Too lazy to post today... read this.

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants."

...and yesterday, too
.

Little rant

.

I could have sworn I posted something about my phone company troubles last month. Heck, I could have sworn. WT....?
For the past several years I have been paying my home phone bill online with a credit card. The phone company emails me a notice that the bill is available to view online and I log in and pay it... until last month.
Some assweasel at the phone company determined that their website needed to be improved.
Now, when I go to the phoneco's website, I'm directed to the wireless billing page. When I attempt to connect to the home phone billing page my user name and password no longer work. It's not like I haven't tried to contact them about this issue, either. They just don't respond, other than with automated email responses that tell me they'll contact me withing so many business days. I'm still waiting and they have my phone number.
Do you think they might have given some kind of warning ahead of time that they were going to mess with this?

It seems to me I remember something about how we would all appreciate having Ma Bell broken into smaller parts and deregulated because we'd be better served. Now it seems she's bigger than ever and offers virtually little service... at least from humans... for much higher expense.

glad I'm not on
paperless billing

.

It's been awhile

.

.

Interesting fact

.

My friend, Cecil, writes:

Hey Skip...

Did you know?

If you were to take all the Chinese people in the world and lay them head to toe around the world......

About half of them would drown!

That's just how he wrote it.

.

Quote for today

.

"You do not have to love a book that everyone else in the world is loving...it's called a subjective business for a reason...revel in your dislike of the popular ;-D"
~ Michelle McLean

Oh, thank goodness!!!

.

Well I didn't actually see the dentist yesterday. I saw everyone else at her office. The main purpose for my visit was to see the hygienist. She gave me an A for the care I've been giving my implants. I didn't tell her that the person who should get the good mark is the previous hygienist, who told me how to take good care.
Anyway, it was an overall good visit.

Odds and ends

.

No, there was a post yesterday. Not here anyway. Grandma Skip and I snuck away to France because our wine cellar is almost empty were away helping conduct Lions business for the district.
It's interesting that I no longer consider driving to the southeast corner of the district a long trip and an inconvenience.


BP and his better half are the ones off to France. I'm not sure the trip is necessarily to restock their wine cellar, though I am sure they will. They are really check up on their home away from home and sometime summer rental to make sure it is still there. If you should decide you want to read the blog posts on the first link, I suggest you read from the beginning. I makes more sense that way.
Remind me to check on his blog to be sure it is still there.


I was right about the fog down south. The timing was a little off. Saturday was beautiful and clear because there was a strong breeze. Sunday morning there was no breeze and visibility was maybe a quarter mile. It cleared later, but the haze never disappeared entirely.


I will mention in passing that Jack LaLanne died yesterday at the age of 96. Not to give anything away, but I remember as a kid seeing him on local television in San Francisco. He was doing fitness shows on midday TV using ordinary household stuff.


Suldog's been roasted by an Englishman. After reading the roast I concluded every American should have at least one British friend to banter with. The back and forth keeps us on our toes. I wish more of my friends from across the pond blogged.


I'm off to the dentist in a few minutes for whatever it is they do afterward.

maybe she thinks
they'll grow back?

Off to... where is it this time?

.

Befor I forget... and because there may not be a post tomorrow... today is Squirrel Appreciation Day. While I'm thinking about it, I may as well mention there was a squirrel out front, under the oak tree the other day. We've lived here 25 years. I can't remember seeing any squirrels before, nor have I seen it since.




We have a Lions District Cabinet Meeting at Marysville this weekend. There are board meetings before lunch today, training sessions and forums in the afternoon, a dinner with a guest speaker tonight and then tomorrow is the actual meeting of the District Cabinet. As club officers, Grandma Skip and I are pretty much obliged to attend. Of course, as a Past District Governor, I'm automatically a member of the cabinet anyway and should attend at least the Sunday morning session.

it hasn't been nearly
as warm down there
.

Snow

.

No, we have no snow here, unless you include the mountains on three sides of us. But they are still some distance away. There are no prospects for snow, or even rain, in the near future. Nope, snow is the topic for a couple of bloggers elsewhere in the lower 48... well technically I guess they're in the upper part of the lower 48 [why do we call it the lower 48 when we mean the 48 that are touching each other?].
The, now, world famous Suldog dusted off an old post, dressed it up a little, threatened to bore everyone and entertained with a reminiscence. I'm not real sure I cotton to his reference to "Fogeyville." But I well remember Peabody's Improbable History and the accompaniments from Rocky and Friends. What's more, I remember the originals, not reruns.
Craig, who comments on other blogs more than he posts [is that what he means by Running In the Yard Next Door?], put forth a couple of snow stories in one post.
Of course, last month (last year!) BP gave us several posts regarding the snowfall in Merry Old England that disrupted more than just the locals.
It's not that we haven't had snow here. It's just that it was three weeks ago, on New Years morning, and so minuscule that if you blinked it was gone... really.

it's been in the mid 60s
to low 70s and clear

Fame

.

So I was surfing through some blogs and saw a post saying another blog I read regularly had been named Blog of Note. So I immediately typed BON into the search box and this popped up.



The M is right next to the N. Fat finger errors are fun.

go ahead, click the image

.

Challenge accepted

.

I couldn't stay away. I am addicted to blogging. That's a whole lot better than some of the alternatives.
Anyway:
BP posed some offerings earlier today I just couldn't leave alone. The first thing I did was add a link to the Lions Clubs International Blog. Later I decided that it wasn't enough. So if you go to fffnear the bottom of the page in the sidebar you will find the Lions Clubs logo linked to the LCI website. Just be careful if you go there. It is easy to get lost.
Next I decided I should just respond to his entire post:
Will the weather play havoc with travel plans once again? Hmmmm. Maybe, maybe not.
Why do we write these blogs? In my case it's kind of like that pressure relief thingy on a pressure cooker that lets the steam out. There used to be a place some of us went on the WEB. It was a bulletin board called The Banterboard. A number of us would actually interact with one another. Some of us still do with our blogs.
Would it make a difference in the organizations profile if every Lion who writes a blog posted the logo with a link in their sidebar? Not if they do it the way I did.
Why does it take an hour or longer for my computer to boot up on some day and on others it's almost instantaneous? Steam powered computers are like that. Some days the water in the boiler is ice cold and takes forever to come to a boil.
Should every sentence that starts "I wonder" end with a question mark? Not if you don't want folks to respond.


While I'm here I may as well mention that the tiny head over in the sidebar known as Suldog was recognized as a Blog of Note yesterday. I'm sure I will have something more to say about that and so will he.

the challenge was there were
so many questions and I was
never any good at essay tests

WTF

.

Weather's Too Fine to be sitting here doing whatever it is I do when I'm sitting here.

...and it's only Wednesday

Writing titles first

.

Since I started blogging I have almost always written the title before I wrote the post. It wasn't until the other day that it even occurred to me that I could wait until the post was written or even post sans title.
Then I started thinking about why I did that. I'm fairly certain it goes at least back to when I was taking English 1a in college. That's the one where we had to write a 500 word composition each week based on whatever popped into the mind of the instructor at the time it was being assigned. My favorite was What Pragmatism Means to Me. I'm still not certain exactly what pragmatism is.
In any event, the title of the composition was pretty much a given. I always typed my compositions on the fly, seldom proofreading them because there wasn't going to be time to retype them anyway because they were last minute. When you're typing something only once it's difficult to go back and title it after it is written, particularly when you are already late for class and others are breathing down your neck because they want to use the typewriter.
Then again, it may have been well before college that I began titling before writing. Looking back, I would venture that I seldom, if ever, wrote anything voluntarily. That being the case, you can bet my imagination wasn't much involved. So whatever I was writing probably took on the name of the assignment.
So, it's the teachers who created this title first issue for me. I've just continued the tradition... to a fault. I even did it with this post. But old habits are hard to break. Besides, it works for me.

Mondays and peanut butter

.

Brighton Pensioner is calling today Blue Monday. I understood it was the Monday in the last full week of January.
Be that as it may, it's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on this side of the Pond. And just in time, too. We haven't had a holiday in two weeks.
Whatever it is, it's a bit dreary here this morning. Here's a view out of my office¹ window.



It is projected by the Weather Service to reach 68º today, with mostly sunny skies.

¹ The word mess is already taken - used to describe where some military personnel eat.

BP also asked me if I eat peanut butter instead of ordinary butter or on top of it. I facetiously answered yes. But it's true sometimes I do spread peanut butter on top of real butter, though not nearly as often as when I was young, like Suldog.
Maybe the previous item is a good question for Facebook?

maybe, but I'm
not going to ask

Sundays are slow around here

.

I just had a thought.
Maybe I should write my posts... and then come up with a title.
That way I won't be forcing myself to keep within some kind of parameter.

I don't have any idea what that has to do with my thought about using words of Latin derivation when we have perfectly good English words.

Oops!

Now that I think further it occurs whoever comes up with these derivatives may actually have known what they were doing.

This whole exercise was all brought about by today's post on the other blog and by this post from a few months back.
I had to know what those rays are called. Now if you've already looked at the comments at R,M&P, you'll know they're known as crepuscular rays. If you are on a binge for trivial knowledge, you will know that Wikipedia has two pages dedicated to crepuscular, here and here.
Anyhow, my aborted rant was about why if they meant twilight, could they just say twilight.

Then it dawned on me (no pun intended). Crepuscular rays may occur at any time.


I don't believe I will be using the word crepuscular in any conversations. Anything that sounds like it has anything to do with creep and pus....

so's the rest of the week

In the moment

Today we are enjoying what one would call typical California Weather.
For the first time in what seems like months the sky is clear, the overnight temperature didn't drop below 40 degrees, there has been no fog, and the predicted high may even preclude a second layer to ward off a chill.
I say that knowing full well there is no such thing as California Weather.
Just 70 miles away another town had freezing temperatures overnight, was overcast, had fog this morning, has an outlook for rain, and may reach 52 degrees.


I wonder what's going to happen next in Tunisia.


That's funny... it doesn't feel like Saturday.


"If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button."
~ Sam Levenson


Ear candling?

really!

My own musings... and vitriol

.
Thanks a lot Suldog. I will remember your remark¹ well into dementia. How and when I get even remains to be seen.



¹He said I was old.


So I looked up vitriol.
It's another name for sulfuric acid. In other words it's pretty corrosive.
That was the second time this week I'd seen... or heard it used.
The first time it was used as an attack word. Isn't that ironic?
When I looked it up, the following image was also displayed.





George Carlin's outlook on age is kind of refreshing.




Another definition for vitriol:
Cruel and bitter criticism.
I'm of the opinion that criticism should be constructive.
So if you're going to criticize somebody for being old, shouldn't there also be some advise on how to improve?

Notice I didn't say change. I don't even want to go there.
Besides, change happens anyway.

George Carlin stopped getting old

It's on Thursday this month

.
Friday the 13th, that is.

explanation here


Today's Melvin Jones birthday


I was looking at the stats. That's what blogger calls them, stats.
Most curiously, one of you, at some time during the year, found your way here by virtue of a typo in a key word search?

do of these have
anything to do
with the others

Reflect on this

.

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~ Jimi Hendrix

and he also said:
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."

Nasty

.

Floods in Oz

Yesterday

.

Sometimes it's hard to remember yesterday.


Copy and paste helps.
Write the story today in Wordpad or Notepad and paste it tomorrow.
There are other tricks which shall remain unrevealed.


Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday
~ author unknown


The Brighton Pensioner was saying he likes to set a number of daily challenges. My immediate thought was that I don't need to set any challenges because they arise on their own.


Another blogger (and Lion member), John May, posted about a problem with retirement. It never occurred to me that there are any problems with retirement. Then I figured out why.
Problem implies there is something negative. There is also the implication something must be done regarding said problem. Substitute the word challenge and it means almost the same thing.
But... here is the best part. It is a whole lot easier to choose not to accept a challenge than it is to ignore a problem.


You may ask why I choose to follow these two blogs.
I think it is mostly because I admire the style of writing... also because the bloggers are both older and wiser than I. So I might learn something?


The Sun came out around 9:00am, for the first time since Thursday. Of course it was still too chilly, 28°F (-2°C), to go outside. The weather service called what we'd been experiencing Ice Fog. The local term for this condition is pogonip.

...and has nothing to do
with cartoon possums

Today is...

I was going to take the day off

.

Imagine that.

I wasn't going to post anything today.
Then, Grandma Skip got an email from a friend and read it to me. I had to share it.

A Holiday Letter

Dear Friends;

As we progress to end of the year 2010, I want to thank all of you for your educational e-mails over the past year. I am totally screwed up now, and have little chance of recovery.

I no longer open a bathroom door without using a paper towel, or have the waitress put lemon slices in my ice water without worrying about the bacteria on the lemon peel.

I can't use the remote in a hotel room because I don't know what the last person was doing while flipping through the adult movie channels.

I can't sit down on the hotel bedspread because I can only imagine what has happened on it since it was last washed.

I have trouble shaking hands with someone who has been driving because the number one pastime while driving alone is picking one's nose.

Eating a little snack sends me on a guilt trip because I can only imagine how many gallons of trans fats I have consumed over the years.

I can't touch any woman's purse for fear she has placed it on the floor of a public bathroom.

I MUST SEND MY SPECIAL THANKS to whoever sent me the one about rat poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing.

ALSO, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.

I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die for the 1,387,258th time.

I no longer have any money, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.

I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa's Novena has granted my every wish.

I can't have a drink in a bar because I'll wake up in a bathtub full of ice with my kidneys gone.

I can't eat at KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes, feet or feathers.

I can't use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

THANKS TO YOU I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.

BECAUSE OF YOUR CONCERN, I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

I no longer buy gas without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer doesn't crawl in my back seat when I'm filling up.

I no longer use Cling Wrap in the microwave because it causes seven different types of cancer.

AND THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW I can't boil a cup of water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face. Disfiguring me for life.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

I no longer receive packages from UPS or Fed Ex since they are actually Al Qaeda agents in disguise.

And I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

I no longer buy cookies from Neiman-Marcus since I now have their recipe.

THANKS TO YOU I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big black snake (or poisonous spider) could be lurking under the seat and cause me instant death when it bites my butt.

AND THANKS TO YOUR GREAT ADVICE I can't even pick up a coin dropped in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting to grab me as I bend over.

I no longer drive my car because buying gas from some companies supports Al Qaeda, and buying gas from all the others supports South American dictators.

I can't do any gardening because I'm afraid I'll get bitten by the Violin Spider and my hand will fall off.

If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon, and the fleas from 120 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's best friend's beautician . . .

Oh, by the way.....

A German scientist from Argentina, after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with insufficient brain activity read their e-mail with their hand on the mouse.

Don't bother taking it off now, it's too late.

P.S.: Oh, and I now keep my toothbrush in the living room, because I was told by e-mail that water splashes over 6 ft. out of the toilet as it flushes.

maybe I'll take tomorrow off?

.

It's thick this morning

.

This image is from the TrafficCam about a half mile from here.



I am only guessing, but I would venture that the visibility is less than a tenth of a mile.

and it's only one tick away from freezing

Little Christmas story

.

Maybe this should be titled Little story about Christmas? I kind of got the idea when I read a post on another blog. Someone was lamenting about their lack of skill for wrapping packages. Here's my package wrapping story.
I waited until about ten days before to even get an inkling for what Grandma Skip might even want for Christmas. That allows for plenty of time... right? Determining what I was getting for her was the easy part. Finding it proved a little more difficult. None of the local purveyors had exactly what I was looking for. I say local meaning within 20 miles. Anything beyond that this time of year (particularly with out pre-Christmas weather) is a real stretch. So my next move was to catalogs. It lasted all of about a minute because the first one I spied was from a certain merchant in Freeport, Maine. I immediately abandoned the catalog and went to a place that I am quite familiar with... the Internet. In about ten minutes the order was placed. A few minutes after that I received an acknowledgment... Christmas shopping done.

That was Thursday. I was happy in my ignorance.

Monday morning I received another email. The item I had ordered had been shipped ...that day.

A quick calculation told me there were only five more days until Christmas Eve. The package was being shipped from about as far away as one can ship something and still be in the lower 48.

Maybe it's time to start sweating? There are blizzards you know? So, yeah, I was just a little concerned. But the company had thoughtfully provided me with a tracking number. So I found out when it left their location and was loaded onto a truck going West... or at least I assumed it was going West because East was a very poor option. Thursday morning was the next inkling I had about the location... Salt Lake City, UT. It had arrived there. There are still blizzards.

Finally, several hours passed, it was in transit again. Time is getting short. If it doesn't arrive on Friday. It won't be here until Monday at the earliest.
Friday morning it has arrived at... and left Reno, Nevada in a blizzard. And I am just a little too busy helping with preparations for Christmas Eve Dinner to check further.

About 4:00pm there's a knock on the door and a ring on the bell. I gaze out to see a delivery person chasing the brown van down the street (someone else was driving). I opened the door and there it is. My order... in an unremarkable plastic bag-like green pouch.

Well, there isn't a box. I'll be darned if I'm going to try to wrap it as it is... plus there isn't much time before Grandma Skip will be aware that I'm up to something anyway. So I quickly run into the spare bedroom and pull out the container of wrapping stuff from the storage area (under the bed) and grab a gold bow. Gold because it compliments the dark green of the plastic pouch. Then it's into the office den place where the computer is to make a gift tag big enough to cover the logo on the pouch.

I'm really sorry I don't have a picture. It's probably the best gift wrapping job I have ever done.

well, maybe the neatest least messy

Another first Sunday

.
I may have mentioned maybe I would someday get some photos at the Community Breakfast. Immediately afterward I grabbed the camera on the off chance that an opportunity would present itself.

Before the doors are opened there is a tremendous amount of preparation needed to serve anywhere from 125 to 250 people who may arrive between the hours of 8:00am and 11:00am


In the Dining Room...



...and in the Kitchen

Then the public starts to arrive...


...as singles, couples, small groups


...or large groups.


French toast can fill up one of the grills pretty fast


Just a few of the offerings. Food moves out so fast that photo ops are limited.

Last Sunday was one of the slower days, otherwise there aren't many chances to step back to take a picture.

You can tell the volunteers by their red shirts.

yes, even the two
young men in the
Fresno State shirts

What Line in the Sand?

.

So yesterday I was visiting around the blogs. It's visiting when you leave comments, lurking when you don't. I noticed my brother-in-law [are the hyphens mandatory or optional?] had added another post to his blog. When I clicked on the sidebar link, I found he had actually posted twice on the same day (Friday). That made a total of three posts for last year. If you read his blog posts for the last year, you will note that the number of quality posts over there outnumber the quality posts here by at least two.
I should mention my hyphenated sibling has not limited himself to one blog. He has another on which he posts occasionally about bicycling and has a number of links of interest to cyclists. That's kind of where this post is headed. Those who know me also know I have a slight tendency to veer off target. When I read his suggestion about local governments, I veered. Specifically, he said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if local governments would come up with some things that make getting around town by bicycle easier?" Well, he said it in a different font, but I wanted you to be aware they were his words and everyone know quotes aren't enough. He also made mention of the fact that gasoline prices have recently reached a level where alternatives to driving... other than walking... have become more and more attractive. Which brings me to where my thoughts veered.
First, I remembered my own city has developed bike routes throughout. There had to have been some expense. Unfortunately there mustn't have been enough money to publicize the routes or how to use them properly. Because the few local everyday cyclists seem to be totally ignorant [and/or oblivious]. They insist on riding on sidewalks (where we have sidewalks), ignoring traffic signals, and well, in general behaving like folks pushing baskets through supermarkets.
Second, and probably more on the issue of saving on the purchase of fuel, the local government transportation agency, which I will hereafter call the bus company, came to mind. They have come up with a novel way to save on fuel costs. Bus service in Anderson, Which actually consists of a one hour circuitous route to Redding, has been cut back from once each hour to once every two hours.

please note it isn't
called bus service

Not right

.

Whoops... did I say something about warmer overnight temperatures?
The New Year brought us some of that white stuff.



Yes, we had a snowfall... a really pathetic snowfall.



As you can see it is the Winter that brings us the green grass.
No, it's not an anomaly. It happens every year. The only question is how long will it last?

I was out and about looking for some likely subjects to photograph. All I could think was it looks a lot like what many folks think of as Spring.

somewhere between ¼ and ½ inch

Another first Sunday

.

Grandma Skip and I are off to serve at the Community Breakfast.
Maybe some day I can get some pictures.

always seem too busy
for that sort of thing

Repost

from last year