Seriously, it’s like the plague
Here’s another one I’m going to visit everyday:
Stop by often and say hi!
2 comments March 31st, 2005
Archive for March, 2005
Very busy today
Sorry, guys, I have no time to post anything worth reading today. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll have a new word of the day.
3 comments March 31st, 2005
My son is now a blogger!
Billy created this blog in his spare time in his computer class today. Check it out here, and stop by and say hi!
1 comment March 30th, 2005
Newest member of the family
As reported earlier, we got another dog. This makes four (not counting the soon-to-be puppies waiting to burst forth from Lucy and Sissy’s bellies).
A friend of a friend knew of someone (no, this is not the makings of an urban legend) who could no longer take care of their pomeranian Heidi, and if they couldn’t find a good home for her, they were going to have to take Heidi to the pound. Hayes family to the rescue! Heidi’s previous owners were an elderly couple. The wife died recently, and the husband was going to be moving into a retirement home and couldn’t bring Heidi along.
She is eight years old, housebroken, and extremely mellow, very much UNlike our other three dogs, all purebred toy poodles, all on crack. At least, that’s what it seems like to me.
(Click the thumbnails for larger images)
3 comments March 30th, 2005
I think I may have Rebecca Marie beat
First, go to this page on Rebecca Marie’s site.
Then, click here.
7 comments March 28th, 2005
There’s nothing more attractive than . . .
… a woman who’s not afraid to follow through on a long-time desire, even if it is scary and painful. Case in point: Kathy got a tattoo! She totally rocks.
(Click the thumbnails for larger images)
What do you think of it?
8 comments March 26th, 2005
“Fur is murder” - Insulting tagline?
Is the phrase “Fur is murder” insulting?
First, I’ll make it known that I’m taking no stand on the whole animal rights issue. People who know me know that I love animals. In our house, we have one fish, two cats and four dogs (yup, four dogs - I’ll explain the newest addition to our canine brood another time). We’ve even gone out of our way to rescue two pets recently. But, I’m a proud carnivore. One of my favorite bumper stickers says “If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?” I also own three jackets that were formerly the exteriors of live cows. But I don’t own any purely decorative animal-product clothing. Sure, the leather jackets look good, but they just happen to be (in my opinion) much better at keeping me warm and dry than vinyl, fleece, or whatever else warm outerwear is made of.
So I’m not going to say anything about fur mills, or the cruelty of killing minks, foxes, and other cute animals.
So aaanywaaaay… I’ve never known anyone who met his or her end at the hands of another. However, if I had a friend or family member who had been murdered, I think I’d be pretty upset if their needless loss of life was being compared to, and diminished by the comparison to, the killing of animals for clothing.
Does anyone else agree?
3 comments March 26th, 2005
Random old memory #2
Hero of the day
This happened about 6 years ago at our old place in Lafayette. Kathy wasn’t feeling well, so she went to bed about 9:00. I came to bed at 10:00. At about 10:10, our motion sensing floodlight came on, and the dogs started barking. I figured it was just a cat walking on the van, but I got out of bed to check, and to quiet the dogs. As I got out of bed, through the blinds I saw three people walking between our house and the neighbor’s house, coming from the neighbor’s backyard, going toward the street. They came right next to our driveway, where the kids keep their bikes and helmets.
The first thing I thought was that they were stealing something from our driveway or the neighbor’s backyard. I grabbed my pants as I ran for the door. I looked down the street, but they were nowhere. I slowly walked down the street, looking in driveways and yards, trying to see where they were hiding. When I got past our neighbor’s house, I heard sounds coming from the backyard, it sounded like the chainlink fence being rattled. I walked back between the neighbor’s house and the vacant house next to them, trying to see anything in the dark. Right about this time, Kathy called 911.
As I peeked around the corner, I saw two people standing next to the fence, but I didn’t see the third. Without even thinking what I was doing, I shouted “What the hell are you doing back here?” The two turned to try to see who was talking, but they couldn’t see me in the dark. One of them said that they were trying to hop the fence, it was a shortcut to their house through the field behind our neighborhood. I said “Well stop it. Take the long away around. You’re waking up my kids.”, and he said O.K.
I started walking back out to the street, and stepped on some sort of spiny weed or plant (it hurt to put weight on my left foot for days afterward). As I was walking back to our house, I saw Kathy on the phone in the front yard, and a Sheriff’s deputy pulling up to her in his cruiser. I explained to him what happened, and he went into the back yards to look around.
He said that he saw an area behind the chainlink fence where the blackberry bushes had been trampled down over time, as if this shortcut had been used many times before, and he saw some fresh broken branches through the extra thorny part of the bushes. We figure that they were in fact just trying to find the shortcut, and had wandered into the wrong backyard, setting off our motion sensor, which made the dogs start barking. It wasn’t until later after the cop left that I realized just how stupid I had been. I went out in nothing but my pants, barefoot even, with no weapon, to confront three people that I thought had just robbed us.
1 comment March 24th, 2005
Cigarettes in your ears? Come on!
I saw a strange thing on MAX on the way to work this morning. A guy with a just-woke-up-from-my-refrigerator-box air about him got on the train, but not before pinching out his lit cigarette and tucking it behind his ear. One can only surmise that he was saving the rest for later. I mean, if you’re dumpster-diving for your meals (yes, I’m aware that this is a pretty big assumption about this gentleman, but it is after all MY observation,) you probably aren’t spending $3 or $4 for a pack of smokes, you’re probably bumming them off of others, so each individual stick is like gold.
Now, I seem to remember reading somewhere that nicotine is supposedly more addictive than crack cocaine. I’m not a smoker, I don’t drink excessively, in fact I’ve never been addicted to anything, except maybe spaghetti marinara (though recently Rebecca Marie politely pointed out my obvious lack of sophistication; what I thought of as fine cuisine was most likely, to her finely tuned Italian palate, wallpaper paste al dente.) I really can’t speak for that feeling of need that drives people to spend their food money on something that is very obviously killing them. However, I do know that anyone can quit if they really want to and really try. Kathy quit smoking cold turkey and hasn’t had a smoke in more than two years, and it is one of her accomplishments of which I am most proud.
4 comments March 22nd, 2005
Scary foods that can kill you
Next in a continuing series.
This cereal is extra crunchy, daddy.
What happens when you do more than 50 shots of tequila at once? You die.
3 comments March 21st, 2005
Google searches
Here are some recent Google searches that brought visitors to this site. It’s interesting to see the weird combination of search phrases that bring people here.
“expired pop”
fairytopia invitations
And my all time favorite:
Add comment March 20th, 2005
Local TV news sucks, part 3
While watching the news this morning, there was a story about a murder in Hillsboro, which was actually Hillsboro’s first murder of the year. Just reporting the story would not have been nearly sensationalistic enough, so the reporter opened the story by saying “There is a killer on the loose in Hillsboro!” He then went on to explain that the victim had been killed sometime between Tuesday and Thursday evening. Keep in mind that Hillsboro is a small bedroom community west of Beaverton, which is a largish suburb west of Portland.
So, a person was killed, possibly as far back as three days ago, in a metropolitan area with 2+ million people in it, and the reporter confidently (and ignorantly) asserts that the murderer is still wandering around the scene of the crime.
2 comments March 18th, 2005
Random old memory #1
Brother Gabe and I were driving down Pacific Coast Highway years ago when we both lived south of L.A., and were stopped at a traffic signal. A woman in the car next to us made the universal “roll down your window” circular hand gesture with one hand while covering her eye with the other hand. We rolled down the window, and she asked if we knew how to get to a certain doctor’s office.
We had no idea what she was looking for based on just the doctor’s name, and she said something like “Darn, I just accidentally pierced my eyeball with my inkpen, and my doctor said I should have it checked out, but I don’t know how to get to his office.”
We told her that she should probably go straight to the hospital emergency room (which was about three blocks away behind us), but she said “No, I’ll just keep driving until I find it.”
Random old memory #2
Random old memory #3
1 comment March 17th, 2005
Another Happy Birthday!
Brother Gabe is 27 years old today. We had a great week-end with all the family in town for his surprise party. Now, it’s back to the same old thing: Wake up, go to work, come home, yell at kids, eat, sleep, repeat.
Add comment March 16th, 2005
Surprise!
Well, we pulled it off. The surprise party for Gabe was a success. My mom and step-dad drove up from California Thursday afternoon, my brother Josh and his son Thomas flew in Friday morning, and my dad and step-mom flew in Friday afternoon. Friday night, we were all at my brother Gabe’s place and surprised him as he walked in the door after work. It was awesome. It was the first time in at least 8 1/2 years that all three brothers and our mom and dad were all together.
We’d been planning this for months, and as the day got closer, I was sure one of us was going to blow it and inadvertently let Gabe know what was going on. I’d been ignoring him for more than a week, because I was so sure that if I talked to him I would somehow spill it.
Add comment March 15th, 2005
Happy Birthday!
Matt is 13 today! Happy birthday, son.
Wow, two teen-age boys in the same house. Feel free to give us advice, we’ll take any that we can get.
Add comment March 10th, 2005
Word of the day, part 5
More twisted usage of the English language:
Word: Exordinant
Usage: Can be used as a substitute for “exorbitant”
Example: “The electronics store is charging an exordinant amount for this high-end digital camera that I know will be 25% cheaper in three months, but I bought it anyway.”
Add comment March 8th, 2005
If it gets cold enough
We do love animals, but honestly, what is it with us and small, blind, lost housepets?
We were in the front yard Saturday, and Kathy noticed a pudgy little dog walking down the middle of the street. She looked like a dachsund-beagle mix, and generally seemed oblivious to the fact that she would’ve been hit by the next car to come around the corner at the end of the street.
Kathy went out into the street to look at the dog’s tag, but she was a bit skittish and recoiled from Kathy’s touch. She turned direction as if she was going to walk into our yard, but instead of hopping up onto the curb, she just bumped right into it, chest-first. She shook her head and turned and kept walking along the curb a bit more. I gently picked her up and took her into our yard.
She had a tag on her collar, and looked like a very well-fed, gentle old dog. The address on the tag was several miles away in Tigard, so we were a bit puzzled how this blind dog ended up in our neighborhood. I called the number on the phone and got an answering machine. There was no indication from the outgoing message that this was the correct number, so I left a simple message saying that we were taking care of the dog, and to please call back.
The dog’s owner called several hours later, extremely grateful that we had taken the dog out of the street and had cared for it. She had just moved from her place in Tigard into a house just down the street from us, and didn’t realize there was a hole in the fence just large enough for the dog to fit through. Her husband came down to meet us and take the dog back home.
This had a much happier ending than the previous blind stray pet experience (we confirmed with the vet a few days later that they had to put that cat down. Lexi cried and cried when she heard the news.)
Add comment March 7th, 2005
Shopping yesterday
I don’t think I’ve ever been called the brightest bulb in the box. And, I’ll be the first to admit that as I get older, I’m getting even more and more dim. So it took me quite a while to realize that some of the anonymous postings on some of the articles recently may have been from former co-workers (whom I still very much consider friends). I’m going to take a couple guesses, and I’ll address you simply by your first initial:
B: Have there been any complaints about an odor problem at your new office?
S: I know that Super Bowl Sunday was a bust, but have you had any “good luck” since?
Let me know if I’m right by posting more comments to this article, and you can still post anonymously if you like.
Now, the reason for all this is because the aforementioned B and S will remember the “gallery of scary foods” that I keep on the shelf at my desk. In fact, S even contributed a much appreciated bag of dehydrated iced tea (”Sqwincher, the activity drink! Just add 1 gallon water! Makes 1 gallon tea!”).
So aaanywaaaay… I went to Grocery Outlet yesterday morning to buy some expired Pop-Tarts. I love this store, if for no other reason than the weird foods you can find there. I snapped pictures of two different canned goods that caught my eye. I did not purchase either item.
I don’t know if I should be offended or not.
“What did you call me? Pasta what?”
Eww. “Imitation abalone” sounds bad enough.
“Prepared from giant squid” sounds even worse.
8 comments March 4th, 2005
Bored at home
I’m working the evening shift today, starting at 3:00. We’ve all been taking turns working this shift with Vince in the computer room, so that we are ready to cover for him when he goes on vacation in a few weeks.
I’m kinda bored. Kids are all at school. Kathy’s in class. I think I’ll go to the grocery store. That’s always been a surefire cure for boredom.
Maybe later I’ll write somthing about the scary/strange transvestite who was staring at me on MAX yesterday.
4 comments March 3rd, 2005
Date Night!
So Kathy and I unexpectedly had a few days to ourselves last week-end. Lexi’s friend Ariel asked if Lexi could stay at her house Friday night for a sleepover, and about 10 minutes later, Billy and Matt’s friend Tony called to ask if they could stay over at his house. We found ourselves suddenly sans children until 9:00 the next morning. We haven’t been out together by ourselves in a long time, so we made the most of it by going out on a “dinner and a movie” date. We had already eaten dinner, though, so we settled for a movie and beer.
We went to the Bagdad Theater and ate nachos and shared a pitcher of ale while watching Ocean’s 12. The last time we were at the Bagdad, Batman Forever was playing. I love this theater, and I think the McMenamin brothers are geniuses.
We are so far removed from our pre-children party animal ways that we were back home and asleep by 11:00.
1 comment March 2nd, 2005
Word of the day, part 4
This is one of my personal favorite Words of the Day:
Word: Apparition
Usage: Used in place of “aberration”
Example: “The huge number of Help Desk calls we took yesterday was an apparition, due to the print server unexpectedly crashing.”
Add comment March 1st, 2005