Life Is Good...But It's Still Strange

After almost six weeks of intensive training, I have graduated and am now working on the floor as a Tech Support Specialist. Due to the public nature of my blog, I'm not allowed to say WHERE I work, but a couple of you already know. So, life is good in that respect. I'm working and hoping that the contract is extended past the projected end date for the project I'm on.

I called home earlier today when I got off work. Julie was asleep when the phone rang and she tried to answer the reading lamp on the side table. In THAT respect, my life is still strange. But it's a GOOD kind of strange and one that I can accept as I've done some pretty strange things upon waking up myself.

We had rain yesterday in The Valley of the Sun aka Phoenix. It rained all day and into last night. Up to the north at Flagstaff they got almost 3 feet of snow and all we got was a good shower...followed by some hellacious wind. I know 50 mph gusts are not uncommon to those of us who grew up in the Midwest. Heck, that's "kite flying weather" where I'm from. But HERE it's different. Since there's nothing to slow the wind down it tends to get itself worked up pretty good pretty fast. We'll have rain followed by wind and blowing dust...and then it's over. Just gets dusty enough to make you wish you had waited a day to wash your car.

Getting back to the wind...several trees got blown down by the wind. Now, before you get excited about that, let me explain. Here in the desert, there's not a lot of topsoil before you hit bedrock. Consequently, palm trees and pine trees have rather "shallow" root systems, even though the tree itself may be 20 to 30 feet tall or better. On my way to work this morning, had it not been for the car in front of me suddenly swerving to the left lane, I would have cruised right into a rather large pine tree that had fallen into the street and was blocking two lanes of traffic. Apparently it happened sometime between sunrise and 8:30 local time since there were no hazard cones on the street or anything else to warn you about said fallen pine tree. I didn't have an accident so in THAT respect, life is good.

Got a call from a friend tonight who was telling me about a call he had received from someone wanting his help on installing a Golden Goodie Blast From the Past..IBM OS2 Warp. For you non-techie folks, this was Big Blue's answer to Microsoft Windows circa 1990 or so. My friend and I are both at a loss as to WHY anyone would WANT this particular program since it was about as popular as a fart in church at the time of its release. To satisfy my own curiosity, I Googled OS2 Warp and discovered, much to my surprise, that IBM has been quietly upgrading OS2. The last upgrade was to Version 4.52 that was released in 2005.

The guy making the call to my friend was building a computer for someone (apparently a time traveler of some sort) and they wanted...actually WANTED...OS2Warp on a brand new machine. There was also some discussion of "Flux Capacitors" and whether the machine would be able to reach the necessary speed of 88 mph with such an outdated operating system. My friend and I are both awaiting a report as to the outcome and have also given some money to pass on to the Time Traveler to put down on the outcome of the 1990 World Series. In THIS respect, my life is exceedingly strange. However, unless some sort of Temporal Time Displacement happens and changes the outcome of the 1990 World Series, my friend and I will soon become wealthy beyond all belief. And THAT would make life VERY good!

So, for the most part my life is good...but still strange. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Banned Beer and Other Things

Thanksgiving is finally over at the Young household. I cooked a turkey for the second time in my life. After getting it all prepared and ready to go into the oven, I remembered why this was only the second turkey I'd ever cooked for Thanksgiving. Apparently, the inside of a frozen turkey is the best possible place to hide the parts that are supposed to make up the "giblet" part of "Giblet Gravy". Since neither me nor my wife are fans of what amounts to "Gravy Made of Chopped Up Bits of Turkey Gizzard, Turkey Heart and Turkey Liver", these got cooked and offered to the cats.

Toby, our oldest cat, pawed at the offered turkey bits and promptly tried to "cover them up" by scratching at the carpet. Keep in mind Toby normally has all the discrimination of a garbage disposal and he was turning this stuff down cold. Yoda, our youngest cat, discovered that if she tossed the gizzard up into the air on the linoleum it would bounce...much like a Meat Superball. While she too refused to actually EAT it, it has become her favoite toy. As soon as possible, Mr. Bouncy Gizzard is getting tossed outside. She has hidden him somewhere and I'm hoping I can find him before he starts to...umm...stink.

The dinner turned out to be quite good, despite the turkey coming out a bit dry. I cooked that sucker in a baking bag WITH water and WITH butter and it still came out dry. It was edible, but I prefer to not have to wash my turkey down. The gravy mix (Turkey, of course) made it more palitable and went quite well with the dressed up Stove Top stuffing and the mashed potatoes. The rest of the turkey has been ground up and made into Turkey Salad...a good 10 pounds of it. Apparently, a 12 pound turkey gains weight AFTER it's cooked and placed in a refrigerator overnight. When I got ready to make that salad, I would swear on a bible that there was at LEAST 20 pounds of turkey there.

Julie started a new job on Black Friday. She's working at a Toys R Us near Scottsdale and seems to enjoy it. Her job on Black Friday was to "stand guard" over the "X-Men Movie" DVD display. She got geeked up on Monster Energy Drink and vanilla Zingers, but no one got a DVD before it was time. I think the customers were afraid of her. By the time she got off work that day, she was on such a sugar/caffeine jag that she was vibrating like a...well...like a vibrator! (Sorry folks...the Similie Well is running low tonight). I almost tried to slip a quarter behind her ear when we went to bed that night. It was like sleeping on one of those "Magic Fingers" vibrating beds, except it kept stealing the covers.

While watching the local news tonight, I learned that a new beer is coming to Arizona. I'm not a beer drinker...never really cultivated a taste for it, actually. And in the case of this particular beer, that may be a GOOD thing. The beer is made by the good folks at Samuel Adams and goes by the name of "Utopia"...apparently because that's where it sends you after you drink one bottle of the stuff. It has 27% (yes, I said TWENTY SEVEN PERCENT) alcohol by volume, sells for $150.00 a bottle (U.S.) and has already been BANNED in 13 states.

Now, I'm from Oklahoma originally. Here in Arizona you can get "Six Point Beer", as well as hard liquor, any place in the state outside of a church or the Election Board. Back in Oklahoma, the best you can hope for is 3.2 beer at the grocery store. If you want anything stronger than that, you have to go to a liquor store. They have liquor stores here in Phoenix, but I think they're only here for people who feel funny about telling some guy behind a counter, "Twenty bucks on pump 3, a lottery ticket and a pint of Jack Daniels, please!"

However, liquor stores aren't quite as common here as they are back in my home state. In the area I grew up in (near Tulsa) you could find a Quik-Trip Convenience Store on one corner, a (I swear, I'm not making this name up) Kum & Go Convenience Store on another corner, a strip mall, non-denominational, church on the 3rd corner and a liquor store on the 4th corner. All your needs, physical and spiritual (in more ways than one), all in one convenient spot.

We're planning to make a return visit to Sooner Land sometime after the first of the year. My high school graduating class is planning a thirty year class reunion. We all want to see each other again before we all get Alzheimers and are unable to keep track of our OWN names, much less each others. Getting back in touch with people I haven't seen for the larger part of thirty years has been rather enlightening. While we've all gotten older and, for the most part, "grown up", we still can talk about stuff that happened 30 or 40 years ago and laugh about it...or rant about it...or a combination of the two. A lot of the people I graduated with are GRANDPARENTS now...and it just doesn't seem possible to me. It's hard to accept that someone that I last saw when they were a vibrant, vital youth of 18 is now not only a mother or father several times over, but now has ankle-biters that call them "Gramma" and "Gran'pa".

I'm happy for them in all honesty. Because they're grandparents, they can now exact a little "payback" on their own kids. Give those grandkids a Hershey Bar and a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew about an hour before the parents come to pick them up and be all "sweetness and light" when they get the call saying that little Bobby or Susie is insisting on climbing the walls and putting footprints on the ceiling. BWAHAHAHA!!!

Things You See And Wonder Why

When you have an extraordinary amount of free time on your hands like I do, your mind will start pondering things of its own volition. This is done without the use of stimulants (legal or otherwise) and can sometimes cause you to have sleepless nights. Since I've been wide awake as a hoot owl on a caffiene jag since 4:30 this morning, I'm going to write down a few things that hit me when I woke up. I'm not asking for "answers" here....I'm actually just trying to pass off some of the sleeplessness to the rest of you because misery loves company.

1. Why do you never see an obituary for a Funeral Home Director? Seriously. I read the obits the way some people read the funny papers and I have NEVER seen an obituary notice for someone who was a Funeral Home Director.

2. Why do all the really good sales happen on the weeks that you DON'T have a payday? Kohls, Macy's, Stein-Mart....every time they have a three day weekend sale, invariably it falls on the week BEFORE I get my paycheck.

3. What's happened to the Sunday paper? Time was that you only bought the paper on Sunday for the comics section, the TV Guide and the stacks of coupons. NOW, not only has the comics section gotten SMALLER but the TV Guide section is either "missing" or no longer being carried and the coupons? The coupons just suck.

While I can appreciate the fact that some folks have to pinch pennies when it comes to toilet paper, I really wish they'd put in coupons the average person would actually USE...like 75 cents off a bottle of ketchup or 50 cents off a bag of frozen Brussels Sprouts for instance. Also, while I appreciate the fact that I'm now in a demographic that views "fiber intake" with the same intensity that 20 year old computer gamers read the latest computer game reviews, I don't see a need to have an entire coupon page devoted to Metamucil, Citracel or these giant wafer things that are the approximate size and consistency of a ceiling tile.

4. Television commercials. I've talked about this before but I'm starting to get a complex now. Every other commercial seems to be an ad for Cialis, Viagra and Enzyte (complete with "Smilin' Bob" who has a perpetual look on his face that makes him look like he's discovered a "chubby" for the first time). And I swear if I hear about how he now has a "sack full of confidence" I'm going to throw the cat through the TV set.

And now they have "Cialis for Daily Use" and they show a couple sitting in separate bathtubs on what appears to be the front lawn of their house. I don't know where THEY live, but where I grew up, doing something like that would get you arrested and probably locked up for a 72 hour psych observation.

5. Cereal commercials. The cereals we used to BEG our parents to buy for us are NOW being aimed at...you guessed it...ADULTS. Nothing says you've reached adulthood like eating bowl of "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" at 3 a.m. and knowing there's not a damn thing anyone can say to you about it. So, to that end, *I* am having a piece of double layer chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream icing for breakfast in the morning. Hey Mom! NEENER-NEENER!!

But, just to get "equal time" the folks who make Cheerios now claim that by eating their cereal you can lower your cholesterol. What they DON'T tell you is that if you eat the recommended amount to actually do what they say it can do, you'll spend the next hour sitting on the commode wondering why you can no
longer feel your legs.

6. Toys. This is a timely observation what with Christmas being (literally) just around the corner. It comes earlier every year and I figure by 2025 Christmas decorations will start going up on Memorial Day. But, despite that and despite what we all LIKE to believe, Christmas is about "The Loot". And if you have people in your family below the age of 60, you know good and well that if you try to give them socks, underwear or a butt donut as a gift, they'll chase you up the Christmas tree and set fire to it.

Unfortunately, good gifts are getting harder to find. Not because people are getting picky but because the over zealous, self-appointed Guardians of Safety and Deniers of Fun are recalling things faster than the Chinese can get them to market. I'm 47 and I remember getting things like TinkerToys and Lincoln Logs...that were REAL WOOD and (if you were a kid with the IQ of a rutabaga) you MIGHT be stupid enough to chew on them and get a splinter in your tongue or your gums.

Thanks to "Those Who Think We Need Protection From Ourselves", you'll have an easier time finding the "really GOOD" airplane glue (you remember...the glue that said to open a window but you never did and so your airplanes wound up looking like an inebriated monkey put them together...but you didn't CARE because you were busy watching all the colors?) than you will finding 100% wood TinkerToys or Lincoln Logs. They exist...but you have to go to Cracker Barrel of all places to FIND them.

7. Lack of common sense when it comes to setting up places of business. I can give you a perfect example of this. The only question is whether it was done by accident or design. You be the judge.

In my former work city, Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is a cemetery at the corner of 51st Street and Memorial Drive. Memorial runs north and south in front of the cemetery. Immediately adjacent to the cemetery is (I kid you not) a NURSING HOME. And, as if THIS wasn't bad enough, the next business past the Nursing Home is a MORTUARY. To me this seems exceedingly cruel. The old folks come out on the veranda on a nice day to sit and watch the traffic, get a little sun...and they look to the right and there is a cemetery. Then, they look to their LEFT and there sits a funeral home. I've HEARD of adding insult to injury but this is the first time I've ever witnessed it. And I'm sure the staff can't understand why none of the patients want to go outside and sit on the veranda after this. DUH!!

8. Why does the price of a gallon of gas always seem to drop AFTER you've filled up and by the time you need to fill up again, the cost has jumped 5 cents over what it was when you filled up before it went down?

9. Why do idiots always speed up and pass you when the road you're on has signs that say, "Right/Left Lane Closed Ahead" and then hold up traffic while they force their way into the proper lane? Or worse yet, get pissed off at you when you DON'T let them in because they were stupid and didn't obey the sign that they blew by a half-mile back up the road?

And yet people wonder why "Road Rage" exists. I can tell you why. It's because there are stupid drivers out there who don't know how to read a freakin' TRAFFIC SIGN or honestly believe that it somehow "doesn't apply to them".

And lastly...

10. Who was the genius that came up with the notion that dark underwear looks "good" with white tops or bottoms? Don't get me wrong....I'm as appreciative of sexy lingerie on a female as the next guy...but there are limits. For instance...if you are wearing thin, white pants or capris DON'T wear the black or leopard print thong under them. Please. Same goes for the top. I mean I'm happy for you that you can coordinate your bra and your panties/thong...but if you're wearing light colored outerwear DON'T wear the dark or printed undies. And if you DO, don't get all offended if someone stares at you. It's not YOU they're looking at. In fact, the only thing running through the starers mind is, "Good God, did she dress in the DARK or is it wash day??"

Same thing goes for guys but in a slightly different way. YOU may be proud of those new plaid boxers you just bought but that does NOT mean the rest of us want to SEE them. We ESPECIALLY don't want to see the top two-thirds of them sticking out above your pants, okay Flava Flave?

There's a place in every clothing store and Wal-Mart in the country where they sell these things called "belts". They are really simple to use and will do wonders for keeping your pants UP, your boxers HIDDEN and eliminate the wear and tear on the hems of your pant legs...not to mention they keep you from tripping over your pants when you're stupidly running from the cops. If, after buying a belt you fing the legs are still a little long, simply make a cuff on each pant leg and then roll the cuff up one more time. Trust me...it's not rocket science.

If you want to traipse around your "crib" with your BVD's shining, that's your business. But when you're out in public, hike the pants UP...and don't try to say it's a "cultural thing" becuse that's a lie you could have kept from telling. Unless there's a culture out there known as "The Too Stupid To Dress Properly Tribe" you don't have a leg to stand on. A HEM maybe but certainly no leg.