In '96, wife-to-be and I were shacking up. We had a small black lab named Snoop. One night, while we were sound asleep, there was suddenly a simultaneous BANG, bright flash of light, the dog yelped, there was a crash, and Snoop went charging out of the bedroom.

Before the echo of the crash died, I'd flung the blankets off and was half launched out of bed. I was entirely on autopilot, with adrenaline pouring into my system thru a firehose. I had no idea why I was airborne heading off of the bed. My sound asleep brain had somehow observed the "BANG/flash of light, crash, and dog-behavior", as mortal danger and bolted me out of bed. It was all reptile brain. 100% in berserker mode, my sole thought was locating the "must be occurring" death struggle between Snoop and "the bad guys" so I could tear into it. Every fiber was screaming PROTECT PROTECT! There was not the slightest bit of rational thought going on.

I was also butt-naked.

As my first foot hit the ground en route to the bedroom door, my fore-brain started working. I didn't hear a death struggle. I started putting together what I knew re. the last 3secs. Bang, flash, Snoop yelps, crash, Snoop charged out the door. "WTF is going on?"

As my second foot hit the floor I started slowing the mad rush and tried to find a scenario that fit. I came to a halt at the open bedroom door. Still no sound of struggle. I started regaining my senses. I found Snoop downstairs, seemingly no worse for wear. We did a house clearing and all seemed fine.

I went back to the bedroom and turned on the light. Which is when I figured out what happened. The lamp from my bedside table was all the way across the room. After that night, Snoop didn't chew on on power cords any more.




Snoop was with us for another 10yrs. That dog and I were really tight.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Speaking of run-ins with the authorities...

Second year of undergrad we were living in the equivalent of on-campus condos. The girls next door (adjacent, shared a living room and bedroom wall) used to be friendly with us until a few short lived "romantic interludes" came to an abrupt end. After that they'd complain about the noise, parties, etc, somewhat routinely. One night we were partying in-house, and after their second round of banging on our door telling us to keep it down, we thought we'd be cute and escalate the situation. I rigged a cup of water over the main doorway into our suite, so that it would dump on the head of whomever opened it. Tested it out, worked perfectly. We then took a speaker and faced it directly against the wall and started blaring an Adam Sandler comedy tape. Ten minutes later we're sitting in the living room next to the door when the loud knock came. I'm holding a two foot water bong, the place is littered with alcohol and thick with marijuana smoke.

"Come in!"

Door opens, in steps a Pomona Township police officer, 12 ounces of water cascade over his head and down his uniform. He looks at me, holding the bong, I'm just staring like a raccoon about to be flattened by a semi, wondering who's going to post bail, how quickly I'll be booted out of school.

"Someone tripped the fire alarm. I'm guessing it's either from all the smoke or from the water hitting the sensor here (which apparently got doused during my trial run). I said nothing.

"You all have a nice evening." Closed the door and left.

We sat there for what felt like an eternity, wondering if that really happened. Never heard another word about it. Suffice it to say, we toned it down from that point on.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

- My assistant calls me and tells me I have an offer to buy out a bunch of my client's contracts. This was very unexpected and a very generous offer. My portion of the deal is I am earning ~20% of the buyout. I do the mental math and think sweet I just made a ton of money... 30 seconds later, I realize that my math was off by a decimal point and I made a ton of money x 10. I pulled over and called my dad.

- I've mentioned before but I sued someone for lying about the occurrence of a murder on a home I bought from them.

- I discovered a flaw in an insurance contract that allowed me to trade - risk free - and earn 1-2% everyday (Sometime I'll explain how, but it was just bad writing by an actuary). Which sounds awesome but is better than awesome. I did the math and realized I would double every month, which meant that $20k (I was 25 and that was all the money I had) would be $81M in a year! 2 weeks later I get a call from the company. hey yeah that was an error congratulations for discovering it. So here is what we are going to have to do to stop you from doing that going forward. I did get to keep the $8K or so I made.

When I was 13-14 yrs old, I rode my bike the long way home from school along a dirt trail behind a row of houses. I glanced over at my neighbor's house and noticed a crack along the bricks running halfway down the 2-storey home. I never noticed the crack there previously but this wasn't my normal route home so didn't think about it too much


That same evening, a major thunderstorm hit the area including several lightning strikes. Yup - my neighbor's house with the crack had a direct hit. Just prior to the lightning strike, my neighbor had been sitting up reading in bed. Soon after, she laid down and the strike hit just above her bed causing, yup, a large crack to open up at the rear of the home - something that I "saw" earlier in the day.

This made me wonder if I did actually see the crack there or whether it was some kind of premonition.
@Kid

Memory is a strange thing. I'd say more likely images or the time line got mixed up in your head at some point.

You're in the insurance biznes? I need to get me some of that!

Speaking of being off by a factor of 10, I was once taking a cab in Santiago, Chile and was pretty lit up. The currency is about 500 pesos to the dollar, so the cab fare was 'lots of pesos.' After I had paid and stumbled my way to the hotel door, I realized I had probably paid him 10 times too much. I looked back and he'd driven away quickly...

Greatest story of his whole life. And you attempt to crush it. Dude <sigh of disappointment>.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I know right! Next thing, ThisIsIt will say something like you misremember your pocket Aces poker hand!
Edit - oh, wait. You had Snoop chewing power cords. Time to move on...

@Kid

Sorry for raining on your parade.

Just be amazed that your brain can play tricks on you like that.

I couldn’t even make this up. Here it goes.

About 5 years ago, on my birthday, a handful of friends had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We left our cars there and car pooled to a few places and had drinks. End of the night, maybe 1am or so... a couple friends get dropped off at the Mexican restaurant to get our cars. When walking by the Mexican restaurant, a girl is on the sidewalk asking us to come in for a drink. I figure- what the hell- it’s my bday. One more drink. I’m the only one to go in, my friends leave.

So, I get a drink at the bar nearest the door. I notice everyone is in the back of the restaurant. I walk over to see what’s up... there are 3 male strippers there! I have no clue what happened to this restaurant this late at night, but it was a full on strip club. I decide to check it out as I have been to plenty of female strip clubs and I was curious to see how women customers would react to the male strippers. It was pretty crazy and if what I saw went on on a female strip club, the male customers would get the butts kicked by the bouncers. Anyway, I’m chatting it up with some girl and after a bit- a male stripper gets in my face and wants to fight.

I’m standing there with my drink, pretty drunk, thinking this is funny as hell. This dude is standing there in some speedo underwear getting in my face and wanting to throw down. He kept saying- why are you telling her “I’m not for real!” I just laughed and said- “Man, I don’t even know what that means.” The stripper gets wind the fight isn’t going to happen and he turns around to walk away.

On his ass there was a sheriff star on his silver Speedo’s and it said above the star, “officer and a Gentleman”.

I almost spit my drink out and died laughing.

Good times.

I am cracking up.

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DISH is how we do it.

Threads like this make me miss Duffy.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Hahahaha. Yep, all these posts are lame compared to what he would be putting up. Me, I don't have anything interesting to post.

True, he would make up something brilliant.

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)