Friday, January 25, 2008

Great things for 01/24/2008

Dinner at the Vineyard with your newly minted 16 YO son, Thing 3.

We each ate massive prime rib, baked potato and their famous salad (which is very yummy by the way). The salad puts that crap at Olive Garden to shame. (My apologies to you vegan pals. so I'm a flip flopper when it comes to food. Sue me.)

I even talked him into dessert. After all, it was a celebration type day.

Man, am I lucky to have such a fine son.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Among the Living 01/24/2008

January 18-22 were spent barking like a seal. Congested enough that I bought a vaporizer and brought my bedroom to near jungle like humidity. Added something called Vicks VapoSteam to the solution so when vaporized it smelled like menthol and camphor. Sort of like smoking Marlboro menthols without the smoky goodness.

At times the congestion was bad enough that my teeth hurt. Man I hate that. And oh my did the work pile up while I was out a few days.

It worked, so don't knock it if you haven't tried it. Really. I was less congested every morning I used it. I didn't use a lot of over the counter dubious drugs, just let the respiratory flu take its course. So much for this year's flu shot working to prevent it. I did drink lots of juice, water, 7 up, and other liquids. And plenty of naps.

I've now had the annual dose of bad daytime television. Actually not so bad, with satellite, you can always find some re-run of Diagnosing Amy, Judging Matilda, Law and Disorder - Middle School Principal Assistant Janitors (L&O-MSPAJ) or something. That is when I didn't find the energy to change the cd in the player. I listened to a fair amount of music and its the one time I thought; "Huh, a changer would be cool about now."

I wish I could listen to 89.3 "The Current" (I dislike the name, but its not my fault), but my tuner and it don't get along or something. I've tried a variety of antenna and no luck. When I can get it I tend to get a lot of weird annoying feedback as if someone is pulsing power to something within the circuit. Sometimes they are easily ignored, but at least once every half hour or so one "pops" loud enough to really annoy and for all I know distress the speakers. Two different amps, different pair of interconnects, two pair of speakers, two different homes, and the problem is the same. I'm guessing its the tuner. Its easily 20 years old, but little used for the most part and a quality Yamaha piece. I give up. Its a digital tuner, so I can't figure out what would be pulsing inside.

Good things; Thing 1 was out at the house working on a car and it was another nice visit. Sure am proud of that guy.

Thing 3 got to visit a couple of times with Thing 2. Glad she found some time for him.

Sparky has been fine. He really gets a case of the nerves when it comes to putting him into the kennel, but that's tough. The house is a lot cleaner and he gets into less trouble this way. The 10 minutes it takes to carry him to the kennel (I think it'd take a cattle prod and pain on his part to get him into it otherwise) and get him to drag himself (oh, I do mean drag, his legs move in slow motion, like I might change my mind in the meantime) into the kennel its hard not to laugh.