Much ado...

Word today from my cousin Michael in Detroit (where the current rampant expertise is in Creative Abandonment) is that all you need is love...

I'm very excited about the prospect of winning the HGTV Project House on the Turqouise Trail in New Mexico.  It is a 3900 square foot house worth $2M and comes with a new car and $500K included.  Since I never win anything (worth anything), I have to savor the dreams of winning, because I don't.  A friend of mine buys his lottery ticket early so that he gets "dream time", because he doesn't win either.

Last night we watched Up and Julia and Julie.  I enjoyed them both.  They were very entertaining and unexpectedly so.

Today we took Max for a hike along the bluffs and to look at the butterflies.  He was really gung-ho, but eventually he got tired and was ready to come home.

 

It was unbelievably beautiful there today.  Since we had a blue moon on the 31st, there have been minus and plus tides.  While we were there the waves were breaking way up on the cliffs.

My flight was being served by an obviously gay flight attendant, who seemed to put everyone in a good mood as he served us food and drinks. As the plane prepared to descend, he came swishing down the aisle and told us that Captain Marvey has asked me to announce that he'll be landing the big scary plane shortly, so lovely people, If you could just put your trays up, that would be super."

On his trip back up the aisle, he noticed this well-dressed and rather Arabic looking woman hadn't moved a muscle. "Perhaps you didn't hear me over those big brute engines but I asked you to Raise your trazy-poo, so the main man can pitty-pat us on the ground."

She calmly turned her head and said, "In my country, I am called a Princess and I take orders from no one." To which (I swear) the flight attendant replied, without missing a beat, "Well, sweet-cheeks, in my country I'm called a Queen, so I outrank you. Tray-up, Biatch." 

Not sure what this is, but it is a cool pic.

I was recently asked about rushing out to buy a Prius on the 31st because the dealer would be more motivated.  I think the demand for that vehicle is such that it won't matter at all.  And for those of you that are rushing to buy a hybrid, consider this:

Gas is roughly $3.00 a gallon.  If you buy a hybrid that gets 50 MPG for $27K and drive 15000 miles a year:  (15000 / 50) = 300 * $3 = $900. An $18K car that gets 35 MPG, for the same distance on the same gas would be (15000 / 35) = 428 * 3 = $1284.  The difference is $384.  Both card will be worth $12K after five years.  The hybrid will have cost $15000 + (5 * 900) =$19500 while the normal car would have cost $6000 + (5 * $1284) = $12420.  Which is the better deal.  (Also, assume that the hybrid did NOT need battery replacements during the five years).  Okay, it makes you feel better to drive a hybrid (good for the environment....).  Consider that the electricity that you are consuming when you do a plug-in recharge was probably generated by burning coal, as most of it is!  Sooooo, consequently the only reason to buy a Hybrid is to be seen in one by people that REALLY don't understand the issues about them.

Enough pontificating....We went for a glorious ride in the Vette today, but for a weak battery.  I stalled the car and couldn't get it restarted.  The Lone Ranger (Steve) came to our rescue, as he was going by and jump started us.

Happy New Year

Its a beautiful morning (which makes up for my losses at poker last night).  As I promised no more complaining (wanking). I'll just deal with making you laugh....

A couple made a deal that whoever died first would come back and inform the other of the afterlife. Their biggest fear was that there was no afterlife at all.

After a long life together, the husband was the first to die. True to his word, he made the first contact, " Kathy.....Kathy.... "

"Is that you, Tom?"

"Yes, I've come back like we agreed."

"That's wonderful! What's it like?"

"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it's
off to the golf course .. I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and
then have sex a couple of more times. Then I have lunch (you'd be proud - lots
of greens) another romp around the golf  course, then pretty much have sex
the rest of the afternoon.  After supper, it's back to golf course again.
Then it's more sex until late at night.. I catch some much needed sleep and
then the next day it starts all over again"

"Oh, Tom you must be in Heaven!"

"Not exactly ... I'm a rabbit on a golf course in Arizona "  

One more day to go....

Well we took the tree down last evening.  I am amazed we put it up fast and took it down fast.  This was a strange Christmas.  IN the past I would have spent a day getting decorations up outside and that long again getting them down.  Since we had the house painted and trees removed, we didn't have time to get them up- which means I lucked out and don't have to take them down either.  New Year's Eve will be fun too.  This time we are only having one couple over and we are playing poker until the wee hours.

Today we took Max with us downtown and he was amazing good.  He also waited for us in the car twice.  What a good dog!

What an experience!

Wow!

Anticipation and Relief

Christmas is a funny holiday.  When kids are small, it is the greatest experience to provide them with much anticipation and happiness.  Later, it becomes more of a chore and a necessary task to get past that point.  It is really unfortunate.

Christmas should be more of the sharing of love and caring than managing to get the last of the year's bargain widgets!

Enough "wisdom" for today's post.  I can say that because I have finally posted my "Wanks" list.  I'll continue to add to it transparently.

Wanks

1. I hate "pushing 1 for English" for two reasons. One, if I don't pick one of the choices, what language are they going to review the menu in (English, right?), and two, the default should be English- if you want something else, then you can pick.

2. Why do cars push me out of the fast lane into the slow lane so they can pass me and then pull in front of me in the slow lane to get off at the next exit ?

3. Christmas shopping is tough this year:
The kids have grown up and I can't fill their stockings with Hot Wheels and chocolate kisses.
You can't put iPhone apps in a stocking.
All of my favorite "peruse" stores are gone. For the most part, if you buy on the web, you have to know what you want first.
Bookstores don't have enough stock anymore to look until you find something good.
Nobody wants DVDs or CDs anymore because they are available online electronically.
I'm tempted to replace the stockings with MyXmasStocking.com

4. My wife keeps telling me that we are not doing "much" for each other this year since we just got the house painted, paid taxes on three properties and had two trees removed.  I really can't read what "much" is, but whatever I interpret that as, I will be wrong!

5. This year my wife wanked on me that she has been putting up the tree for 29 years and wants absolutely nothing to do with it this year.  Ev and I went to Home Depot and picked out a tree, a seven foot Doug Fir.  It was a nice tree.  We had it up and partially decorated when my wife got home.  First, "It isn't a Noble Fir.  How come ?".  I explained that the Doug Fir was only $25 rather than the Noble's $80 price tag, and I though I was doing a good thing AND you didn't want anything to do with it.  Then, "It doesn't have the right garland on it.", but you said that you didn't want anything to do with it.  I put the other garland on it.  Since she says that it looks pretty good, for the price.  Why didn't she give me INSTRUCTIONS ?

6. Frequently people don't want to listen to my perspective and then just as often, they're sorry later.

7. How come some people can afford a gardener or having someone detail their new car in the driveway, but don't think painting their house is a justified expense ?

8. Why do we push to recycle glass and then spend the same amount of energy to sort colors, crush and remake the bottles instead of washing them ?

9. Why have the plastic bag recycle stations disappeared from the markets ?

10. Why does Kodak push the affordability of their new printer ink, but they only make it in containers that fit on their lousy printers ?  [Another recipe for failure.]

11. Why is it that there are a thousand holiday contests, plus Lotto, Mega and scratch-offs and I never win anything ?

New Year's Resolution

NO MORE WANKING IN THIS BLOG!

I promise to put only funny and happy stuff in here starting on 1/1/2010. [That gives me NINE more days to wank!!].

Much awaited

Much awaited pics of Max, the latest addition to our circus. Yesterday was a high-pressure runaround to get more shopping done. Later in the day I made some gingerbread and some cookie dough to be used later. The gingerbread is Emeril's recipe and uses Guinness beer. It was very good, AND I drank the balance of the Guinness that wasn't used.

This morning I am baking cookies before I venture out to shopping land. Ev and Terre are already at work and Tori is still asleep. The house is veritably quiet. This feels like my first day off.

Quiet time

Thought for sure I posted yesterday, but I guess not. Even though Xmas shopping is not done, Tori is home and sleeping with Max. Ev is working at KJEE and Cost+ (keeps him busy). I'm home and keeping pretty busy and Terre is trying to tear herself away from those loans that just have to close before Xmas.

By the way, I haven't mentioned it before (it was a surprise to Tori), but we adopted a Chihuahua (or was it Max that apopted us?), [we had to, since we couldn't have one of our own]. We were looking for a larger dog, but Max is very pleasant, smart and easy to take care of. They told us at the DAWG shelter that he is a "PEE" dog. I asked if that meant that he pees on everything, but the response was that he needs to have one foot on grass to let go. That makes him a very nice addition to the inside of our house.

Also we are not really sure about his name. The shelter doesn't know where "Max" came from. Terre said that maybe we should change it. Maybe something that sounds similar. I suggested "cliMAX" but all I get are smiles about that one. Tori calls him "MAXiepad". I don't think that I like tht one and I know Max doesn't. At any rate, it appears as though he has found his way into our hearts and home.

FYI: The most common theory and most likely is that Chihuahuas are descended from the Techichi, a companion dog favored by the Toltec civilization in Mexico. Historical records indicate that the Techichi hunted in packs. They can only be traced as far back as the ninth century but it is highly likely that this is the Chihuahua's native Mexican ancestor. Evidence of this is that the remains of dogs closely resembling, but slightly larger than the average Chihuahua have been found in such places as the Great Pyramid of Cholula, which dates back to the 2nd century BC and predates the 16th century. There is also evidence to suggest that the Techichi may also predate the Mayans.

The Toltecs were conquered by the Aztecs, who believed that the Techichi held mystical powers. In terms of size, the present day Chihuahua is much smaller than its ancestors, a change thought to be due to the introduction of miniaturized Chinese dogs, such as the Chinese Crested Dog, into South America by the Spanish.

A progenitor of the breed was reputedly found in 1850 in old ruins near Casas Grandes in the Mexican state of Chihuahua from which the breed gets its name. The state borders with Texas, Arizona and New Mexico where Chihuahuas first rose to prominence and were further developed in the United States. Since that time, the Chihuahua has remained consistently popular as a breed, particularly in America when the breed was first recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1904. Genetic tests place the Chihuahua with other modern breeds originating in the 1800s.

The circus continues...

Tori bumped her head yesterday on the bunk bed above hers. She had a headache that wouldn't go away, so I told her to go to the medical facility on campus. They decided that she needed a cat scan. Today she took a taxi to Pasadena and was scanned. The results are in. She is swollen by her bump and needs to take it easy for a bit. NO BLEEDING. Great.

Work was a joke today as I prescribed workarounds to almost everyone that didn't have any money to get me to fix their problems. That seemed to work. The day drug out to a crawl. I didn't think I'd ever get out of that place.

Tomorrow I will go down to get Tori and her stuff to stay home for almost a month. She needs the rest and we need the break from drama...

SNAFUS'R'US

Both trees are now gone from the front of our house. They were lifting the walkways. It is like the front got completely re-landscaped, since now you can see everything so clearly.

Tomorrow is my last working day for the year. I am really ready for a vacation. Thursday I pick up Tori from Oxy for the holidays and I will be glad she is back home for a month.

Goats in Trees!

A frustrating day performing validation testing. Now after dinner, I am trying to satisfy Terre defining our holiday card by putting our picture on a design on Walgreen's website. It is a pain that only occurs at the holidays. It adds to the peeves that occur every year (or more frequently) like forcing one to "press 1 for English" on the phone or other seemingly small things which cause accumulated grief.

Today on the radio, I heard about the most popular calendar being sold for next year. Its title is "Goats in Trees". I Googled that and I was utterly amazed. Check these out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQev3UoGp2M

Dark and Rainy

Went down to Eagle Rock for a birthday lunch with Tori today. It rained lightly the whole way down, but rained very hard the whole way back. After one headlight burned out and my old wiper blades stopped doing a very good job, we were lucky to make 40-45 MPH all the way back. It was so dark and the windows so smeared that it was very hard to see where we were going. Glad we made it home safely.

Everett worked his first day at Cost Plus. I've yet to hear how it went.

TGIF

The day didn't start too well. First my paper didn't show up. Then Terre got a call about someone making an additional charge on her debit card so it got canceled. I took my newly acquired (yesterday) debit card over tyo the credit union and got a PIN, so that one of us would have one that worked.

We just got back from lunch and the sky opened up. Today is Tori's birthday. I'm looking forward to seeing her tomorrow. She comes home next Thursday for the balance of this year.

This is the kind of day I'm having at work....

Christmas Sprit

Dear friends and family,
With Christmas almost upon us, I'd like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me "forwards" over the past 12 months. Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed and healthy.

Extra thanks to whoever sent me the email about rat crap in the glue on envelopes - cause I now have to go get a wet towel every time I need to seal an envelope.
Also, I scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.
Because of your genuine concern, I no longer drink Coca Cola because I know it can remove toilet stains, which is not exactly an appealing characteristic.
I no longer check the coin return on public phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a wild boar on a hot day.
I no longer go to shopping centres because someone might drug me with a cologne sample and rob me.
I no longer eat KFC because their "chickens" are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.
I no longer worry about my soul because at last count, I have 363,214 angels looking out for me.
[Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.
I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl on the internet who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time).
I no longer have any money at all in fact - but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special on-line email program.
Yes, I want to thank you all so much for looking out for me that I will now return the favor!

If you don't copy this text and send an e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 7 minutes, a large pigeon with a wicked case of diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00PM (EST) this afternoon. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's beautician.

MERRY CHRISTMAS





Ok if this doesn't get you in the Christmas "spirit" I don't know what will!!!

Crazy?

Today was an interesting day as well. It brought to mind parts of the song "Crazy":

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space

And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Possibly

And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice

Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control

Well, I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me

There are a whole long list of people that fit the category that that song describes... I guess much of the frustration comes from having to resurrect some old code that I thought had long died. Maybe I was crazy to perform the resurrection!

Looking Up

We had a nice "end-of-the-year recognition" luncheon today. We couldn't call it "Christmas Luncheon" or "Holiday Luncheon" as the powers that be in the big R thought that we might get sued for discrimination or anti-PC or who knows what. It is tiresome.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that I make a call and the automatic answering computer wants me to hit "1" for English. How about if I only have to hit something if I want non-English? The other one, is when the machine does not give me the option to talk to a human. I usually just hit zero anyway, thinking that they didn't list it. I would probably get someone in India anyway, which certainly is only marginally better.

Monday Blues Again...

I've been thinking about how I can get away from here...




I must have the end-of-the-year 'tude. I guess I really don't care much anymore. Too much to do and no money or time.

Vacation is on the horizon...



.

Not enough days in the weekend anymore...

The days seem to be very interesting lately. Last night we watched "G.I.Joe", and experiment to see how many special effect w/o plot connections could be put into a movie. I guess it was still better than the crap that is available on Cox this time of the year.

Today we worked around the interior of the house decorating for the holidays, and doing some light yard work in preparation for the rain that is expected all week.

Terre took me to DAWG today to look at some of the cast-offs that are available for adoption. [Do you know why we are adopting a dog ? Because we could have out own!] We started with Apollo-- boring and way too much patience to get him back to trusting anybody [scared shitless- we'll almost]. Then there was Taz - cute but a bit too reserved and quiet [no spirit left]. Max, on the other hand was good spirited and ready to go. He just needs a home and a family. We shall see how this all works out. I have to admit that these miniature doggetts are not what I predict are my cup-of-tea, but as far as keeping your lap warm- sa'rite!

I had planned to take the Vette out this weekend, but I just didn't get to it. Rain is on the way and it is way-cold out here now. Once again, I just started it up a bit to keep the battery charged. I hope I get to enjoy it a bit during my vacation.

This Tuesday is End-Of-The-Year Recognition luncheon day at work [they can't call it Christmas or even "holiday" any more. I bought my toy to bring in for Toys-For Tots (sic) today as well.

Tree Hunt

Last night's Christmas parade was okay, I guess. It really is a family thing, especially for little kids. I did get reminded, though, about my instant dislike of crouds.

This morning, after other chores (like grocery shopping), I went with Everett to pick up a Christmas tree. Terre said she wants nothing to do with it this year. She says that it is always up to her. What that REALLY means is this year it is my turn, but I'm supposed to do everything like she was in-charge ('cause she still is). At any rate, Ev and I picked a reasonably good looking tree (a Douglas fir) for a great price. When we got home, we got wanked on for not getting a Noble fir. Oh well, it WAS up to us.

The tree is up and it looks pretty good (if I do say so myself).