A Whiny Post About Whiners

Attention Scary Looking People Who Whine When People Act Scared of You

Yes, we pull our purses a little tighter or cross the street whenever we see you coming toward us. Perhaps, it will make you feel better knowing that 99% of the avoidance is not anti-biker, anti-punk or anti-this-race-or-that-race.

If you’re bigger than me and deliberately dress in scary ways, I’m going to be scared. It works. You made your point. Stop trying to make me feel guilty for a situation you created.

Attention People Who Spell Their Name Weird

If your name is spelled weird, don’t be mean to me because I spelled your name Carol instead of Kerryll. Your mother did that to you, not me. Stop trying to make me feel guilty for a situation your parents created.

Attention Whiny Newlyweds Who Had Some of Their Wedding Gift Cards Stolen

You have told every news program that will listen that the woman and her 12 year-old daughter who stole gift cards from your reception ruined and/or "tainted" your whole wedding day. It's just money. If someone stealing a few gift cards ruined your whole wedding day, you need a little reality check.

Not only that, you caught them when you accidentally ran into them at Target the next day trying to use the gift cards. You obviously aren't from the South. In the South, catching the thief red handed the very next day would qualify that as the best wedding story ever.

How Sonic helps me diet

Today, I stopped at Sonic and ordered a Java Chiller (coffee mixed with ice cream) and a small popcorn chicken with creamy chipotle dipping sauce for lunch.

Instead, they gave me an iced latte (no ice cream) and forgot to put my dipping sauce in the bag.

So, Sonic saved me about 400 calories (300 or so on the latte and 50 or so on the sauce) on my lunch.

Sneaky bastards.

History of Rock and Roll

Johnny Rotten

I was watching History of Rock and Roll Saturday on VH-1 Classics and someone made the following quote. "This generation's rock and roll is destined to become the next generation's pop music."

Damned if I can remember who said it though. It was either Elvis Costello or Bruce Springsteen, I think. It might have been Johnny Rotten who looks surprisingly, relatively good, considering I thought he was dead.

Last week, I switched my XM radio over to the "Lite Pop and Love Songs" channel for a while and they played a lot of Elton John, Billy Joel, James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac. I remember wondering when it happened that these guys and so many others who were cutting edge back in the early 70s began to be considered "Lite Pop."

Seriously, boys and girls, ELO and Boston and even the Eagles were thought of as pretty bad ass back in the day. Of course, I guess I was a lot cooler myself, back in the day.

Happy Hurricane Rita Anniversary! - CLICK HERE

Mom's a ding dong

Mom's now a bell ringer at church. She's not The Hunchback of Notre Dame type bell ringer. She's the shake-the-little-bells kind of bell ringer.

Sneaky way to get your kids to go back to church, mom.

(Mom's on the left.)

Guess who this is...

Family Feud

You should add a link to your desktop for VH-1's Best Week Ever. It's got some great stuff. This is what they had to say about this video:

This clip from today’s “Family Feud” definitely falls under the “maybe only I find this funny” category, but still, when this guy gets asked “name an occupation where a man can work with his shirt off,” and he answers “male dancer,” his wife (standing right behind O’Hurley) shoots him a really natural, really unamused glare that may or may not offer insight into the couple’s past tribulations, or at the very least, her subconscious suspicions. Maybe I’m reading too far into it, but keep in mind, this is a show where people get asked “name a famous first lady” and answer “cherries” and everyone’s only reaction is still to clap and yell “good answer!”

I'm a redneck

I have a rash on my neck that's driving me nuts. That's it up there. Last night I went to the medicine cabinet and found I had no Benadryl cream and my Benadryl tablets had expired. In itchy desperation I rummaged through all my bathroom drawers and cabinets until I found something specifically made for itching: Vagisil anti-itch cream.

So, between the Vagisil on my neck and the Preparation H under my eyes, I guess you wouldn't be wrong to call me ass face. It wouldn't be very nice, but it definitely wouldn't be wrong.

This just in (from my son)...

In The News

Meteorite Sickens Hundreds in Peru
Of course, "the authorities" say it isn't the meteor that is making people sick. Doesn't that sound like the plot of every science fiction/horror/alien movie you've ever seen? Are they even sure it was just a meteorite? Am I the only person who saw "The Thing?"


O. J. Simpson's Big Caper
On my drive to work, I listen to the Morning Show on CBS. As the anchor was reporting on O. J.'s latest adventure, he quoted CBS's sources numerous times as TMZ and The Insider. Remember the good old days when the news came from police departments and eye witnesses?

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day - CLICK HERE

Aaargh, I do believe my magnificent grand-pirate-daughter needs this pirate book to learn her pirate-y A-B-Seas!

Here are the blasted details:

Mark 'Cap'n Slappy' Summers
John 'Ol' Chumbucket' Baur
Jonathan 'Pilferin' Pooter' Cooke

A piratical romp through the alphabet with all that that implies. Sometimes rude, sometimes downright dangerous and subversive, but always fun and always funny. "A Li'l Pirate's ABSeas" does for the alphabet what a well-placed broadside does for a Spanish galleon – softens it up so that pirates can have their way with it! Actually, we're not sure this should be read by children – but their parents will love it. Children should only be given this book by their drunken uncles and wild aunts who don't want the little darlings to grow up to be insufferable prigs!
Trade paperback, 48 pages with original black-and-white illustrations by Jonathan "Pilferin' Pooter" Cooke.

$9.50

Order now from Lulu.com

Add YOUR Best Friend to Dogster

Join the Dogster community

There's even a place to indicate if your friend is "no longer with us." What a nice little memorial for a puppy who has gone to doggy heaven.

My Fabulous Weekend (Click here for more pics)

Over and Out

Signing off until Sunday...no, wait...the Emmy's are on Sunday night...make that Monday.

Sayonara.

How Special

Notes on power and/or the lack thereof

• When Cory laughed at me for buying one of those flashlights that you shake to activate, he was right. Mine, at least, is a piece of shit.
• A flashlight does you no good if you set it down in the dark and forget where you put it.
• Just because the power is off doesn't mean I will stop flipping switches or trying to turn things on.
• I looked at my refrigerator at 8:30 a.m. after being without power for about 4 hours and thought, "I sure hope the power comes on soon so I don't lose everything in my refrigerator." The power came back on at that exact moment.
• After I was at work for about an hour, the power went off. As I wandered around the office visiting people, I came upon the office manager and a couple of co-workers. I told them about my powers of persuasion when it comes to getting the lights back on. The office manager said, "Do it again." I said, "Hell, no! I don't want the power to come back on here. I just wanted it back on at home." She said, "Aw, come on." I said, "I don't want to say that I wish the power would come back on here." Right then, the power came back on. Evidently, The Universe wasn't listening to the first six words of that sentence. Dammit.

Surprise! It's a hurricane!!

When I went to bed last night, Tropical Storm Humberto was headed toward Galveston. I woke up about 3:00 a.m. and wondered what was going on because I hadn't even heard any rain, yet. When I turned on the television, I found out that Tropical Storm Humberto was now Hurricane Humberto and it was headed straight for us.

About thirty minutes later, conditions started to deteriorate, as they say on The Weather Channel. The winds picked up to probably no more than 50 m.p.h. but it was enough for my power to flicker off and on for about thirty minutes before going out completely. The disco effect from the lights on my bedside clock radio and cable television boxes in my den and living room made it difficult to find a bed or couch to be able to go back to sleep. I was actually happy when my power finally went out completely.

I ended up spending the rest of the night on the couch downstairs because it was so noisy upstairs. The sound of the constant wind, even at only 50 m.p.h. is as scary as everyone says. We had been warned about rainfall and flooding but the thought of hurricane force winds never occurred to me. So, I hadn't done anything to protect the stuff on my patio. As it turns out, my patio is so small and enclosed, everything weathered the storm just fine.

By about 5:30 a.m. or so, everything had pretty much settled down except for a few squalls and my power came back on at about 8:30 a.m. I'm going to try to make it to the office, now. I don't think there was much flooding.

Now, go take the quiz below or I will be forced to repost it tomorrow.

Update:
When I got to the corner at the end of my block, there was a huge tree down in front of the railroad tracks. I think that explains my power outage.

There were a few more trees and fences down on my route to work. Not too bad, though.

There are still a lot of traffic lights out on Phelan Boulevard and the debris line looks like they might have had 4 or 5 feet of water there last night.

Where the hell are you?

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Massage, Thy Name is Ouchy

Every year for Administrative-Professionals-We're-Intellectually-Superior-To-Our-Bosses Day, our office invites in a few masseuses to masseuse us. We get the 20-minute chair variety and, as anyone who sits at a computer all day and half the night knows, a 20-minute chair massage is divine.

This year, APWISTOB Day was on the Wednesday of the week I got back from vacation. I told my appointed masseuse that I was desperately in need of my 20 minutes because my back had been killing me since I got back from vacation.

"When did you get back from vacation," she asked.

"Monday," I said.

As she worked on the knots in my shoulders she suddenly blurted, "You did this to yourself in two days?!"

Since that day, I vowed to get a professional one hour massage at least once a month. Five months later, I actually made good on my vow. I'm not very good with vowing, especially when I'm vowing to myself and it involves spending money.

Tonight was my second monthly massage or as I like to call it, "What The Hell Is She Doing Back There Day." "We" decided that I needed some work on my sinuses and some deep tissue...scratch that...A LOT of deep tissue work on my left shoulder.

Boys and girls, let me tell you, that woman bent me into positions I haven't been in since Spring Break 1976. At one point, I swear to you, I was as flat as the Coyote whenever he gets run over by that steamroller thingy.

After she finished the front-end alignment of my shoulders, she eventually made her way to my sinuses. Sinus work by a masseuse is not for the weak hearted. She somehow managed to invade my sinus cavities by going through my jawbone.

As I sit here, hunched over this keyboard rekinking my shoulders and restuffing my sinuses with the dust on this computer desk, I ask myself, "Was it worth it?" I think it must have been. Surely, something so painful has to be good for you, right?

I do feel more bendy, my head does feel a couple of pounds lighter and some of my cellulite had to have been squashed into oblivion in the whole pummeling process. Hell, that's worth a couple bucks, right there.

The Creeps

Before I went to bed early to lose weight (see previous post), I discovered that TVLand was having a Bob Newhart Show marathon (not the Vermont Bob Newhart, the Chicago psychologist Bob Newhart). So, instead of going to bed at 10:00 p.m. I went to bed at midnight. Then, the nightmares started. It was like I was in one of those Dawn of the Dead movies and I knew I was in a movie but everything they were doing to me still hurt and I was still terrified. Then, I woke up because I was screaming. Yes. Literally. Screaming. Although I was awake (sort of), I was still afraid and thought I could hear people downstairs but I was suddenly afraid of the dark and my stairs looked pitch black and I thought I could still hear things downstairs. I went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep, but Midnight Train to Georgia kept going through my head. When I finally did go back to sleep, I dreamed my parents were at my house and dad kept letting people, mostly trick-or-treaters, into my house without looking first to be sure who was at the door before opening it. The trick-or-treaters were parents with children who would come into my house and go through my things and they were mean and I would have to kick them out while my mom and I kept screaming at my dad.

I hate my allergy medicine.

Can't blog...must sleep

Google: sleep loss weight gain

Here's an excerpt from one link:

According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average woman gets only six and a half hours of sleep per night. Chronic sleep deprivation can have a variety of effects on the metabolism and overall health. Inadequate sleep:

• interferes with the body's ability to metabolize carbohydrates and causes high blood levels of glucose, which leads to higher insulin levels and greater body-fat storage;
• drives down leptin levels, which causes the body to crave carbohydrates;
• reduces levels of growth hormone--a protein that helps regulate the body's proportions of fat and muscle.;
• can lead to insulin resistance and contribute to increased risk of diabetes;
• can increase blood pressure;
• can increase the risk of heart disease.

Good night. I'm going lose some weight now.

People Get Paid to Do That?

I just saw a commercial for Aquapod bottled water. It's regular old spring water that is bottled in a shape to appeal to kids. Supposedly, the water is "orbtastic."

It's water, just water. Yet, by just changing the shape of the bottle, the water becomes "orbtastic." I shudder to think of the amount of time spent around advertising agency conference room tables promoting and selling this concept to enable their client to sell more water. Just water.

Come to think of it, a person can also buy dirt, grass, wild flowers and oxygen. I wish I could think of a cool way to package ear wax and toe cheese. I'd make a million.

More Coincidences - Justin Timberlake Variety

You all know I'm a sucker for coincidences. The latest version pertains, oddly enough to Justin Timberlake. When two things happen that seem like coincidence, depending on the strangeness of the connection, I usually chalk it up to just that, coincidence. However, when there are three events, I start thinking The Universe is trying to tell me something.

Trigger Event
I watched Justin Timberlake's HBO special Monday night. Loved it. That boy's got some moves.

First Coincidence - Second Event
While Jack was paying for my birthday lunch Wednesday, it got so crowded at Frankie's that I walked outside to wait for him. As I was standing there, I looked over to the left and there was a huge sign for the Timberlake Courts Apartments which I had never noticed before and we go to Frankie's pretty often.

Second Coincidence - Third Event
I have a really long NetFlix queue. We're talking 102 movies. It'll take me a year to watch all these movies. I got a couple of movies in Wednesday's mail but I didn't open them until tonight. The movies were Black Snake Moan and Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark*. I decided to watch Black Snake Moan. Guess who's in Black Snake Moan. Yep. Justin Timberlake.

*Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark is made by the guys who used to do Mystery Science Theater. I'll be doing a post about those guys pretty soon. They're baaaaaack.

The Office: Bringing Sexy Back, Scarn Ultimatum, The (Office) Invasion

Happy Birthday to Me!

Tonight I was going to post a lovely Bill Pullman/Bill Paxton quiz I'm working on when I suddenly realized that most of you will read this tomorrow which is my birthday. I knew you would be much too distracted trying to construct the perfect happy birthday comment to be bothered with Bill Pullman-Paxton nonsense.

Since my last official birthday was in 2004 when I turned 49, I still haven't decided on my exact age. You may choose from the following:

• The "3rd anniversary of my 49th birthday"
• My "49 plus 3" birthday
• My "Reverso Birthday Age" of 46*

* Subtract a year each year since I turned 49. It's physics. You wouldn't understand.

I don't have time to blog tonight because...

This is what I did today...



This is what I did this afternoon...



This is what I'm doing tonight (J. T. is bringing sexy back on HBO)...

Ava meets Paw-Paw Red

Ava = my grand-fabulous-daughter
Paw-Paw Red = my dad

No spreken ze deutch

I have lots of blogging friends outside the United States who speak and understand English. Most are from Great Britain...or England...or the British Isles...oh my. I'm not sure what to call it, so I found a diagram and a Wikipedia article (click here for the article).

I have lots of blogging friends in Canada and Australia and Astrid is originally from The Netherlands but now lives in London. For a couple of years now, I've had a blogging friend in France who posts in French but leaves her comments here in English. I can't read most of her posts and I leave my comments to her in English which I'm not sure she understands.

In the past week, I've acquired an Italian blogging friend and a blogging friend from Monterrey, Mexico. I'm pretty sure my new Italian friend is using a translator to leave her comments but my friend from Monterrey seems to be fluent in English.

Other than a couple of years of French language studies in high school and being raised by and around Cajuns, some of whom spoke only French, I am ridiculously ignorant in the foreign language department. As the world grows smaller, it is suddenly quite clear to me that I need to get off my lazy ass and acquire a passable knowledge of, at the very least, French, Spanish, Italian and German. I wonder if it would be overly ambitious to attempt a couple of Asian languages. Also, wouldn't life be much easier if we all knew a little Hindi?

As you know, I'm overly sensitive to obvious and not so obvious coincidences. Off we go:

• In the spring of this year, I finally got my first passport.
• A few weeks ago, I joined NetFlix and have been peppering my movie queue with lots of foreign movies. Watching the movies while reading the subtitles is frustrating. I know I'm missing so much, not only visually by having to look back and forth between the subtitles and the film, but also because I'm not experiencing the subtleties of the languages in which the films were made.
• Out of the blue, I've been stumbled upon by folks whose blogs are written in languages I cannot understand and to not be able to read their posts as they intend them to be read drives me absolutely nuts.

So, I suppose I'll start by learning French since it should be the easiest to pick up at first having been raised around a lot of French speaking folks. Since I live in Texas, Spanish should be my obvious next choice because we have a lot of Spanish speaking people here in the area. I work with a girl from Germany, so after Spanish I'll move on to German and finally Italian. Eventually, I'll attempt Japanese, Chinese and Hindi.

That should keep me busy for a couple of weeks.

Nomad's Blog

Lina's Blog

Leon's Blog

Steve and Peg's Vegas Vacation Practically Live - Picture 8

G-rated version of Steve and Peg's last night in Vegas

Steve and Peg's Vegas Vacation Practically Live - Picture 7

Steve (second from bottom) hamming it up at Spamalot