Scrape the Windows

I Love This Video

2006-11-08T22:04:00.000-05:00

This powerful, moving video
pretty much sums up how I've felt
about the last 6 years.

After George W. Bush
was declared the winner of the 2000 election,
I had a really bad feeling
some horrifying things would happen over his term.

After yesterday
- and with the final results today -
I feel so much better!

Haunted Schools?

2006-10-30T19:49:00.000-05:00

I didn't want to rush around my school this morning
to set the clocks back,
so I stopped by yesterday morning.
I was nearby for breakfast anyway,
so I figured...why not?

I was in an office setting a clock,
about halfway done
when I heard a crash in the hallway.
I couldn't figure out what it could've been
and went into the hallway
and looked around when I was finished.

I found nothing.
Even when I "opened up" the building this morning,
nothing.

And when that happened yesterday,
I got that creepy feeling
that there were poltergeists or something nearby.
I'm glad it wasn't dark
or I would've really flipped out!

Similar things have happened to me over the years:

= Just last week,
a teacher and I found what appeared to be
5 drops of half-dried blood in the hallway.
No students ever reported they were hurt
and the clinic had no injured parties that day.

= When I first started working
in this particular school 17 years ago,
I'd find dozens of drops of melted candle wax
scattered on the gym floor every Monday morning.
But the building was unoccupied every weekend.
The custodian who cleaned nights at the time
had no idea where it was coming from
and neither did anyone else.
This went one for about 3 years,
yes...3 years...
before it mysteriously stopped on its own.

= And in the early 1980s,
when I just started my "career"
the night foreman and I were hearing stories
from the other custodians who quit at midnight
about how there was one hall bell on the top floor
that rang at midnight as they were leaving.
The foreman and I never knew this
as we both got done and left at 11 p.m.
We felt they were just making it up
and didn't give it a second thought.
But the foreman had to work one hour over one night
and, sure enough...
one bell on the top floor rang at exactly 12 midnight.
Was this the work of a restless spirit?
Who knows.
The three-story school
(which has since been demolished)
was built in 1928,
so who knows what could've gone on in there
all those years
to produce a permanent presence
that tolls one bell each and every night at midnight.
And that was another thing: one bell.
We found out the next day
from the then-head custodian
that even if the bell
was accidentally programmed 12 hours off
(so it was supposed to ring at noon),
one bell wouldn't ring anyway....

that bell was set to ring in a series with other bells!

Hmmmm.....

Odds and Ends and Bitching and Moaning

2006-10-24T17:36:00.000-04:00

I can raise both my eyebrows together
or my left one by itself.
But not the right one by itself.

* * * * * * *

Why aren't losing attorneys
charged with obstruction of justice?

* * * * * * *

If I'm at a wobbly table or chair in a restaurant,
it annoys me no end.
I've been tempted to ask to be seated elsewhere
but have so far avoided doing so.
I've also thought about folding up a towel
into a small cube
and putting it under the offending leg.
But I know I'd look like a nut in the process.

* * * * * * *

Ditto with wobbly shopping carts.
I had a WalMart shopping cart 4 weeks ago
where a crumbing front rubber wheel
disintegrated into nothingness
over the course of 15 minutes.
I had to lean on a corner of the handle
just to get it to the checkout counter.
Unbelievable.

* * * * * * *

People who drive
the exact speed limit (or slower), are either...
a) very old
or
b) just got caught speeding
and they don't want to get caught again
anytime soon.

* * * * * * *

The year is 2006.
In this "day and age",
why can't anyone make socks and undies that last?

* * * * * * *

You take a gallon of milk out of the 'fridge,
open it up
and pour yourself some.
Close it up tightly.
Let it sit for a minute or two
then re-open it and it'll go
*phssst*
a little.
Why?
There's no carbonation.
Is it beginning to spoil already?
But it hasn't been out that long
and it's still very cold!

* * * * * * *

There's a pickup just like mine
(only burgundy in color)
that I see every day on my way home from work.
He goes the same direction as me
for about 6 or 7 miles.
He's usually right in front of me;
once in a great while he's right behind me.
I noticed something was strange about him
and figured out what it was:
In those 6 or 7 miles,
he has never gotten a red light,
although each day
I see him go through 5 intersections that have them.

I also know perfect families,
those who have it all.
No worries.
No problems.
I know one in particular
who was in financially great shape
and then his aunt left him a small fortune in her will.
Now he's gone from great shape to rich.

In short, some people lead a charmed life
for no apparent reason.
Just pure chance.
Or - as my Dad used to say -
"There's two kinds of people:
those who get sh*t on
and those who do the sh*tting."

* * * * * * *

Predicting Winter Weather

2006-10-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

For Ohioans,
the Winter of 1977 was considered
the Year of the Blizzard
and many called what we had
the Blizzard of the Century.
I couldn't remember the exact date,
so I had to Google it up.
It was January 28th, 1977.

I was only 18 at the time.
The day before,
I remember watching the local weather on TV
(the was no Weather Channel at the time)
and they said it was going to be horrible:
a very strong low-pressure system
was going to move straight north
from the Florida panhandle/Alabama border area,
producing winds up to 75 mph.
It was, in effect...a white hurricane.

It seemed many large trees virtually blew sideways
and in an area containing a lot of big pines,
that meant a lot of snapped trees.
You see, pine is very soft wood.
Wherever icicles formed,
they formed horizontally due to the wind.
I remember this very well
as my Dad made home movies of the blizzard.
And I've seen them over and over.

A few days after the blizzard was over,
I was walking in the front yard of my Dad's house
and noticed a very large bald-faced hornet nest
in a white pine tree.

Typical bald-faced hornet nest

I was not only amazed
that the tree survived the blizzard well,
but I was also amazed the nest survived, too.
But most of all I was astonished
at how high the hornets built the nest:
this nest was a good 50 feet above the ground!
I'd never seen bald-faced hornets
build a nest so high before.
Although we had no more blizzards that winter,
the rest of the Winter of '76-'77
did indeed turn out to be severe.

Was there a correlation between the two?
At the time, I thought
"Of course not."
But I never forgot that nest.

So each autumn,
I'd start watching bald-faced hornet nests.
I'd watch how high
they'd build their nests off the ground.

Hopefully, you NEVER see one up this close!

And I discovered
there is a direct correlation
between how high they build their nests
and how much precipitation that area gets that winter.
I say "precipitation"
because I don't think they can tell
if the winter will be mild or cold.
But considering that
- at least here in Ohio -
most of what falls each winter is snow,
I think that's what we're talking about here.

And it's not just the nests I see.
I ask around to family, friends and co-workers,
asking how high the nests are they've seen
(if they've seen any).
And they're all built the same height in a given area.

In the last 29 years,
I've seen a few years
where these hornets build in low shrubs
(maybe a foot or two off the ground)
during late summer and fall
and the following winter was very, very mild.
Other years they'd build 30-40 feet in the air
and we'd have a severe winter.
It seems we'd get an average winter snowfall
if the height was between 15 and 20 feet.

In 2004, I found one in my neighbor's tree
that was built about 25 or 28 feet high.
We had a pretty bad winter,
but nothing that broke records.

Last year, 2005, I learned something new:
in September I found hornets had built a nest
about 30-35 feet up in a tree.
I figured, "Uh-oh...an awful winter."
But I was cleaning up the leaves
in my backyard in November
and saw one built under the eaves
on the back of my barn.
And it was about 8 feet off the ground.
It was new and not very big.
It didn't look quite done.
I was a little discouraged at what I saw because,
after what I'd seen all these years,
this didn't make sense.

Was I on a 28-year wild goose chase?

I did have a theory,
and it turned out to be true:
December was terrible...very snowy and cold.
The rest of the winter was actually quite mild.

It all made sense:
They can only figure how severe winter will be
a few months ahead of time.
The high nest looked ahead to December,
the lower nest to this past January and February.
So if I'm able to see a nest built in early autumn
and find a second one built later,
I can actually come up
with an even more accurate prediction.

So, what does this winter hold here in Ohio?

I don't know.

Quit laughing or rolling your eyes.
The fact is, I just haven't seen any yet!
I think once the leaves are off the trees
I'm sure I'll see one.
And I promise I'll let you know.

How high are any bald-faced hornet nests
you've seen recently?
Maybe I can determine
(or you can, using the info I've just given you)
how snowy your winter will be.

* * * * * * * *

Just a postscript...

Tornwordo was wondering about
the habitat of these hornets,
where exactly they could be found in North America.
Here's a good map I found showing just that!

Note how widespread they are.
Looks like they only place they aren't
is dry parts of the continent:
the Great Plains and parts of the Rockies,
southern California
and Mexico.

White and Nerdy

2006-10-15T18:10:00.001-04:00

Uh-oh.
I see myself in this video.
My wife says she sees herself too,
at least a little.

That's scary.

Yay!!! Grand Nagus Strickland for Governor!

2006-10-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

Ohio's Democratic candidate for governor,
Ted Strickland,
looks remarkably like one of our favorite Ferengi's,
Grand Nagus Zek
(minus the ears and wrinkles, of course).

Who else but the Grand Nagus
would be best to run our state's economy?

I therefore encourage all Ohio citizens
to vote for the future Grand Nagus, Ted Strickland !

Widescreen TVs

2006-10-12T16:18:00.000-04:00

I don't have one.
A widescreen TV, that is.
All three of my TVs
are old-style cathode-ray-tube TVs.
But I'd love to have a widescreen TV someday.

Or would I?

One day 2 weeks ago, I was at WalMart
and they had
just about all of their display TVs turned on...
regular TVs, LCDs, plasma, projection,
they had them all on.

And I noticed something,
something I never noticed before.

I've seen display widescreen TVs
turned on in other stores before,
of course
but they were always showing something
formatted for a widescreen TV.
Therefore, it always looked great!

But this day at WalMart,
they were showing something in full-screen format.
Full-screen. I believe it's a 4:3 ratio.
It's what just about all (if not all) TV programming is.
Whereas all theatrical movies
are all filmed in widescreen format.
Anyway, ALL of the TVs were showing full-screen.
It was a show that they picked up over cable.
All of the standard TVs
- although they had small screens -
looked fine.
But all of the big, widescreen TVs
had the picture stretched to the left and right
to fill the screen!
Those of you out there that either have a widescreen TV
or know something about them,
is there any way they can be set or adjusted
so the picture isn't distorted
while watching a full-screen broadcast???

I'll never pay thousands for a widescreen TV
if this is what you have to put up with.
I'd much rather have black bands
going down the left and right sides of the screen
rather than have the picture stretched
so everything looks short and fat.

Anyone out there know what's going on?
Can that be done
and WalMart just didn't bother to adjust them, or what?

Woodchuck Problems

2006-10-04T19:37:00.000-04:00

It all started in early August
when I saw fresh dirt
thrown out into the flower bed
from under my deck.

I checked it out with a flashlight
and found a woodchuck-size hole
under the deck against the old concrete patio
that used to be there.
And my wife saw a woodchuck
twice in one week near the deck
just about the same time.

I covered the hole over
and the dirt was thrown out again later in the day.
I know woodchucks (AKA groundhogs)
can be quite destructive to homes.
Left undisturbed,
they'll burrow down and around your home
and ruin the foundation.
And they can be hard to get rid of.
So I was worried.
My one neighbor has had a family of them
living under her deck for years
and she's admitted
that they've chewed on and ruined her back door.
But she doesn't seem to care about upkeep on her house.
She says she's remodeling inside
but you can see sagging parts of the roof
where the wood is rotted under the shingles.
It's not like she doesn't have any money to fix it.
She owns another home about 25 miles from here
and shuttles back and forth between the two places.
And she once told me she bought this house
(for $150,000)
from profit she made off the stock market.
I honestly think she's hoping
the house will collapse someday,
ruin any work she's done inside,
and collect from her homeowners' insurance.
Why else would someone let the outside go to hell
and do work inside instead?

OK...I'm getting off the topic.
Back to the woodchuck.

I bought some woodchuck repellent,
some granules that's supposed to smell like fox pee.
Foxes and woodchucks hate each other.
But the instructions said
that if his burrow is well-established
(and I really didn't know if it was or not),
it won't get rid of him.
Well, he just sort of spread the dirt around more
and that buried the repellent.

One night early last month,
there was a terrible skunk smell around the house.
I didn't think it really meant anything at first.
But now I'm wondering.

Suddenly, days would go by
where I'd see no activity around the hole.
I'd cover up the hole
and it would stay covered for several days.
But eventually, the hole would get dug out again.

Still hoping to catch a woodchuck,
I bought a live-animal trap and set it near the hole.
A couple of days later, I caught
...of all things...a opossum.

I think the night we smelled a skunk,
one tangled with the woodchuck.
And in a sense, they both lost...and we won.
And a opossum took over the hole.
I've heard that'll happen.
Opossums are nomads.
They'll take over old holes of another animal
but rarely stay in one spot
more than one night at a time,
but they'll come back to that spot...say,
5 or 6 days later.

I took the opossum
and dropped him off in some woods
about 10 miles away.
They say opossums aren't really much trouble.
They aren't very destructive, eat bugs & rotten stuff,
and come and go.
Supposedly, they're quite beneficial.
But I still don't want one living under my deck.

Still, something continues to dig out the hole.
One source says
to repeatedly pour filthy, used kitty litter down the hole.
Whether it's a woodchuck, opossum,
skunk, raccoon, Osama Bin Laden, or space alien...
whatever is living there
will hate having its living space "soiled"
and after doing this about 3 times, will leave for good.
So they say.
We'll see.

And I've reset and rebaited the trap.

I'm guessing it's another opossum.

What a Couple of Months!...part 2

2006-09-24T18:49:00.000-04:00

I quit yesterday before my posting got boring,
so I'm finishing today.

Each summer
- except for the occasional teacher
who stops by to pick up something -
we custodians are the only ones in our school
from mid-June until the first of August.
It's that approximately 6-week period
that we must kick our butts into high gear
to get the majority
of our heavy cleaning and refinishing done.

There's three of us in our school each summer.

Or at least there's supposed to be.

We get our vacation renewed
at the beginning of each fiscal year, July 1st.
Two of us - having nearly 30 years service each -
each get 6 weeks vacation.
I'm one of them.
The other one
blows the vast majority of her vacation
beginning July 1st.
She's been working in my building now for 6 years
and in all of the past summers
she's used 4 or more weeks of her vacation
in one big lump beginning July 1st.

One day at a time.

In other words, she'll call our boss
the day she's supposed to come in
and say she's "taking a vacation day" that day.
Many times she just doesn't show up
and she calls when she's already 3 hours late!
I know, because not only does our boss tell me so,
but she leaves me messages on my voice mail
the same time she calls our boss.

There isn't another employer in America
who would put up with this bullshit.
Former principals and former superintendents
have told me so.

Why do they let it go?
Why don't they just fire her?
Fear of a lawsuit.
And they don't want to waste money on a lawyer.
She always gets her own way
by saying,
"Well...you let so-and-so do this and that,
so I can do it, too.
If you don't let me, it's discrimination."
And we have a boss
that pretty much lets people under him
do what they please
because he doesn't want to be bothered.
That's how it got started
and those of us who are good, honest workers agree
that it's gotten way out of hand.
The genie's out of the bottle
and the administrators can't put it back in.

For years,
she used to vacuum the Board of Education office
so we also think there's a strong possibility
that she pulled incriminating evidence
out of a wastebasket
and she hangs it over someone's head.

Wow, if that's the case,
I would love to know what that is!

Well, anyway...
this time she was gone for 9 1/2 weeks!
Nine and one-half weeks.
And all but 3 weeks of it were one-day-at-a-time,
like I described.
She claimed she was in the hospital those 3 weeks,
but she hasn't told anyone why
nor has anyone seen any evidence
that she was anything other than perfectly healthy.

So, to make a looooooong story short...
for the majority of the summer,
the other custodian and I were really busting our butts
just to get done in time for the first day of school.
And I was really tired after each day.
I'm not 27 anymore, I'm 47.

And when I asked for extra help,
I got a college student for 2 weeks.
I don't need to tell you
that anyone who intends to have a career
in business, engineering, law or medicine
really doesn't have their heart in custodial work!

If it weren't for my other helper,
I don't know what I'd do.
He has his really bad days
(especially now with his marriage on the rocks)
but he's otherwise been a real lifesaver this summer.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Something else that's occupied my time
(this time on a positive note)
is Leeta.

Leeta?

We got a kitten.

My wife has wanted a kitten for a couple of years now
and a family a block away had free kittens
We've had her now for 2 weeks
so she's now 11 weeks old.

Trying to think of names,
my wife said, "How about a Star Trek name?"
So we went through all the popular female characters
but none seemed to fit her.
And my wife said,
"Who's that girl you like so much on DS9? Leeta?"

So Leeta it was.

She was one of 3 kittens
There may have been more
but were given away already.
The other 2 were males.
We could use a good mouser...or mol-er
(mostly for all the moles we have)
and I've always heard spayed female cats were the best.

Leeta is adorable
and does very typical kitten things
- very playful, getting into mischief, purrs loudly -
you know.

Anyway, here's Leeta.
It's really hard to take a photo of her when she's awake
because then she's playing
and she's moving so fast she's just a blur.
I'll post a full-body shot of her
when I can take a good one.
That dark spot on her nose is just that:
a dark spot of skin.
She also has one on her gums.
Not unusual on dogs and cats.

What a Couple of Months!

2006-09-23T11:02:00.000-04:00

I know, I know.
You're saying a could've
found a way to blog, but I didn't...right?

In late July I began to wonder
if the stuff I was blogging about was,
well...
really worth it.
And I still have serious doubts.
I mean,
Other blogs are controversial
(many are political)
and invite a lot of discussion.
They're successful for this reason.

But that was just the beginning.

Tropical Storm Chris
- with winds of something like 45 mph -
was swirling around in the Atlantic in early August
...so they raised the price of a barrel of oil
because it might head toward the Caribbean
and it might splash a wave on an off-shore oil rig.
And gas went up over $3 a gallon.

About the same time,
my wife was upset with herself
because she forgot a couple of things
after grocery shopping for 2 hours.
Both disgusted,
we went out and bought a new motor scooter.

It's a medium-gray 2006 Yamaha Vino 125
and we got it for $2500.
Well, sort of.
We went with the 5-year/unlimited mileage warranty
(but really...how many miles can you put on a scooter?)
for an extra $600.
Still a good deal, with comparable Vespas at $6400.
And Yamaha makes an excellent product.
At 80 mpg, it was a good idea.

I've driven motorcycles off and on since I was 9 years old
so this was nothing new to me.
But my wife
had never touched anything resembling a motorcycle
so this was all new to her.
And she really wanted to learn
so she could get her license
and make short - but necessary - trips.
Five days after we bought the scooter
she was practicing
up and down the driveway and through the lawn
when she got too close to the creek
that runs through our front yard
and she wiped out.
The kids ran in the house to get me
and I found her sitting
- stunned -
in the yard next to the creek.
She couldn't put any weight on her right foot.
It turned out she broke two bones,
one in her ankle and another in her foot.
The scooter actually fared better
with only some deep scratches on the side cover.

With my wife on crutches for two weeks,
it was really tough to find the time
to do everything around the house,
work full time, and take care of the kids!
I have new-found sympathy for single parents!
But as I said, she was only on crutches for two weeks.
She's off of them now
but still must wear a "removeable cast"
for another week.
She is, however,
allowed to put her full weight on her foot,
I think because she's thin and doesn't weigh much
so it's healing quite fast.
An incentive for anyone on a diet.
I'm still doing the laundry, as it's all downstairs.
But my wife is doing everything else she did before.
And quite happy about it,
as she was getting bored to tears doing nothing.

I bought a new side cover for the scooter
and while putting it on,
the hinged, flip-up seat
crashed down on one of my fingers,
doing no permanent damage to me
other than a lot of pain.
So I'm thinking of nicknaming the scooter..."Killer".

So far though,
it's been great driving it back and forth to work.
Maybe when it was new,
it was like a wild stallion, and I've tamed it.

I can't believe I'm saying that about a motor scooter.

There's been much more going on the past two months,
but this particular posting is getting long.
I'll post part 2 - or something - in a day or two.

I missed you all, and it's good to be back.

Best of all, it's good to be caught up on my laundry.

What's New

2006-07-23T16:48:00.000-04:00

My garden has done pretty well so far this year.
But late spring here was cool
so some vegetables did better than others.
My green beans took off
(and are just now beginning to slow down)
even though slugs have eaten them to bits.
Next year I must remember to be prepared for slugs.
Funny thing is,
in late April I threw some leftover bean seeds
in a big pile of dirt outside the garden
and they're
growing better than the ones
I planted in my garden!
HA!
I hate it when my vegetables say
"F*ck you, I wanna grow over here!"
Oh, well...at least they produced!

The green onions didn't do well
(which really surprised me),
the snow peas did...well...OK
but they're all done now.
I think I'll rip out the dying vines
and plant more green beans in their place.
It's not too late for more green bean plants to mature.
The squash, pumpkins, carrots and tomatoes
seem to be right on schedule.
We've already eaten 3 squash
and I picked my first ripe tomato today.
It appears I have 3 marble-sized pumpkins, too.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The past two weeks - Mondays through Thursdays -
both my boys took swimming lessons.
Wow...
there's such a big difference in swimming lesson fees!
Pools are prohibitively expensive.
Lakes are much more affordable,
and yes...that's where my sons were, a nearby lake.
The first several days were a little chilly,
part of the reason being it started at 6 p.m.
My wife said all the kids were shivering,
our two boys included.

Each day there was several instructors there for the kids.
The third day there was an older woman instructor
that my wife said was rather mean.
She was assisting a little black kid
and at one point pointed her finger at him and yelled,
"Look....I told you to shut up!!!"
I said,
"How old was this little boy?"

"About the same age as ours, about 6!"

"Six??? And she was treating him like that???
That's awful!!!"
Thinking maybe she was his grandmother or something
and he was used to her treating him this way,
I asked if she was white or black.
My wife said she was white.
So that wasn't the reason.

A few minutes later he told the instructor
he had to go to the bathroom,
and she said
"If you get out of this lake now,
you're not going back in!!!"

Wow!

Someone obviously had some words with her
because the next day she was with my youngest son
and she smiled and said in a soft voice
"Today I'll try to be better, OK?"

He started to cry anyway, HA!
Probably thinking
about the way she treated that kid the day before.

The boys completed their last swimming lesson
this past Thursday
and each got a certificate saying so.
My youngest was really excited.
Just because of the certificate!
My oldest was a little sad.
He loved the swimming lessons
and didn't want to see them end.
Since he liked them so much,
I think we'll find more lessons for him soon.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I got an automated phone call
from Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield several days ago.
It's who I have my health insurance with
through my job.
This recording wanted me to call a 1-800 number
and then an extension
so they can
"update my health insurance info".
It sounded suspicious.
Some scam artist could easily say
they were Anthem
and collect a bunch of information
to be used for identity theft.

So I called a number that I knew was Anthem
and asked them about it.
They didn't know, but they were suspicious, too.
They wanted a day to check into it,
then they called me back and said it was legitimate,
to call the number
and give them whatever info they needed.

I did so, and discovered all my concern
was pretty much a waste of time.
It was
"Does your spouse have insurance from somewhere else?
If so, press 1. If not, press 2".
That was it.
No giving sensitive information, virtually no nothing.
The whole thing lasted about 3 minutes.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

We need a new sofa.

We have one stored in the barn behind our house.
It's really good quality
and we planned on getting it reupholstered.
About 10 years ago, we bought it for about $700.
We've found in the past week
that reupholstering prices ranged anywhere
from $600 to $1200 and that's just labor!!!
Our sofa needs about 15 yards of fabric,
so with a decent fabric at $24/yard
we're looking at another $360!
Are reupholsterers nuts, or what?
So, needless to say...we're planning on a new sofa,
hoping to get a medium quality one
with fabric that'll wear well.
We found a store that has a sale on $1300 sofas:
they're 1/2 off - $650.
But when my wife was there
she didn't see any she really liked.
Maybe we'll go back where we got the arm chairs
and see what they have.

I'll let you know what happens....

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I finally found some shorts I like.
If you'll recall in a recent post of mine,
I was very frustrated after finding
that all mens' denim shorts are too long.
Faded Glory original fit/classic cut denim shorts
- found at WalMart -
end above the knee.

I'll be so happy
to put the denim shorts that I loved to hate
out of their misery.

Thankfully,
end of story.

Gripes, Amusing Observations and Weird Ideas

2006-07-15T15:47:00.000-04:00

For several reasons,
I've hardly blogged the last few weeks.
My job has been exhausting
and it's not much an exaggeration to say
that when I come home each day
I plop on the recliner and watch a few hours of TV.
From there I eat dinner,
then give the kids some attention,
then lay down a while and I frequently fall asleep.
When I have to, I force myself
to fix some things around the house first
or mow the lawn.

Summer work sucks all the life out of custodians.
I can't wait for autumn.

Another reason I haven't blogged much
is that blogging everywhere
seems to have tailed off somewhat.
Must be something about summer
because I noticed it last summer, too.
I think
people have many other things they'd rather be doing.
Blogging seems to pick up
as the weather gets cooler, wetter...and snowier.

But I've had some thoughts the last few days.
Gripes, amusing observations and weird ideas...

=There's nothing that makes a 6-year-old happier
than to immediately recognize everything in a picture
that he (or she) drew, without any hints.

=What's with men's denim shorts?
The last few years, they've made the legs so long
that when I get up from a sitting position
the bottom hemmed edges catch on my knees.
This is incredibly irritating.
Do designers think
there's a lot of guys who are 7-foot-3
and have 3-foot-long thighs?
Mens' shorts need to be cut at least 3 inches shorter.
I'm not a short guy - I'm 6-foot-1,
and this is a problem with me.
The worst part is,
what they're doing is costing them
- and us -
money!
Make them shorter
and they would not only be more comfortable
but they'd also be cheaper to make
because less material would be used!

=How long will it be
before someone genetically engineers big trees
- oak, maple or hickory trees -
so you can grow one with with leaves
that are colors other than green?
Many trees have red leaves
but I'm talking other colors...
leaf colors such as baby blue, purple, white or pink.
Some colors would look awful,
but some would be pretty cool.
Or...glow-in-the-dark leaves.
But I wonder what would happen in autumn
when the leaves change color and fall?
I'll bet this could be done
without interfering with
chlorophyll function or production.
Christmas trees could come in a choice of colors, too!

=Do you remember ever watching
any one of several old Three Stooges episodes
where one of them would get punched by some bad guy,
spin around backwards,
and flip upside-down to a position
where he's standing on his head against a wall?
(Actually, it's a simple special effect trick.
They're just coming down
from standing on their head.
They just played it backward.)
My youngest son can really do that.
The other day he got so excited about something
that he ran over and did it on my recliner
in the blink of an eye!

=Imagine a TV commercial,
comedy movie or TV comedy show,
and the camera shows
someone doing something in the foreground.
But the action in front is off-center,
because your attention is really supposed to be focused
on the sight gag going on in the background.
Anymore, I can see it coming.
Boy, I hate forced humor.

=I'm a big supporter of hydrogen power
and I hope they find a practical way
of making and storing solid hydrogen within cars
to use for fuel.
But I've heard hydrogen-powered cars referred to
as "bombs on wheels"
because of how dangerous
moving around a tank full of hydrogen can be.
But whether your car is carrying
400 miles worth of gasoline
or 400 miles worth of hydrogen,
wouldn't the explosion be similar
because the amount of energy stored is equal?
Or does the degree of danger vary widely
because of how the energy is stored?

=I don't know about other parts of the country,
but we're really growing around here
and they're doing a lot of building,
mostly new neighborhoods where fields used to be.
And that results in most of the roads
sporting double-yellow-lines.
I hate a lot of growth
and I sure miss passing lanes.

=A "street-wise" friend and co-worker
- who turns 28 next month -
told me that when he was about 20
he had a car with an incredible sound system,
one with some really powerful speakers.
I don't know if this is common or unusual,
but this was so powerful
that when he'd crank it up
his rear-seat friends would get nosebleeds.
Regularly.
Sounds like it caused brain damage or something!
Not to mention that the volume
vibrated the inside rear-view mirror off his windshield.
And after a while
his friends refused to sit in the back seat any longer.
I'm surprised my buddy has any hearing left!

=After watching my boys blow bubbles outside,
I can't help but wonder
what's the biggest soap bubble that can be made
if you had an instrument big enough to make it
before it collapses on itself
or the atmospheric pressure pops it
or whatever.
Five feet in diameter? 20 feet?

Dad

2006-07-04T07:48:00.000-04:00

Dad was really strict.
I don't remember him ever spanking me as a kid
but I remember him threatening to.
And I remember being afraid he would,
so I'd settle down real fast.

My Dad
smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day since WWII.
As a commercial artist
he was exposed to paint and thinner fumes
for over 30 years
and
he was exposed to benzene while building tires for 20.

You see, he held both jobs at the same time,
working 80 hours/week for 20 years.
No wonder he was usually grumpy
until he retired from building tires in 1971.
With him working 80 hours a week,
I only saw him on weekends.
Maybe a glimpse or two during the week...
but that was about it.
Good thing I had lots of older brothers
to do things with.

But even after he retired from building tires,
he was still grumpy.

Maybe it was because
he was in the early stages of emphysema.
Emphysema that was likely caused by all three of those:
smoking, art supplies and benzene.
They're all very hard on the lungs.

He quit smoking around 1986
because one day he ran up a flight of 4 steps
and couldn't catch his breath at the top.
It scared him to death, and he quit cold turkey.
A few years later - in 1988 - he retired.

He seemed to get thinner and more frail
as the years went on
and after seeing a doctor in the autumn of 1990,
he was admitted into the hospital.
It was only supposed to be for a few days.
His breathing had gotten so bad
that his doctor wanted him to start using an oxygen tank
and some medication
and tests were being done in the hospital
to determined exactly what he needed.

He was in the hospital for over 2 months.

Initially, he was in a hospital ward
and while I visited him one day
I noticed a nurse with a bad cough
who went from bed to bed to check the patients.
A few days later, several patients in that ward
- including my Dad -
developed bacterial pneumonia.
Pneumonia on top of severe emphysema
is a virtual death sentence.

So he was transferred to intensive care
and put on a respirator and IVs with antibiotics.
While in intensive care,
he drifted in and out of hallucinations.
I brought in a small chalkboard so he could write
because with the respirator in his throat,
he couldn't talk.
One day he wrote that he thought he was in Florida.
Another day he looked out his 3rd or 4th window
and thought he saw our neighbor lady
walking down our neighborhood street ,
when all there was to look at
was multi-story office buildings and birds.

This was all very hard to take.

It didn't help matters
that a sister-in-law asked
in front of all of my brothers and myself
"how much money" Dad had.
A brother of mine exploded at her,
accusing her of worrying
about what kind of inheritance she was going to get
while Dad was fighting for his life.
She insisted that she was just concerned
about his medical bills being paid.
He had supplimental insurance,
so added to Medicare, that wasn't a problem.
It's hard to tell if my brother was right,
or if my SIL was truly concerned about the bills,
because she's very sly.
It could go either way.

In mid-December 1990,
he was well enough to be released to a nursing home
with an inhaler and a multitude of prescriptions
with the intent to be rehabilated and return home.
He was to get physical therapy every day
so he could strengthen his arm and leg muscles
and learn how to breath more efficiently
to make the best use of his damaged lungs.

And the nursing home staff
was told by our family doctor to make sure
his oxygen setting never went above 2-1/2.
That's actually a pretty low setting.

You see, most emphysema patients
have trouble inhaling oxygen.
My Dad had trouble exhaling carbon dioxide.
So, he was always in danger of hallucinating
from a buildup of CO2 in his body.
Having the O2 turned on low
made him work a little harder so he could exhale better.
The CO2 buildup had another nasty side effect:
my Dad - a once wonderful artist -
now had hands that trembled terribly.
Even if he survived,
emphysema robbed him
of ever being able to paint again.

After a few weeks, I discovered
the nursing home
was taking him to less and less physical therapy.
When I'd ask why,
they'd say "...because he didn't feel well today."

I also found twice
that his oxygen was turned up to nearly 4
(they said he seemed "more comfortable"
with his oxygen turned up),
I told them to never let it go above 2-1/2.
And I told them why.

In the nursing home, my Dad's calves
had become all dry and scaly-looking.
Obviously some side effect from the emphysema.
I'd visit him every day
and rub lots of skin lotion on them while we talked.

Most of the time,
he had become an "easy buck" for the nursing home.
He didn't complain, needed no shots,
and was able (but just barely)
to get up and go to the bathroom by himself.
But every now and then I'd still find his O2 turned up
and it was those times that he'd be hallucinating.

Pretty much all they did was feed him.
Physical therapy was gone
and they seemed to make up a reason each time.

Dad was dying.
And I determined that if I didn't do something,
he'd be dead in two weeks.
I talked it over with my wife
and here was our plan:
we'd bring him home,
sell our house and move in with him,
she'd get a leave-of-absence from her job,
help take care of him
and we'd have a visiting nurse come in
several times a week
to do stuff like give him sponge baths.
She was very supportive of the plan.

"You can't take him home!!!",
the nursing home protested.
"Really? You want to watch me?", I replied.
Yes, that's exactly what I said.

I packed up his things and moved him home.
My Dad didn't feel comfortable
at the nursing home anyway
with "all of those old people."
Dad never felt old, just sick.
Even through all of this,
he still had a full head of black hair at 69 years old.

The day I planned to take him home
turned out to be a day he wasn't doing well.
He was hallucinating at the nursing home
and it got worse after I brought him home.
By evening I called called an ambulance
to take him to the hospital.
Ambulance paramedics said,
"No wonder! You've got his oxygen turned down so low
that it's making it hard for him to breathe!"
I explained to them that it must be kept at that level
and I told them why.
It obviously fell on deaf ears.
By the time he arrived at the hospital,
he was in a coma, caused in part
by the paramedics turning his oxygen way up
and thus Co2 built up in his body.

When my Dad's doctor found out
what the paramedics had done,
he was furious!

Dad was in a coma for 4 days,
with nothing in him but a feeding tube
and he was given last rites.

On the 4th day,
while one of my brothers was visiting him,
Dad opened up his eyes
and said
"What happened?"
It appeared it wasn't his time after all.
The CO2-induced coma wore off.

By this time, it was early January 1991.
He continued to improve,
although his lung function never got any better.
Several days after he came out of his coma
the hospital was ready to release him.
His doctor and I had a long talk, and I said
"Look...all the medications my Dad was taking
- the inhaler and all the pills -
weren't helping him a damned bit.
Emphysema contributed to his hand tremors
and the inhaler he used made it worse."
(During the 4 days he was in the coma
he hadn't used the inhaler, of course,
and the trembling in his hands nearly disappeared.)
"I don't want him on anything that wasn't helping",
I said.

The doctor agreed,
and Dad was sent home with two things:
an oxygen tank
and a prescription for steroids - for inflammation.
The doctor really thought that was helping him.

Once home,
Dad told me he had overheard
my conversation with the doctor.
He said he was really impressed
at the way I handled myself with the doctor
on his behalf.
That made me feel good to hear him say that.
I also learned
that it's amazing what all of us are capable of
when the need arises.

And we did hire a home nurse to visit him twice a week.
As I said earlier,
to give him sponge baths, quick check-ups and such.

Throughout 1991, my Dad was pretty much his old self
except for the fact that he was on oxygen.
Since we were able
to keep close tabs on his oxygen settings,
he never had any hallucinations at home.
And although he didn't like
the O2 line dragging all around the house,
he learned to accept it.
But he refused to go out of the house
with a portable tank.
There's no doubt in my mind
that he was embarrassed to be seen with it.
He went out once with me
and it was just to go on a car ride.

At some point that summer
I remember Dad and I talking
and at the end of the conversation
I told him that I loved him.
He wiped tears from his eyes and said,
"You'll never know how much that means to me."
He added,
"No one ever told me they loved me before.
Not even my parents."

Sometime during the summer,
Dad had a lawyer over at the house.
He told me later after the lawyer left
that rather than make a new will,
he had the house and all the belongings
put in a survivorship deed with me,
he sold (or gave, I don't know which)
his car to one of my brothers
and had all financial accounts
made into joint accounts with me.
Nothing would go through probate court.
This is not something
I'd advise elderly people to do
because there's so many unscrupulous people
that would be put into the position I was in.
It worked for us, but I could've taken everything
had I not been an honest person.
And that's the key to doing this.
You must implicitly trust that person
to fullfill your wishes.

"When I'm gone, take my money
and split it up evenly 4 ways among your 4 brothers.
You keep the house", Dad said.
"The house? That's worth a lot more
than a share of the money."
"I know. I want you and ____ (my wife)
to have the house."
I replied, "We'll sell the house, OK?
Then I'll split up the money evenly."
My Dad closed his eyes.
I knew he was starting to get angry.
"No...keep the house. You need a place to live.
Besides, I want you to have it."
"But it's going to start fights.
Everyone will get mad
because I got something worth more."
Dad said, "I'll invite them over one at a time
and explain it to them."

And that's what he did.
My brothers never discussed the conversations with me.

By autumn 1991,
Dad's breathing seemed to be getting a little worse.
In early December 1991,
the doctor came over to visit him
...and gave him bad news.
I was there.
He told Dad his emphysema was in it's last stages
and he probably only had a few more weeks.
Then Dad asked the doctor something
that really surprised me.
"Could I get a heart-lung transplant?"
He wasn't prepared to die,
and I thought by now he would be!
The doctor replied, "No. You're 70 years old
and such a transplant operation
is one done for younger people."
After the doctor had left, Dad and I had a talk.
I said, "Well, you've always told me that
you wondered what it's like after life is over.
Think of it as a big adventure."
Dad seemed to like the idea, and smiled.
"Yeah. I guess so."

On Decenber 15th, 1991
Dad was sleeping comfortably in bed
and I decided I needed a diversion.
My wife stayed with Dad
and a buddy and I went to see
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
at a theatre.
My wife met me at the door when I got home.
"Your Dad's not doing good. I can't wake him up
and he's not breathing well."
I went into his bedroom and up to his side.
We weren't able to wake him
and his breathing was very shallow.
I took his hand in mine and said,
"Dad? Dad? I'm here, Dad."
He slowly took a few more breaths,
then he was gone.

He was hoping to make it to Christmas.
He didn't make it,
but at least he died at home.
That was something he wanted.

I closed our joint accounts
so I could split up his money among my 4 brothers.
There wasn't very much
but since Dad always made everyone think
he didn't have two nickels to rub together,
there was more than a couple of my brothers thought.
Just over $45,000 total,
so each brother got just over $11,000.
The house at the time - 1991
was worth about $85,000.

I really miss Dad.
I miss visiting him, I miss his company
and I miss his advice.
When you're a kid,
you think your Dad knows everything.
By the time you're in your 20s,
you realize he doesn't.
But there's been a ton of stuff
that's happened to me in the last 15 years
I would've loved to get his advice on.
No matter how old you are,
I think most people
would like their Dad's advice from time to time.
I suspect that even if I were 76 years old
instead of 46 like I am now,
that would still be the case.

What Movie Are You?

2006-07-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

I ~~borrowed~~ stole this idea

from AverageHousewife!

to check to see what movie I was

and came up with this.

Platoon was really popular,

but I've never seen it.

Why this movie was chosen for me,

I have no idea.

But it's a curious choice.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Back From Chicago

2006-06-29T16:32:00.000-04:00

First, a big thank you
to everyone from my last posting
wishing me a good time in Chicago!
I just got back yesterday evening, about 7:30 p.m.

Driving to Chicago was pretty uneventful.
Usually, the check engine light comes on
on our car during moderate-to-long trips.
It always seems to be a temporary glitch in a sensor
that otherwise doesn't affect the car...or trip.
Sometimes I feel it's brought on some bad gas.
But on the way to Chicago, it stayed off.

On the way, an interstate led us
through an industrial park
in Gary, Indiana...and what a stench!
The air was filled with an acidic-sulfur-like odor
that took my breath away several times.
The smell was compounded by the fact
that before we left
my wife was sure our car's A/C didn't need recharged,
so I didn't check it.
I turned it on though in Indiana
and all we got was pretty much "vent air".
So we had to drive with the windows down.
I was a little pissed
because I had everything at home
to recharge the system.
And there was an orange haze above Gary.
We saw where there were several homes nearby
and were thankful we didn't have to live there.
We have no idea how they were able to tolerate it.
Because of the smell, I was hoping we didn't get
a breeze from the east while staying in Chicago!

The moment we crossed from Indiana into Chicago,
we found ourselves in a huge traffic jam.
Most of it was just from cars piling up at toll booths
but there was a little road construction, too.
Funny, though...
as the construction got more extensive,
the traffic flowed better.

We found our hotel,
the Best Western in Grant Park
(just south of downtown Chicago).
It was a pretty nice area.
The Chicago Hilton where presidents stay
was just down the street.
The room was OK,
but we got a view of a dilapidated building next to us
and a pretty good view of downtown.

This was what we saw

looking straight out our window....

....but looking a little to the right

gave us a much better view!

outside - just to the south of our hotel

We were hoping to get a corner room
with a view of downtown and Lake Michigan.
But that probably would've cost a lot more.

looking north toward the center of downtown

The thing that shocked me the most on the trip
was parking and the parking attendants.
Not the price...$15 for 24 hours,
about what I expected.
What shocked me was giving them my keys,
letting them park it,
and returning an hour later to get more out of the car
and finding
that not only did they leave the windows down,
they left it completely unlocked!
We questioned them extensively about this
and this was apparently the way they operated.
Sure enough...we noticed everyone's cars like this,
even Corvettes and Hummers!
They explained the vehicles were very secure
and assured us not to worry.
There were large, prominent,
professional-looking signs posted
threatening anyone with prosecution and jail time
who was in there without a legitimate reason.
That made me feel a little better,
but...
lets see...
very large city, car open and unlocked
and leaving it for 3 days.
I couldn't help but feel very uneasy.
I wondered what my insurance agent would say
when we'd tell him our car was stolen
under these circumstances.
He'd probably call us idiots (and rightfully so),
ask us why we'd agree to such a stupid thing,
and not give us a penny in compensation.

The first thing we did was walk down the street
to eat at a place called Eleven Diner.
The atmosphere here was wonderful!...
The ceiling was very high
and hanging from it,
lights that were dim
and had a bit of an orange tint to them.
A huge chalkboard filled one wall,
listing their specials.
My wife got a tuna salad sandwich platter
which she said was very good.
My youngest son had a hot dog
and my oldest was supposed to have "Noodles, Noodles!"
He figured he'd try that and see how it was.
He got a bowl of boiled spaghetti.
Honest to God, that's all it was.
There was nothing at all on it.
I got some kind of sandwich
called the Marshall Field Special.
Turkey, lettuce, tomato, onions, bacon
and thousand island dressing on big bread.
They took forever bringing it out,
the waitress seemed to be avoiding us,
and then she brought me the wrong entree.
More time went by,
then when they finally brought it out
the entire thing was ice cold.
No, it didn't cool off after being cooked...
it was made to be ice cold!
It might've been much better
if the bread were toasted,
the turkey and bacon were hot
and everything else were put on cold.
But no.
And although everything seemed fresh,
it just wasn't very good as it was.
A chef came out to ask us how everything was
and I complained about my son's "noodles".
He acted like I ripped out his heart,
threw it on the floor and stomped on it.
"Well...yes...these are noodles! Spaghetti noodles!
What did you want, flat noodles?"
"Well...yes, that's what I expected!"
"What kind of flat noodles?"
Then,
he named a couple of different kinds of flat noodles,
names that were foreign to me.
So I didn't complain about anything else.
We left as soon as we got done.
Oooops!...I didn't leave a tip!
Oh, well.
All in all...that place really sucked.

The next day we walked to the Sears Tower
and they invited my 6-year-old
to push the button to the top floor
and announce:
"Next stop...top floor! See all of you there!"
So he did!
That was very nice of them to do that
and he had fun.

the Sears Tower,

looking up from the sidewalk

Damn, that elevator goes fast!!!
I determined it traveled at 2-floors per second!
Talk about your ears plugging up fast!
The view from the top was beautiful,
even with the few clouds and haze we had that day.
We had our fill and left.

different shots

from the Sears Tower observation deck

After that
we traveled to the Navy Pier by free trolley....
*Note*...
if you ever travel to Chicago,
never depend on the free trolley.
There's maps available for the regular trolley system
(which is $25/day for adults and $10 for kids).
But the free trolley system isn't much more than a myth.
You see a couple of them driving around with passengers
but we only knew of two stops.
Otherwise, more is known of Bigfoot
than Chicago's free trolley system.
So...
after we had fun at the Navy Pier
(which is pretty much an amusement park
with lots of restaurants),
we never saw a free trolley stopped again.
Late in the day,
and therefore not wanting to pay for the regular trolley,
we walked back to the hotel.
And it was a long walk.

That evening, we found an italian restaurant
called Boni Vino.
This was a much better restaurant
than the place we went to the evening before!
We had very thin pepperoni pizza.
Not only was it excellent,
it was reasonably priced,
as was everything on their menu!
We went there again our final night
and had some different things:
I had a steak sandwich and my wife and kids
had mostaccioli and shrimp.

The final day
we broke down and spent $60 taking a guided tour
(about 90 minutes) going around the entire city
on the regular trolley.
The kids and I were all tired from the day before
so sitting was welcome relief.
My wife never seemed to get tired.
The city energized her
and like the Energizer Bunny, never seemed to run down.

There's a few interesting facts
we learned from the guided tour:

- there's a jewelry store in Chicago
where you must be fingerprinted
before you examine any of their merchandise.
I'm sure
there's places in L.A. and New York like this,
but I didn't expect it in Chicago.

- the Sears tower is very strong
due to the way it's built:
the towers around the center are shorter
than the rest, and thus
cradling the middle sections.

- the tower next to the Sears tower
is the tallest tower in the world...
without a name.
There's several businesses inside
and the tower is simply known only
by its street address.
(I suppose if someone bought the rights to name it
there'd be nothing special about it any longer, huh?)
At night,
the water tank and spires on top of it around the edge
are lit up with lights
and it looks like a crown.

Yesterday morning, tired and ready to go home
(well...at least the kids and I were),
I paid the parking garage and got our car back
and it was indeed still intact,
had no new dents or scratches
and nothing that was left inside
was taken out of it.

As we left and headed south,
the traffic was heavy and stop-and-go
due to the construction
and I was noticing the green Honda Accord behind me
and admiring how the driver
really hung way back a safe distance.
A few minutes later,
we got rear-ended.
Yes, by the just-mentioned Accord.
My wife screamed
and we got out to survey the damage.
The Honda had some light front-bumper damage
but our Taurus wagon just had a few scratches,
nothing more.
Wow, the way we were jolted
I would've sworn we had some damage!
That poor car has been rear-ended several times
and never more damage than a few scratches.
The Honda driver apologized profusely
and since she sustained more damage than us
(and it was her fault)
and heavy traffic was zipping all around us
and we had no place to pull over anyway,
we all agreed to go about our merry way.
Now I'm thinking
she was hanging behind us "a safe distance"
because she'd probably rear-ended others before
and did it as a precaution...which didn't work.

Other than that
and driving through a couple of severe thunderstorms
(one with hail),
coming home was pretty quiet
Oh, yeah....remember the check engine light?
It finally came on during the drive home.
That figures.

Some things I noticed about downtown Chicago:

- it's very clean, at least where we went.
I even noticed a guy with a knife
digging up the few little weeds that were there
- root and all -
growing between sections of concrete
in front of the store where he worked.

- we spent most of the time
in middle-class areas,
and I never once saw any drunks
or any drug exchanges or dealers or anything.
We felt safe.
I did see four beggars.

- Chicago is truly a melting pot,
and the ethnic diversity is unbelievable.
Blacks, hispanics, asians...
many, many kinds of people live and work there.

- this place is home
to what seems to be 10 million bicyclists.
With really wide sidewalks
and some concrete urban bike and walking trails,
it's really the best way to get around.

- nothing is cheap in Chicago.
Everything is expensive.
Except the little italian restaurant we went to.

My wife says she misses Chicago already.
I suppose we'll end up going back some day,
the way she's talking.
She's a city girl at heart
and I'm more at home with rugged natural scenery.
National parks, beaches and mountains
are for me.
Even though I had fun,
there's other places I'd rather go.

Off to Chicago!

2006-06-24T07:15:00.000-04:00

Last year our family went to Myrtle Beach.
This year,
my wife and the kids wanted to go to Chicago.
Why Chicago?
None of us has ever been to Chicago
- although I've been through it - without stopping.
And it's not real far for us,
so we won't be buying a lot of gas.

As I said,
my wife and the kids wanted to go to Chicago.
I don't mind going, but there's other places I'd rather go.
The boys are in awe of everything
that's cities and skyscrapers.
In other words, architecture.
My wife loves big cities
and I'm sure will love shopping in Chicago.
We thought about going to NYC or DC,
but we don't want to overwhelm the kids at this age.
We wanted to try a smaller city first on them.
If they love Chicago, I'd like to take them to DC.
DC's great and I'm sure they'd love it...
if they don't get real tired
and start to whine in the first 10 minutes!

So, we're packing now
and leaving tomorrow morning.
I won't be blogging for several days.
I'll post when I get back to say how it went.

Thoughts of the Last Few Days...

2006-06-20T15:14:00.000-04:00

=I've heard that scientists found
we all seem to have a "meat gene" (or genes).
It (they) determine
whether we should be eating meat, fish,
or if it's just best to be a vegetarian.
Which might be why many people become vegetarians.
It could be it's their genetic calling....
my wife says it's easier for vegetarians not to eat meat
if that's the way they were meant to be.
And healthier for them, too.
It could be that it's healthiest for people with
the "meat gene" to eat meat
and healthiest for people with the "fish gene" to eat fish.
Maybe any deviation contributes to cancer
or throws our blood chemistry out of whack.
How do you know what you have?
I suppose the only way to tell, for the moment,
is what you feel is right for you.

=I've been recording Deep Space Nine from Spike
the last several weeks on VHS
then burning favorite ones on DVDs.
I do it that way because
they haven't been showing them
in quite the right order.
A couple of weeks ago
they showed The Visitor and I got it.
Sweet!

=Tornwordo did a posting the other day on dental visits.
Oh man...
I wish I would've read it the same day he posted it
and left a comment
(I rarely leave comments on any older posting
because I don't know if they're ever read).
I once had a dental hygienist who,
using torn's words,
"sawed away bits of my gums"
with dental floss 'till they bled like she hit an artery,
then said it wouldn't happen if I flossed regularly.
I got pissed and told her,
"Give me some dental floss,
I'll bet I can make your gums bleed
as badly as you've made mine bleed!"
A moment after I said that,
I realized my dentist was in the next room
and I'm sure he heard the whole conversation.
She never cleaned my teeth again
and she doesn't even work there anymore.
Even though I've brushed and flossed daily now
for several years,
I can still make them bleed if I get carried away
and go at it too hard.
And the present hygienist
tells me I do a nice job cleaning my teeth.
Which makes the old hygienist's argument invalid.

=I once was at the Wal-Mart check-out counter
and the check-out lady seemed real down.
I said "Hi, how are you?"
and she began to tell me why she was so down.
As she checked out my stuff,
she was telling me about
how her house needed a new roof
and was wondering how
she was going to be able to afford a new one.
Man, I wish I were rich.
I would've found out from her where she lived
and sent a roofing company over to re-roof her house.
If I ever win the lotto or otherwise get rich somehow,
no doubt about it...
I'm going to help people like that.

=Someone left
a 6X10X2-foot deep inflatable swimming pool
on our front porch.
Brand new, still in the box, never opened.
I assembled and filled it Saturday morning
and my kids have been having a ball with it ever since.
I was pretty sure it was from
my neighbors across the street,
an 81-year-old woman and her daughter.
They really like our kids
and buy them stuff at Christmas and Easter
(although if it's clothes,
they're nearly always too small.
I don't think they realize how much my kids grow!
But, it's the thought that counts!)
Anyway, I was surprised when the daughter said
"No...it wasn't from us."
And I could tell she was telling the truth.
She's not the kind to lie to remain anonymous anyway.
And I still haven't found out who it was!

=My wife was watching CNN
and they came on with a story
about illegal organ trade in China.
It seems someone with lots of money
can (and will) buy an organ they need from China.
China will then execute a prisoner
with the proper "credentials", and
*poof*
you have your organ, ready to transplant.
China insists that the prisoner
(or the family,
if the execution has already been carried out)
always consents to the donation first,
but human rights organizations say that's not true.
One man who wanted a liver transplant
due to liver cancer
paid tens of thousands of dollars for a liver
....even though doctors have told him
there's a 90% chance of the cancer coming back
after the entire operation is done.
I'm not against capital punishment,
as I feel there's some cases that justify it.
But if China's executing prisoners just for this,
what a ghastly scenario....

The First Full Week of "Summer"

2006-06-16T18:31:00.000-04:00

I'm tired.
Very tired.

This was the first full week
that the kids have been off for summer vacation.

During the last few days of school,
a few of the staff asked me,
"Wow, I'll bet you'll be glad when school is out, huh?
You won't have us around to give you headaches!"

Well....yes and no.

While it's true that I now don't have people
"tugging on my apron strings",
- wanting this and that -
the real work has just begun.
Twenty years ago,
I used to tell people
that summer was when I earned my salary
and the school year was volunteer work.
But that was back when I was making $20K/year
and at $42K now, it's hard to tell people that.

Summer work is very hot and sweaty.
I always hope for a cool, dry summer,
and we have had a few over the years.
Our school doesn't have central A/C;
just a few offices and the staff lounge
have window A/C units.
So a string of 94-degree days and 95% humidity
can be pure hell.

Each classroom goes through the following procedure:
Swing down each flourescent light cover
and dust each light inside and out,
(changing bulbs as needed),
dusting the upper halves of each wall
and washing/scrubbing the lower halves,
washing/scrubbing each piece of furniture,
carrying it out into the hallway and stacking it
and stripping and re-waxing each floor
with 5 coats of wax.

And there's 30 classrooms in my school
plus a multitude of offices, a computer lab
a gymnasium/lunchroom and a kitchen.

And at the moment,
there's four custodians (including myself)
working together
and we don't get along 100% of the time.
I don't think any four people
who work together day after day in the same room do.
Most of the time we really get along well
but when we start getting really hot and tired
and by Friday we're sick of looking at each other,
nerves start to fray.
My best worker exploded on Wednesday
because our principal moved some classrooms around.
And he hates change.
He's sure the moves will make more work for him
but I've assured him it either won't make more work
or the change will be minimal.
I explained to him why I believed that,
and he settled down.
He's really good at his job.
He's always reminded me
of a major league baseball player,
a superstar in the field and at the plate,
a 3.00 batting average and 45-homeruns-a-year hitter
...but someone
who has to be constantly nurtured and encouraged.
Another custodian loves to say things
that's sure to get somebody hot under the collar.
She does it just to make trouble.
The third is a college student
working here just for the summer
and this was the first week
she's ever done anything like this.
So inexperience is a problem there.
And since our work varies widely, experience helps.

It also helps a lot if I split us up into two groups.
But sometimes it's best
if all four of us work together in the same room
to clean furniture.
That way it goes faster.
Nobody particularly likes cleaning furniture.

Anyway...as always,
I'm hoping again for a reasonably cool, dry summer.

Wish me luck.
I may need it.

A Flower With Weird Leaves

2006-06-13T19:16:00.000-04:00

What the heck kind of flower is this...
does anyone know?
My youngest son brought it home from school
(everyone in his class grew a plant)
but he was never told what kind it was.
I just watered it because, as you can tell,
it was getting dry
(look at the leaves turning brown on the edges).
My wife thinks it's a petunia
with something else growing that producing the leaves.
I think if it's all the same plant,
it looks like a cross between a petunia and leaf lettuce!

Maybe we ought to name it Audrey Jr.!

Feeeeed Meeeeee.....FEEEEED MEEEEE !!!
Wahhhh!!!....I'M HUNGREEEEEY !!!!

HA!

Movies and TV Shows on DVD

2006-06-12T05:34:00.000-04:00

Each Saturday morning
I usually go to Bob Evans for breakfast,
and since Wal-Mart is so close
I go there just to nose around.

While at Wal-Mart, I'm always on the lookout
to see for what's just been released on DVD.
TV shows, movies, it doesn't matter...
I'm always looking every week.

This week I bought the first season of
The Wild, Wild West on DVD.
It was $37, but it has 28 episodes,
and it's a total 22 1/2 hours long.
I remember it as a kid
and I was too young to appreciate it then
but I know I'll enjoy it now.

But over time I realized
that so many TV shows and movies
that have always been popular for years
have never been released.
At all.
Not on DVD, not on VHS video,
never in any format.

At the theatres,
the newest Mission Impossible movie is very popular
as was the original and it's sequel.
But for some reason,
whoever owns the rights to the '60s TV series
won't release it to be sold on DVD.
And, like The Wild, Wild West
I didn't appreciate it then
(I was too young to understand it fully)
and I've love to have the Mission Impossible series now.
The same with The Invaders.
Petticoat Junction has come out on DVD,
but only a few select first-season black & white episodes.
Remember the old campy Batman show of the '60s?
It's never been released on DVD or VHS,
but a cartoon version recently has.
Most years of Bewitched has come out on DVD.
I Dream of Jeannie has, too
even though you can see both series on TV Land.

In a Q & A movie/TV show column in our local paper,
people frequently ask why this or that
has never been released in any format.
I realize a lot of old shows were just never very popular,
but many were, and they're unavailable to the public.

Are there any TV shows or movies
that - like me - some of you have been dying to watch
but they've never been released to buy?

And The Lie Was......

2006-06-07T05:58:00.000-04:00

Here's the answers to Liar, Liar...Pants on Fire!,
my post from the other day.

If you haven't been here in several days or more
and want to check the original posting,
STOP...and go -->here<-- first.

* * * * *

Here's the answers:

I once got a great deal on a new car
because the salesman said
I resembled his deceased son.
The car I wanted to buy was a Ford Mustang GT.
and it was June 1985.
I went to the nearest Ford dealer
and the salesman who waited on me
was unusually quiet the whole time.
They didn't have exactly the kind of Mustang
I was looking for,
so I had them order one for me.
It came in 8 weeks
and as I was finishing up the paperwork,
the salesman said I looked so much like his son who
"passed away ____ years ago"
that he couldn't believe it.
At one point I saw tears in his eyes.
I really don't think it was an act
because in the end,
I got the car for just over dealer's cost.
Then again, if he was telling the truth
maybe he would've bought the car for me.

Naw.

True story.

* * * * *

I'm a high school dropout.
In high school, I never felt at all like I fit in.
Each day, I always felt like a visitor to an alien planet.
There were the sports jocks,
there were the kids into drugs,
there were the brainy nerdy kids,
and there was me.
Well, actually...
I think I was one of about 2% of the kids in my class.
And I'm not even sure about that,
because since they also felt like they didn't fit in,
they were quiet, too.
Since I never got to know those kids,
I had very few friends in school,
none whom I went to visit after school hours.
So, my unhappiness led to worse and worse grades
as high school went on.
Strangely enough,
I've always been invited to class reunions.
I think it's because I quit early in my senior year
and my senior photo was in the yearbook.
Or maybe they just felt sorry for me
and never said anything about it.
But I've had tons more fun at each class reunion
than I ever had at any time in school.
The last reunion was organized by, well...
a loser (for lack of a better word) like myself.
He did a wonderful job
and I hope he organizes the next one in 2007.
If he was indeed a loser, he's a winner now.
A very nice guy who has a great job, and very outgoing.
It's strange how all the popular guys in school
are all so quiet at the reunions.
I did get my equivalency diploma (GED) eventually.
I was sure I'd need it for a promotion at work
as it was required for a posting for a similar position.
Turned out it wasn't needed.
Some co-workers thought the promotion
was tailor-make for me.
They weren't angry, they just thought it was strange.
So afterwards
- like Archie Bunker, when he got his -
I thought...
"And here I am, stuck with a diploma."

Another true story.

* * * * *

I write right-handed.
Everything else I do is left-handed.
Probably the first thing I learned to do
with a specific hand...was write.
Everything else came later.
My oldest brother taught me how to shoot a gun
and since he was left-handed...well, you know.
That's how he taught me.
And the first time I picked up a wet-mop and used it,
someone told me I was doing it left-handed.
I can't begin to remember
if someone taught me to do it that way,
it just happened.
And I never tried to change, because
(and maybe this is silly)
I always felt if I do some things right-handed
and some things left-handed,
I'll end up using a bigger part of my brain
and I figure keeping my brain active this way
is good for me.
When I was young,
I also figured it'd keep me
from building up muscles
more in one part of my body than the other.
LOL!!!

Again, a true story.

* * * * *

I've eaten food
from a lunch trash can at work.
Once at work
the kitchen made something really good
(I think it was some kind of tuna casserole)
and the portion they gave me wasn't very big.
They put each portion in a foam bowl
and put them on foam trays for the students.
After lunch (and after the cooks had left)
there were a couple of extras
the cooks had thrown away
and they were right on top of their trash barrel.
I was 99% sure there was nothing wrong with them,
fished one out, ate it and it was fine.

True.

* * * * *

I always throw out
the last swig of pop or beer I drink
from a bottle or can.
It's backwash.
I never let the drink from my mouth
go back into the container.
Never.
Like Patricia said, it sounds so yucky.
But I do know many people (all guys)
who say they do this for this reason.
And it disgusts me no end.
More than eating out of a trash barrel.
When I clean up litter outside my school
I sometimes come across a drink container
with some of the drink still inside
and this crosses my mind.
And it grosses me out.

This - #1 - was the clinker. The lie.

Wow, there were only four of you
but I had all of you fooled!
I must be getting better at this.
Or at least this time, I didn't tip my hand.

That was fun.
I hope all of you had fun, too.

666

2006-06-06T18:30:00.000-04:00

The temptation was just too great
to post this today!

Actually, today's date isn't "666"
as far as I'm concerned.
To me, that date would be June 6th, 6 a.d.
...two-thousand years ago.
And as long as they're going to use
only the last number of the year,
it'll recur again June 6th, 2016.
And 2026. And 2036.
Ooops...I'd better not give them any ideas, huh?

Anyway, I read in yesterday's local paper
that the book of Revelations in the bible says
the real number of the beast is 616!

Why hasn't anybody caught on?

Daniel P. Winters, author of Superstitions 101, says
"Because 'six-six-six' rolls off the tongue easier.
Plus, The Omen would have to be re-written,
related superstitions reconsidered,
the stars re-aligned
and a whole population re-educated.
And, I'd have to re-write my book!",
he said with a laugh.

It amazes me,
- not only because was this mistake ever made -
but it's thrived over the centuries
and now some people are terrified of 666.

For no reason.

But this obvious mistake
that...over the centuries...
no one ever bothered to correct for the masses
begs the question...
how many other parts of the bible are there
that simply aren't true?
Or, how many omissions were made
that some knew about back then?

Hmmm....
maybe Jesus was married and had kids or something,
.....right?
Or maybe Judas was a cool guy after all.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

2006-06-05T06:04:00.000-04:00

Lets play this little game again.
I think everyone has fun at this, including me!

Which of the following statements is a lie?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1. I always throw out
the last swig of pop or beer I drink
from a bottle or can.
It's backwash.

2. I once got a great deal on a new car
because the salesman said
I resembled his deceased son.

3. I'm a high-school dropout.

4. I write right-handed.
Everything else I do is left-handed.

5. I've eaten food
from a lunch trash can at work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There you have it.

Leave your answer in the comments section
and I'll post the correct answer on Wednesday.

Waddle Waddle Waddle

2006-05-30T15:54:00.000-04:00

I went to breakfast Sunday morning as I usually do,
and saw four geese walk by the front of the restaurant
with 10 goslings.
I heard the people in the booth behind me remark
that they hoped they didn't try to cross the street.
Although the traffic wasn't real bad at the time,
the street this restaurant was on can be very busy.

Two of the adult geese stopped
about 20 feet short of the roadway
while all the other geese continued toward the road.
Just before the group stepped into the road,
the two that held back
stuck their heads way up and began honking.
The others stopped, stuck their heads up and listened
and the two continued to honk.

After about a minute, they all turned away from the road
and headed back into the lawn of an adjacent restaurant.

The two had warned the group of the dangerous traffic.

I don't particularly like geese
because they can be mean and attack you
and they're really messy.

But they're smarter than I ever gave them credit for.

While paying my check,
I was talking to the manager about it
and she told me about something
that happened on a previous day...
Geese were crossing the parking area
and a customer came driving in
just as the last gosling waddled across the driveway.
And then he stepped on the gas,
hoping to hit and kill it!
The gosling stopped in his tracks...and ducked.
The car went right over it
and the gosling ran away unharmed.
A little old lady pulled in about the same time
as the driver that tried to hit the gosling,
she got out of her car the same time he did,
walked over
and whacked him over the head with her purse!
Ohhh....that was funny!
I roared with laughter !!!

- - - - - - -

On a similar topic,
I came home from work this past Thursday
and found a deflated mylar balloon
in the creek that goes past our house.
It was around some weeds
and as I walked over to pick it up and throw it away,
I saw some movement a few feet away from it.
Here it was the mallard duck hen
that always comes back to our house
every spring along with the drake.
I hadn't seen either one for weeks.
and I now saw why...
she had 10 or 12 ducklings with her!
The drake was nowhere to be found
(typical guy, huh?
Probably partying it up the his buddies somewhere).

I think she's starting to get used to me
and wasn't really scared or anything
but she did eventually
wander out of the creek with the ducklings.
They were awfully, awfully cute!
She walked across our front yard, turned 90 degrees
walked past our house and headed back into the woods.
The ducklings followed single file
and every so often a duckling would stumble and fall.
One in 3rd place behind the mother would fall,
get behind, get up fast
and scramble to the end of the line.
Then maybe first one would fall,
get behind and do the same thing.
If the last one fell, he'd get way behind.
But they always caught up easily.
Every so often she'd make soft quacking sounds.
I think it was to keep them all together.

You don't know how hard to was
to keep from running over and snatching one to keep!
But I knew I couldn't do it, of course.

Eventually, they all disappeared into the woods
and I haven't seen them since.
I'm guessing there's about a 50-50 chance I will.
If I do, this time I'll run and grab my camera,
take pics and post one or two.

A Rich History

2006-05-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

I've told you before about my father-in-law,
his rough childhood, and how he was such a character.

My mother-in-law's family and ancestry
was very different:
rich in history and very interesting.
Many of the stories I've heard
from elderly members of my wife's family
were fascinating!

- - - - - - - -

My MIL's mother
was from a small town just inside France near Alsace
along the French/German border.
She came over just a few weeks
after the sinking of the famed Lusitania.
Although she's passed on now,
(she died when she was 94)
she told me once that everyone on board
was very nervous for that reason.
I then remember her mood suddenly changed
and she laughed as she told me
that she was quite young when she came over
(and very attractive,
as I'd seen a photo taken of her then)
and she had fun flirting with all the sailors.

My MIL's father moved here about the same time
from a part of Hungary
that was close to the border with Austria.
I don't think my MIL's parents even knew each other
until their families moved to the states.
So they met and got married.

My MIL's family was pretty well-off financially.
Much of her father's family remained in Hungary,
including her grandparents.
They probably decided to stay put
because they owned a brick factory
and didn't want to get rid of the business.

They kept in contact with their son's family in the States
through most of the 1930s.

And then, in the late 1930s...
Nazi Germany invaded Hungary.
Well, I'm not sure invaded is the word,
because the whole thing was very complicated.
Maybe "under German control" is a better term.
The town where the grandparents lived
was taken over as well
and Nazi troops ordered them
to turn over their brick factory.
They refused.
Nazis took them to the middle of town,
rounded up the townspeople to watch
and made an example of my the grandparents.
The Nazis said to the townspeople,
"This is what happens if you don't obey orders."
My MIL's grandparents were put aboard a train,
and taken to a concentration camp.

Meanwhile,
their son in the states had lost contact with them,
and after hearing
that Nazi Germany had invaded Hungary,
he feared the worst.
He was getting no news at all from his homeland.
He began to drink heavily
and began to physically abuse his wife and daughter,
my MIL who would've been 12 or 13 at the time.

World War II began and ended
and he was finally able to hear from
the townspeople where he lived.
He was told about what the Nazis did to his parents,
about hauling them off to a camp.

He also found out that in that camp,
they died of exposure.

This worsened the drinking and abuse at home
and it never got better.

After several years, his wife filed for divorce
(which was uncommon at the time - around 1950).
and she eventually remarried.
(I got to know my wife's step-grandfather pretty well.
He was a lightweight boxer in the early 1930s).
Meanwhile, her ex-husband died in 1959,
homeless and alcoholic.

- - - - - - - -

Remember how I talked about
my wife's grandmother's family
who came from the French/German border?
The "baby" sister of my wife's grandmother
is still alive and she told me a couple of great stories.
Bear with me, they're both short:

Around the turn of the last century (1900),
their mother owned silkworms.
They'd spin natural silk
and their mother would sell the silk in Paris!
Pretty cool, huh?

Especially in the region where they lived then,
there weren't any cars.
Just horses and buggies, horses and wagons.
About this time, in this part of Europe
there was a big outbreak of dysentery,
an intestinal infection that can be life-threatening.
They knew of a family friend
who was seen in his horse and wagon.
Townspeople recalled seeing him
unresponsive at the helm
while the horse trotted along home,
and it parked the wagon in the barn
like so many times it had done before
with its master's commands.
But this time, the horse had done it on its own.
The family went out to greet the man
and found him dead at the reins,
presumably of dysentery.

- - - - - - - -

My father's entire family was from Italy.
It would be very hard to do any kind of research
on that side of the family.

My mother's family is from in and around West Virginia.
We have done research on one branch of that family tree
and have come up with
- what amounts to -
350 years of blacksmiths and farmers.
HA!
Probably nice people,
but (so far), nothing as fascinating
as my mother-in-law's family.

Odds & Ends

2006-05-20T15:48:00.000-04:00

= I buy two new pairs of cotton jeans,
and anticipate they'll shrink.
If I buy them
with a slightly bigger waist than what I have,
the inseam will shrink and the waist won't.
Buy pants a little long,
and the waist will shrink.
Do both, and they won't shrink at all.
It never fails.
And try to find a cotton/polyester blend of jeans
that are designed not only not to shrink,
but are designed to be permanent-press.
Impossible to find nowadays.

= I would love to try a real taco.
Real tacos are not just a shell filled with ground beef.
From what I understand,
real tacos have very little (or no) meat
and are mostly vegetables and beans.
I haven't been
to all the Mexican restaurants around here,
but "people in the know" tell me
that none serve real tacos.
Taco Bell, are you listening?

= So far, so good with my garden.
My snow peas are doing well.

All the tiny light brown specks? Maple tree seeds.

I'm hoping most won't sprout...

For some reason the green onions aren't.
But nothing has ever grown well
at that end of the garden (?!)
even though I've augmented (I like that word)
the soil with some really good stuff.
Maybe radon gas is leaching up from underneath.
Or they're growing on Indian burial ground
and the spirits don't like it.
The rest of the garden
- bush beans, peppers, pumpkins and squash -
was all planted recently
and I haven't expected anything yet.
Especially after 10 straight days of cool, rainy weather.

= I had a teacher bring her kids to lunch
2 minutes early the other day.
and found the classes before her hadn't arrived yet.
Two minutes mean quite a bit there at lunchtime.
Everyone is supposed to follow the schedule precisely.
"Where are they?
I'm supposed to be here at 11:56, and it's 11:56!"
I looked up at the clock.
"It's only 11:54", I said.
She had a very puzzled look on her face,
then said..."Oh".
It reminded me
of something that happened ten years ago:

I worked with a fourth-grade teacher
who could not read a clock.
She had a decorative clock on the wall in her classroom
and had me replace it with a clock
that had a traditional clock face
with numbers and lines because...in her own words,
"I need the practice. I never learned to read a clock."
"Um...how were you able to get through college?"
"With an LCD watch."
I told a few trusted people I knew about this
- people I knew wouldn't repeat it
and get me in trouble
for embarrassing the school system.
I was curious to see
if this sort of thing was common.
They wouldn't believe me
and insisted she must've been joking.
But, I swear...it was no joke
and what I said was 100% accurate.
You had to be there.

She's now a principal at another school district.

Gas

2006-05-14T10:47:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting morning.
I went to Taco Bell
and ordered a couple breakfast burritos.
I wasn't really hungry.
I just wanted to go to the last place in L.A.
where you could get gas for under three bucks.
- Jay Leno

What Leno was referring to for under three bucks
was gasoline, of course.
But cars can also be run on natural gas.

Has Leno just solved our energy problem
without even knowing it?

What our society needs
is a system of fart collecting tanks.

In our home,
we'd have a large holding tank with a check-valve
and we'd rush there when we'd feel a big fart coming on.
The hose we'd do it in
would have a nice, soft rubber donut on the end
to press up against your rear while you "do it".

On the go?
We'd have portable tanks.
Maybe even ones that are camouflaged into our clothing.
Or strap onto our bodies under our clothing.
In either case, the same kind of hose/rubber donut setup
would be strapped around our hips
while we go about our daily affairs.

No more offensive odors in public.
It would all be stored.
No waste!

And why stop here?
On the farm,
farmers could have this same system
strapped on cows, horses and other large mammals.
A farmhand could go around and collect all of it
at the end of each day.

A typical fart doesn't have all methane in it?
Perhaps, but that problem could probably be solved.
I'm sure there's certain kinds of foods a person could eat
that would produce
the maximum amount of methane possible.
And chances are, that food would be good for you.
I've always heard that food that produces gas
is healthiest food a person can eat.

The biggest drawbacks?

If you're shot...even by accident,
the chances of your survival are minimal
if the bullet even slightly pierced your intestine
(let alone your portable holding tank).
A hot bullet,
or one that somehow produced even the slightest spark
would cause you to explode.

Uh-oh....
I hope I didn't give suicide bombers any ideas.

Another drawback to this proposal is that -
considering the number of exploding people would rise -
funeral directors would lose business.
Or at least casket manufacturers would.
There wouldn't be very much left of an exploding person.
They'd pretty much be buried in a hatbox.
Or cremated.

Yet another drawback would be
that the price of food
that produces methane in huge amounts
would skyrocket, at least initially.
Unfortunately, our government
has probably just participated in a big trade agreement
with another country,
giving them thousands of tons of supplies
to grow these foods.
I suppose when the time comes
to initiate this gas program,
that country will then be under the control
of an evil dictator,
who will jack prices way up
or threaten to cut off all supplies to us.
We'll say he has Weapons of Mass Destruction,
and invade.
That seems to be the way it goes these days.

And last, but not least...
the final drawback?

Beano would go out of business.

Gripes

2006-05-11T16:25:00.000-04:00

I can understand a few people who refuse
to leave messages on answering machines.
Some good people are just uneasy
about talking to a machine instead of a person.
That's OK.
But of all the people I've gotten to know over the years
and learned not to trust,
all are very hesitant
about leaving a message on an answering machine.
Probably afraid of leaving a clue to an ulterior motive.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I followed a car today
that was hogging two of three lanes
of a mall exit.
They were in both the left lane and the center lane,
and no one could get by.
And until they turned,
no one knew which way he or she was going.
And on the rear was the bumper sticker:

God is my Co-pilot.

So...God created us, but apparently can't drive.
Or, as a co-pilot...can't help drive, anyway.

I became slightly more atheistic today.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Advertisements that say
"Save up to 50%...AND MORE!!!"
really, really annoy me.
Think about it.
Literally, this means a savings
of a fraction of 1% up to a full 100% off.

In short, these ads are worthless to me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm disturbed when I drive by homes
with $60,000 vehicles sitting in the driveway
covered with six inches of snow,
and looking inside their garage with the door opened
and seeing it full of junk.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We've been shopping
for a couple of upholstered living room chairs
off and on the past couple of months.
What we needed was about 33" wide and 30" deep.
The height doesn't matter,
but it would look best if it were about 32"-34" high.
Everything we've found is huge.
I...
mean...
HUGE!
About twice the size - or more -
than we're looking for!
I blame it on the growing obesity problem.
Everything must be made huge
to handle growing bellies.
Co-workers even tell me that new strollers and car seats
are growing in size to accommodate really big babies.
Come to think about it,
I've seen them, too.

(By the way, we did finally find chairs we're happy with.
But we had to order them
and we won't get them for a week or two.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Speaking of upholstered chairs...
for the couple of months
that we've been looking at them,
nearly all that we've found
rock, swivel, recline, vibrate
or a combination of the four.
All we wanted were two upholstered chairs,
each with four short legs!
Why are they making so many chairs that move???
I'm not about to chase my furniture
all over the living room!

My Weekend

2006-05-08T17:04:00.000-04:00

I had a very busy weekend.
It helped
(or didn't help, depending on how you looked at it!)
that the weather was very nice,
sunny and 58 Saturday, sunny and 72 yesterday.

Yes, Doug...I know...
58 would kill a Californian,
but here it's pretty nice.

After a Bob Evans breakfast on Saturday morning
I took my truck to get it E-Checked.
They didn't have it long
and I remarked to someone else who was waiting
that it either passed quickly...or failed quickly.
It did indeed pass, which surprised me somewhat.
Although it runs well and doesn't smoke or anything
it's been getting worse and worse gas mileage
and I suspected it had a bad PCV valve.
My wife's car had a bad one and it did the same thing.
Oh, well...maybe it doesn't.
Or maybe they still pass with bad PCV valves.

In April of '05 we had a terrible storm go through
and uproot a big pine tree in our backyard.
At the time, I cut it up with my chainsaw
and hauled away the wood
but the stump was too pine-tarry at the time.
Even though I was wearing gloves,
I couldn't stand the pine tar sticking to everything.
So I waiting until this past Saturday (over a year)
to take it out.
Man, what a job.
Even though the storm uprooted the tree,
the stump settled back down into the ground
after I cut up everything else.
So with a pick and shovel, I had to dig
all the dirt away from the stump the best I could,
cut through all the big roots with an axe,
and lift up on one end of the stump
with a big pry bar I had.
Then I wrapped a thick chain around it,
flipped it upside down with my garden tractor,
and hauled it back into the woods behind my house.
This tractor has a dozer blade on it
so I was then able to push all the dirt back into the hole.

We had made plans to check out
dwarf trees at a nearby home improvement center
because we wanted to plant one
between out house and garage
in an empty flower bed we have.
So once I was done with the big stump,
we were off to Lowes'.
We narrowed it down to 3 Japanese Maples,
all dwarfs that get no bigger than 8 feet tall
(Some varieties of Japanese Maples
get up to 20 feet high)

My Japanese Maple close-up. The leaves are very narrow and delicate.

Two were $115/each and one was inexplicably $90.
They all looked the same except the $90 one
had a weird little branch that jutted out the side.
That may be why it was reduced in price.
So I bought that one.
No big deal about the branch.
When winter comes, I'll just trim it off
and it won't be missed.
My neighbor to the south
(not the frozen-cat neighbor, she's to the north)
came over to watch me.
His Japanese Maple just died last year.
It was planted only 6-7 years ago, and he thinks
a really bad heat wave we had last summer
might've killed it.
"And I paid $300 for the damned thing
and it up and dies on me!"
Wow, $300!
And when he planted it, it wasn't much bigger
than the one I bought Saturday!
I think I got a pretty good deal.

While he was over,
he pointed out a broken tree branch
hanging on a tree just behind my garage.
This dead branch
is about 4-inches in diameter at the base.
I'd seen it before and planned to remove it
so it doesn't fall and hit and damage my garage.
But there's still plenty holding it on to the tree,
so there's no hurry.
"You'd better get that branch down
before it falls and hits one of your kids!", he said.
"Are you kiddin' ?", I replied.
"That would be the freakiest thing that ever happened,
for one of my kids to just happen to be standing under it
right when it lets loose!", I added.
(They don't even play there!)
"Well...this stuff happens." he said.

And I finally really figured out why
he wanted me to do this:

He has obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I've suspected it for the last few years
because he keeps the outside of his house so meticulous.
His house and yard just look so perfect.
He even bleaches his shingles
so they don't show any discoloration from dirt or mildew!

And now, besides my branch,
he has a bigger branch that's broken
that he's said he has to remove.
But this one is in the woods behind his house!
I mean...no one will ever notice if he just lets it go!

Yesterday, the frozen-cat neighbor to the north
brought over two small green bell pepper plants
and also gave us a strawberry plant.
She said the strawberry plant would spread.
She's normally like a hermit
and keeps to herself all the time.
So, I don't know why she did it.
Maybe she's hoping we'll give her some vegetables
once they're grown and ready to pick.
And we just might give her some at that,
if we can spare any.

Finally yesterday,
I planted the tree we bought Saturday.
There used to be an old garage
where this flower bed was
and about 6 inches down
the ground was hard-packed gravel and clay.
So I had to dig like crazy with a pick
and replace that junk with some nice potting soil
so the tree roots have something good to grow into.

So that was my weekend.
And with my bad back, I'm still a little sore.
But mostly just tired.
Which is good,
because that means my back can still do some work.

The Old Phone

2006-05-04T17:15:00.000-04:00

Someone sent this story to me in an email one day.
Some of you may have read it yourself.
It appears to be quite an old story.
Every time I read it,
the ending brings tears to my eyes.

I really don't know if it's true,
but it sounds as though
it certainly could be.....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

THE OLD PHONE

When I was quite young, my father had
one of the first telephones in our neighborhood.

I remember the polished, old case fastened to the wall.
The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box.
I was too little to reach the telephone,
but used to listen with fascination
when my mother talked to it.

Then I discovered
that somewhere inside the wonderful device
lived an amazing person.
Her name was "Information Please"
and there was nothing she did not know.
Information Please
could supply anyone's number and the correct time.

My personal experience with the genie-in-a-bottle
came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor.
Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement,
I whacked my finger with a hammer,
the pain was terrible,
but there seemed no point in crying
because there was no one home to give sympathy.

I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger,
finally arriving at the stairway.
The telephone!
Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlor
and dragged it to the landing.
Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlor
and held it to my ear.
"Information, please"
I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.
A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear.
"Information."
"I hurt my finger..." I wailed into the phone,
the tears came readily enough
now that I had an audience.
"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.
"Nobody's home but me," I blubbered.
"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.
"No," I replied.
"I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."
"Can you open the icebox?" she asked. I said I could.
"Then chip off a little bit of ice
and hold it to your finger," said the voice.

After that, I called "Information Please" for everything.
I asked her for help with my geography,
and she told me where Philadelphia was.
She helped me with my math.
She told me my pet chipmunk
that I had caught in the park just the day before,
would eat fruit and nuts.

Then, there was the time Petey - our pet canary - died.
I called, Information Please," and told her the sad story.
She listened, and then said things
grown-ups say to soothe a child.
But I was not consoled.
I asked her,
"Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully
and bring joy to all families,
only to end up as a heap of feathers
on the bottom of a cage?"

She must have sensed my deep concern,
for she said quietly,
"Wayne...always remember
that there are other worlds to sing in."
Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone,
"Information Please."
"Information," said in the now familiar voice.
"How do I spell fix?" I asked.

All this took place
in a small town in the Pacific Northwest.
When I was nine years old,
we moved across the country to Boston.
I missed my friend very much.
"Information Please"
belonged in that old wooden box back home
and I somehow never thought
of trying the shiny new phone
that sat on the table in the hall.

As I grew into my teens,
the memories of those childhood conversations
never really left me.
Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity
I would recall the serene sense of security I had then.
I appreciated now how patient, understanding,
and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on my way west to college,
my plane put down in Seattle.
I had about a half-hour or so between planes.
I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister,
who lived there now.
Then without thinking what I was doing,
I dialed my hometown operator and said,
"Information Please."
Miraculously,
I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well.
"Information."
I hadn't planned this, but I heard myself saying,
"Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"
There was a long pause.
Then came the soft spoken answer,
"I guess your finger must have healed by now."
I laughed, "So it's really you," I said.
"I wonder if you have any idea
how much you meant to me during that time?"
I wonder," she said,
"if you know how much your call meant to me.
I never had any children
and I used to look forward to your calls."
I told her how often I had thought of her over the years
and I asked if I could call her again
when I came back to visit my sister.
"Please do", she said. "Just ask for Sally."

Three months later I was back in Seattle.
A different voice answered, "Information."
I asked for Sally.
"Are you a friend?" she said.
"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," she said.
"Sally had been working part-time the last few years
because she was sick.

She died five weeks ago."

Before I could hang up she said,
"Wait a minute, did you say your name was Wayne?"
"Yes." I answered.
"Well, Sally left a message for you.
She wrote it down in case you called.
Let me read it to you."

The note said,

"Tell him there are other worlds to sing in.
He'll know what I mean."

I thanked her and hung up.
I knew what Sally meant.

Never underestimate
the impression you may make on others.

Women and Make-up: Do They or Don't They?

2006-05-02T20:54:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday was a beautiful day
- sunny and about 70.
During nearly all of April
we had a strange breeze from the east.
I say "strange" because usually the wind
blows from the southwest, west or northwest.
This wind brought us some beautiful weather.
But the air was very dry
and I found myself using lip balm and hand lotion
throughout April, and even using it today.
I normally stop using that by the end of March.
April here is usually very wet.

Anyway, the kids have a swingset in the backyard
and at one end is a wooden loveseat swing
that my wife and I love to sit on.

On Sunday, my wife and I were sitting on the swing
and she was applying make-up
as we were swinging.
"How are you able put on make-up as we're swinging???"
I said with a laugh!
"I'm a woman of many talents, aren't I?"
she replied.

I had to go into the house for some reason
and while I was inside
the neighbor woman came over to the swingset.
And yes...
this is the same neighbor
with the dead cats in her freezer.
She sat down beside my wife, said Hi,
and my wife told me that they chatted for a while.

Eventually, our neighbor said,
"Are you going somewhere?"
Well, no...why?", replied my wife.
"Why are you putting on make-up?
I don't do it unless I'm going somewhere."
said the neighbor.
"Just habit." my wife said.

We were talking about it later, and my wife concluded
that our neighbor does this
because she's been living alone for so long.
My wife puts on make-up each day,
regardless of what she has planned.
She's horribly vain
(her words, and she insisted that I quote her),
and she always wants to look her best.

It's very awkward to ask women I work with about this.
I feel many would consider this a private matter.
Keeping this in mind,
I might get: "Mind your own business!" as an answer.
So I posed a question today to two women I work with,
two that I knew
would not only give me an honest answer,
but also wouldn't be somehow insulted or anything.
So I asked,
"Do you wear make-up all day, every day
(except when you sleep, of course)
or just apply it when you plan to go somewhere?"

One said she put it on each day and wore it all the time.
I might add that she's about 60
and you'd consider her old-fashioned.

The other wears it
only when she plans to go somewhere.
She said
"If I'm just going to bum around the house all day,
I won't put any on."
She's in her early 40s and not particularly old-fashioned.

So, there was a grand total of 4 in my "survey",
including my wife and neighbor.
Certainly not much of a survey,
but the results are 50-50.

I'm pretty surprised!

I always thought the vast majority of women
put on make-up each day
regardless of what they had planned.
Maybe I'm wrong.
(Of course, there's some that never wear any.)

Ladies, what are your thoughts on this?
Do you apply it each day regardless
or put it on only when you plan to go somewhere
...if you wear any at all?
And guys,
any idea what your wife or girlfriend does
in regards to her make-up?

Favorite Star Trek Memories

2006-04-28T20:19:00.000-04:00

News has spread about a new Star Trek movie
planned to be released sometime in 2008,
made by J.J. Abrams, the same guy who created Lost.
The report says it's another prequel, like Enterprise.
I've never seen Lost,
but I've heard nothing but good stuff about it.
I have seen the prequel series Enterprise
and never liked it from the start.

The only real good thing about a Star Trek prequel
is that:
even though there's records archived somewhere
in Picard, Janeway and Sisko's day
of any important events that happened
back in earlier days of the Federation,
we may not know about those stories
and those stories and characters will be new and fresh
for the fans who are watching.

The basic trouble with prequels
is that any technology shown is old by Trek standards.
And isn't that a big reason
people have watched Star Trek for 40 years?
You watch the technology grow and develop
for 40 real years,
then all of a sudden you're thrown back
80 (or more) Star Trek-years in a series,
or in the case of this week's news...a movie.

Not to mention that we already know the ending:
that the Federation will prevail
over whatever the threat is
and flourish 80 years later.

Well, I have no control
over the direction moviemakers take
to develop this story for a 2008 Star Trek movie.
No doubt I will watch it once at the theatres
and, if I'm very pleasantly surprised
at what story the Trek writers have come up with,
...several times.
I hope that's the case but I'm not holding my breath.

Lets hope for the best, Star Trek fans.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The news has made me think, though
about favorite memories I have
of Star Trek over the years.
All were events that did one or more of the following...
either shocked or surprised me at the time,
had sudden plot twists, left me in (or nearly in) tears
big battles that left me feeling super-gratified
or a just-barely-getting-something-done-in-time scene.
Um...I guess that makes sense, huh?
As that's what creates a memory!

I'm going to borrow (steal)
a nifty trick from Patricia that I like:
Coloring the sections in different shades.
I think it'll make it easier
to keep track reading this long posting.

Here they are, in no particular order:

= In TOS episode The Doomsday Machine,
Scotty managing to get
the nearly destroyed USS Constellation
moving well enough
(and...recharging one phaser bank!)
to help the Enterprise
break free from a tractor beam
the planet killer had trained on it.

= In TOS's Balance of Terror,
Spock racing to weapons control
only to find the room filled with toxic smoke
(and one man dead and another nearly unconscious)
and managing to fire phasers manually
at a Romulan warbird just in time
to halt its attack approach and severely disable it.

= Watching The Wrath of Khan
at a theatre the first time,
I was shocked to see the damage
the USS Reliant inflicted on the Enterprise
in the initial phaser attack,
before Kirk knew Khan was aboard.
That was the first time really good special effects
were used to show
a close-up, detailed, ship-to-ship attack.
I remember some in the theatre audience gasped.

= Speaking of watching in a theatre,
I remember watching First Contact
the first time in a theatre.
At the point toward the beginning
where Picard is on the bridge with all the senior officers
and says,

"I am about to commit a direct violation of our orders.
Anyone who objects,
speak up now and it will be noted in my log."
After a few seconds of silence, Data replies,
"Sir, I think I speak for everyone here when I say...
to hell with our orders!"

It was at this point in the theatre
that a woman about 40 got to her feet and screamed
"Yessss! YESSSS!"

= In First Contact, as much as I liked the battle
all the Federation ships had against the Borg cube,
I wish I would've seen Worf and the USS Defiant
have a little more luck.
After all, that class ship was built to fight the Borg.
Obviously, I wasn't the only one.
I understand the artist who invented the USS Defiant
was furious that the moviemakers
didn't let his ship fare better, too.

And the cameos of Ethan Phillips and Robert Picardo
(Neelix and the doctor on Voyager)
were a nice touch, too.

= I've watched two interviews
regarding James Doohan since he died.
One was with him
and one was someone speaking about him.
In both, a story is told
of a woman who was a big fan of his
but she was depressed about something
and suicidal.
He heard about her, somehow got her phone number,
called her and talked to her
and they even saw each other at conventions.
He kept in touch with her from time to time
and helped manage to lift her spirits for good.
She turned out OK.

= There's people in Star Trek
we really aren't supposed to like (some are villains).
But there's some that were created to be popular
for one reason or another.
And some of them........I...can't...stand!

My top three people in Trek that I hate, in this order
(and they're all from The Next Generation):
1. Dr. Pulaski from the 2nd season.
She was incredibly insulting to everyone,
especially Picard and Data.
When she contracted an aging virus
while on the one planet
with the genetically-enhanced kids,
they should've left her there
with her self-important attitude.
2. Wesley Crusher. I know of someone
who had a toy minature transporter room
about 15 years ago.
They bought a Wesley doll, melted it in an oven
and put it on one of the pads
to make it look like a transporter accident.
3. Lt. Cmdr. Shelby from Best of Both Worlds.
I don't care if she thought she was an "expert"
on the Borg or not.
The first time she went over Riker's head,
he should've shoved her out an airlock.

= I saw an interview
with DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy from TOS)
sometime before he died.
He said that if TOS were to continue for a 4th season,
that Dr. McCoy was to have
a daughter from a previous marriage join the crew.
Kirk would've "made moves on her"
and it was to be
a source of friction between the two characters.

= I loved The Visitor from DS9.
A beautiful episode all the way around
and there wasn't one fight or battle in it.
Spike TV's been showing DS9 twice daily
and I'm gonna watch for this one.
They're showing season 2 stuff now
and The Visitor is season 4.
Keep Kleenex handy for this one.

= The same with The Inner Light from TNG.

= It was so cool to watch Voyager decimate Borg ships
with transphasic torpedo technology from the future
on the last episode, Endgame.
And the Borg was virtually helpless
against Voyager's new shield technology.
After watching the Federation struggle so much for years
against the Borg, I could finally shout...
...AWWW-RIGHT!!!

= And finally, I loved TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise.
An excellent story, a little romance
and another great battle at the end
with the crew of the Enterprise D sacrificing themselves
so the Enterprise C can make its way back
in hopes of repairing the past for the future's sake.
Another just-in-the-nick-of-time moment at the end!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm sure I missed some.
But that's OK.
Even if I added them,
I'd probably be adding more every day
because I'd get carried away.

And who knows?
Maybe they'll make another series someday.
Or maybe I'll have favorite scenes
from the movie that'll be ready in 2008.

I once heard a trekkie who was interviewed
after all the series had ended.
She wasn't just an ordinary trekkie,
she was big in a Trek club.
And she said,
"You know...people are so sad
that there aren't any more
new Star Trek episodes being made.
And yes...that is sad. But consider this:
There's a lifetime of Star Trek material out there.
There is so much Star Trek material available
that one can watch it all,
and by the time you go back and begin again,
you're ready to watch it once more."

Very true.

Do you have a favorite Star Trek memory?

Diaries

2006-04-25T10:26:00.000-04:00

I'm just now getting over a nasty bout of the flu.
Real flu, that is...as opposed to stomach flu.
With what everyone calls stomach flu,
there's a lot of throwing up and such.
But I've got the kind they make flu shots for,
the kind that gives you a high fever, aches and pains.
My fever maxed out at 101.5
but it's hovering around normal now
and I'm not even taking anything to bring it down.
So that's good news.
But only a few years ago, I had a fever of over 103
and for some reason, I felt much worse with this.

Home from work
and not feeling like doing much of anything,
I pulled out some old diaries I wrote when I was a kid.
Now, many people create a blog to be a diary,
but how many of you wrote down your thoughts
- your fears and dreams...or just general goings-ons -
when you were very young?
I'm guessing that many girls did
but very few boys like me did.

I see my first entry was May 1st, 1972,
when I was 12 years old.
In six days, that'll be exactly 34 years ago?
Unbelieveable!
And what did I write?

Monday. Just got this diary.
Time: 9:11 p.m. at 72 degrees outside.
Rained all day. Rode motorcycle before it rained.

How interesting.
One thing is for sure:
no one will ever make a movie from my diaries.

It does get a little better ( funnier), though.
The entry I put on May 29th says:

Some light rain, 86, no school today!
Time 11:35 p.m.. Played with pointed knives all day.
Men to pave driveway
are supposed to finish tomorrow.
Variable skys, but cloudy in evening.

I don't have a clue about the pointed knives.
I don't ever remember playing
with pointed knives before
and I don't know why I'd enter that.
I don't know if I was throwing them at trees,
the ground, little animals or people.
Maybe I was possessed by the devil
or an alien entity for a while that day.
The stuff around it sounds like me, though.

I've noticed that,
while I eventually stopped writing
the time I made the entry,
I always - always -
wrote the weather conditions each day.
Always.
I was always fascinated my the weather and
for a long time I wanted to be a meteorologist.
Both my sons are the same way now.
Must be genetic.

And I seemed to have a preoccupation that month
with our family having our driveway paved.
I think it was really exciting for a twelve-year-old.
Better for riding a bike, a motorcycle, playing basketball.
We had a basketball hoop when I was a kid.
You've really gotta have asphalt or concrete for that.
In one entry I made a reference to the discount store,
Clarkins.
I see I bought a new basketball there.
Are any of those even in business anymore?
And the back of the diary
has a Woolworth price sticker on it ($2.29).
Do they still have any stores open?

As I read through these four diaries,
I'll post some of the more interesting or funny entries.
There's much too much to put in one blog posting.
Although it appears I did
most of the writing in the first year or two,
none of the diaries are complete.

Just skimming through them, I see
I did a lot of petty fighting with friends
when I was 12 to 14 or so.
Very typical of that age, I suppose.
It looks like the last thing I ever wrote
was when I was 21,
a month after my mother passed away.
I probably wasn't able to force myself to write much after that.
Not that I got real depressed or anything,
but I wrote when she was still alive.
And so much changed after she passed away.
So did I, and the writing ended.

Anyway, I'll see what I can find
worth posting from these diaries.

My Father-in-Law

2006-04-18T19:54:00.000-04:00

I always promised
I'd do a posting someday on my father-in-law.
He was a real character!

My wife's father grew up
in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As a young boy, he witnessed a friend his own age
run across the street and get hit and killed by a car.
Not long after that,
his home was involved in a major fire.
His father died right away
and his mother died later in the hospital.
Add to this the fact that he apparently inherited genes
that made him very susceptible to depression,
and he had a very rough childhood,
moving around to different foster homes.
But he spent most of his foster life on a farm.

I guess what he went through as a child
made him very cheap.
Not greedy, mind you.
And he would never cheat on his taxes
or never cheat anyone out of money.
He just would not spend money if he didn't have to.
And if he found ways to save you money,
he'd point it out.

Unfortunately, it was my mother-in-law
who bore the brunt of this for over 50 years.
Not once did he ever buy her a gift
in all the time they were married.
And he never took her out to eat.
Once in a while, if...say...
Arby's had roast beef sandwiches on sale,
he'd pick some up and take them home.
That was the extent of ever treating his wife to dinner.

My wife told me he was harsh when he was younger,
especially to his wife and oldest daughter
(my wife was the youngest).
Yelling and such. A hot temper.
By the time I met him in 1987, he mellowed a lot.

Luckily, part of his cheapness helped his health:
he quit smoking in the 1960s.
But a big of the reason was watching his wife's uncle
- also a smoker - die of lung cancer.
He was a very smart man:
he saved money and helped his health, too.

He did some crazy things that involved being cheap.
When I think of how he was,
eccentricity comes to mind.

Ironically,
even though both his parents died from a house fire,
he never bought insurance on his home.
He always said the chances were
that it would never happen again to him.
That was terribly risky...but he was right.

He had a 1986 Ford Escort
and took the rear seat out to save weight.
He took off the passenger side windshield wiper
to make the car more aerodynamic.
To save gas, you know.
His Escort was beige,
so whenever it developed a spot of rust,
he'd stick a piece of masking tape on it to cover it.
He disconnected
all the anti-pollution equipment on the engine
and plugged up any hoses going to them
because he figured they contributed to wasting gas.
Unfortunately, he was wrong
since the engine was built for this stuff.
He pretty much trashed all the equipment
and while I don't think it hurt the gas mileage
(or help it either),
disconnecting these things
made the engine always smell like raw gasoline.
When he bought a new 1996 Escort,
he did all the other things,
but he left the engine alone.
No matter what car he drove,
when he'd see he was approaching a traffic light,
he'd turn off the engine and let it coast
if the light was green and he was still far away.
You see, he anticipated that the light would turn red
and he didn't want the car to sit at a red light and idle.
He was usually right, too!

He even made up his own jokes.
Some were pretty good, actually.
(A man shoplifted some Doritos
from a convenience store.
As he was running down the sidewalk,
the store owner chased him screaming,
"Hey! That's Nacho Cheese!!!")

But some were awful!
(What's the most important parts of a car?
Lifter, rear end and wiper)

He even kept a little notebook
with all the punchlines in it.
I guess he figured the body of the joke could be altered,
but the punchline was important.

I really liked him and he really liked me, too.
Even though he was cheap, he was a nice guy.
He was always very chatty when we went to visit.
He always looked forward to our visits.
We'd talk cars, baseball, politics, anything in the news.
He was great with puzzles of all kinds.
He loved bowling and golf
and drastically altered his golf clubs to his liking.
Although this irritated his golfing buddies,
they tolerated it (which was very nice of them).
He felt the clubs performed much better
with his alterations.

In the early '80s, he developed stomach cancer,
had it operated on,
and retired from the Ford Motor Company.
He thought it was the end,
but to his amazement, it never came back.
While the doctors were "in there",
they also took out his gall bladder and appendix.
Just to be on the safe side, I guess.
To everyone's astonishment, though,
he had to get operated on for gallstones
in the early '90s.
Gallstones...after the gall bladder was removed?
Well, the doctors left in some "ductwork"
(for lack of a better name)
from the gall bladder,
and that's where the stones formed.
And he was hospitalized for a bleeding ulcer
a year or so after that.

In September 1997, when he was 74,
he left around noon one day
to go bowling with some friends.
He threw his ball and winced.
His buddies thought it was because he missed a spare,
but then he collapsed and was unconscious.
He had suffered a major heart attack
and never regained consciousness.
I was called at work, rushed home,
and we sped to the hospital.
The doctors said he had several more heart attacks
in the ambulance and in the hospital
and he had no chance of ever waking up.
He always said
he never wanted to be kept on life support,
so at 5 p.m. that day, everything was disconnected
and he passed away.

And I sobbed uncontrollably.

It just all happened so fast.
Although he went regularly to the doctor,
he would never tell anyone what the doctor said.
We suspected the doc told him
he had high blood pressure
and refused any medication.

He always told me that if anything happened to him,
he wanted me to have his '96 Escort
because he and I were the only ones in the family
who knew how to drive stick-shift.
I told him that we were happy with the cars we had
and I would just sell it.
But he insisted that I take it anyway.
It was almost new at the time
and he didn't do anything harmful to it.
So my mother-in-law did what he wished
and gave it to us.
We sold it and used the money for home remodeling.

Part of the remodeling was a new 3-1/2 car garage.
In the garage hangs a plaque that says:

In Memory of (his name) ,
For Without His Generosity
This Garage Could Not Have Been Possible.

To this day, I miss him very much.

And I was given his little notebook
with all his joke punchlines.
I keep it in my top dresser drawer.

Happy Easter!

2006-04-15T19:59:00.000-04:00

First and foremost, Happy Easter to all!
I hope all of you are having
a wonderful holiday weekend!

My neighbors gave this mechanized bunny - Mr. B -
to my kids today, a day ahead of time.

It sings Hop Hop Hop!
to the tune of Hot Hot Hot!
and whirs and hops when it gets to the refrain.
After about the second time I heard it,
I determined it was annoying
(unfortunately, the kids like it)
but I think I can handle it until the kids get tired of it.

There is a humorous side to this whole thing, though.
Look at the backside of the tag around its neck:

I did not alter this image with my computer or anything.
It really does say NOT A TOY.
If this isn't a toy, what is it???
Maybe I should be afraid of it...
like it's a bomb or it'll come alive.
Or maybe it's some kind of tool
and I have yet to figure out what its made for.
Hmmm.

Obits

2006-04-12T18:16:00.000-04:00

I don't remember
what made me think of this yesterday.

When I was young,
we had a pizza shop about 1/4 mile down the road.
They had good pizza
but the owner was the first real jerk I ever met.

Each pizza box had a coupon on the back.
If you saved up 20, you got a free small cheese pizza.
I remember - when I was about 13 -
calling in an order
after we saved up the coupons for a free one.
I walked there to pick it up
and got chewed out by the owner
for not telling him over the phone that it was a free one.
I guess he would've skimped on the toppings,
had he known.

Another time (a couple of years later)
a friend of mine and I went in to order a pizza.
We walked in with our own cans of Coke...
and were promptly told by him to leave...

because we didn't buy our Cokes there!

The last time I went
(why did I keep going back???)
was when I was in my 20s
and there was actually someone desperate enough
to be working there with him.
To be honest, though...
she did look awfully miserable.
She handed me the pizza
and as I dug out my money to pay her,
he came over and opened the lid of my pizza box.
"Hey!...
You put too much pepperoni on this pizza!!!",
he said to her !
Right in front of me, the customer !!!

He let it go
and I guess I should've considered myself lucky
that he didn't pick any off !

One day when I was about 30,
I heard that he died of cancer
and saw his obituary in the paper the next day.

It changed forever the way I look at obituaries.

It was a long, glowing obituary
about what a wonderful father he was
and a wonderful husband he was.
And...oh, yeah...he was a friend to everyone !

I wasn't the only person who had trouble with him.
By the time I was 16 or 18
I knew an awful lot of people
who had similar experiences at his pizza place.
Many quit going there for pizza.
There were even some who knew him
in some other capacity
and they all said the same thing.
That he was an a**hole.

Today, whenever I read an obit
about someone who was oh-so-wonderful,
I can't help but wonder if it's true.
After all, surviving family can say anything they want.
And the worst part is,
there are those who pass away
who really are wonderful
and their loved ones give them a really nice send-off
But it's basically the same write-up as the jerk.
And it's not fair.
But I guess life isn't fair.
And neither is death.

I think I'll tell my wife
(and my kids...when they're older)
that when my time comes someday,
just make it short and sweet, like most obits.

Wh-e-e-e-e!!!...Roto-tilling!!!

2006-04-08T19:16:00.000-04:00

Well, after a 13-year absence
I have decided to grow a garden this year!

You see, I used to grow a garden every year
until I had back surgery in 1993.
Working in a garden
didn't contribute to my back problems
but using a rototiller would be quite hard
on someone who's just had surgery.

My back healed up fine
but then we started having kids
and they took up much of my time.

But now since my kids are 6 and 10,
they'll get a kick out of Dad...um...growing crops.
And they'll get to see exactly how these things develop
from a seed into something you put on the plate.

So I bought a new rear-tine rototiller from Sears.
Got a good deal, too....
20% off last years' model, new in the crate
and they're assembling it for free.
The extended warranty looked good, so I got that.
Five years, no cost on parts or labor
and they come to my house to fix it.

It's too early in this part of the country
to start planting most anything in the ground yet.
That'll come in about a month.
But I can till the ground very soon.
We haven't decided exactly what to plant yet
but we always grew green bush beans,
carrots, snow peas (like the kind in Chinese dishes),
green onions, peppers, squash and tomatoes.
Those all did well here.
And I've had some success with pumpkins
(the big jack-o-lantern kind),
depending on the kind of weather we had those years.
My oldest son also wants corn
but you've got to plant a lot for it to pollinate well.
And my garden won't be big enough.

That is, unless I really get into this
and make the garden bigger.

A New Reason For Hating Car Dealers

2006-04-07T14:50:00.000-04:00

It used to be
that the biggest reason I didn't like car dealers
was because they charged so much for everything.

Now they've invented a new reason for hating them:
attempting to sell me
something my car doesn't need.

The last dealer that I thought I could trust not to do this
has switched over to the dark side of the force.

I took my wife's Ford Taurus to this dealer
to have them figure out why the CHECK ENGINE light
kept coming on.
It stalled when cold
and was getting worse gas mileage, too.
The girl in the Service Department called and said
it was a bad PCV valve and a bad attached vacuum line.
An easy fix,
but she proceeded to tell me that it also needs
a fuel filter, an air filter,
the transmission and cooling system flushed,
the ball joints are "slightly" worn (yes...her words),
one tie rod end is "tight" (again, her wording...
even though tie rod ends are supposed to be tight)
and the engine oil needs changing!

None of these had anything to do
with my reason for taking it in!

Why are they checking these things
- nosing into places in my car where they don't belong -
when I took it in for something completely different?
Although they'll insist it's "for my own good",
it's solely to make money.
Solely.
Obviously, Ford has been leaning on them to do this.
And I don't necessarily blame Ford
because all car manufacturers are probably doing this.
Which is downright scary
when I consider I'll be buying a new car someday
and at some point I'll need to take it in for something.
When the time comes to buy a new car
I may ask around to find out
which car manufacturer does it the least.
That may make the difference
on what kind of car I'll buy.

Two of the things she mentioned
I just did a few months ago,
so they were only going by the mileage
and assumed I didn't do it.
She even told me so.

How evil.

One was something I was about to do anyway.
And the other four aren't problems.
She never gave me a price to do this work,
probably because she could sense
the disgust in my voice.
But $1800 is not out of the realm of possibility.

Many people consider their car one of the family.
This whole thing was offensive.
I felt it was almost like
I had a family member in the hospital,
she was raped by one of the staff,
and this person called me to brag about it.

Bored, Bored, Bored...But at Least I'm Not at Work!

2006-04-03T16:23:00.000-04:00

I've decided to take a week's vacation from work,
beginning today.
My kids are off, too. So much of my time is...so far...
being spent watching the kids while my wife goes out.

I have done a few things.

Before I know it, the grass will need cutting
so I went to my barn to get the tractor out and ready.

And it won't start.
It won't even turn over...it just makes *clicking* noises.
My multi-meter says the battery is fine,
I cleaned all the connections,
checked the ignition switch
and bypassed all safety features
in case one of them went bad.
Still nothing.
So it must be a bad solenoid on the starter.
Unfortunately, it comes as one unit.
The dealer wants $160(!!!)
and eBay sellers want around $100,
including shipping for the same thing.
They're even new.
That's still expensive, but at least it's not as bad.

So I bought one from a good-sounding seller.
I should get it by Thursday.

I also made an appointment to get my wife's car fixed.
The CHECK ENGINE light keeps coming on.
The autoscanner I have
says the entire engine is running lean.
Thinking it may have been a fluke (a bad tank of gas),
I deleted the code and made the light go off.
It keeps coming back on
so it goes into the dealer tomorrow.
It tries to stall when it's cold, anyway.
Probably related to the light.

A big, dead tree from my neighbor's woods
fell in my backyard
a few weeks ago during a windstorm.
I made arrangements with him
that if I cut it up with my chainsaw,
I could give the firewood to my brother.
Which gave me the opportunity
to visit my brother yesterday
with a pickup truck full of firewood.
It was good to see him...I haven't seen him since autumn.
He took one look at the firewood
and proclaimed that it was excellent,
as it was from an Ash tree.
Incredible!
I knew it was a hardwood
but I would've never known it came from an Ash tree!
My wife and I were both very impressed...
unless he's feeding us a line of bull.
But that would be very unlike him.

Still, I haven't done much so far.
But isn't that supposed to be
what a break from work is like?
But I do need to find stuff
to keep from getting bored.

There's not much I can do outside.
The wind is really strong....20-30 mph
with gusts up to 45, I understand
and the temperature is dropping rapidly.
It was 71 around noon
and now it's 53.
We're supposed to have
some scattered rain mixed with snow tomorrow.

Ah-h-h...Spring!!! When Thoughts Turn to...Wild Turkeys???

2006-03-29T16:14:00.000-05:00

This is a photo taken just about a half-hour ago
of our crocuses (or croci) in full bloom next to our deck.
Believe it or not,
that's the only thing we have blooming so far!
Daffodils are out, but haven't bloomed quite yet.

And that's a small group of irises in the second photo.
Such delicate looking flowers, huh?

They were behind the crocuses.

On my way to work the other morning
I - very unexpectedly! - drove past a flock of something
along the side of the road at the entrance to a local park
about a quarter-mile from my house.
At first - judging by the size - I thought they were geese
until I got up close, and they turned out to be this....

I had a hard time finding

this sample photo on the internet
but it turned out they were poults....young wild turkeys!
All the other photos I could find were adult turkeys
with a lot of brightly colored plumage
or else very, very young poults
that pretty much just looked like
some kind of generic just-hatched chick.
There were about 6 or 8 of them
and they all pretty much looked the same,
probably all from the same hatching.

ABCs About Me

2006-03-26T17:36:00.000-05:00

A big thanks to Average Housewife!,
who did this on her blog a few weeks ago!....

- - - -

"A is for age":
I'm 46

"B is for booze of choice":
I drink very little...
even a six-pack of beer lasts me six months.
But when I do buy something,
it's nearly always an ice beer,
like Bud Ice or Natural Ice.

"C is for career":
I'm a school custodian.
I've been a custodian somewhere a total of 28 years.

"D is for your dog's name":
I don't have a dog right now,
but I used to have an english setter named Sam.

"E is for essential items you use everyday":
On a weekday? What you'd expect...
a dustmop, wet mop and mop bucket, ladder, snowblower,
you get the idea.
Weekends include a bicycle, my PC, my TV,
and whatever my kids are involved with.

"F is for favorite song":
ohhh, it's all oldies stuff from the '80s back to the '60s.
I don't really have a favorite.

"G is for favorite games":
probably Life.
NO!....Flinch!

"H is for how many jobs you've had":
I've had four...
when I was a kid I was a paperboy,
I used to work at an Arby's,
I worked as a church custodian
and now I'm a school custodian.

"I is for the instruments you play":
None, but I tried the clarinet when I was in 4th grade.
My parents rented it,
and when the rent period was up
they told me they'd buy me one
if I wanted to continue playing the clarinet.
I didn't think I was very good at all,
so I told them the truth and decided to quit.

"J is for jam or jelly you like":
Blackberry jam. I grew up on blackberries.
Tons of them grew wild behind our house.

"K is for kids":
Two, both boys...ages 6 and 9.

"L is for last kiss":
Just before my wife went shopping she kissed me.
That was about an hour ago.

"M is for most admired trait":
There's a lot of traits to admire,
but since I must pick one,
it would have to be honesty.
Lying seems to be epidemic these days.

"N is for name of your crush":
Hmmm...that seems to be for people younger than me.
OK, I'll say Pamela Anderson.
Ten years ago I would've said Jeri Ryan
but I don't hear much about her anymore.

"O is for overnight hospital stays":
A week before I got married in 1988
I was hospitalized for four days
with bacterial pneumonia & pleurisy.
They said if it were 75 years ago, I'd be dead.
Twelve-and-a-half years ago
I had major back surgery.
I had surgery in the morning
and by evening they insisted I stand up!
I did and felt I would collapse in a big pile of flesh,
but I didn't.

"P is for phobias":
Until I was in my mid-30s, I had dentophobia -
a fear of dentists.
The dentist I had as a kid was apparently sadistic
as he insisted on drilling for cavities
without numbing a person's mouth first.
Which sorta reminds me of the dentist
in the original Little Shop of Horrors.
Mine did it because he said he needed to know
when I began feeling pain
so he'd know how close he was getting to the nerve.
My dentist I've had since my mid-30s
says this is hogwash,
that a good dentist doesn't have to do this.
That was my only phobia and I have none now.

"Q is for quotes you like":
There's several I like....

"Fear not the villain who twirls his mustache
as he is easy to spot.
Fear those who cloak themselves in good deeds,
...as they are not."
from TNG's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard to Worf in The Drumhead

"I don't understand!?! Is there a gas leak in here???"
from a thoroughly confused Plankton in
The Algae's is Always Greener, SpongeBob Squarepants

"Squidward! You're steaming!!!
You're like a steamed vegetable!
......only smarter."
from a very innocent SpongeBob in Squidville

"That looks like Squidward,
only in angry mob form!"
SpongeBob to Patrick in Squidville

"They say there's no devil, Jim...but there is.
Right out of Hell, I saw it!"
Commodore Matt Decker to Capt. James Kirk on TOS,
describing the planet-killer
in the episode The Doomsday Machine

I could go on and on with quotes, I suppose.

"R is for biggest regret":
Boy, I don't have many...let along "biggest" ones.
Probably some investments somewhere along the line
that I should've made.
I know around 1976
I could've bought this one car for $300.
If I'd bought and restored it
(which would've been extremely easy for this car)
it would've been worth $20,000 ten years later.

"S is for sweets of your choice":
This changes from time to time.
For the moment, it's Dove Dark Chocolate squares.
They come individually wrapped in bags.
In a month it might change to baklava
if I get the urge to make some.

"T is for the time you wake up":
Work days (weekdays), at 5:45 a.m.
Unless something is happening
where I need to go in early
(such as a big meeting I need to set up
or if it's snowed overnight
and I need to clean the sidewalks.)
Then it changes correspondingly.
Weekends...um...it's still 5:45 !
I just wake up automatically anymore.
If I try to sleep in, I get a headache.

"U is for underwear":
Briefs.
Size 40.
I know.
That was more than you needed to know.
But I figured I'd throw everyone a curveball.

"V is for vegetables you love":
There's quite a few vegetables I love.
I think my favorite would be peas with pearl onions.

"W is for worst habit":
That would have to be nail biting.

"X is for x-rays you've had":
Do MRIs count?
I've had to have several MRIs done
over the years for my back,
some in 1993 when I first started having back trouble
and again three years ago
when I thought my back was giving me trouble again.
Several years ago I had chest x-rays during a physical.
And when I had the previously mentioned pneumonia,
I had x-rays for that, too.

"Y is for yummy food you make":
Hey, I already gave an answer earlier!...baklava!
How about that!
Everybody loves my toll-house cookies, too.
And the kids love my macaroni & cheese from the box!
HA!

"Z is for zodiac sign":
I'm a Cancer.
A crab. I grab and hang on!

- - - -

Well, that was pretty fun!
Whew, there's a lot of letters in the alphabet, huh?
They say there's 26, huh? HA!

I have to admit,
I did get carried away with a few categories, though!

Why Do Some People Have to Struggle to be Good?

2006-03-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

A local man was just put to death
several days ago for the murder of two women,
each murder being several months apart.

A woman who fell in love with him
while he was in prison awaiting execution
(ok-a-a-a-y......)
was sure it was drugs he was on that made him do it.

But the day he was executed,
they asked him why he did it, and he responded,
"It wasn't pot I was smoking that made me do it.
All the friends I grew up with smoked pot, too.
But they never killed anyone.
So I don't know why I killed them."

I read about an HBO film
that was on recently
about C.C. Baird, a Church of Christ minister
who - for four years - made millions of dollars selling
stolen or abandoned dogs to laboratories!
This is too cold for words.
I believe people like that are capable of murder,
and this lowlife was a minister.

Are we all born with sin?
Regardless of what some people say,
I don't think so.
Some people are naturally good their entire lives.
Maybe it's genetic.
I believe if you're a good person,
the most church (or any other house of worship)
will do for you is provide socializing opportunities
and maybe learn
that particular interpretation of the bible.
If you're a bad person,
it's a place to hide one's lack of values,
and a place to build someone's trust long enough
to take advantage of them later.
I don't think a church can make you a good person.
But it might give someone with low self-esteem
some confidence in themselves.

Many of us might be born with aggression.
I've heard before
that if you put two toddlers together in a playpen
that within twenty minutes
one will hit the other for no apparent reason,
regardless of how they were raised.

Another example of the struggle to be good
(although this deals with control, not physical aggression)
is with someone I actually work with:
our school's lunchroom monitor.
One of our two cooks
has worked in our school for over 20 years
so she knows the most efficient way to run lunchtime
and what works best for the kids' sake.
The lunchroom monitor,
who has worked there for about 6 or 7 years,
insists on trying to make changes every few months,
such as moving a condiment table from here to there
or telling the cooks things would run smoother
if they changed how they served food.
She even goes to the principal to plead her case
if the cooks say "no!".
Once the principal is involved,
the problem smolders for 2 weeks
before the monitor is ordered to forget it.
Five months later, after things have quieted down,
she'll try something new.

And she's a compulsive liar,
lying about how discussions we had never took place...
even when several other people were around!
One such discussion was
why I was once in our labor union, quit,
and never joined again.
My biggest reason was because
at negotiation time for a new contract,
none of my suggestions were ever seriously considered.
She told me that for any suggestion
to get serious consideration,
I'd have to become a union officer.

I was outraged!...
"I'm paying union dues and what do I get in return?!
If any union member has good ideas,
they should be seriously considered in contract talks!"

Things got rather heated
and less than a year later
I mentioned the discussion
and she denied that the informal meeting even occurred.

Even though nothing she did was physically violent,
she tries to control everyone in every situation she's in
and lies even when others were there to witness events.
Those of us who work with her a lot
are wondering if she's mentally ill.
Unfortunately,
this idea hasn't made it's way to supervisors.
We're also wondering
if her husband controls everything she does at home
and her attempt to control everything where she works
is a way to satisfy that same craving she has.
After all, when she thinks she's controlling people,
it appears to be like a narcotic to her,
like she's really high or something.

Why do people like this need this as an outlet?
Why can't they find serenity in getting along with others?
In the long run,
they'd save themselves a lot of time and trouble
because they seldom get what they want,
and ....people who know them start to talk.
They end up making a bad name for themselves.

My wife has asked me this question before:

"t...do you think people
- as a species -
are basically good,
or basically bad?"

And after thinking long and hard about it...

I've never been able to answer her.

Sensory Test

2006-03-18T17:22:00.000-05:00

This is quite challenging, but it's fun.
I only got 9 out of 20 right.

See how you do at this.
Try it!

Sensory Test

Elderly People And Their...um...Medicines

2006-03-18T17:20:00.000-05:00

My wife had a funny story to tell me today.
This happened to her yesterday at work.

She's a pharmacy technician
and at work she had to call up
an elderly customer at his home
to tell him some medication had come in
and it was ready to be picked up.

She called on the phone and it quit ringing,
so she assumed someone had answered it.
But she said "Hello? Hello?" and no one responded.
She determined the elderly man and his wife
must've been babysitting because she heard children
and a toddler must've picked up the phone.

She never found out for sure,
but eventually,
she heard an elderly woman in the background
say in a stern voice,

"NO! I'm NOT going to give you an enema today!"

By the tone of her voice,
my wife was pretty sure she was talking to her husband.

Playgrounds

2006-03-15T15:58:00.000-05:00

Our school playground has swings,
a baseball field, a soccer field,
several basketball half-courts,
enclosed and open sliding boards,
and four-square games painted on the blacktop.
During wintertime, kids have access to plastic sleds
to use on a short hill we have.

When I was a kid,
I think my favorite playground activity
was playing on a jungle-gym or teeter-totter.
These two things are long gone
from area playgrounds now
because they caused some accidents over the years.

But I remember one thing we used to do
when we had free time outside in Jr. High School
(at that age I wouldn't really call it recess):
back then,
pop/soda cans had pull-tabs
that came off the can (which were steel then)
when you opened up your drink.
The tabs could be snapped into two pieces.
Kids discovered that one of the pieces - a circular part -
could be inserted into a slot of the other piece,
snapped back and released
and - with a little experience -
it could shoot like a frisbee 30 feet or more.
Eventually, the tabs were banned from recess
because they were making a mess on the grounds.

Damned custodians, always taking fun away.

What was your favorite thing to do at recess
or any outside free time you had at school as a kid?

Did Dr. Seuss Predict the Future?

2006-03-12T09:45:00.000-05:00

My youngest son who is now 6
has become crazy about Dr. Seuss videos.
So we borrowed several from our local library.

Of course, they follow the books exactly,
even as far as using the same artwork
in a crude stop-action method cartoon.

One of the stories we got on VHS was
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
The original book version was written in 1958.

In case you don't know,
the Cat in the Hat returns
to the house with the boy and girl
as they are shoveling snow off their sidewalk
and proceeds to make himself at home
by going in and eating a slice of cake while taking a bath.
As the water drains, a pink bathtub ring appears
and the Cat cleans off the ring
with the mother's white dress.
He then slaps the dress against the wall
to get the stain off,
which is where it's transferred to.
The Cat in the Hat insists throughout the book
that he knows what he's doing,
but spreads the stain from the wall to expensive shoes,
all over a rug and a bed
before calling on little-cat-helpers
that he pulls out from under his tall hat.
The little-cat-helpers inevitably intensify the damage,
getting it on more and more things
before the stain ends up as pink spots outside the house,
all over the snow.

Was Dr. Seuss - Theodore Geisel -
a modern-day prophet, a modern day Nostradamus?

The kids, their home and lawn
could be Iraq and it's citizens,
and the The Cat in the Hat is George W. Bush,
making himself at home inside
and eating a slice of cake in the bathtub.
The pink stain he creates,
an analogy to insurgency and suicide bombers.
The little-cat-helpers are Cheney, Rice, Powell,
and Rumsfeld and the rest of the military.

Iraq may have just entered the stage
of the pink stain on top of
the tufts of snow outside the house.
When the little cats shoot the blobs of pink snow
with pop guns, it's spread throughout the lawn.
Will this be indicative of a future Iraqi Civil War?

And this book is The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
The original was, of course, The Cat in the Hat.
I haven't even scrutinized that one yet.
But I'm wondering
if there's an analogy to the Gulf War there.

Oh, I know.
This is all a silly coincidence, and besides...
I suppose I'm stretching events in a childrens' book
to match real events.

But just in case I'm right,
in the end, little cat Z has something called VOOM
that takes care of the whole mess.

Lets hope this is the case.

I Wish....

2006-03-05T18:14:00.000-05:00

= I wish that my alarm clock could be used
to put me to sleep just like it wakes me up.
Wouldn't it be cool to set your alarm clock
to instantly put you to sleep at a time you preset it for?
As it is now, I sometimes have trouble getting to sleep,
but most of the time I fall asleep earlier than I want to.

= I wish episodes from the original Star Trek
used today's special effects.
One episode in particular I'm thinking of is
The Doomsday Machine.
Wow, would that look good today!
Add a good subplot to lengthen it
and it would've made a great theatrical movie.

= I wish there were someone in my household
whom I could play chess with.
When I was a kid,
there were a couple of people in my family
who would play chess.
But my wife doesn't play and my kids are too young.
Maybe when one of my kids gets older...

= I wish they had
old reruns on of a TV game show called The Liars Club.
The website says it was shown several different times
but I remember it being on in the mid or late '70s.
Although it had several hosts,
I'm sure I remember the host once
being Larry Hovis (now deceased)
from the 1960s comedy Hogan's Heroes.
Premise:
Four celebrities are given
a part of a machine or some sort of device.
They each tell contestants what the part is
and what the part does,
and they make themselves sound very convincing.
All but one are lying,
and the contestants have to pick
which one is telling the truth
to win a chance at a big prize.
It was quite good,
it's a lot like when we tell our 4 or 5 stories
and others comment on which one is a lie.

= I wish that when the writers
of news items on the internet or in newspapers
printed the full names of the news subjects
for the first time in the article,
that they'd do it in bold print.
That way a reader could easily trace someone named, um...
...Widget...
back toward the beginning
where it first introduces him as
Methuselah Widget, director of small parts for Acme.
It would make the news so much easier to follow.

= I wish I didn't wake up
a half-hour before my alarm clock is set to go off
just because I have to pee.
And there's no way I can hold it in for 30 minutes
and go back to sleep.

= I wish the credits on TV shows and movies
didn't go by so fast.
There really are times when I'd like to see
who the producer or director was
or what actor or actress was playing a certain part
without having to Google up the show later to find out.

= I wish everyone who lights up
the front of their house,
business, factory or public building
(did I include everyone here?)
with any kind of a high-mounted light at night,
aimed the light down where people are
with a reflector over it.
I can think of no good reason
to shine a light from the ground
up on the side of a building
or mount a light on a pole with no cover over it.
All it does is create dingy-pink skys at night
instead of black and starry like night was meant to be.

The Fib Was......

2006-03-01T17:40:00.000-05:00

Before I start,
anyone who just now checked my blog
for the first time in more than 2 days
and they want to play the "Which is the Fib?" game,
read no further and click here:
Fibbing Again
It'll take you back to the beginning of the game.

Now, the answers in no particular order...

(yeah...right....)

- - - - -

My grandfather once said
he sat on a boulder and had a talk with the devil.
My grandfather (my Mom's Dad) insisted this was true.
He did however, drink some
and had an inherited liver problem
so he got tipsy on just a little booze.
So, everything considered,he was probably just drunk.

One summer day long ago,
between two and three dozen cancelled checks
floated down from the sky into our yard.
It was a hot, breezy summer day and I was a teen.
Thunderstorms were in the forecast
and the sky in the west was getting dark.
Suddenly, out of nowhere,
something began floating down from the sky.
I could see it was made out of paper,
then more and more were falling from the sky.
I walked over and picked one up.
It was a cancelled check
and dozens were on our lawn.
I called the local news station to tell them
that these cancelled checks were falling from the sky
and they just said,

"Well...let them fall!!!"

They thought it was a practical joke.

Long story short, a tornado hit a town
about 80 or 90 miles west of us.
One of the buildings hit was a bank
and the tornado sucked up some cancelled checks
and deposited them (sorry, bad pun) on our lawn.
We eventually turned them over to the authorities.
So, yes...this was true.

Too bad it wasn't cash.

The day that news broke
of Catholic priests sexually molesting children,
the bell tower of a Catholic church in a nearby town
crumbled and fell.
I read about both the priests and the bell tower
on the same day.
The bell tower was part of a Catholic church
that was right in the middle of town.
Sidewalks were close by the bell tower
and luckily no one was hit when pieces fell.
Authorities said
they don't know why the bell tower crumbled.
"Maybe just age", they said.
No one I know of
- not on radio talk shows,
newspaper editorials, nowhere -
noticed the coincidence.
It went by unnoticed.
Or maybe people just didn't want to talk about it.

One night as a kid
I woke up to hear screaming
and chains rattling in the house.
No one else heard a thing.
There isn't really any more to this story
than what was already said.
Except that it really happened
and it scared me to death.
It was a woman's scream
but it wasn't my mother's voice
and she was the only woman in the house.
And it was over in about 20 seconds.
Too scared to pull the covers off my head
and get out of bed to investigate,
I lay shaking until I was eventually able to fall asleep.
I told everybody the next day about it
but everyone claimed they heard nothing.

Once when I was young, I drove my dirtbike
through a school lobby window
and had to get 27 stitches.
I had several dirtbikes when I was young
and got into a couple of accidents
but nothing this severe.
But I did know someone about 12 years older than me
who really did drive his dirtbike
(not all the way, just partway)
through the lobby window of a nearby school.
He did have to get a lot of stitches from cuts
but I don't know if it was 27.
Those lobby windows didn't break easily,
but they did break.

So...this one's the fib.
That one happened, but not to me.

- - - - -

Well, there you have it!
Some of you may have misunderstood
what we call a dirtbike around here.
It's not a bicycle, it's a small motorcycle
meant only for off-road use.
So it has more weight and speed behind it than a bicycle
and it's capable of breaking a lobby window.
Patricia, Tornwordo and Ultra Toast Mosha God,
all of you were correct!
Congratulations!

Doug, it's funny...
if you grew up
with the same definition of dirtbike that I did
that may have prompted you to believe
that it was true.
Because I did try to make it believeable!
And it did happen. Just not to me.

Fibbing Again

2006-02-27T05:57:00.000-05:00

These are kinda fun,
and I enjoy participating in ones that others do,
so I thought I'd do it again.

One of the following 5 stories is a lie I made up.
All the others are true.
Leave a comment stating which one is the lie.
I'll give you the correct answer in two days
(that's for people who don't check my blog daily,
I want to give them a chance at it).

Which is the fib?.....

1. One summer day long ago,
between two and three dozen cancelled checks
floated down from the sky into our yard.

2. Once when I was young, I drove my dirtbike
through a school lobby window
and had to get 27 stitches.

3. My grandfather once said
he sat on a boulder and had a talk with the devil.

4. One night as a kid
I woke up to hear screaming
and chains rattling in the house.
No one else heard a thing.

5. The day that news broke
of Catholic priests sexually molesting children,
the bell tower of a Catholic church in a nearby town
crumbled and fell.

Cindy Lou

2006-02-22T22:12:00.000-05:00

The house I live in now
is the house I grew up in as a kid.
I bought a house 20 miles away when I was 23,
then sold it when my wife and I moved back here
to care for my Dad when he got really sick.
But that's another story.

This home has a small creek
flowing through the property,
from the woods behind our house,
through our front yard and our neighbor's,
and then under our street.

On nearly every clear warm summer evening
my mother, two of my brothers and I
would sit on our front porch after dark,
watch for meteors, listen to the crickets and frogs,
and talk.
We'd talk about people we know,
school, work, places we've been to,
places we might go to, our hobbies...
we'd talk about nearly anything and everything.

Once when I was a teenager
we heard some scratching
in some ventilation ductwork in the attic.
It turned out to be a young female raccoon.
We don't know if it was curiousity or what
that made her go in there
but we found where she got in from outside.
My Dad called the fire department
and they managed to get her out unharmed,
and they let her go.
I remember how the firemen remarked
about how unusually tame the raccoon was.
They figured it was due to the fact she was young.
Once she was out,
we fixed it so she couldn't get in the ductwork again.

The day after the firemen freed the raccoon,
we were on the front porch
- it was about 9:15 or 9:30 in the evening -
and we heard a noise behind us
at the edge of the woods near the creek.
One of us got a flashlight from inside the house
and shined it toward the noise.
It turned out to be the same young raccoon
the firemen rescued from our ductwork.
Only this time she was in our creek
looking for crayfish and frogs to eat (blecht!!!!)

We walked over toward her...and she didn't run away.
In fact, she met us halfway.
I remember reaching down toward her
and...once she was sure she could trust us...
grabbed my hand with her mouth
and pretended to bite me
much like a playful puppy or kitten would!
(Now, keep in mind,
we could tell this was the same raccoon.
We would've never done this
with one we'd never seen before
for fear of an animal with rabies).

We all took turns playing with her
and one of my older brothers
decided to call her Cindy Lou
after the little girl in How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
She played with us for about 40 or 45 minutes.
Every so often, she'd stop...look all around...
then, when she determined there was no danger...
resume playing.
No matter how tame she was,
it was obviously instinctive
to occasionally look around for danger.

After she wandered back into the woods,
we talked about what a ball we had that night.
But the best was yet to come.

She came back
nearly every night about the same time to play
for the next 2-and-a-half months!
When 9:15 rolled around,
we'd begin to listen for her
rustling around at the edge of the woods.
After a week or two,
she'd just come right up to us on the porch.
We didn't even have to get out of our chairs.

Cindy Lou in my car,
probably wondering what I had planned for her

"At play"

One night in early autumn
we were playing with her
and we noticed
she kept glancing back toward the woods.
"She's just looking for danger", we figured.
Then we heard another noise in the woods.
Like the first night,
we got a flashlight and checked it out...
and saw a huge male raccoon.
Cindy Lou saw him too, turned to look at us,
and walked into the woods with him.

We never saw her again.

There's still raccoons in this part of the neighborhood.
A neighbor down the street told me she even saw
three in my front yard as she was driving by
a few months ago.

But they're big and wild.
I'm sure none would approach you
unless you had food for them.
And that's dangerous.
They'll never be tame and sociable like Cindy Lou
or give us the joy we had that summer long ago.

Birthdays for Inanimate Objects

2006-02-19T07:17:00.000-05:00

This can only happen if you have kids.

Or maybe you remember doing it
back when you were a kid.

My youngest, who is 6,
got a robotic spotted dog for Christmas.
It sits up, begs, howls, barks, pants,
counts to 3 with barks and "waves".
The instructions insisted we call him Scampy,
so that's his name.

But my oldest son, who's 9, took a liking to him and,
as a joke,
decided that Thursday was Scampy's 3rd birthday.
His idea was that we all sing Happy Birthday Scampy.
I think this was just a plot to liven up the house a little.

So, we sang this Thursday evening....
but our 6-year-old was conspicuously absent
(even though we called him
and he knew we were doing this).
Halfway through the song, he decides to show up
and he's horrified we're singing Happy Birthday
without a cake complete with lit candles.
And he proceeds to run into the bathroom,
lock the door...and cry.

My wife and I talked it over
and decided it would be nice to have some cake anyway.
So Friday, she bought a cheap Boston Creme pie
with cherries on top.
Well, it looks nothing like a birthday cake
but the kids didn't care and the adults certainly didn't.
So we put some candles on it, lit them and sang.

To a robotic dog.

Ahhhhh....yes......
another evening in the looney bin I call home.

Well, my 6-year-old thought that was so much fun
that...guess what?....
his teddy bear just turned 7 yesterday!
I asked, "Your teddy bear is older than you?"
"Yes."
But this time my wife actually found
- while out shopping for other groceries -
a miniature birthday cake(!)
from the local Acme grocery store.
It was about 6-inches in diameter and cost $4.
And we added candles, lit them and sang again tonight.
And the youngest was very happy.

But this has to be it.
I will refuse to sing Happy Birthday
to anything else that's stuffed and has a face.

At least until next year.

Fortune Cookies

2006-02-16T06:57:00.000-05:00

Joe, on Doug's blog the other day,
reminded me of something I've always wanted to see:
fortune cookies with REAL fortunes inside.
Not this crap like
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life", or
"You've got a big heart to share".

None of this sissy stuff.

I'm sure many people have thought of this.
But I got the idea from an old episode of
The Twilight Zone,
the one where William Shatner and his wife
stopped at the old diner
and kept popping pennies
into the old fortune-telling machine
that kept giving him right answers.

I want to see fortune-cookies like
"You'll fall deathly ill on May 11th, 2011",
and then the recipient will get a big laugh out of it.
Well, at least until the day approaches.
Then, if you're superstitious,
you'll worry like hell that it's going to come true.

Unless all fortune cookie companies did this.
Then, some fortune cookies would say,
"Be prepared to undergo a serious operation
within 3 years"
or
"Someone will attempt to break into your home
on October 27th, 2009"
or
"Don't make any plans...nuclear war is breaking out soon"

Then people would get so used to it
that it wouldn't even faze them anymore.
They'd laugh and shrug it off.

Of course, fortune cookies would have good news, too!
"This November,
you'll enjoy a wild night with a stunning blonde"
or
"You'll inherit hundreds of thousands of dollars next year"
or
"The AIDS test you tested positive for
is actually negative"

Oooops.
They'd better not do that one.
Someone might believe it and have unprotected sex.

On second thought, forget the whole thing.

I foresee suicides, heart attacks, depression and lawsuits.
Something the fortune cookies
should've been able to predict, but didn't.

Besides, I've just creeped myself out
thinking about the ones with the bad news.

The Amphora Can

2006-02-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

We went to visit my mother-in-law yesterday.
It's been a while, as between one of us being sick,
bad weather, and my stubbornness
on wanting to go only on a Saturday
meant we hadn't been over to see her since autumn.
And it turned out
we went to see her on a Sunday anyway.

We took over a surprise for her: a DVD player.
She has a VCR, but with so much video only in DVD now
we figured this was a good idea.
It turned out her VCR didn't work anymore
so I took the DVD player back today - unopened -
and bought her a DVD/VCR combo.
While we were at her house yesterday
we found out her wall-mounted phone receiver
kept falling off the wall.
So, while I'm there today to hook up her DVD/VCR,
I'll also glue a small piece of plastic on her phone
under the receiver hook to keep it from falling off.

So, I'm out in the garage yesterday,
looking for something to glue on her phone.
Anything, a piece of a plastic
or a piece of rubber washer maybe.
I know I had to be creative.

I'm looking on my shelves,
which are full of coffee cans with sorted items
and I come across the red Amphora can.

My garage was built in 1998
but it has a lot of stuff in it
from a garage we had torn down the same year.
The Amphora can
was one of those things from the old garage.
My oldest brother used to be a pipe smoker
and Amphora is pipe tobacco
("Amphora...a gentle smoke")

My brothers all worked on their own cars in the '60s
and I joined them when I got my license in 1975.
We even built a 1947 Ford coupe hot rod in the '70s.
We had nuts, bolts, cotter pins, screws,
and every other fastener
you could think of in that garage
but no matter what,
you're gonna need something you don't have.
That item was always found in the red Amphora can.
That being the case,
it always seemed to have a mystical quality.
Well, not always.
It wasn't until we were in our 20s before we realized this
and only then felt we could've thrown away
all the other cans of nuts and bolts years earlier.

A can that you could reach into
and magically pull out any fastener you needed.
Like an Aladdin's lamp.
Or so it seemed.
Only it was a pipe tobacco can.

So yesterday, I did just that.
I pulled it down off the shelf and looked inside.

But it didn't have what I needed.

I ended up finding a hard rubber washer
from a drawer on my workbench.

The Amphora can lost it's magic.
Maybe it felt
- with all of us grown into middle-age now -
that it outlived it's usefulness
and it quietly became just another can.

*sigh*

Happenings

2006-02-09T18:16:00.000-05:00

One more day at work
and I'm taking next week off.
Yippee!!!

Otherwise, it's been quiet around here.
We had 3 inches of snow last night
that caught everyone
- including the weathermen -
off guard.
Other than that, it's been around 30 all week
with a few flakes of snow
drifting out of the broken clouds now and then.

Here's some things that crossed my mind.
Prepare yourself,
I really jumped around a lot on subject matter.
It's as though I had
some sort of extreme mood swings or something...

=One warm spring morning
I left for work with a bill ready to mail
but it needed a stamp
and once my workday was over
I was going to buy one at the post office.
So, here I am at work
and I decide that since it is a nice day
that I'll pick up some litter out on our vast school lawn.
And I come across a stamp book.
I pick it up and think,
"Wouldn't it be something if it had one stamp in it?"
I opened it up.
It had one unused stamp in it.

What's the chances of that?

So I figured, "Wow, is this my lucky day?"
so then I bought some lotto tickets.

And I won nothing.

Moral of the story:
Sometimes, you get what you need in life,
but you seldom get what you want.

Or maybe finding the stamp was coincidence
and there is no moral.

=I was about to pay a cashier in a gas station once
when a guy came in and got in line behind me.
"This is a hold-up!!!", he says.
"Well...Hi, Frank! How are you doing?" asked the cashier.
"Ohhh...I'm doin' pretty good, thanks!"
That's right, this wasn't a real robbery.
These two knew each other.
But greeting each other this way
in a place of business with other customers around
isn't a good idea.

Once I got done cleaning out my pants
I felt like knocking his teeth down his throat.

=I've met actress Yvonne Craig several times.
She played Batgirl on the old Batman TV show
and was in several movies, at least one with Elvis.
She's a really nice person.
I'd email her
and she'd always respond within a few hours.
My wife has about the same figure
that Yvonne had in the 1960s,
so she had me email her once
to ask if she had any clothes or costumes from the '60s
that she had thought of selling
or auctioning off on eBay or something
(my wife loves clothes from that era).
Yvonne responded by saying
she auctioned all that stuff off a while back
and gave the proceeds to a battered womens' shelter.

Oh, well.

=Looking at this news item,
I see that if you're obese and on death row
they'll spare your life.
They'll refuse to execute you
and you wind up dying of natural causes.

=My wife is pestering me
to a Half-Nekkid Thursday shot.
But I have very few women readers
and there's no reason
any guys would want to see any part of me,
even if it's Rated PG-13.

=I'm sure you've all heard
of the "Lost World" jungle they found
on an Indonesian island.
There's only a few hundred people on the entire island
and representatives from clans there
say no one has ever bothered to go into this jungle...
simply because they had no reason to.
Scientists think no human being
has ever set foot in this jungle
and it's existed without any change for 50,000 years.

“ It's as close to the Garden of Eden
as you're going to find on Earth. ”
is what Bruce Beehler,
vice president of Conservation International's
Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation said.

I think this is just so cool.

I'd love to be there right now.

Golden-Mantled Tree Kangaroo

In this photo released by Conservation International,
mammal expert Kris Helgen holds a golden-mantled tree kangaroo
(Dendrolagus pulcherrimus)
discovered on a Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) expedition
to the Foya Mountains in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province
in December 2005. The animal allowed Helgen to pick it up.

Rare Echidna
So unaccustomed to humans was this long-beaked echidna

(Zaglossus bruijni) that scientists were able to pick it up.

The rare mammal lays eggs.

The Waitress

2006-02-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

Looking through shayera's blog,
I looked at one of the photos again that she has there
of her cute little nephew, Zephyr
and how this little girl they met
offered to babysit him someday.

It reminded me of something that happened once.

During one of our visits to my brother's family
- they used to live in Louisville, Kentucky -
we went to a Chinese restaurant
they'd been wanting to try out.

My brother, his wife, their baby son
(who was about 4 months old at the time),
and my wife and I were all seated at a table,
ready to order.
Our waitress took our order,
then proceeded to go nuts over the baby:
"Oh, my!!!....look at the baby!!!
OH! OH!...what a cute little baby!
What a cute little baby!"

Man, oh man...
she just went on and on about how cute he was!
A few minutes later she was back
and asked my brother and his wife
if she could take him back into the kitchen
and show him off to the others that worked there!
It was an unusual request - to say the least,
but she was so nice they didn't want her to feel hurt.
Even though she was a total stranger, they said "OK".

I'm glad it didn't happen
to me and my wife once we had a baby.
We may have done the same thing.

So, she took him back.
Time went by and they were still back there.
More time passed and she still hadn't brought him back.
My brother's wife began to get panicky
so she waved over another waitress
and calmly and politely asked her
the status of the waitress and their baby.

She explained that the first waitress
was indeed still showing the baby around in the kitchen
and was having a ball with him.
And the second waitress also told us
that her co-worker
had been trying for years to get pregnant,
without results.
Which explained her behavior.

Finally...after 20 minutes,
their baby was returned by the waitress,
who now had a huge smile on her face.
The baby was safe and sound and wasn't even crying.

And my brother and his wife
got a big thank you from her and she expressed
how much she appreciated them
letting their baby be with her for a while.

No, we didn't get a discount on the dinners!

The Afghan Girl

2006-02-04T17:08:00.000-05:00

An Afghan girl carries bread to her home in Kabul, Afghanistan

this past Wednesday, Feb. 1st.

I saw this photo by Rafiq Maqbool of the AP

in my local paper the other day

and I loved it.

He snaps a lot of good photos,

but I like this one best.

The first time I saw it

I just stared at it for 3 or 4 minutes.

I love the expression on her face,

one of strength, determination and satisfaction.

I have a feeling this girl will grow up strong.

She'll be a survivor.

My Dad was an artist

and created some beautiful oil portraits.

If he were alive today,

he'd paint a portrait from this photo.

He'd probably even see more than what I see.

Stuff

2006-01-31T20:51:00.000-05:00

Seeing how I'm really bored
and there's really nothing else
going on with me to talk about
(which is better than bad news),
I've decided to do a list.

Patricia at jaimefits gave me this idea.
She has several cool lists like this.

=If you have a loaf of bread
that's going to be sitting out for a day or two,
occasionally turn it upside-down for a while.
Otherwise gravity draws down the moisture inside
and makes the bottom soggy.
My wife noticed and told me.
I was wondering why she was doing that
and never got around to asking her until recently.
Amazing!...She is a fountain of knowledge!

=I bought my first car
with money from a paper route when I was 15.
At the time,
a person couldn't get a license until they were 16.
So I took a chance and drove it
- lots of times -
around the block,
hoping I wouldn't get stopped by the police.
And no...I was never caught.

=Speaking of which, my first ticket
was driving double the speed limit in a park.
(I was doing 50 in a 25 zone).
I was fined $120...an awful lot in 1980,
when the average ticket was $20 or $30.

=I hate mint.
Unless you include wintergreen, which I love.

=I have a terrible habit of biting my nails.
So, they're all very short.
At least my fingers aren't raw or anything.

=I used to sleep on my back.
Until I had an episode of sleep paralysis
and I found out most people
that have that happen to them
sleep on their backs.
I switched to sleeping on my side
and it never happened again.
Although it might just be coincidence.
But sleeping on my side was messing up my back.
So now I'm sleeping on my back again.
Again, I'm hoping the sleep paralysis
was just a coincidence.......

=I have no phobias.
But I used to have a fear of dentists
because my childhood dentist
refused to numb the area around my tooth first
when he planned to drill into a cavity.
So, although I brushed and flossed,
I didn't see a dentist again for 18 years.
When I was 33, I broke a tooth in half
and then I had to see a dentist
and get a root canal.
I found a competent, gentle dentist
(and I still use him),
and the phobia is gone.

=The first
- and, by coincidence...the only -
Star Trek club I ever joined was in 1973.
It was called S.T.A.R. - Star Trek Association for Revival.
When the first movie came out in 1979,
it's mission was accomplished and the club disbanded.

=The only book I've ever read as an adult
was Child Star -
Shirley Temple Black's autobiography.
Everything else has been magazines and newspapers.

=I've never lived more than 20 miles
from the house where I grew up.

=My grandfather was one of 11 children.
And 6 of those kids were 3 sets of twins.
But he himself wasn't one of them.

=I hate shrimp.
I used to like it until I saw it used as fish bait
while vacationing at the beach as a kid.
From then on, I only saw it as bait.

=I've never been on a jet.

=I hate seeing things at the edge of a countertop.
Afraid whatever it is will get knocked off,
I always shove it back toward the wall.
I guess I'm safety-conscious to a fault.

=Growing up, our family of seven
lived in a two bedroom house.
That is, until my Dad built an addition
when I was a year old.
One more bedroom.

=Only twice in my life
have I ever stayed up until dawn.
Once was bar-hopping with a buddy
and the other time was at work:
my school was having indoor "camping"
and I was expected to stay up to help chaperone.

My Day

2006-01-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

It's been an interesting day.

It hadn't snowed here all night.
Then - driving to work - it started.
And by 8:15 a.m. there was a coating on the sidewalks.
I was dreading having to throw salt on to melt it
when I remembered the new leaf blower
they bought me this past fall.
So I took it out, cranked it up
and blew all the powdery snow
off the sidewalks in a flash.
If it were a wet snow there's no way I could've done it.
Mission accomplished.

~ ~ ~ ~

It was still dark and I was alone
while I was unlocking the school
and while unlocking one of the rear outside doors
I heard someone shout something at me
from the other side.
I jumped three feet, made sure I still had a pulse
and checked to see who it was.
It was a housekeeper on her way to work.
She startled me because she's usually
not within talking distance the days I see her.
She works for a family
who lives in the neighborhood behind our school.
She always walks to work...rain or shine,
and takes a shortcut through the school yard.
This morning, she was yelling hello to me.
"Hey...did you bring this snow?", I asked her.
"Nooooo....I'd be bringin' 90 degrees
if I was gonna be bringin' anything...hahahaha !!!!"
"Hahaha!!!....Well, have a nice day!"
"Thank you....you too!"
She's a very nice lady from Alabama
and she's about my age.
After Katrina, I asked her if her family there was OK
and she said
"Ohhh, yeaaaah....they'd be up north,
the northern part of Al'bama.
By the time it got to them,
it wasn't too bad. They were fine."

~ ~ ~ ~

By the middle of the workday I realized
that Friday, Feb. 3rd
is the American Heart Association
"Go Red for Women" day.
We're all supposed to wear red
and some kind of little red pins.
It's supposed to bring awareness
to women's heart disease
supposedly because people don't think of women
as having heart disease.
Bull.
This day irks me each year.
Why not have a day like this for all people,
instead of just women?
This day is offensive, sexist and insensitive.
My father-in-law - a really nice guy -
died in 1997 from a massive heart attack
and his life was worth no less than anyone else's.
Why they've decided to focus their resources
on heart disease in women and not everyone
is beyond me.
They must be hoping
that women who just broke up with their boyfriend,
had a big fight with their husband
or are newly divorced
will give them their life savings.

I'll be damned if I ever donate money to them again!
Do any of you have loved ones who are men or boys?
Don't expect the AHA to care.

~ ~ ~ ~

On my way home I stopped to get gas in my car.
This place has good coffee, too.
I pulled up, reset the pump, it reset back to -0-,
and God said
"OK, #3.....you're ready. Pay inside when you're done."
Well, it turned out it wasn't God.
They were talking to me on the intercom from inside.
Well, of course I'm going to pay inside.
What did they think I was going to do?
So I went inside, got my coffee, gave her $25
for $21 worth of gas and 89 cents for coffee
and she gave me back $18.11.
And I looked at it in my hands.
"Um...did I give you two twenties?"
"Uh...NO! Oh my God!"
And I gave her back the change.
"Wow, you almost made $15 off that deal!",
she said as she gave me $3.11.
"Well, it wasn't right and fair is fair."
She thanked me and I took off.

~ ~ ~ ~

And as I'm typing this
my wife is so excited about
the vacuum cleaner attachments she just bought
for her Hoover canister vacuum cleaner.
She won't admit she's excited,
but she is.
One day, she was vacuuming oven ashes
out of the oven after using
the automatic oven cleaning feature.
The oven was still just a little too hot
and it trashed the upholstery brush.
A border collie we used to have
trashed a crevice tool...so she got one of those, too.
Luckily we have a Hoover store nearby.
If they don't sell it for your Hoover,
they can fix what you have.
Pretty nifty.

~ ~ ~ ~

And finally,
my youngest son seems to finally be cheering up.
When he got home from morning kindergarten,
he and his Mom went to Borders Books
to try to add
to his Spongebob book collection of 8 books.
No such luck.
It seems like he has them all...for now.
Until they make new ones.
So he came home in a bad mood,
then played a video game and that made him happier.

Looks like he's forgotten about the Spongebob books
...for now.

A Record Warm January?

2006-01-25T17:17:00.000-05:00

January 2005 was awfully cold and snowy here.
In fact, over 32 inches of snow!
Any warmer air we got that month
was accompanied by freezing rain, it seemed.
I have a lot of white pine trees
and they have brittle branches.
So I lost a lot of limbs last year due to freezing rain.

As a matter of fact,
this past weekend I lit a big bonfire behind my house
and burned a big pile of those white pine branches.
I find bonfires very relaxing,
especially once it's died down some
and I don't have to worry about sparks
setting the woods on fire behind my house!

What a change this year!
January 2006 has - until today - been very mild here.
Today was blustery, snowy and chilly
but it's supposed to get
back into the upper 40s by Friday.
And with the month coming to an end soon
they're already talking around here about how
we may have the warmest January on record ever,
with most days in the 40s and even some 50s
when normal is 30-36!
We've had a little more than average
precipitation falling from the sky
but it's been mostly rain.
And a total of about 5 inches of snow
spread around throughout the month.
Normal snowfall in January is about 12 inches.
It's making up for December,
one of the coldest and snowiest Decembers
on record here.

Since part of my job
is to shovel and snowblow snow at work
in the dark at 6:00 in the morning,
this has been quite nice.
Especially after last month.
Doing that at 6 in the morning gets old real fast
when you're 46 and having worked 25 years at it.
At least I don't have to do it year-round.

I'm hoping this continues through February.
We'll see.

Here Ya Go, Chuck

2006-01-25T16:56:00.000-05:00

Notice all the stains on the recipe.
That means it's good.

My wife also makes a Tuna Noodle Casserole
but she doesn't have it written down
- it's all in her head.
If I had a #5 favorite food, that might've been it.

Blogging Frustrations

2006-01-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

After more than a year,
I've come across something very frustrating
here in blogworld.
It's probably happened to some of you, too.

Like the blogs I have linked to the right,
I've come across a great one,
one that's interesting and well-written
with topics and photos I enjoy.

I've left many positive comments
on many of the postings
....without a single reply
- even though this person will reply to others.
And from what I can tell,
this person has never visited my blog,
even just out of curiousity.

Well, even though I never had this blog linked,
I had it bookmarked.
But no more.
It's tough
always being on the outside looking in.
But after all, it's their blog,
and they're free to do as they please with it.

Too bad.
As I said, it's a great blog.

Of all of you who come here regularly,
I think you do what I'm about to suggest.
But I'll say this anyway, just in case:
if someone visits your blog
and they leave several nice comments over time,
it would be great if you acknowledged them
at least once.

They'll appreciate it more than you know.

The Fours

2006-01-18T18:37:00.000-05:00

How about a light topic today?......

Four jobs you've had in your life:
-paperboy (HA!!! If I don't include this,
I've only had 3 jobs in my life!)
-Arby's restaurant roast cook
-church custodian
-school custodian

Four movies you could watch over and over again:
-Star Trek movies I, II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII, and X
-The Pink Panther Strikes Again
-The Time Machine (1960 version)
-My Cousin Vinny

Four TV shows you love to watch:
-Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9 and VOY
-All in the Family
-Futurama
-MXC (heh-heh!)

Four places you've been on vacation:
-throughout the American Rockies
-camping in Ontario
-Myrtle Beach, S.C.
-Bar Harbor, Maine

Four websites you visit daily:
-eBay
-weather.com
-Google Earth
-the New Republic

Four of your favorite foods:
-Pesto spaghetti
-Sakkio/Sarku Japan's Chicken Teriyaki
-Barbequed ribs with a side of greens
-Tuna New Orleans

Here and There

2006-01-14T21:08:00.000-05:00

Some recent thoughts:

= A New York Times magazine advice columnist
recently gave one definition of friend this way:
"...someone who's ignorance you can exploit."
Brilliant.
Unfortunately, in today's world,
that's how some treat others they call their friend.
When I was 8 years old,
a friend was someone special to you.
Today, many people use the word
for anyone they don't hate.

= I sometimes read where someone died after
"a heroic battle with ______."
What's so heroic about trying to stay alive
when you're dealing with a terminal illness?
It's what everyone's expected to do, isn't it?
And wouldn't it actually be more heroic
to accept the circumstances, kiss your family goodbye
and look toward an afterlife as a big adventure?

Hmmm...first friend, then hero.
Am I hung up on language today, or what?

= Symbiosis
This is the name of a 1988 first-season episode
from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
A synopsis:
The Enterprise D investigates two inhabited planets
in the same star system.
Planet A is supplying drugs for the other,
a drug which inhibits a plague
that all of Planet B's inhabitants have had for centuries.
In return, Planet B's inhabitants
provide Planet A's with all the necessities
to lead rich, luxurious lives.
It turns out the plague was cured long ago
and Planet A slowly developed the "cure" into a narcotic
and sold it to Planet B,
turning the entire world into addicts,
solely for the purpose
of keeping up their standard of living.
When Planet A began to realize that
the Enterprise crew was catching on,
they offered to let Planet B
"have the next shipment of 'medication' for free"
as a gesture of good will.

Every time I see a new drug ad on TV
and at the tail end of the commercial, they say
"...and if you have trouble paying for your prescription,
please contact us for possible assistance..."
I'm always reminded of that ST:TNG episode.

= Remember the old TV comedies
of the '50s, '60s and '70s?
Wouldn't it be cool to create new shows
with the old characters
- looking and acting just as they used to -
only the stories would be based
on 2006 problems, personalities, and technology?
Imagine Archie Bunker and Mike Stivic
arguing about George W. Bush,
Lucy Ricardo (I Love Lucy) trying to figure out
Windows XP or controlling pop-ups on her computer,
or Fred Sanford insisting he has the bird flu.

What's So Wonderful About "Progress"?

2006-01-11T06:28:00.000-05:00

I was thinking earlier about two classrooms at my school
that are infrequently used.
They're used as tutor rooms, not standard classrooms.
But a huge neighborhood is being built a few miles away
and...with a new neighborhood...comes kids.
Not every home has elementary-age kids,
and from that new neighborhood will be kids of all ages,
going to classes scattered throughout the school.

One of the tutor rooms will probably have to be
converted to a regular classroom when the time comes.

Seven years ago, I used to have a secretary who would say,
"Wow! This is great! This is wonderful!
I think it's just so fantastic
that our district is getting bigger and bigger!"

I could never figure out
what would possess her to say such things.
Why would anyone want their school
to lose it's intimacy,
only to become a huge, impersonal,
major-city-size school
where your child becomes nothing much more
than a statistic, a number?
Was she thinking that new homes pay lots of taxes
and that eventually translates
into fat raises for all of us?
Yeah...like that tax money
goes directly into our pockets, right? HA-HA !!!
I've been here now for 25 years
and I can tell you how much I'll be making when I retire.
Because - whether 3 new housing developments are made,
or none are made - we get a 3% raise each year.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It's just always worked out that way.
Could it be she's happy
that parents have chosen our school system
for their kids to learn in?
Maybe they moved here for other reasons.
And I knew this secretary a long time.
She didn't really give a damn about anyone else.
Her attitude was "ME-ME-ME".
Besides, I have relatives whose kids went through school
in a neighboring school district
and they turned out just fine, thank you.
The only ones who benefit from this way of thinking
- that the bigger school systems get, the better -
are teachers' unions.
Bigger everything means more teaching staff.
More teaching staff means more union members
and that translates into more money for unions.

Anyway, that secretary is long gone now.
She was transferred to Siberia
by a new superintendent who hated her.
So she quit.
I wish now I would've asked her
"What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?"
Could be I did,
and she didn't give me an adequate answer.

So, school systems that get bigger and bigger is progress?

And I got to thinking about "progress" elsewhere, too.
Like bulldozing hundreds of thousands of acres
of hills and forests flat to build city suburbs bigger.
And building huge new stinky factories
that pump lots of pollution into our environment.
I guess that's a growing economy, huh?

And our population keeps growing.
My wife and I always believed in zero population growth.
We have two kids to replace us when we die.
Two for two.
Up until a couple of years ago
I used to work with a guy who laughed hysterically
when I'd say that.
He has six kids, and yes...
he gets state financial assistance.
He's also a phony church minister.
Why "phony"?
He's been cheating on his wife
for as long as anyone can remember.
When I mentioned that our country really can't handle
much more population growth, he said...
"What??? Go out into the country and look around!
Look at all the farmland available for people to live on!
Look at all the forests where homes could be built!"
And I'd quickly snap back...
"Really? Where do you plan to grow food
for those people to eat if you take away farmland?!
And forests give us air to breath
and habitats for animals to live.
How do plan to solve those problems???"
He had no answer.
People like that
- especially the ones who are clergymen -
are dangerous.
They talk up a storm to people
who's sole purpose for being there is to listen.
And much of the time, the talker isn't making sense.

I saw an episode of The Andy Griffith Show
the other day
and he was standing next to a lake
lamenting the fact that he broke a date
with some gorgeous girl
he was supposed to go to that lake with for a picnic.
And I thought:
if that really was a lake
in rural North Carolina back in the 1960s,
that whole area was basically untouched for millennia.
Today, it's probably a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to live at a time
when you could live somewhere your whole life
and you knew you could wake up every day
to the same pleasant surroundings, the same lifestyle?
There was probably a very short time
in most of America for that
without having to fight for food and shelter.
It was probably from the 1930s into the 1960s.
But those days are long behind us.

What it all boils down to
is a poorer lifestyle for all of us today.
And that's not progress.

Revelations Learned While Burning DVDs

2006-01-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

Guess who got a new DVD recorder for Christmas?
It was my only present, but it is nice.
Or so I thought.
I figured they were all pretty much the same,
only some had features I didn't need.
So, I asked for the "cheapie",
a Wal-Mart CyberHome for $68.
And it worked!
Well, part of the time.
It was the other times that pissed me off.
So...back it went, and a few days later
(after a lot of internet research)
I bought a Panasonic DMR-ES20.
This brand and model got very good reviews.
And Best Buy had it on sale...normally $200, now $165.
Especially for the money, it sounded like a great deal.

So...I discovered some things about the past
while burning DVDs from old home movie VHS videos:

= While filming outdoors in the 1990s,
I discovered birds sang during the Clinton years.
Today, wild birds no longer sing.

= I always wondered why the spayed female cat
we had for 12 years was never a mouser.
It suddenly occurred to me
while looking back at old home movies:
she grew up with two ferrets we had as pets
when we got her as an 8-week-old kitten.
She no doubt viewed rodent-like mammals
as nothing she should chase and kill.

= New Car Show attendance
has gone up in the last 15 years.
Waaaaay up! Like, about 300%!
Used to be, I never had any trouble
taking video of concept cars on display turntables.
Now, it's nearly impossible with so many people.

= My wife used to love being in the videos
at the time when I made them.
Now she says she "feels creepy"
when she watches herself in them,
and she says she doesn't know why.
Even though many of the videos are 15 years old,
she still looked the same as she does now.
But even though she won't really say,
I'm sure she doesn't think so.
I know she acted wackier in them
than she does now...and she noticed, too.
Maybe that's it.

=While watching an old video of a trip to Cape Hatteras
at one point - on a breezy, warm, sunny day -
we were on the Ocracoke Island ferry
and I was filming a passenger feeding
seagulls that were swooping down
and taking food from her hand.
Many people were doing it, including my wife.
If you did it long enough, the bird would eventually miss
and nip your finger, drawing blood.
Today, I can't help but think
that this wouldn't be a good idea anymore.
If seagulls are infected with bird flu,
no doubt you could get it this way.

=And finally, the last VHS-to-DVD I burned
was one of our wedding nearly 18 years ago.
I'd forgotten about the end of the wedding:
We were heading out the front of the church
to the getaway car, which was my own Mustang GT.
Along with all the other "decorations" on it,
one of my brothers - whom I suspect was my oldest -
had written on the side windows in white shoe polish:

Mustang today...
gelding tomorrow

Coming Soon: World's First REAL Aphrodisiac!

2006-01-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

Honest to God.

No, it's not
"horn of rhinoceros, penis of tiger,
root of sea holly or
husk of the emerald-green blister beetle,
known as Spanish fly."

Supposedly, this is the real thing.
A new drug, currently known as PT-141,
is about to enter phase 3 trials
and may be on the market in 3 years.
And it works for men and women.
It's a nasal spray, and...to quote New York magazine:

"Putting that inhaler up your nose
and popping off a dose of PT-141 results,
in most cases, in a stirring in the loins
in as few as fifteen minutes.
Women, according to one set of results,
feel 'genital warmth, tingling and throbbing',
not to mention 'a strong desire to have sex.'
Among men,
who’ve been tested with the drug more extensively,
the data set is, shall we say, richer..."

My wife and I have only seen this news
in New York magazine.
We don't know why it's not all over the media.

Read the full article here, entitled:
Is the World Ready for Libido in a Nasal Spray?

heh-heh!.....

2005-12-26T11:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.uglychristmaslights.com/

The Gift

2005-12-26T11:40:00.000-05:00

On Christmas Eve
I woke up at about 6:45 a.m.
and walked into the living room
to find my oldest son laying on the sofa watching TV.

Instead of saying "Hi, Daddy"
-which is customary for him when he gets up early-
he said nothing.
"Oh, well", I thought.

Turned out he was sick with a stomach flu
and had just thrown up all over his bedroom.
And my wife had to be to work at 9 a.m.

So I cleaned it up while she got ready for work
and washed and dried all his sheets, bedspread
and the side of his bed frame.
During the day I washed and dried
his brother's bed linen, too.

Off and on all day he threw up
and although he felt warm, he wasn't burning up.
His peak fever was probably 101.
Not that high for a kid.
We had to call my mother-in-law and tell her
we couldn't come to the party that evening.
It's bad enough to be spreading the stomach flu around
but one person at the party is 90-years-old
and another has hepatitis-B.

At about 1:30 p.m. my wife's sister
- whom I'll call Karen-
called and asked if my wife was home.
"No, she's at work. She'll be home around 3:50
if you'd like to call back then."
She said "OK" and hung up,
but I didn't realize at the time
that she didn't ask so she could call back and talk to her.

At 3:50 Karen and her husband "Bob"
unexpectedly came driving up our driveway.
When she came in,
I said my wife wasn't home yet, so they waited.
Deep down I was fuming,
as I was sure the reason they came over
with no advance notice
was because they didn't believe our son was sick,
that we just didn't want to come to the party
for some reason.
You see, they hosted Thanksgiving
and we didn't go then because of heavy snow and wind.
I'm not driving for 4 hours in a snowstorm
and I think they thought we were trying to avoid them.

But the worst was yet to come....

My wife finally came home
and she and Karen were talking outside
when my son began throwing up again.
I was holding a big coffee can under his mouth
when my wife and Karen came in the front door.
My back was to them and my wife said,
"t...look what Karen gave me."
I said "Hang on..."and I was going to say
"Just set it down, I'll look at it in a minute",
thinking it to be some new clothes
or an end table or something.
But I didn't say that.

Again, they said..."Look, it's for us."

I turned around.

It was a full-grown cat.
It was dropped off at Karen's house.

"No, it's not for us", I said.

They took it back outside,
and once my son's throwing up was over, I followed.

"Will this work for us?" my wife asked.
"No", I replied.
"But she's always wanted a cat", Karen said.
"She wants a lot of things", I replied.
And the moment I said that, I felt bad.
It seemed a rotten thing to say about my wife.
Karen said "You want a lot of things, too."
I was getting angrier and angrier.
"Yes, there's a lot of things I want...
a lot of things I can't have."
Karen said "You got to have a dog."
"I don't have a dog!"
"You did!"
"I don't anymore! When I realized we couldn't keep him,
we had to give him away!"

As they began to pile into the SUV with the cat
and take her to Karen's mother's house,
hoping someone there would take it, I went inside.

My wife told me later, that as they were leaving
Bob said "That son-of-a-bitch!...."
because I refused to take the cat.
I don't care.
I've been called worse things by better people.
The comment would've upset me
if...at any time in my life...I ever liked him.

Afterwards, we both sat numb in the living room.
Several times, my wife said
"I can't believe she did that. I can't believe it.
Out of the blue. No warning.
And why did it have to be now? (Christmas Eve)"
My wife doesn't like Christmas anyway.
When she was a little girl
her mother always had a lot of relatives
over for the holidays
and would get all stressed out cleaning the house
and making sure everything was set up just so.
If any problems arose, she snapped at the kids.

When Karen called earlier at 1:30,
there was no mention they were going to stop by.
No mention of wanting to give us a cat.
Their scheme was to blindside me,
figuring I'd say "OK, we'll take the cat"
if I were caught off-guard.
And I'm sure they especially figured on my wife
instantly falling in love with the cat.
But she was stunned at the fact
that what Karen did was so inappropriate.

Stopping by unannounced
to unexpectedly give a family
a cat they knew nothing about.
I just doesn't work.

How deep are the hard feelings?
Only time will tell.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

2005-12-23T16:57:00.000-05:00

We've had an awfully cold and snowy December here.

So what happens?
What certainly looked like a White Christmas for sure
...won't be.

We've had snow on the ground every day this month
and this is one of the coldest Decembers on record.
Now we've begun a warming trend
and we're getting scattered rain showers
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!

Just as well.
It's good for the gas bill.
And even though
many seem to be traveling far this holiday,
I'm not.
But I will be going
to a Christmas Eve party 30 miles away
and it'll be good driving weather.

I've baked Christmas cookies every year
for the last 9 or 10 years
but this year I can't.
I just don't have the time this year.
I've had big problems
with some defective outdoor decorations
and ended up having to return them.
I badly needed laminating material
for a Christmas project I'm making for my kids.
When I finally found some and got all they had,
it turned out to be so old
that the paper was morphing into the laminate.
I managed to salvage enough to make it work
but these things took up tons of valuable time.
Why is it the stuff you buy that's shoddy workmanship
always seems to be during the Christmas season?

But, I'm managing now.
Everything seems to be under control.

I want to wish each and every one of you
a Very Merry Christmas
or...if you wish,
a Wonderful Holiday Season!
May your days ahead be fun and joy-filled,
or restful and relaxing if that's what you wish.
And may any problems you have be little ones!

A Lie Among Truths

2005-12-21T06:15:00.000-05:00

Two days ago I invited you to play Spot the Lie.

If you didn't play and you want to do it now,
don't read any further and go here

OK....here's what's true and what wasn't....

1. When I decided to propose to my wife,
my Dad knew I was going to do it
and he really loved the girl I was going to marry.
So he gave me
my mother's engagement ring and wedding band.
My fiance's fingers were smaller than my mother's
so I had to have the rings resized.
I also decided to have them both cleaned
and have the prongs that hold on the diamonds checked.
When they were finished and I went to pick them up,
the jeweler asked
"Where in the world
did you get that engagement ring from?
They haven't cut diamonds like that since the 1830s!"
My Dad had told me he bought it
from a small pawn shop right after WWII ended
and that's what I told the jeweler.
So yes...this story is true.

2. In late September 2004
I went from feeling fine
to a 103.2 degree fever in four hours.
Then it went down a lot, but only to about 100.5
I thought I had the flu
but a few days later I developed
blisters on the palms of my hands and soles of my feet
and a dozen-and-a-half canker sores in my mouth.
"Um...something's not right here."
and I went to an urgent care center
(which is for care you need before the doc's office opens
but not bad enough for the hospital emergency room).
The doctor who examined me there said
"Now, I have to ask you this. It's very important.
Have you had sex with any men recently?"
I burst out laughing and said
"No, I've never had sex with a man."
I didn't get angry nor was I offended.
Just very surprised.
The doctor was doing what was best for me.
He added,"Well, I had to ask.
I think I know what you have.
But there is a chance you have syphilis,
so I need to do a blood test for that to rule it out."
It turned out I didn't have it, of course.
I had Hand, Foot and Mouth disease,
which is so common among kids
that most kids hardly ever show symptoms.
But the symptoms for adults who get this virus
can be very painful and include a high fever like I had.
All in all, a pretty harmless virus.
But it took two weeks for me to feel normal again.
Again, a true story.

3. The first house I ever bought
was in a really small town.
Supposedly, it had the roughest bar in the county
and that bar was only a mile and a half down the street.
Despite the wild bar, this town was quiet.
Especially at night.
Even the train that went by several times a week
in the middle of the night blew it's whistle very quietly
as it rolled past each of the town's road crossings.
The engineer must've just
given the whistle rope just a little tug to do that.
And yes...
the 'fridge came on in the middle of the night once
and I didn't know what the noise was
until I got up to see.
Three bad things about the town
were that there were no places to shop nearby,
nearly everyone had to drive far to their jobs,
and after heavy rains
the river flooded much of the town.
Which was something
I didn't have to worry about, though.
My house was on a hill.
Another true story.

5. When we first met,
my wife said she'd had sex before.
So I just took it as the truth.
After we had sex for the first time, she said
"Oh my God...I've never felt anything like that before!"
Now I won't lie: I'm neither big nor small.
And I won't brag here about something that isn't true
even though I could do it and get away with it.
From everything I've ever heard,
I'm...well...average size.
After some talking with my wife,
for whatever reason...
it turned out he never penetrated her.
She said it was because she was so tight.
I said, "Well, that's never stopped any guy I ever knew!"
But this guy had a "regular girl"
and was seeing my future wife "on the side",
so maybe he was nervous
- afraid his girlfriend would find out -
and couldn't get real hard.
And they never went to bed again.
If they did, maybe it would've happened.
So...up until the time we had the real thing,
my wife thought she already had sex once before.
Because after only doing it one time,
she had nothing to compare it to.
A true story.

If you noticed,
I went right from number 3 to number 5.

Because number 4 is the lie.

4. I've never hit a deer.
And my sister-in-law doesn't even live near an interstate.
Once I was driving along the edge of some woods
and a mother raccoon suddenly walked out
with 3 or 4 babies on her back.
It happened so suddenly I couldn't respond in time
and hit them. Hard.
I turned around and went back
and didn't see them anywhere.
I always figured I knocked all of them
off the road and into the woods.
There's no way any of them could've survived.
I had to stop for a while to regain my composure.
I felt so bad.
But no...I've never hit a deer.
And that's the lie.
I made the whole thing up.

~ ~ ~ ~

Congratulations to doug and squiggle.
Maybe they're really good guessers,
or maybe I tipped my hand somehow
or maybe they know me better than I think
(which is scary, since we've never met!)

And thanks, tornwordo;
I first heard this game from you.
Patricia has done it recently, too
and that prompted me to to do this sooner,
rather than later.

And a big thanks to everyone who participated!
It was fun!

Spot the Lie

2005-12-19T06:11:00.000-05:00

Wanna play?
One of the following 5 stories is a lie I made up.
All the others are true.

Leave a comment stating which one is the lie.
I'll give you the correct answer in two days.

~~~~~~~~

1. My wife's engagement ring includes diamonds
that were cut at least 165 years ago.

2. A doctor once asked me
if I'd ever had sex with another man
because he said I might have syphilis.

3. In a home I owned when I was single,
my house and the neighborhood was so quiet
that I heard a strange noise
in the middle of the night and didn't know what it was.
I investigated
and found the refrigerator had clicked on.

4. I once slaughtered a buck deer on the interstate
coming home from my sister-in-law's house.
My car was only 3 years old
and I had to get a new front bumper,
hood, grill, radiator and radiator support.
Except for a few aches and pains, I was OK.

5. When we met, my wife was a 28-year-old virgin.

The Magazine

2005-12-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

My wife collects old issues of Ladies' Home Journal,
ones from the '50s and early '60s.
She loves the articles
- reading about the things they wrote about back then -
and she loves to look at the fashions
and styles of '50s homes and appliances.

One issue in particular was from 1953.
It had an article in it about a young family
with three children...who were little hellions!
And that's mostly what the article was about,
what a difficult time the mother had
raising these wild kids.
The article was huge, taking up 10 or 12 pages
and had tons of pictures
of the family and their home.

These people lived in our town!
Or rather, in the city eight miles away.
That's what intrigued my wife the most.

Two days ago,
while reading the obituaries in the local paper
my wife said, "Hey...(blankety-blank) died !!!"
"Who the heck is that?"
"Remember?...the mother in the LHJ article!"

She had to refresh my memory with part of the story.

"Ohhhh....yeaaah.....now I remember."

We talked about it for a few minutes,
then I said
"Hey. Go to the calling hours at the funeral home,
introduce yourself and give them the magazine.
I bet they'd love it !
I'd do it but I have to work then."
"OK, sure. I can always get another one on eBay."
(Which it where she got the rest!)

Well, it turned out there weren't calling hours
but there was a funeral service
with "friends welcome to come an hour beforehand."

So she went.

I called her afterwards from work.
She said:
they were thrilled!

They were so surprised when she introduced herself
and they were all very nice.
They invited her to stay for the service
but she felt it "wasn't her place" to stay.
I wish I could say the magazine article was something
none of them had ever seen or heard about before,
but I can't.
After the article, their mother received correspondence
from all over the world for decades.
The last person wrote to her just a few months ago!
All four children
(she had one more child after the article)
had copies of the article but two had lost theirs.
So, at least this replaced a lost one.

And the funniest thing:

How many grandchildren did this woman have?
Let's see...she had four children,
so she had maybe...12 or 14 grandchildren, right?

No.

She had 3.

I have to laugh,
the kids were probably always reminded
of how rotten they were
and resisted having kids of their own
for fear they'd be tormented themselves.

And as I'd said,
my wife says they were all very nice.
And the nicest one
was the one who was most rotten as a kid.

Of course.
It figures, huh?

Into the Lion(ess)'s Den

2005-12-13T06:10:00.000-05:00

At any of the stores she went to,
my wife couldn't find new paring knives
that weren't beveled on both sides.
With a bevel on only one side,
a knife has a tendency to not cut straight
if you cut something big.

She knew I was driving three miles
into the local jaws of retail madness
and traffic jam hell,
so I offered to go somewhere nearby
that had a big selection of cutlery.

Bed, Bath and Beyond it was.

I've been there before.
It's not a place for men.
(Neither is Marc's, the inside of which
is messy and very cluttered.
It's just like you're a shrunken male version
of Alice in Wonderland
walking into a women's purse...really!
I mean, I've never seen an orderly purse unless it's new.
Ladies, don't get upset...
if men used purses it would be the same way.)

When I say B, B & B isn't a place for men,
it's not that there isn't anything in there
that would interest men,
but this store was 100% women
and I got a lot of dirty looks
for encroaching on their territory.
And I was nervous.
It wasn't because I was dressed like a slob or something.
I was stylishly dressed....
a nice black knit shirt with gold flecks,
dark gold slacks and new brown loafers.
I was just in no-mans-land, that's all.
Literally...no mans land !
Much like a male dog
who wandered inside an area of trees peed on
by a rival male dog.
Well, I guess that's not the best example
since the only male was me.

No one would wait on me.
The clerks were probably all conditioned to think
that men don't shop anyway,
they just run in, buy one thing and leave.
Which is...um...exactly what I was doing.
But at least I had plans to buy something.

Well...it turned out Bed, Bath and Beyond
was 99% women, not 100.
A young lone male clerk who looked to be about 22
was near the cutlery department
and the moment I made eye contact with him
he asked me if he could help me.
He was a really nice guy.
I think he may have been watching me anyway.
A lone male customer sorta stands out in a crowd.

I found a set of pre-packaged paring knives
but we didn't know how they were sharpened.
There were others made by the same manufacturer
but better quality, much pricier and sold singularly.
$150 for a single paring knife! Wow!
He ended up opening a package
like the kind I had in my hand
and we examined them.
He thought they were nice
but said the handles weren't heavy like the $150 one.
No matter, my wife wouldn't care.
And they were beveled on both sides.

So I left the lioness's den unscathed
- save a few holes burned through me from stares.
And my wife was very happy with the knives.
And she was very surprised...
she had serious doubts I would find some.

It's funny, though.
If the situation were reversed
and a woman went to a guy store
she'd probably get treated really well
and possibly even get hit on.
But guys get the cold stare.
HA!

More Christmas Funnies

2005-12-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

Bizarre Christmas & Winter Funnies!

2005-12-09T05:23:00.000-05:00

Click on each pic for a bigger view

Yummy Conversation at the Thanksgiving Dinner Table

2005-12-06T03:48:00.000-05:00

At the Gesundheit home
everyone is chatting and sitting
at the enormous dining room table
on this special holiday, Thanksgiving.

"Well...here we are, ready for Thanksgiving dinner.
Mom, Dad, Uncle Joe and Aunt Rose,
Grandpa and Grandma, Josh, little Carrie and myself.
Wow, everything looks delicious!
I think before we eat, we should give thanks.
Grandpa, will you do the honor of leading us in prayer?""

Everyone quiets down and bows their head
while Grandpa says a few words.

The prayer finished,
each takes their turn to fill their plate
with cranberry sauce, rolls and butter, stuffing,
mashed potatoes and gravy, peas and pearl onions,
tossed salad and, of course...turkey.

"So", I said...
"Uncle Joe....you had colon cancer, didn't you?
Did either of your parents have it?
How about their parents? How are you doing now?"

He responds,
"Well, I'm doin' pretty good.
Neither of my parents had it, but my Uncle Fred had it.
I get the colostomy bag off in a week
and they'll stitch me up for good.
As a matter of fact, I think it's about time to empty it..."
and he gets up and leaves the room.

"And Mom's diabetic, aren't you?"
"Yes, honey...you know I am."
"Didn't you have a problem with gangrene
a few years back?"
"Yes, but you wouldn't believe how wonderful leeches are!
They set those on my rotting flesh and they ate it all up.
Helped my circulation, too!
You know, son....you have a good chance of getting diabetes.
If you lose 60 pounds, your chances will be cut in half."

"Dad, how's your hemmorhoids?"

Little Carrie giggles.

"Oh, they're doing better. Not too painful anymore.
I don't think you have to worry.
There's no solid proof that it's inherited."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This never really happened

to me or anyone I knew.

But I hope you all had a Thanksgiving dinner

that sounded similar.

Because the day before Thanksgiving

the local newspaper had an article entitled:

"Thanksgiving Ideal Time to Share Family Medical History"

They really were advocating

sharing all this with each other at Thanksgiving dinner!

Was this really something

you wanted to talk about at the time?

I think I can think of better times to do this.

There's other times of the year

when you'll be seeing all these people separately.

Do it then......privately.

It doesn't have to be like group therapy.

Not surprisingly,

no one took credit for writing the article,

while in the articles around it...they did.

Well, if you didn't follow the article's advice

and talk about these things at the Thanksgiving dinner table

you still have a chance to redeem yourself.

You can still do it over Christmastime.

Are You Ready, Boots?............. STAAART WALKIN' !!!!

2005-12-03T18:14:00.000-05:00

Why?

I love this album cover, that's all!

Paper Money

2005-12-03T09:46:00.000-05:00

Even with 9/11 now over four years old
and almost no public support anymore
for American involvement in Iraq,
I still see so many vehicles
sporting American flags, ribbons and bumper stickers
showing support and love for our country.
That's fine, except for the fact
that some people cover their cars with this stuff.
Sort of like...
"Look at me, I'm more patriotic than you.
I have six things on my car, you only have one!"

I wish they'd show
a little respect for our country of another sort.

I cashed a check this morning
and asked the bank teller,
"Could you give me two crisp $10 bills
when you cash this? I'd like to give my paperboy
and my mailman each one for Christmas."

She tried, but couldn't do it.
None were in good shape.
And this was a large bank.
(However, she did give me three
new West Virginia quarters
as some of my change :)
I collect 2 of each quarter for my kids.)
Anyway, the bills she ended up giving me
were flattened out,
but had been mangled at one time or another.
And I don't mean one or two folds...
these bills had been trashed.

I carry a wallet.
Each bill I get goes in there
and I reasonably straighten them out when they go in.
From what I can tell,
half of all Americans
must stuff bills in their pocket or purse all wadded up.
And many of them
probably have their vehicles covered with flags.

Would these people wad up a flag
and stick it in their pocket?

I wish these people
would show some respect for America
by treating paper money better.
It would not only be an act of patriotism
but make the money easier for others to use after them.
But I don't think they never will.
They can't display
how neatly and respectfully they use them
on the outside of their car,
and the value remains the same
no matter how badly they treat the currency.

Creativity Linked to Sexual Success

2005-11-30T16:18:00.000-05:00

In a nutshell, this news item says
that those who are very creative
- like poets and professional artists -
are also sexually successful.
Using Pablo Picasso, Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas
as examples, they said all had multiple sex partners
and that was their definition of "sexually successful".

After some thought...it suddenly struck me:

if you have multiple sex partners in your life,
you aren't sexually successful!

If you have sex with someone
and they think you're great in bed
that partner won't want to give you up - and vice versa!
If a person has had multiple sex partners
then, more likely, most - if not all - of those partners
were disappointed and indifferent at having more sex.
And the multiple-sex-partner person went on to have sex
with another and another and another,
all of them finding disappointment.
In other words...
someone who looks to be dynamite in bed,
and turning out to be a big dud.

I'd think the person who was sexually successful
would be someone who'd had
just a few sex partners in their life.
Someone who'd want to stay with that person
(all else being equal, of course).

A Dedication to my Toilet Plunger

2005-11-28T05:51:00.000-05:00

This toilet plunger has finally bit the dust.

I went to use it the other day
after my son plugged up the toilet
and noticed the rubber on it
was hardening up and cracking.
A small piece from a badly cracked area
even fell out of it.

It's been in my family as long as I can remember
so it's at least 40 years old.
It's plunged many a poopy plug.

I'm going out to buy a new one today.

Goodbye, dear friend.
(*sniff, sniff*......)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(Note:
My oldest son - 9 - has been
playing with a tape recorder all day.
My youngest son - 6 - just now raced into the bathroom.

Um...care to make any guesses as to what just happened?

Yeah....
My oldest just ran in after the youngest
to tape record him sitting on the toilet!
Mom just chased him out, saying "You can't do that!!!!"
"Why not????"

Little boys do unbelievable things.)

WalMart...........5:02 A.M............... The Day After Thanksgiving

2005-11-25T09:16:00.000-05:00

Every few years I try this to see if it gets any better.
It hasn't.
And it'll be several years before I try again.

Which is going to a big pre-dawn store sale.

WalMart had a Friday-after-Thanksgiving sale
from 5 a.m. until 11 a.m. today.
I'm sure it's nationwide.

I went as I saw three things I'd like for Christmas gifts.
I got up at 4:20 a.m. and left at 4:45.
I drove to a new one that was out near a small town,
one that hasn't been very busy yet.
Sound strategy, right?

I got there at 5:02,
walked inside all the way to the back
where electronics were
as I was primarily interested in the DVD recorder
they had on sale.
I laughed, turned around and walked back out.

Because...
for one thing, I saw none of the recorders anywhere
even after walking over to where they kept them.
Second, for some unknown reason
a huge mob had formed around one aisle in electronics
making it nearly impossible to get around.
There wasn't a whole lot of pushing and shoving,
but no one showed any manners
or had a smile on their face.

Most importantly,
the people there made whole place stink.
Not only like stale beer,
stale cigarettes and a faint odor of feces,
but it just plain smelled...sour.
Like people who hadn't bathed in three weeks.

I'm sorry to say,
this 5 a.m. sale attracted the armpit of America.
People who haven't seen the light of day for months,
who live in the basements of the homes of others.
They came to this sale,
wearing yellowed white t-shirts with brown stains
and ripped baggy pants.
And they had to hurry and get done and back
before dawn broke in two hours
or they'd die from exposure to sunlight.

That experience wasn't worth saving a couple of dollars,
so I left after 10 minutes and went to breakfast.
On my way home, I decided at the last minute
to stop at one close by, one in the suburbs.
By this time it was about 7:30,
the crowd wasn't nearly as bad
and this WalMart had no disgusting people.
This store had several
of the DVD recorders I was interested in
but were sold out of the other two gift ideas I had.
No matter...they weren't gifts my kids wanted,
just what I thought they might want.

To be honest, I really don't blame WalMart for this.
It just so happens this is the kind of sale
that brings the worst people out of their caves.
I'm sure they went to other chains
that opened at 5 a.m. for a big sale.

As I said, every few years I try this
to see if the experience gets any better.
It'll be a while again before I try.

My time and sanity are worth more
than the few bucks I would've saved at the first store.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-23T18:49:00.000-05:00

We were all set to go to
my sister-in-law's house for Thanksgiving tomorrow.
We've gone every year for the past several years.

With both my parents deceased
and all my brothers involved with their own families,
I really don't have any relatives to go to anymore.

So we go see someone in my wife's family each holiday.

But not this time.

A big snowstorm stands between our house and hers.
By Friday morning
they're predicting up to 9 inches of snow
and winds up to 45 mph in that time frame
with temperatures in the upper 20s and low 30s.

Any colder...and we're talking blizzard conditions!

My mother-in-law, like most people,
always hated to drive in the snow.
Now, nearly 80, it scares her
to even be the passenger of a car in the snow.
And we would've gone to pick her up first.
And she lives where the storm
is going to be at it's worst!

I understand she's relieved everyone's staying put.

So, it looks like we'll be staying home.
My wife just walked in the front door
with a Honeysuckle turkey breast
and the usual anticipated side dishes.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sit Back, Relax and Enjoy....

2005-11-20T14:33:00.000-05:00

A scene from Belgrade,Serbia

No, I didn't take that photo.

I'm not that good.

I got this from TrekEarth.

They have 300 pages of really cool photos,

- about 16 or 18 on each page.

The photographers have notes added for most

so you know where it is.

Many are high-resolution wallpaper quality.

I like to go here when I want to just sit back and relax.

Same Place, Different Time

2005-11-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

As I was returning from breakfast this morning
I drove past an intersection with a side street.
And at that intersection was a home
I'd been to before, long ago.

In 1976, a 20-something guy who lived there
had an early muscle car for sale
and he needed the money real bad.
It was a '62 Ford XL convertible from Texas.
It had a 406V8, 385 horsepower 4-speed.
It ran good (and was fast!) and the body was perfect
but it needed a paint job and the interior was "tired".

He'd take $300 for it.

My brother talked me out of it.
He removed a rubber drain plug in a body panel
and a lot of rainwater came out.
He said it might be rusting a lot on the inside
and I might be sorry later if I bought it.

But I wanted that car so badly.

In retrospect,
no way could I have gone wrong for $300.
Even for that price back then.

So as I drove by today
I looked at the spot next to the garage
where the car sat almost 30 years earlier.
Very little about the home and property had changed
except the car was gone.
And every time I go by that house
I look there.
Anymore, it's just habit.

- - -

But it got me thinking
about some big moments in my life so far
and where I was when they happened.

- - -

I was working at a church a couple of years later
when I had my first real kiss
with a girl I saw off & on for about 2 years.
It was on a balcony overlooking a huge dining hall.
We were completely alone, of course.
From what I understand,
little has changed about the church, too.
If I were there right now,
I could pinpoint where we were standing
when that first kiss happened.

- - -

One day a little over 18 years ago
my older brother came over to visit
and mentioned he knew a girl
who volunteered at the hospital where he worked.
She had just broken up with some creep-o;
it was a pretty bad relationship.
My brother said
- since he knew neither of us were seeing anyone -
he'd ask her if he could give me her phone number
and if she'd like me to call her.

She eventually became my wife.

And today I can stand out on the lawn
in the exact spot
where I first heard about her from my brother.

- - -

I've always been told by co-workers
that I'm a hard worker and an excellent employee.
(But not in public by any school administrator.
They'd feel it's silly to say that about a custodian
and they feel they have an image to keep.)

One day my boss came to my building
- with a chip on his shoulder like he usually had -
and after a minute or two
proclaimed that I was the worst head custodian
that building ever had.
Not bad, mind you...I was the worst.
Some of it was because some of my lawn mowing
was given to a floating custodian
who did a lot of my boss's work.
But the rest of his attitude had to do
with the cruise he just came back from.
It was the first, last and only cruise he'd ever been on.
His wife talked him into it...and he hated it.
So he was in a really foul mood.

I can stand in the spot today
where he told me that
and how I mustered everything I had
to keep from pulverizing his ass,
going to jail and losing my job.

He did come back later and apologize.
Much later.
Like 10 months.

- - -

A blogger once said (to paraphrase):
"The past is the past. Forget about it.
The only thing that counts is the future."
But you can't deny memories you have.
And strong memories - good and bad -
make the experiences more vivid.
I think that's how I can remember
where I was at those times.

Do you ever go past some place
and think about something you did
or something that happened to you
long ago in that spot
and the memory that went with it?

Now THAT'S Health Care!

2005-11-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

American intelligence has determined Wednesday
"that an assessment based on a wide variety of material
suggests (Fidel) Castro has Parkinson's disease".

Wow!....a long-distance diagnosis
and they never even met him!
Here's the story.

How come they can do that,
yet even after I met a couple of times
with an orthopedic surgeon,
a hospital emergency room staff,
had x-rays taken and gone through physical therapy,
still...no one can tell me why
I have numb areas on my feet?

I don't expect anyone to have an answer.
I'm just griping, that's all.

The Freak Channel

2005-11-14T21:52:00.000-05:00

Cable TV.

There's cable TV channels out there
that are so different, so diverse from each other.

There's even (or was...) one
(I don't know if it exists anymore)
that only had fish swimming around on it.
It was entertainment for your cat.

There's some street corners out there that are just wild,
with all kinds of weird activity going on.
Drug deals, fights, vomiting, hookers, arguing,
car accidents, urinating, drag races, funny kids,
strangely-dressed people, dogs, arrests, neon lights
and babes (and hot guys for the women).
Add a sudden thunderstorm or snow storm
and it's all different again.

I propose setting up
a high-quality hidden camera with a mike
and putting it live on a new cable TV channel.

Lets call it "The Freak Channel".

It'll run live and run 24-hours-a-day.
It would need to be a scene
with at least some existing lighting at night
so we can see what's going on.

Eventually, word will get around
on the location of the camera and mike.
Some people will shy away from it
while others will ham it up
and a lot of people will turn it into free advertising
or their political soapbox.

That's when you change locations
to another part of the country,
maybe another part of the world.
But like I say, it has to be a crazy street corner
or no one would tune in.

There'd be very little overhead
and no writers or actors to pay.

With reality shows still popular,
it should be a hit!
I'd tune in, wouldn't you?

Today at Home

2005-11-12T19:30:00.000-05:00

Autumn's last stand...

a backyard sugar maple

as it looked last week

~~~~~~~

Well, all my leaves were down.

Time to start cleaning them up.

~~~

I have 1 and 1/2 acres of property

and half of it - 3/4 acre - is a lawn.

And do I have trees!

Hickory and white pine in my front yard,

sugar maples just behind the house

and oaks way in the back.

I grew up in this house.

The sugar maple you see above, we used to tap

- along with our other sugar maples -

to make maple syrup when I was a kid.

~~~

Strange how they turn color first in my front yard,

and by the time my trees in the back are in full color,

most of the tree leaves in the front have fallen.

Must have something to do with the types of trees.

~~~

I started about 11 a.m.

and figured I could work 6 hours

before it started to get dark.

I worked 2 hours

and the mowing deck on my garden tractor suddenly quit.

Sure that I snapped a belt,

I drove into the garage and called the tractor parts store.

They closed at noon and they aren't open Sunday.

Damn!......I can't continue until Monday!

I took a better look at the tractor

and...good news!...a big stick forced the belt off!

It hadn't snapped!

I slipped it back on and it was fine.

~~~

The grass and leaves were drier than I expected

and the dust from both really got me filthy.

Worse, I felt like inhaled two pounds of dirt.

I blew my nose later

and any moisture that came out was black with dirt.

I probably should've worn a particle filter mask.

Although I feel fine at the moment,

I'm hoping I don't get a sinus infection.

~~~

Well...I worked 6 hours and got most of it done.

Hopefully I can finish the back yard tomorrow.

Tuesday - three days away -

we're supposed to get thunderstorms,

and then a wet snow on Wednesday.

I have to get it done before Tuesday.

Thankfully, I'm off from work for a week.

I really needed a vacation break.

~~~

Finished for the day, the sun about to set,

I walked around to the front of the house

and there's my oldest son.

He's been in and out of the house all day

waiting for the mailman to come.

I bought a new out-of-print

N64 video game guide on eBay for him and the youngest

and they know it could come any time.

And they're getting anxious.

~~~

"Has he come yet?", I asked.

"No, not yet....HEY, LOOK!!!!"

And the mailman was driving toward our driveway.

"Look, he's turning in our driveway!

Maybe he has it!", I said.

About then, the youngest - all excited -

came out onto the front porch.

~~~

No such luck.

Mr. Mailman had a big magazine

that wouldn't fit in the mailbox for my wife.

The boys were so disappointed.

"Maybe it'll come tomorrow",

said the oldest, his voice crackling.

"No...tomorrow's Sunday", I said.

My youngest just looked really sad.

I remember expecting stuff in the mail

when I was little.

A day seemed like a week,

a week like a month.

~~~

Maybe Monday it'll come, I told them.

Maybe Monday.

Smoking and Personality Changes

2005-11-09T17:13:00.000-05:00

As far back as I can remember,
my Dad always seemed easily angered
and down on everything.

He smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day,
built tires - so he was exposed to benzene
and was a commercial artist
- so he was exposed to paint and thinners.

I guess all that in itself
might make you easily angered
and down on everything.

But for sure, it was all very hard on his lungs.

Once he retired, he mellowed somewhat
but he never showed any enthusiasm
to do anything.
He just sat around the house and watched TV.

By 1990, he developed emphysema
that was bad enough where his doctor determined
he needed to start using oxygen all the time.
He went into the hospital to get tests
to see exactly how much he needed
and whether any medication could help him.

He was initially only supposed to be admitted
for a few days.
But when a nurse with a bad cold
went around and coughed on everybody in his ward,
many ended up in intensive care with pneumonia...
including my Dad.
This is why my doctor says
to avoid hospitals if at all possible:
Infections caused by carelessness.

With pneumonia, his lung function got much worse
and he was placed on a respirator.

The main feature of this story
was an interesting device hooked up to my Dad
that measured the amount of oxygen in his blood.
When he first went in, even hooked up to oxygen,
the device said the amount of oxygen in his blood was
- if I remember right, because this was 15 years ago -
78-85% of normal.
It varied in that range during visits.

One day I visited him in intensive care
after he was put on a respirator
and he was like someone I never met before:
cheerful, optimistic, joking!
If the conditions were different
- if he were healthy and at home -
it would've been great to see him like this.
I'd never known him like this before.
Remember...he was still on the respirator,
and his blood oxygen level was near 100% of normal!

I remember asking a nurse
if he'd been put on any kind of medication
that would artificially lift his spirits so much
and she said "Not that I'm aware of.
He's probably just doing better."

Over the next few months
he got better and worse, better and worse
including a coma where he nearly died.
There's a lot that I could go into
but this blog would get really long and,
unless you were there.....really boring.

He eventually came home with an oxygen tank
and lived for a year at home
before passing away late in 1991.
And while he was at home
his personality reverted back to it's old self;
no enthusiasm to leave the house with a portable tank,
down and usually depressed.

Does reduced lung function...even temporarily,
with smoking as the single biggest cause in our society,
lead to personality changes?
Does it lead to apathy, depression,
irritability and listlessness?
Has a large segment of our society
been affected by this and we don't realize it?
And how low does blood oxygen level get
before any personality changes are noticeable?

Or is blood oxygen even the culprit?
Is it something else,
with blood oxygen only as a symptom?