicks in the video.

Oh mock if you will, but this was manly efficiency at its finest. I mean seriously.. it was country music for crying out loud. You surely don't want to get stuck listening to that crap if you aren't distracted by a nice rack and a skimpy outfit or a nice ass in some tight jeans. I miss the 80's big hair band music videos. They had the right idea. Rock music... with mostly naked chicks squirming over the hoods of cars or dancing on stipper poles. Want a good example? Check out Warrant's "Cherry Pie" video. You will have to go here as I cannot imbed that one. You want to talk about some classic lyrics ..

Swingin' in the living room

Swingin' in the kitchen

Most folks don't 'cause

They're too busy bitchin'

Swingin' in there 'cause

She wanted me to feed her

So I mixed up the batter

And she licked the beater

If you don't catch the meaning there.. you should really get out more and join the rest of us with our minds in the gutter. :P I started this whole thing off talking about St. Patty's day, so enjoy some green beers with friends tonight and maybe if you play your cards right you can find someone that will go home with you and lick your beater for you. ;)