Archives January 2003

Last night we did the classic, dinner and a movie. We went for dinner at Olive Garden. We had not been there for months. We arrived shortly after 5 and only had a 5 minute wait. We were one of the VERY few in there without full heads of gray hair. We had a great meal. By the time we rolled out of there a little after 6, the lobby was full of people waiting. Then we headed up to Bonita to see the movie. We never have been to this theater before but it was the only one still showing Nemesis. It has 12 screens, stadium seating, and is very clean and modern. A nice joint. There were a total of 6 people watching the movie, including us. 🙂 I thought the movie was good. Certainly par for the course as far as Star Trek movies go. It wasn’t the best one I ever saw but it was also far from the worst one. (the one where they save the whale) I certainly don’t think it deserved the nasty review it got. 2 of the 6 there must have been hard core trekkers. They were really into it and at the end high fived each other, I kid you not. So that was our night, something different.

Picked up the DVD player yesterday. Has some cool features. Not only is it progressive scan (ohhhhh ahhh), but it has a memory stick slot that can be used to play back jpg’s through the dvd as well as being able to play MP3’s and VCD’s, CD-R’s and CD-RW’s. I will play with it this weekend.

The local hobby shop has told me 3 separate times that they SHOULD be getting in the props I need for my plane. Each time, they don’t have them. I guess he doesnt subscribe to the “under promise, over deliver” style of business.

Tonight, reality TV bonanza. Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole! Don’t miss it! 🙂

Lebron James got a Hummer H2 from his unemployed mother for his birthday. A $75,000 vehicle. Everyone is assuming someone paid for it. More than likely they just gave it to her on a no payments till your son makes millions plan. What a future this kid has.

As most know I have two male beta fish in my office. They are separated by a grid in the tank because male beta’s will kill each other normally. Just now the one had some of his fin dangling through the grid. The other got right up to it like he was gonna take a chomp but he resisted. Mutual respect I guess.

Joe Millionaire last night. It was amusing. The girls were all ready for their big group dates. They went out with “Joe” 4 at a time. They thought they were gonna do something cool. Instead, the one group got to pick grapes in the cold and rain, the next group got to muck horse stalls and the final group got to shovel coal into a steam locomotive boiler. They were not happy. After watching the dude through a second show it has reaffirmed my belief that he is really DUMB. Oh well it should be interesting to see how it all blows up.

We are going to the movies tonight. I intend to see Star Trek Nemesis, however the review I read basically said it sucked. I am hoping they are wrong.

Did dumbell dead lifts at the gym last night. A very uncomfortable exercise. I hate leg nights but it is a necessary evil.

Arghh the weather pixies are still living. Email HOMEY to assassinate them immediately!

My weekend was simple but enjoyable. I worked on my new rc plane. Got it together, and after a couple scary flights and crashes I was able to keep it airborne. Look for pics and brief video of a flight here.

The rest of the weekend was basically spent watching football. GO EAGLES! The Eagles played a sloppy game but still managed to grind out a win so I’ll take it. They will need to turn it up a notch for the NFC championship if they hope to make it to the big game. The Steeler / Titan game was a nail biter. Bill Cowher lost his cool again, just as he always does…. The other 2 games were blow outs ho-hum.

I also washed both vehicles and we went out and got a new DVD player. Did you know the difference between a DVD player with progressive scan vs no progressive scan? About $50-$100 bucks. 🙂 Evidently progressive scan picture quality is much better. I never knew. So we scooped one up that also does cool stuff like play CD-R’s and MP3’s as well as having a sony memory stick slot so you can browse pics on your dvd player.

If you have achy joints forget glucosamine, drink flaxseed oil! This stuff actually works! It has Omega 3’s in it which have a ton of beneficial qualities but the one I noticed most is how my joints have felt significantly better since taking it. It tastes like hell but it’s worth it. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

Weather pixies are evil. Homey needs to make them die.

Early this morning I became an uncle for the first time. Alison’s brother had their daughter, Lauren this morning. She came via C-section because she was breech. All is well. It’s a strange feeling to be an uncle.

Lauren shares her birthday with my Dad who turns 56 today. Hard to imagine that my dad is a few years from 60. Someone stop the clock, please….

Today my last plane parts should arrive. I hope to have it up in the air this weekend. Here’s hoping.

Tomorrow, 8pm E A G L E S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This weekends itinerary, wash and wax both vehicles. Pressure washer party and normal house maintenance routine. We may also try to catch a movie.

We watched the Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole last night. We didn’t realize the fun only started at 9pm so it was a late night. Both shows were good and will make the Tivo list. Cathy Griffin (Griffith?) is EXTREMELY funny on celebrity mole.

Today I met up with the insurance appraiser to look at the buick. He pretty much agreed the car was history. Now I wait for the insurance company to contact me to discuss settlement. I am hoping to do a salvage buy-back of the buick so I can sell it as a parts car.

My new plane should be complete soon, I am just waiting for a few parts. Pictures are on the way.

Eagles play this Saturday night. I hope Donovan is ready to rock and roll. It would be quite a disappointment to have their season end now after so many things wound up falling their way.

The pool guys didn’t show Monday as they promised but they did show up on Tuesday. We came home to a drained pool. It looks like they drained it, patched the wall and were in the process of filling it all in one day. Too bad we have had to wait 5 weeks + for them to show. Now our pool is filling with brown smelly well water. 🙁 At least it is too cold to use right now.

I’m slowly assembling the 2nd plane I have been accumulating the parts for. It is painted Eagles silver and green. I am getting a hellacious motor for it so it should be a beast in the air. Hopefully I can keep it in the air. 😉

I got a call from the local insurance company about the Buick. He asked if it was just a little fire. I said nope, the interior is bare metal. He said , “Oh….” long pause “we will send out an adjuster” I’ll be glad when it is all behind me. Feels like a graveyard when I pull into my driveway.

I still have our outside Christmas lights going on at night. Is that tacky? It looks nice so I am not in a rush to take them down. I guess this weekend I’ll do it.

Over last weekend I slapped in a 2nd 80 gig hard drive in my home pc, giving me a total of 160 gig. The reason I did it was for video editing, those files eat up drive space FAST.

Last night I pulled out my digital cable box. Time Warner’s rates went up 6 or 7 bucks for the new year. I did some investigating, they charge me 9 bucks a month to “rent” the cable box and then another 20 a month for the digital channels it provides. However, after reviewing those channels I realized that I never view any of them, ever. So out goes the box and into my pocket goes 30 bucks a month. I’ll survive with 78 channels. 🙂

I got automatic profile generation for Exchange to work! I had messed with this off and on for awhile but finally took the time to do it. Who cares, eh?

One TV note. Watched Joe Millionaire. Boy does that guy come off as dumb. The women weren’t overly impressive either. I heard one interesting theory. Someone suggested that maybe Fox is actually pulling the wool over the viewers eyes. Maybe this guy actually is rich? Well we will see. More mindless entertainment! Tonight the Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole. Both look promising.

My gutter project went down this weekend. The weekend prior, Ali and I got all the gutters and hardware in the VINYL flavor. In total it was probably close to 100 different parts we bought. I started on the project bright and early Saturday AM. I ran into multiple issues. The vinyl gutter, due to the method used for hanging it allowed water to run behind it. I tried various “modifications” but none of them were successful. Frustrated, I realized that I needed to bite the bullet and go get the metal gutters. I collected up the dozens of pieces and the associated store receipts for a trip back to Home Depot. The retun process took a good 20 minutes alone until we got all the parts straight. However the Home Depot rep was a very nice lady and didn’t give me any problems. Armed with my store credit I went and picked out the metal equivelant for my gutters. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually would cost me less in material to do it with metal. So much less that I was able to also pick up a new ladder which we desparately needed and have $1.13 left over. 🙂 Installation with the metal gutters was TONS easier. I did about 100 foot of gutter in about 5 hours of time total. It looks better and feels more secure. I can hardly wait for it to rain so I can see my handywork in action.

The rest of the weekend involved a lot of football viewing. I fell asleep during the college championship game unfortunately. Too bad, it sounded like a classic. I did however see all the nfl games. The Sunday games were great. In the first game, Pittsburgh mounted a huge comeback in the last few minutes against Cleveland to squeak out a win. Then, in the late game, the hated Giants blew a huge 24 point second half lead! It was classic.

The pool freaks still didn’t show up on Friday. I called and A&S said they were there, looked at it had to schedule the work. I said THAT WAS WHAT WE WERE WAITING FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE! So after more calls it is supposed to be done tomorrow. Yea, right.

I dug through the remains of my car. I recovered the melted toolcase and found the horncap, intact, melted to the bottom of the case! I have no idea how it got there or how it survived but at least it will be a nice momento for me to hold on to.