Reminders

1. Stamps have now gone up to 44 cents.
2. The metric ass-ton of 1 and 2 cent stamps are still in the computer room/office/library/spare bedroom/ah, the hell with it toss that crap in The Room-room from the last time, and for the nest time.
3. Really should get those last of my bills set up for that automatic withdrawal thingy.
4. While I'm at it, I should probably take the stack of mail to the Post Office. This is all the crap that is addressed to the old owner of the house I live in. [Yup, the same guy that moved out Over Three Years Ago! Not too pissed about in essence delivering this guy's mail for him (and without those schnazzy shorts, neither), except for...]
5. Try not to think about my lost letters, plans for reduced delivery 'service', or their creative relocation programs while pondering too much about any of my mail (like say credit card apps.) getting sent to old addresses.
6. Better go ahead and check my credit report, again.
   

Is this thing still on...?

What the hell, am I made of money?

meh

Awhile back when My Love first pitched the idea of cutting back her hours at the office, she mentioned that she could always return to full-time hours, if needed. As I am the somewhat reluctant 'saver' in the relationship and she the buck-wild, former credit card melting, bane of savings accounts everywhere, patron saint of sales clerks' childrens college funds etc etc, I immediately told her she needed to stay full time. Heck, pick up some OT, while she was at it.

After further discussion, we decided that it would be a good idea for her to go part-time.

meh

She's now gone from part-time to no-time, at that job.

meh

Now that she's 'spending' (meh) alot more time at the house, making plans for future upgrades, paint-schemes, redecorating, future purchases and the like, I've been putting in quite a bit of time outside of the house, in the yard. Now, before I get to much further, I should mention that we're fortunate in that her quitting her job is not the end of the world, financially. (I just like to piss and moan). As it looks, we might have to tighten our belts a bit, but nothing that'll lead to me hanging out on the corner showin' a little leg... yet.


Back to the yard.


My yard is lookin' awesome.


Know what really helps out, yard maintenance-wise, besides a wife that's planning to paint the downstairs bathroom for the 12th time?

That's right, the recent run on ammo.


See, I haven't actually bought ammo for a quite a few months now, and while I'm not resigned to collecting rocks for slingshots or anything, I've started to keep an eye on my 'cache', with a mind to conservation. The question arose then of what to do with my ammo acquisition funds. I was mowing my rocks and weeds one day, thinking these deep thoughts, when the mowers started kicking up something totally unexpected. No, it wasn't forgotten lawn ornaments, my feet, feral cats, or small children, but grass. Lush, thick, green grass.


Yeah, 'WTH' was my thought, as well.


I remembered the fertilizer and composts that I was playing around with a couple years back. I had bought a few different type of compost, place some here, scattered some there, and in the end usually managed to sequester roughly half the bag in my pants cuffs for the trip inside the house. It worked pretty good, but after a buddy mentioned some types of fertilizer, I made a trip over to the local Home Depot. I bought a bag, brought it home, poured the stuff in the spreader, and started out. Of course something came up, as it usually does (if I remember correctly it was buying antique furniture), and the bag o' fertilizer spent a bit more time in the spreader than is probably recommended.


I believe it was about 3 or 4 months-ish.


Come spring time (of '08), I dragged the spreader out of the garage, and promptly dropped the ass-end of the spreader (and the solidified fertilizer it held) onto the driveway. I'm not a pro, but I figured that fertilizer on the driveway wouldn't help out too much, and the solid mass of of fertilizer should probably go in the yard. It wasn't all solid,though, there was some brownish liquid that spread out quite nicely with a healthy application of the hose. There was a strip of 'grass' between one side of my driveway and the neighbor's yard that was my lawn-products test strip, so that's where the fertilizer went. All of it (enough for most of the front and back yards) went in that strip.

So here we are, more than a year later, and I have some sort of mutant grass in that strip that grows roughly three inches by the time I've finished mowing it, isn't afraid to reach up and turn the spigot for itself when it gets thirsty, and, (coincidence?) the neighbor lady's cat Fluffy is still missing.


So yeah, I've been putting down compost and fertilizer all over the rest of the yard, in an effort to help it catch up to the mutant-strip.


That, putting in some plants and flowers, re-planting the flowers that died right after planting, replanting those flowers that somebody *innocent whistle* forgot (again?) to water, digging a garden we wanted, filling in the preliminary holes that we dug when we decided that we wanted our garden in a slightly different position, and well, that's what I've been doing for the past month or so.

Wha?

You know, this is something I never really thought about before, but since you brought it up, Coopster....

0:50





We didn't ask, why do you think he had to tell, hmm?

Morons, 1 - Darwin, 0

Wowwwww....

I dunno if I'm more upset at the actions in this clip, or the fact that the vest didn't fail outright, leaving future reproduction a terrible possibility. Apparently, these post-operative brain donors have never heard of Murphy's Law, using your head, - or hell, a game of pool.




Warning for language and for friggin' idiots...



Bulletproof Vest Test Goes Wrong - Watch more Funny Videos

A pretty good example of my wicked-awesome 'puter skillz. Unfortunately, now I have to worry about that worm / viurs / thingy timed for today, anybody else having these kind of issues?

n.b. #1 warning: language.

n.b. #2 minesweeper rocks!

Yeah, I'd say this fits the bill for amusing... my type of 'amusing', that is. It's not mine obviously, but sent to my email from a friend. HI-larious! Thought the Mommies (and a few of the Daddies) out there would get a kick out of it...

A 3-year-old tells all from his mother's restroom stall.


My little guy, Cade, is quite a talker. He loves to communicate and does it quite well. He talks to people constantly, whether we are in the library, the grocery store or at a drive-thru window. People often comment on how clearly he speaks for a just-turned-3-year-old. And you never have to ask him to turn up the volume. It's always fully cranked. There have been several embarrassing times that I've wished the meaning of his words would have been masked by a not-so-audible voice, but never have I wished this more than last week at Costco.

Halfway, through our shopping trip, nature called, so I took Cade with me into the restroom. If you'd been one of the ladies in the restroom that evening, this is what you would have heard coming from the second to the last stall:

''Mommy, are you gonna go potty? Oh! Why are you putting toiwet paper on the potty, Mommy? Oh! You gonna sit down on da toiwet paper now? Mommy, what are you doing? Mommy, are you gonna go stinkies on the potty?''

At this point I started mentally counting how many women had been in the bathroom when I walked in. Several stalls were full ... 4? 5? Maybe we could wait until they all left before I had to make my debut out of this stall and reveal my identity.

Cade continued: ''Mommy, you ARE going stinkies aren't you? Oh, dats a good girl, Mommy! Are you gonna get some candy for going stinkies on the potty? Let me see doze stinkies, Mommy! Oh...Mommy! I'm trying to see In dere. Oh! I see dem. Dat is a very good girl, Mommy. You are gonna get some candy!''

I heard a few faint chuckles coming from the stalls on either side of me. Where is a screaming new born when you need her? Good grief. This was really getting embarrassing. I was definitely waiting a long time before exiting. Trying to divert him, I said, ''Why don't you look in Mommy's purse and see if you can find some candy. We'll both have some!''

''No, I'm trying to see doze more stinkies...Oh! Mommy!''

He started to gag at this point.

''Uh - oh, Mommy.. I fink I'm gonna frow up. Mommy, doze stinkies are making me frow up!! Dat is so gross!!''

As the gags became louder, so did the chuckles outside my stall.. I quickly flushed the toilet in hopes of changing the
subject. I began to reason with myself: OK. There are four other toilets. If I count four flushes, I can be reasonably assured that those who overheard this embarrassing monologue will be long gone.

''Mommy! Would you get off the potty, now? I want you to be done going stinkies! Get up! Get up!''

He grunted as he tried to pull me off. Now I could hear full-blown laughter. I bent down to count the feet outside my door. ''Oh, are you wooking under dere, Mommy? You wooking under da door? What were you wooking at? Mommy? You wooking at the wady's feet?''

More laughter. I stood inside the locked door and tried to assess the situation.
''Mommy, it's time to wash our hands, now. We have to go out now, Mommy.'' He started pounding on the door. ''Mommy, don't you want to wash your hands? I want to go out!!''

I saw that my wait 'em out' plan was unraveling. I sheepishly opened the door, and found standing outside my stall, twenty to thirty ladies crowded around the stall, all smiling and starting to applaud.

My first thought was complete embarrassment, then I thought, where's the fine print on the 'motherhood contract' where I signed away every bit of my dignity and privacy? But as my little boy gave me a big, cheeky grin while he rubbed bubbly soap between his chubby little hands, I thought, I'd sign it all away again, just to be known as Mommy to this little fellow.


You must pass this on to all the mothers who have had embarrassing moments with their children. Isn't it great to be a parent!!!

Blergh.

My Great-Grandmother passed this weekend. At... [counting fingers n' toes]... well over 100 years old and with her slowly deteriorating condition (acute well-over-100-years-old-ia), nobody can really say that it was much of a surprise, and I'm sure her latest doc is relieved that she hasn't outlived him like his several predecessors, but it's still somewhat difficult, most of all for the fact that she lived in south America, leaving visits for those of us here in the States too few and far in between.


If this had been the only loss the (extended) family has undergone recently, it would be easier, but unfortunately that hasn't been the case. Been a rough few months, just part of life...


Add to this some fights with an insurance company (Grrrr), miscellaneous medical bills (save for one rump-rogering exception small but numerous), work (too much), sleep (lack of), and realizing that my pants gathered around my ankles is a good indicator of tax time and, well, postings have been at times somewhat of a struggle. This is just a heads up to those sorta kinda in the know and with those with curiosity how things are plodding along here.

More (hopefully frequent and amusing) soon...

Coming Back Home

Everything is so... damn... green...

I was staring out the window of the bus taking most of my platoon from the base where we landed to Camp Pendleton. I was touched by the reception of the Fire Department's water arch, the volunteers and vets shaking hands and handing out munchies, but my most distinct memory of that ride was the landscape.


It was early Spring, just past the end of Winter, so in reality the area was most likely moving along just as normal, just showing the start of real vegetative growth, but after the sand and rock of Iraq, it was a bit overwhelming. My wide-eye and nose-squishing view of the relative greenyness of real, live, actual grass (and, holy crap, trees!) was interrupted by the flashing red and blue lights of the escort squad cars, leap-frogging the bus convoy to block another intersection.


'Polowsky', in an actually pretty spot-on accent, exclaimed, "Oye, Cortez, la migra, la migra!". 'Cortez' responded with the appropriate (and expected) finger. Both were staring out the window, like myself.


As we approached the base, the buses first crossed the outskirts of the city, where we first started seeing the folks out on their front yards, then in front of their offices, and even a few just walking around. Seemed like a larger number than I would expect were waving and holding 'welcome back' signs. After extended periods of time seeing nothing but the same scruffy Marines, seeing random ladies waving and greeting us was a bit overwhelming, as well.


One of the last speeches that we got before stepping off the bus was from the platoon sergeant. He rose from his seat, called for our attention, and said a few short words. Paraphrasing, he acknowledged that he wasn't going to be too long, because he knew it wouldn't sink in if it was too long.


He told us to enjoy returning home, that we deserved it, for a hard job, done well He told us to remember that just because we were home, well, the job still wasn't completely done, quite yet. He told us to remember that there was quite a few of our Marines that were recuperating, waiting at Camp Pendleton, but still others in hospitals that hadn't recovered enough to greet us.

No reminder was necessary, but he mentioned the 12 Marines that were already home, but that we'd never eventually see or talk to again.


Coming back home was alot like that.


There was almost nearly constant surprise, seeing how much has changed, and realizing that some things had just changed in my perspective. The elation was off the charts, what with guys meeting newborns, reacquainting with wives, taking calls from long-distance family, and beginning the process of unwinding. Every once in a while, though...

From what I understand, a fairly usual homecoming.


Memory snippet above has been rolling around in my head for a bit, but was prompted by an email pointing out a music video by Pat McGee. Good stuff.

*snorfle*

Helluva idea.


link. (NSFW-ish.)


Dunno if it'll catch on, though...

Well, Looky There!

How about that! I just logged into my gmail to see my li'l blog in the 'top recommendations' panel of my reader-thingy. Thought process follows...


Top Recs? I rule!


*clickity-click*


Ah, I see... 'Recommendations for new feeds are generated by comparing your interests with the feeds of users similar to you.' Probably means only I saw the false new-found indicator of my future fame and fortune, huh.


I don't rule, after all.


Holy crap! 74 subscribers?


I rule again!