Taking A Big Hit

Man, is my ass sore. (And no, it doesn't have anything to do with March Madness, you sick freaks!) Although, it does kinda feel like I've been bent over and violated by a very large and very angry convict.

I just finished my taxes and Uncle Sugar just worked me over like a pimp who found out one of his girls was holding out on him. So yeah, I'm feeling poor and broke again. I coughed up some cash to The Man, but the rest is going on the installment plan. What sucks is that my 'reported' income was so low that I barely had any taxes deducted all year from the weekly bag of peanuts that the casino paid me. Then I got a stack of W2G's from all of my poker winnings and that pushed me up into a more costly bracket. All I can say is 'Ouch!'.

And I've got that whole 'when it rains it pours' thing going on too, because it didn't help that my shift got canceled last night, either. I got into work and there was a no-limit game going with several tall stacks in the game. That looked juicy, but then one guy immediately went broke, and from the time I walked from the poker room to the employee cage and back, another guy left, one more player went broke, and the game busted. So I turned right back around and clocked back out a minute later. I hate losing a shift like that, but then again, I've been picking up lots of weekend shifts lately, so I'm sure I'll make up for it over the next few days. (Hell, I even got a call during the Madness on one of my days off--they wanted me to come in and work one night). And I saw that next week's schedule is out and I picked up a weekend swing shift, so that'll help ease the pain a little, too.

But I'm off tonight, so I'm gonna relax and get some reading done and maybe catch a movie or two from the DVR. Two weeks ago, I signed up for HBO just so I could watch The Pacific during it's first run, and I got three months of free Showtime and the Movie Channel, so I've been recording all kinds of stuff that I've wanted to see.

First of all, The Pacific totally lives up to the hype. Just like Band of Brothers, it is one of the best mini series ever put on TV. I'll eventually get the whole set on DVD once they release it. I've also seen a couple of excellent movies in the past week--The Bank Job and Traitor. Both are totally worth checking out if you haven't seen them. One the other hand, I had high hopes for Miracle at St. Anna, but I thought it kinda sucked. It wasn't so much a good war movie as it was a thinly-veiled racial rant by Spike Lee. Yeah yeah, the Black Man was oppressed, we're all racists. Whatever.

I hate that--you know, when they tout something as a powerful war movie and it turns out to be something else. Remember when the previews for Pearl Harbor came out? Man, I couldn't wait to see it. Turns out it was a chick-flick. Talk about getting a shiat sandwich at the box office. I mean, how many other 'war' movies do they run every week on the Encore Love channel? I haven't seen any John Wayne there. And Ben Affleck is certainly no John Wayne.

Anyhow...

So, yesterday I made my first attempt at meatloaf. Turned out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. I made mine with half ground beef and half ground pork, added a bunch of spices, some chopped up bacon, plenty of veggies (mushrooms, onions, peppers, sun-dried tomatoes), some horseradish and A1 sauce, an egg, and instead of bread crumbs, I smashed up a few Club crackers. About three quarters of the way through the baking time, I brushed on some KC Masterpiece and topped the whole thing with a can of French-fried onions.

It sure made the house smell good, and now I've got some damn tasty leftovers, too. That'll probably be the extent of my cooking adventures for a few days while I subsist on meatloaf sandwiches. I also took a stab at making hush puppies last night, but they turned out awful. I couldn't believe how bad they were. But then, they came from one of those just-add-milk mixes I got at the store. Even the local pigeons that shiat all over my truck wouldn't eat them. Next time, I'll just make them from scratch.

That's about all for now... I should be getting my puzzle back from the framers in the next couple of days, so I'll take a picture or two of the final product once I get it hung on the wall.

Ciao for now!

Mikey