June 23, 2009
Chuckie's Travel
I was walking one of the dogs this evening, passing the Renaissance Hotel; and a large amount of people were congregated alongside this bus.
I could not get a clear view of the driver of the bus; but he was somewhat older than when we last saw him, and he did have scars on his face.
June 16, 2009
OH YEAH, WE SAW EC AGAIN IN COLUMBUS, TOO
after the more than 8,000 black-robed, mortar-boarded (as opposed to water-boarded) grads -- bachelors of arts and sciences, j.d.'s (lawyers), m.d.'s (the OTHER doctors) -- come the red-robed, wizard-hatted Ph.D.'s.
worth the wait.
yes, i DO have a pic of me with doc, but i LOVE these two!
seriously. we JUST walked in the door. i haven't even peed yet. look how i sacrifice to share with you.
June 14, 2009
Twist and Eat
I was in Target. Around the corner from the $1 aisles, that are just past the entrance doors, was a shelf with relatively healthful foods laid out down its length. Well, on second thought, maybe not totally healthful.
But I did notice something quite distressing. Well, on second thought, maybe distressing does not describe the reaction. Surprising is a better word.
I was distressed some time ago when Nabisco changed the packaging of Oreos, semi-hard, clear plastic container, reminiscent of blister packs that can't be opened by humans, holding the cookies encased in some kind of space age polymer, requiring stabbing weapons to open it, instead of the stiffened waxed paper-like dividers with the not-impossible-to-open, heavy cellophane, ends sealed by blue paper-like end panels that provided an easy way to carry the packages of Oreos.
These new packages of Oreos were quite different, not because there was any change in the nuclear-detonation-proof polymer package, but because there were four white circles on the blue-colored package around each of the blue letters, "O" "R" "E" "O," which is nothing like the usual OREO logo, "OREO" with a blue shadow around it, cookies somewhere behind it.
Next to this new-age Oreo logo packaging was a display of Ritz crackers, but these boxes of crackers had a different RITZ logo, not the blue circle with the yellow RITZ across it, but something quite different. Each yellow letter in RITZ was set inside a blue circle on the red box.
If Nabisco or Kraft or whoever owns OREOs wants to change the Oreo packaging, they should go back to the old, easy-to-open, destructible, non-resealable packages that required eating a lot of Oreos until the brown corrugated waxed thingy could be taken out of the package in order to be able to fold the end of the bag, which still didn't keep the Oreos fresh, but made everyone feel better about not having to eat them all in one sitting.
That, not making the package markings simplistic, would be old school.
And Ritz crackers? I don't care.
June 13, 2009
NEXT!
tomorrow morning, we're heading down to columbus for one of the most notable occasions of our life -- tomorrow matty receives his PhD in computer science engineering at the ohio state university commencement ceremony. he will be starting his teaching career in the fall at moravian college in bethlehem, pennsylvania.
bill and i are crazy proud. we have been grinning like idiots and telling anyone who will listen all about it. god, we're ridiculous.
matt is one of the coolest people you could ever meet. he has grown into an incredibly warm, funny, compassionate, and -- duh -- brilliant young man. he chose very wisely his life partner.mel is lovely, funny, supportive, and -- duh -- brilliant. they are soooo good together.
matty's first-grade teacher complained in our first parent/teacher conference that matt "makes his g's backwards." i said, "did you know he has already read the entire 'little house on the prairie' series?" bill said, "we'll worry about that when and if he's still doing it at 15." again, we're ridiculous.
a friend of mine said to me when matt was 4, "i hope you're not raising him just as the smart kid!" i told her we were raising boys to be fine young men. i think we've done a pretty good job of that (not that i'm patting myself on the back, you know).
when he was just over a year old, bill and i were getting ready to go out. i remember the dress i was wearing -- it was a very light, colorful fabric with metallic threads throughout. matty (BABY matty) said, "mom, you look like a dancer!" honest to god, this is the way he talked. but it was also sooooooo sweet, bill and i just looked at each other with tears in our eyes.
i'm sure there will be a lot of those moments tomorrow. when i pregnant with the boys, i wanted to cherish every minute that i could. there are so few days like this in a whole lifetime. i have been so blessed -- i feel blessed every day. tomorrow will be a day that i'll want to experience and cherish every second.
June 12, 2009
Homeland Security
I won't disclose the location, but there are two huge, billion-gallon SULFURIC ACID tanks with only this low wall separating them from the roadway.
June 06, 2009
"He was a nasty leader hell bent on annoying USA"
I'm still getting e-mails from ultra-right-wing Republicans about stuff. They still try to justify the war in Iraq and George W. Bush. Here are excerpts from one of them:
He was a nasty leader hell bent on annoying USA. Now he's gone.
- "no threat to anyone"? That's probably what you're thinking of Iran and North Korea right now...
-War in Iraq isn't anywhere near 1 trillion. Closer to half a trillion... and less than Obama's bailouts! Sure it was a proactive war. Not the first time that's ever been done.
Why couldn't it be about regime change from a bloodthirsty mass murdering tyrant who did everything he could to undermine US and fund terrorism, showing military might in the most important region in the world, policing against a leader that broke several UN resolutions, and going after someone who a few years earlier showed objective proof of hundreds of WMDs but then later never showed proof of disarming them nor disposing of them to inspectors?
I think if you had your way we'd never have fought Hitler either. Yippee
The dead in May, 2009, in the Iraq war:
Spc. Jeremiah P. McCleery, age 24,
Spc. Jake R. Velloza, 22
Spc. Shawn D. Sykes, 28
Pvt. Justin P. Hartford, 21
Staff Sgt. Randy S. Agno, 29
Spc. Omar M. Albrak, 21
Maj. Steven Hutchison, 60
Maj. Matthew P. Houseal, 54
Staff Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25
Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20
Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19
Commander Charles K. Springle, 52
Cpl. Ryan C. McGhee, 21
Spc. David A. Schaefer Jr., 27
Maj. Jason E. George, 38
1st Lt. Leevi K. Barnard, 28
Sgt. Paul F. Brooks, 34
Sgt. 1st Class Brian Naseman, 36
Navy Cmdr. Duane G. Wolfe, 54
Maged M. Hussein (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District), 43
Spc. Chad A. Edmundson, 20
Pvt. Thomas E. Lee, III, 20
Pvt. Bradley W. Iorio, 29
Spc. Marko M. Samsone, 30
Spc. Samuel D. Stone, 20
This is the ultimate price of an illegal war. And, of course, scores of thousands of Iraqis are dead.
At least, the nasty man is dead.
June 03, 2009
A Little Reggae
I get e-mail notices from Live Nation about concerts -- not just one, but four or five, sometimes more. It seems that because I bought tickets to a concert in Chicago, I get Chicago concert updates; because I bought tickets for a concert in Columbus, I get Columbus concert updates; because I checked to see if there was anything in San Francisco when we were out there, I get San Francisco concert updates. I don't get Indianapolis concert updates -- they must have heard I choked a man there and don't want someone like that in the audience.
And I get Cleveland concert updates. I see where Daniel Tosh is appearing at Lakewood Civic Auditorium, where I saw Tom Hanks in Godspell in a time when we thought the "turn of the century" happened in 1901.
Now, that piqued my curiosity. Is this Peter Tosh's son? Is it a night of reggae? I thought about getting tickets, so I clicked on the link.
He's not a musician and looks like a "Danny," don't you think?