Archives 2003

Yesterday I was called for Jury Duty. The nice part is the courthouse is walking distance from our office. I reported at 8:15 as instructed and told I was on the jury list for Judge Baker. Around 8:45 the Judge came in and explained that he had 3 trials that day, 2 of them have settled out of court and the third may also settle. GREAT!!! He said he would know by 9:30. We got word around 9:25 that the case had settled! Cool, we can go right? NOPE. The other Judge had a trial and even though he had an entire set of jurors set aside for his pool, we still had to stay until that jury was picked. It made little sense to me since they had of at least 50 to pick 11 jurors from but whatever. So we sat, sat for nearly another 4 hours. Finally around 1 pm they let us leave. I read more magazines than I ever have. Dumb. At least I am off the hook for another year.

Rush Limbaugh got blasted for comments he made regarding Donovan McNabb and how his value to the team has been hyped because he is a black QB. I DO agree with the basic premise that McNabb is not nearly as good as he has been played up to be. Not even in the same ballpark. It also may be true that this may be partially an attempt by the league and/or media to promote black QB’s. I mean what the hell, they have a REQUIREMENT for teams to interview black coaches for positions, why is it so outrageous to think they would have reasons to push the black QB in the league? Personally I don’t care if he is black or white but I do care that he has gotten far too much credit for the recent success of the Eagles. If you look at his statistics he is really an average at best NFL QB. I’m no Rush fan however. I heard this morning that he has been hooked on painkillers even though he has preached for years how drug users should be deported. Hypocrite.

DISCLAIMER: Reality TV dumbness to follow.
I have been watching Paradise Hotel for most of the summer. Last night was the finale. The final 4 were Dave & Charla along with Keith & Tara. These 4 have been allies throughout the game. Dave is a weird looking flabby guy that has been very attracted to Charla through out the show. Charla has never returned the feelings and has labeled Dave as her best friend instead. She repeatedly did and said things that hurt Dave’s feelings but he kept coming back for more since he was so enamored with her. Last night the kicked off guests voted for the winners. As a twist they reversed the couples so Keith was with Charla and Dave was with Tara. They had to vote for a COUPLE. Dave played the game in a sneaky manner and it was successful. He had to to have any chance to get to the end. Of course this made many of the victims of his plan seek revenge. So the partner switch made it easy, Charla and Keith won. 250,000 each, but there was one final twist. They had the option to take 125,000 for themselves and give the other 125 to their partner, or they can keep it all. Keith of course split the money with Tara since they helped each other to the end and it only makes sense to split the prize. Then comes Charla, Charla the one who has stomped on Dave’s feelings all show, Charla the one who would have never got to the end without Dave’s support and help. Of course she will split the money with Dave, it’s a no-brainer right? NOPE. The bitch asks Dave if he would hate her if she keeps all the money. Of course the only answer Dave can give is “Of course not…” although you could tell he was fighting back his true feelings of “You f’in bitch! You are going to screw me again??!!!” I could not believe she kept it all. She played him along the entire show acting like his friend and then decides to keep all the money at the end. It was terrible. That rotten bitch.

The new trailer is out, I can’t wait to see this flick!

We were let go early yesterday since the heavy rain (6 inches plus) had flooded out a number of roads. Our parking lot also floods out so getting to my truck required stepping through water as deep as a foot at some places. The drive home wasn’t terrible, there were some roads underwater but nothing my high sitting Tacoma couldn’t handle. However when we got home our property was totally flooded out. Thank goodness for the new concrete driveway giving us a clear shot to the house. The house is built on a 4 foot high mound so it sort of looked like it was on an island. Look at these pics. Wild stuff. It will take awhile for that to soak in.

I go through stages where I let my hair grow a little bit longer than normal and sometimes accompany the longer hair with facial hair to complete the look. However I just don’t think it looks right on me. Some poeple look better WITH goatee’s moustache’s and beards. Take Alex Trebeck from Jeopardy, I think he looked much better with a moustache than without. (No I’m not gay) Lawrence Taylor looked better with his trademark goatee. Some guys don’t look good with facial hair. I think I am in the don’t category. First of all the hair on my face is patchy, there are areas on my cheeks that just don’t grow any hair. Then once I do start to let it come in it seems to stick straight out like a porcupine or chia pet, rather than grow down in a layered fashion. Maybe I just have never stuck with it long enough to get past the awkward stage but I am suspecting the goat will be gone in a day. I think I’ll struggle with letting the hair grow for awhile though.

Today I was heading out of the gym in the pouring rain and hit the keyless entry to hurriedly get out of the elements. It got me thinking about how we (I) take so many things for granted and wonder how we coped before. The list of such conveniences, tools or procedures is huge. How did we manage without cell phones, computers, big screen tv’s, the internet, email, 24 hour news, the weather channel, brand new sports stadiums, fax machines, and other “modern” conveniences. Of course the simple answer is we got along just fine. Life was slower, the world was bigger, things were less convenient, but was it any worse than it is today? Nah probably not, in many ways it was probably better. Even with being a techno geek I recognize that in terms of what is truly best for humanity, technology is not the answer. All of that from a keyless entry, weird.

We have gotten hammered with rain in the last week. The knockout punch has come today. We are getting dumped on with as much as a half foot of rain today. There is severe flooding in our area. Bad enough that our office is closing early. Hopefully I don’t need a boat to get to my front door.

The Eagles won this weekend. Generally an ugly win with a few highlights. McNabb was unspectacular in the win but did enough for us to not lose. I visit the Eagles message board from time to time and decided to voice my opinion that McNabb does not perform up to a level appropriate with the mega contract he was awarded last year. Apparently that is a very touchy subject because it has sparked a huge ongoing tirade from both sides all day long. Funny. Message boards are great.

Expect more comments on my blog entries from the hairy midget also known as Mike on a more regular basis. He loves to comment on my entries so I encouraged him to stick out there to entertain everyone.

It’s been a busy week at work so my blogging has been less than stellar but since one of my regular readers complained, I thought I’d drop something in here. He can be a very annoying little man so it’s easier to blog than to hear it from him. 🙂

Our property was totally dry, no standing water anywhere. How nice! Well it was until this morning. I woke up to lightning around 5:30 am. Loud thunder followed and then the deluge came. I don’t recall ever hearing the sound of water on the roof as loudly as it was this morning. It sounded like someone dumped a bathtub on the roof. I walked outside and saw we once again live in a moat. Everything was pretty much a pond.

This weekend is forecast as more of the same so I’ll stick indoors. I have lots of little things I have been shelving that I can knock out this weekend. The Eagles return to action, I just hope they can at least not embarrass themselves for a third consecutive game. The Phillies choked and died coming down the stretch in true Philly sports team fashion. They had the wildcard locked in and self destructed. Any team that relies on Jose Stinkin Mesa as their closer is in trouble. Well at least now the fans can pillage the VET during the last game. It should be an all out zoo.

On the way back from the gym I stopped for an elderly lady that is crossing, no creeping across the parking lot. She is hunched over at about a 45 degree angle, with a cane, and each stride is no more than 6 inches. I patiently wait and while I am waiting I look around to see who drove her there. NO ONE. This lady drives. Talk about slow reaction times, it really is unbelievable some of the elderly I see behind the wheel down here. I can understand they don’t want to give up their mobility but you have to draw the line somewhere. When you can measure their reaction time with a sundial it is time to give up the license.

As promised here are the pics from the tile work. They are dark, the lighting in that room generally sucks, sorry bout that. I was lazy and tacked them onto my pics page from the first phase of the tile work.

Where did all the Pontiac Fiero’s go? The Fiero was what I thought to be a very cool little car produced by Pontiac in the mid to late 80’s. It was a nifty 2 seater with a composite body like a Vette so it would never rust and featured very futuristic interior styling for a car of it’s time. I loved the radio speakers embedded in the headrests and the interesting dash “pod”. I used to see them everywhere! Today I saw the first one I have seen for at least 6 months sitting in our parking lot. I guess they were built for looks and not longevity. I remember graduating high school and thinking I would have it made if I had a car like that. Seems silly now. 🙂

The tile part II got off to a dubious start. Sometimes my thought process amazes me. On Friday after work, I decided to go pick up a manual floor scraping tool to remove the old vinyl flooring from the utility room in preparation for laying ceramic tile in there. I figured it is a much smaller area so surely I don’t need to rent the power stripper to get the job done. HA. After about a half hour of sweaty , back busting work I may have gotten about 3 square feet clear. Screw that. I was at Home Depot at 7:30 am Saturday morning plunking down the rental fee on the power stripper again. Got it home, an hour later I had the entire room done. Lesson learned, when a power tool is an option, always take that option. Luckily, Home Depot took back the manual scraper.

The tiling went very well in comparison to the first go round. Our experience showed as we knocked out the room on Saturday and grouted it on Sunday with very little fireworks. The room was a simple rectangle, much smaller and a smoother subfloor, all of which contributed to the ease of installation. All we have to do is wet cure it for 3 days, seal the grout and we are done. The 2 bathrooms are left to do but there is no pressure to get those done anytime soon. The utility room is directly connected to the kitchen so it looked dumb to have the cermamic in the kitchen and vinyl in the other. Pics to follow. Since the utility room is normally the home to the washer, dryer and cat litter we have some displacement issues currently. The cat litter lives in my mom’s bathroom right now, I’m sure she is less than thrilled with that.

In between all the tile work, I helped my buddy load his moving truck Sunday afternoon. He and his wife are moving to Colorado today. What a change from Florida. They are very excited. I’m sad to see them go. They were one of the very few couples that we have done anything socially with down here. We have not made many friends in the 3 years since we have moved to Florida. We are far from social butterflies and my volleyball playing has been scaled way back which is how I made a lot of friends up north. Hopefully it will change.

Speaking of social butterflies, we DID go out Saturday night to a downtown hip place called Yabba’s with some people from Alison’s work. Things were ok but eventually the night turned into one of Alison’s coworker friends giving me shit about various things, none of which made sense. She was drinking which exagerrated her normally loud and obtrusive personality. Eventually I started to return the smart comments and by the end of the evening she was calling me a jackass. Annoying woman.

Survivor debuted last night, it was GREAT! Throwing them off the boat in their dress clothes was funny. It looks to be a great season. Check it out.

I am going to start phase II of the tile work, tiling into the utility room that is connected to the kitchen. Since we have some experience under our belt I don’t think it will be nearly as bad as Phase I. There is no Eagles game this weekend (thank God) so it is as good of a time as any. Hopefully will have this phase completed by next weekend.

We went back to the orthodontist for the next stage of our treatment. We had to have little rectangular pads bonded to certain teeth to give the aligners better leverage to move the teeth. It wasn’t much fun. They put this nasty tasting stuff on the teeth to make them take the bond better. Then they stick this device in your mouth that pulls your lips apart so you sort of look like the Joker. It is very uncomfortable. After they stick the pads on your teeth, they had to hit them with a drill to smooth them out. That sound of the drill and the smell of burning tooth goes through me. To make it worse, the doctor kept getting pulled away to deal with a young boy that would not cooperate a few chairs away. So while he is away my throat is filling with saliva, bonding crap and drilled off pad scraps. Nasty. After they were done we snapped the aligners on. Holy shit! They were tight and trying to remove them is now a monumental task. Another issue is one of the teeth that got a pad is on a tooth that leans way in, so when I eat, I bite down on the pad. As a result I have to be very careful when eating, else I risk breaking that pad off. Ali had a worse time of it than me. Not fun but I just keep telling myself how it will be all worth it in the end.