Archives February 2009

I just had a clean bill of health from the dentist.  Going to the dentist is practically a non-event nowadays.  For the first 30 or so years of my life that was hardly the case. I used to DREAD going to the dentist.  When I was a kid, tooth maintenance was very low on the priority list. I remember thinking that swishing milk around in my mouth for the few days leading up to the appointment would somehow fend off cavities. Needless to say, I had a lot of cavities growing up.  My dentist was a sort of creepy guy that did not have exactly a light touch.  In fact there were some times when he would encourage me to not use any sort of pain stuff if the cavity was “small”.

Well I had a myriad of dreadful experiences at the dentist over the years.  I remember about two months out from my appointment I would start counting down to d-day, fixated on my return to the place which I disliked so much, of my own free will no less.  I clearly remember the anxiety as the guy would walk into the office with his magnifying glasses on.  He would scrape and pick at my teeth, eagerly looking for the slightest spot of decay so he could once again inflict pain upon me with his collection of power tools. The smell of  teeth burning as they are drilled on still gives me goosebumps. I don’t know why I never changed dentists once I became an adult.  I saw the guy right up until I moved to Florida.

Since moving here I found myself a wonderful female dentist.  I have found that when given a choice I would rather have a female working on me than man, they are just nicer.  My new dentist has never hurt me.  I only had a couple cavities since I was in her care and I didn’t feel a thing.  Dentist visits are just another appointment on the calendar now instead of a semi-annual torture ritual.  I much prefer it this way.

So last night I am preparing Nicki’s dinner.  Part of the process is taking a small glass bowl of vegetables and warming it up in the microwave for it to be added to the rest of the concoction.  When I pulled it out the glass felt rather hot.  I shifted my fingers to avoid burning them.  As I did, the glass bowl slipped out of my hands and smashed into the tile floor. Instinctively I yelled “F%CK !!!!!!!!” which sent Nicki scampering back to the bedroom.  It was a freaking mess to clean up, glass and food residue was everywhere.  I wound up using the combination of a dustpan, shop vac, wet rags and my fingers to clean up the disaster area. I wasn’t very happy.

I was following a thread on Facebook in the “Topic: Reasons why Scott is not a Real Republican” thread.  Scott is Scott DePace from the Stern show.  He is a die hard, blinders fully on republican.  He actually thinks George Bush did a decent job. Anyway in the thread Scott was talking about George’s virtues, one of which was how inflation was kept in check during his administration.  A poster pointed out how inflation numbers are very skewed.  Manufacturers pull stunts to make it seem like they are keeping prices in line when in reality they are doing the exact opposite.  He posted the following example:

A few years back you could buy a carton of ice cream for about 2.50$ (2.0 quarts).

Then they started making those 1.75 quart cartons and charging about 3.25$.

Now, as of yesterday, I saw they now are switching to 1.5 quart cartons and the price is up to about $4.00. Sweet

Let’s do the math:
2001 ice-cream 2.0 qts @ $2.50 = $1.25 per qt.
2006 ice-cream 1.75 qts @ $3.25 = $1.86 per qt. (48.8% increase)
2008 ice-cream 1.5 qts @ $4.00 = $2.66 per qt. (112.8% increase since 2001)

I thought about what the poster said and he is exactly right.  I see this trend all over the place, take laundry detergent for example.  Now manufacturers are all selling “concentrated” versions of their products, almost exclusively.  It allows them to sell you less product for the same money under the ruse that it does the same amount of laundry as the older, bigger product.  Of course they know the reality is people will more than likely dump in the same amount of detergent they always have.  The end result, they quietly have jacked up their profit margins and cost to the consumer exponentially.  If you look around there are countless examples of this business practice.

Here are pics from the Pet Lover’s Ball. Enjoy.

Obama is coming to Fort Myers to have a town meeting later this week.  There was a bit of a controversy when the free tickets for the event ran out within 25 minutes.  Supposedly there were 1500 tickets available.  There were people in line the night before waiting for tickets.  Pissed off people, some of which were in line since 4am said that only a few hundred tickets could have possibly been handed out.  They speculated that the majority of the tickets were being held back and given to the rich and influential to do with as they please.  There are even dirt balls that secured the free tickets and are now trying to sell them online.  Crazy.

I haven’t said much about the state of things since Obama took office.  Needless to say he hasn’t been able to fix things in the span of 3 weeks.  Every single day there is more bad news about the economy that seems to span just about every industry you can imagine.  To be honest I am not a big fan of these “stimulus” packages.  I really don’t think in the long term throwing more money out there is much better than putting a band aid on a gushing arterial wound.  It seems like left and right various industries are calling for bail outs since the precedent has now been set, if your business is in trouble, the first move instead of looking within is to outstretch the hand. 

Reading about the disgusting, greedy executives of various financial institutions that had no problem receiving hundreds of millions in bonuses as the walls around them were crumbling makes me more hardened towards such hand outs.  To me there is no way getting around there is going to be tons of attrition before things get better.  I don’t know if digging the financial abyss the government already finds us in hundreds of billions of dollars deeper is going to do any real long term good.

I am aware that if I was in an industry where my job was more at risk like banking, automobile or construction my view point regarding bail outs may rotate 180 degrees.  People need to survive.  People need to be able to put roofs over their heads and pay for the basics.  However the reality is much of this cluster f is directly because of the lack of self discipline, restraint, and common sense that prevails EVERYWHERE in American society.  Buy now, pay later eventually catches up to everyone.

Saturday night was the Humane Society Pet Lover’s Ball.  We were given free entry to the ritzy event due to all of Ali’s hard work on the Paws run.  The event was held at the Port Royal Club, a very exclusive, very beautiful, very fancy club right on the water.  We arrived shortly before sunset which was perfect.  Ali and I got to enjoy a beautiful sunset.  While we were outside we were stopped by a photographer for Gulf Shore Life magazine.  He asked if he could take out picture against the beautiful back drop.  We were happy to oblige.

When we came in we were given two free drink passes each.  The woman also said that the wine and soft drinks were free.  I guess it makes sense, get the people drunk so they are more apt to part with their money at the silent auctions.  We went up to the bar and Ali got a glass of white zinfandel.  For some reason that didn’t count as wine, we had to fork over a drink ticket.  I took the one bartenders recommendation and opted for one of the free drinks they were handing out.  I think she said it was a mimosa.  All I know is one of the ingredients was rum.  I haven’t had any rum for 10 years since it caused me to become almost comatose after imbibing a bit too much on our honeymoon.

I snagged a glass off the tray anyway and took a sip, hey it’s free.  It simply was not good.  The taste of it made me recoil.  I didn’t care, it was free, I was determined to drink it.  Ali and took a look at the various silent auction items.  Some of the packages were interesting.  We actually bid on one of them that included a signed Everblades jersey, free golf and something else I can’t remember.  We knew our bid would not hold up with all of the mega-dollars in the room but it was nice to pretend that we were part of the action.

This was practically a black tie event.  Tons of the men were in tuxedos and the women were primped to the max with ample (often enhanced)cleavage spilling out everywhere.  I pulled out the only suit I own.  I can’t quite remember if I have worn it this century or not.  I decided I needed alcohol to help me break down my normal social road blocks.  I didn’t follow normal good practice with drinking, I mixed, a lot.  After choking down the mimosa I had a cosmopolitan followed by a Heineken and then washed down a couple glasses of red wine.  Beside the beer, none of the other drinks tasted good but they did the trick.  I loosened up a bit.

One of the women from our running club was there unexpectedly so that was nice.  We talked to her and her husband for a bit.  The people that sat around us at our table were all very friendly.  We wound up talking to a few of them quite a bit.  The dinner was buffet style, something I heard the rich people poo poo’d.  They don’t like having to stand in line for their food.  The spread was fantastic as you could expect.  Ali and I both got seconds.

After dinner the live auction started.  They had 6 or 7 items.  The mayor of Naples was the auctioneer.  The item that generated the most money was a guitar that was signed by the Rolling Stones, it pulled in a lofty $5500.    As soon as the auction ended tons of people got up and bolted even though there was live music and dancing.  Within 15 minutes 2/3 of the room had cleared out.

Originally I thought maybe Ali and I would get out and dance a little bit.  However the band played nothing from the last half century and the few people on the floor were old enough to be our grandparents.  We instead just stayed at our table and talked to the people that remained.  It was cool.

We stuck around for awhile, not leaving until 10:30 or so.   I had a few cups of coffee late and had enough of a break from the alcohol that I actually was ok to drive home.  Ali and I had a really good time.  It was fun to rub elbows with a class of society we never would see otherwise.

The rest of the weekend had house chores, yay.  I’m not feeling chatty.  The full moon has me rather locked up this month.

This Saturday night Ali and I were invited to the Humane Society Pet Lover’s Ball.  They comp’d us the tickets that normally cost an extremely pricey $275 per head because of everything Ali does to benefit the group through the race.  It is a very formal event that will be filled with mostly ultra-rich individuals.  I am sure I will mostly be glued to Ali’s hip most of the night.  I’m not much of one to make small talk about stock portfolio’s or the woes of owning half a dozen homes. Maybe one of the rich dudes plays WoW or something.

I put in a solid 2 miles on the treadmill today at the gym.  It was the first time I ran since the week after the Gobble Gobble.  It went pretty well.  My right knee always feels a bit sore when I run.  However if my left knee starts to hurt while running the alarms sound and I immediately shut things down.  No such alarms this time around.  My hope is to get another session in next week and then possibly sign up to run in the Festival of Lights on the 21st.  We’ll see.

I have an insane amount of things in my head that I need to address around the house this weekend.

There are tons of pictures from the race online now.  Check them out!

Yesterday on the way to the gym I saw a Chevy Citation.  There are very few of them left on the road. The car was GM’s big hit of the early 80’s with it’s “sporty” styling mixed with hatchback versatility.  The Citation is significant because two of them were driven in the family.  At one time my dad had a Citation as his company car.  I remember he hated it and would abuse it regularly.  Mom had a Citation as well at one point, a yellow 4 speed model.  That was the car I wound up driving after I wrecked my 69 Buick Special Deluxe. 

Mom’s Citation only had a 4 cylinder motor but it had a lot of guts, especially with the manual transmission.  I remember doing HUGE front wheel drive burn outs with the thing.  Sorry mom.  Somehow I think that wound up being my car and mom got something else.  I don’t quite remember the sequence of ownership. I do remember giving the car a thorough wash and wax out in front of the tiny little place we lived in for a short period in Shillington.  The recon was to make it look pretty to sell.  It worked, I sold the yellow Citation pretty easily.

Anyone remember the X11 version of the Citation?  I rememeber at one point thinking I would want to own one.

There was no limit to my race day duties…

I was hoping the below freezing night we had a week or two ago was the end of our “winter”.  No such luck, tonight and tomorrow night could both be hovering around the freezing mark.  When I first moved here I used to laugh at the people that acted like anything below 60 was near freezing.  However now that I have been down here 8 years I am much the same way.  The cold air really gets to me, much more than I like to admit.  I do still have my record intact of not going out in public with a coat since moving to Florida. I just refuse to do it.

In an attempt to make garden covering duties easier I bought 30 feet of pond liner underlayment this morning.  It is basically just a thick cloth-like fabric that should allow me to cover big sections of the garden pretty easily.

I was treated to witnessing two gym dummies during the same session. Dope number one was Mr Heavy Breather/Grunter.  I have posted about him several times.  He is this big dipshit that never speaks to anybody but insists on grunting and breathing extremely loud during every single exercise he does.  He even breathes loud just walking around, perhaps to let everyone know how hard he is working.  Thankfully I only see the clown once every month or two at the gym. His grunting is just over the top.  It sounds like he is either pushing out a coke can sized log into the shitter or starring in a very loud porno. 

Number two was some younger guy, probably in his early 20’s.  He had a real heavy Jersey accent.  How did I know he had a heavy Jersey accent?  I know because I heard this guy do nothing but talk loudly on his cell phone hands free headset for a half hour straight.  During this half hour he did not touch a single weight or do a single exercise.  He just walked around the gym talking, loudly.  I could hear what he was saying clearly from 50 feet away.  To make matters worse, while he was talking he was constantly admiring himself in the mirror.  He would pause and flex his arm a bit,  pull up the sleeve of his t-shirt and stare at his tattooed appendage. What a clown, I mean come on…

Sirius has been pissing me off lately.  Anyone that follows their stock knows that they are financially in the toilet.  To help address their problems they merged with XM.  In order for the merger to be approved Sirius had to agree to not raise prices.  Well they are now doing shady shit to get around that technicality. 

Instead of raising prices on their basic package that has been in place for years they instead are stripping out things that used to be included in the subscription, like the ability to listen on the web and then selling them back to you at extra cost.  They are raising prices, it’s just semantics.  They also are raising the price for secondary subscriptions more than 25%.  It’s bullshit plain and simple.

I think these moves may backfire on them.  I’m sure many people are just like me, annoyed that Sirius would try to squeeze more money out of loyal customers that have supported them for the past 3 or 4 years.  I already pay more than 20 a month between my two radios.  I am at the edge of what I am willing to pay for the service.  If Howard packs it in at the end of his contract in two years I would have a very hard time justifying the expense. 

It’s a sleazy move.

When we were watching the Super Bowl I remember Ali and I commenting that there weren’t very many good commercials.  However if I think about it, there were actually quite a few I thought were funny.  Maybe just because they are so many commercials during the Super Bowl the good ones get drowned out.

I liked the Dorito spots quite a bit, especially the crystal ball one.  The CASH4GOLD commercial with Ed McMahon and MC Hammer was hilarious.  Good for them for being able to poke fun at themselves.   I also liked the Conan O’Brien commercial, it made me laugh pretty hard. Some of the Bridgestone commercials were funny like the Potato head couple although I have no idea how it related to tires.

GoDaddy tried the same formula as last year, directing people to their website for what was surely a misleading and disappointing conclusion to the scenes shown on tv. Get a new idea.

  The commercials that required 3D glasses were generally stupid, especially the Sobe commercial with the football players dancing around, it made zero sense.