Ode to Allergy Season

Kill the cedar trees.
The juniper trees, too.
I think I'll go sharpen my chain saw.

Oak trees? they are A-OK for now.
When Spring rolls around, they might be on death watch, too.

Molds and grasses, you better watch your asses.

It's been a month

And believe me, I've had plenty of things to gripe and whine about. Just haven't made it over here to recorded my rantings.

I'll try harder to bitch and complain more this month.

European fashions and cattle chutes

Friday afternoon The Boss came home from work a little early and we headed out to the brand new IKEA store that opened a couple of days ago. The weekend crowds had not fully engulfed the store yet, and we were able to get in easily enough. And that is about where the fun ended.

The store is set-up like a mouse maze. Everyone is routed through the store the same way, guided by arrows etched into the concrete floor. No real problem, until we realized that we had missed something. Then we had to swim upstream to catch that section. Not fun. Especially since the crowds had fully attacked the store in that time.

Later, the kids were getting hungry, so we doubled back AGAIN, to grab some hot dogs at the cafe. Didyaknow that they have TWO places to eat in there? Yep. No hot dogs at the cafe, Those are available by the checkout stands, in a little bistro. Youbetcha that made me really happy, to have to get back into the crowd current again and swim for the end of the store.

We did find some cool lamps for the living room, and a mattress for The Talker's bottom bunk. He has been sleeping on a big air mattress since we set up his bunk beds.

The kids and I pretty much blew past the end of the store tour, to sit and eat hot dogs and ice cream. Turned out to be the best part. But FYI, skip the IKEA potato chips. They suck.

$65 washer ride

My cell phone survived the ride through the washing machine, but the battery died in the laundry. After 13 stops, including two stores that were not opened this today and 11 stores that either didn't sell batteries for cell phones, or did not have the one I needed, I finally found a replacement battery this morning.

For a little under $65. My only other option was to upgrade my our contract and to extend it for two more years to get a new phone at a discount. All in all, the $65 might have been a good deal.

The Boss Lady carries the same phone, so even if my phone does not last forever, the extended capacity battery that I bought today should come in handy.

Time for an upgrade!?!

My cell phone just died a watery death.

Or at least it had a near-drowning experience. A trip through the washing machine could not have possibly done it any good, right? Maybe it will be OK, once it has a day or two to dry out.

Woomba

A SAHD buddy and I were laughing about the new Roomba vac.

He reminded me about a Saturday Night Live Skit, The Woomba. So here it is.

Oh yeah, I just remembered one...

A while back I blogged about our anonymous caller. Well, they must have given up finally.

But now I have a frequent visitor on my cell phone. Actually, I have three of them. One is constantly calling and asking for Francis. And two others are automated sales calls.

So now I am down to screening my cell calls. Voice mail can talk to the chick looking for Francis. 'Cause I am done. The automated voices don't leave messages.

But it is getting better now. Turns out you can assign a specific ringer action to selected callers and callers who do not disclose Caller ID info. In this case, all of these calls are set to not ring. And now that I know how to set that feature, any callers I don't want deal with will get the same treatment.

COOL!

Here whiner whiner

I guess I have had nothing to whine about in a while. I was checking my blog roll on AtHomeDaddy for any sites that have not been updated in a while.

This was one of the worst offenders but I can't really delete one of my own blogs from my blog roll can I? That just feels wrong.

So here I am. And now I am leaving.

But I promise I'll bitch and whine more regularly in the future.

The worst $5 I ever earned

A couple of weeks back I opened a piece of junk mail that had a brand new $1 bill in it. Then a couple of days later, the calls started. Arbitron cared what I thought about our local radio stations. So I agreed to participate by logging the different stations and times that I listened to for a week.

Then they mailed me the forms and called to say that they had mailed the forms, with a couple of bucks tucked inside. I got the forms and they called to ask if I had gotten the forms. Another letter arrived a couple of days later, with another set of crisp bills included. The scheduled date arrived for me to start recording on the forms. And they called to tell me that. A few days later, another call to make sure we were keeping up with the logging.

Wednesday I finished and dropped everything in the mail. Since then, two more calls, but no more dollar bills. So Arbitron is officially cut off. I refuse to answer any more questions about my radio habits.

Unless they start sending me more nice clean dollar bills. Heck, for a ten spot I'll even tell them what I think of your radio listening habits. But I am not answering their calls next time.

Stickin' it to the state

About a year ago I lost a fight with the state. They started using new registration stickers that made a lot of sense, the car's license plate number and part of the VIN is now on the sticker to help fight theft of the registration stickers. But that is all good stuff. I had no problem with that.

It was the @)#&)@(#&* stickers themselves. I tore up two of the #$)$*)(*#()&@%#%%!@# things trying to get them to seperate from the paper they feed through the computerr printer on. Finally, after I taped the stickers to our car windows with scotch tape, I gave up and went to the county for replacement stickers.

And I sent an email to the state, complaining about the stupid stickers. And it worked.

Just a few hours ago I got an email from a state office:

Dear Texan,

We couldn’t have done it without you.

Thanks to your suggestions and comments we have completely redesigned the vehicle registration sticker. Because you played an important role in our redesign, we want you to be among the first to see it.

The new registration sticker features many of your ideas for improvement, including:

● A clean, uncluttered design
● A colored border to eliminate the “household tape” appearance
● A solid back to eliminate the “paper” appearance

Also, you will be pleased to know the new sticker peels cleanly off from any corner on the back of the registration receipt (no more punch tab)...

It is our goal to always deliver a product that meets the high quality standards Texans expect. I personally apologize to those of you who experienced any problem with the previous sticker.

We heard you, we used your ideas, and we are very excited about the new sticker design. I want to thank you again for your input as we believe it resulted in a design Texans will be proud to display. Take a look at the new sticker and let us know what you think.

We take our commitment to you seriously, and should you ever have any questions or suggestions please contact our customer service help desk...

With a response like that, what do you bet I wasn't the only one who hated those @#$&(@#)($ stickers.

Stickin' it to the Wals

The kids and I ran to Wal-Mart this morning. We only needed three things but we had to go because we had an exchange to make. So we could not pass WM by and go to Target like usual.

No problems finding our items and the exchange was handled quickly and politely. The way I remember it being done when I worked for WMs warehouse little brother. Not wanting to ruin the best WM trip in years, I headed to the self-checkout line. That and the only cashiers were on registers #1 and 2. We were half a mile away, at register #456.

I tried to scan one item and it didn't ring up. Before I could scan it again, a cashier snatched the stuff out of my hand and scanned it over and over without success. Hell, I could have done THAT. Finally she entered the UPC numbers directly then she scanned the rest of my stuff.

All without a single word. It was creepy.

After I got everyone loaded and buckled in, I threw the bag in the car and we were almost done. I looked in the bottom of the cart and there was a pack of batteries that the super-polite cashier had not scanned.

I decided it wasn't worth dealing with her again over a $1.77, so I grabbed my ill-gotten batteries and we hit the road. If the cashier hadn't been so odd, I think I would have hauled the kids back into the store to teach a good life lesson.

But not this time.

A little overkill, don'tcha think?

A few years ago my parents bought a locking mailbox. Not a bad idea to protect your valuable junk mail.

Anyways, while I was on Costco.com this morning I found this beauty. She can be on your curb for $159 delivered. Of course, if you put one up in my neighborhood, I WILL make fun of you and teach my children to point at the crazy people with the goofy mailbox.



Oh yeah, they have it in white, too. But my kids will still laugh at you just as much...

Ever just say screw it?

I need to mow and edge the yard.
I need to clean the garage.
I need to do laundry.
I need to pick up the toys in the front yard but I don't want to do any of that stuff.
I need to find someone to work on my truck but I am not ready to spend the $.
I was going to go to the gym but I am lazy.
I was going to go fishing.

Instead I am sitting here cruising MySpace and watching Sports Center.

What a life.

1 800 Screw You

We get like 30 calls a day from an unidentified 1 800 number. Our bills are all paid up, so I don't know what they want. And I don't really give a crap.

If your business can't identify itself via Caller Id, then screw off and quit calling. 'Cause you ain't ever talking to anyone in this house.

Edit - I tried a couple of online reverse look up tools, but I am not willing to pay $12-$15 to find out who is calling me all freakin' day. Anyone want to give it a crack?

My kingdom for a freakin' blue pen.

Why is it that I can't find a gdamn pen in this house? I need to sign a state form and it has to be in blue or black ink. So what have I found on my quest:

13 unsharpened pencils
Sharpie Markers in Orange, Blue, Light Blue and Black
Gel pens in gold, silver, red, lavender and green
3 sharpened pencils
One pen shaped click eraser

Maybe if I keep looking I'll find Hoffa and save the FBI some trouble.

Edit - One hour and six minutes later...

OK, I found one. In the bathroom in a drawer. Dunno why it was there.

I couldn't resist...

I just got a spam comment on a posting from October of 2004. And know what I did? I deleted it.

Even though I know full well that except for following the above link, no one would ever see that message again. Just a matter of principle, you know.

Rick, you ignorant slut...

Whatcha go and do that for? Jinxing me is not nice.

The toilet was so clogged up this afternoon that I had to make a run to Home Depot for a toilet auger. The plunger just wouldn't cut it.

Thanks for hexing me. Want to wish any more ill on me or my house, buddy?

No more fixing stuff, OK!

Yesterday we found out the house needs a new roof. Today we find out if the foundation needs work. Sometime this summer I'll have the termite guys over to see what kind of damage we have. Whatever it is, I bet the repairs will be cheap, right?

There are times that I sure do miss renting.

Or living with my parents. OK, maybe it is not that bad. It is only the floor walls and roof giving me problems over here.

871

The spam fest is over. I hit 871 emails this evening when gmail started removing the oldest from my spam box.

The only hassle in the whole deal was deleting them all. gmail would only let me delete 50 at a time until i made a quick change to my settings. Then I could delete 100 of the suckers with a couple of clicks.

Less than a minute and a month's worth of spam was gone like the dawn.

ADHDaddy, spam collector

850 spam messages in the box, 1 and a half hours until gmail should start deleting unread spam.

11:51am Up to 857 now and gmail hasn't deleted any, yet

I feel so evil

As of 8:28 am this morning, there were 666 spam emails sitting in my trash box, waiting for my mail service to start deleting them in 6 days.

I was expecting to hit 1000 in the month, but it looks like the spammers might not be hitting me as often as I thought.

The right car for the wrong guy

After spending much of last week shopping for a new car, I am thrilled by the way we were treated at the dealership where we bought.

But several other dealerships seem to be stuck on the high pressure sales stuff. Does it ever actually work anymore?

A few things I dealt with:

A saleswoman at a Chevrolet lot who knew next to nothing about the cars she was selling, except the ones that were on "Special", which were the $46,000 Yukons. Even after we told her we were looking at small SUVs, she kept pushing us toward the full sized beasts. Then she decided that maybe we needed an Aveo, the Chevy shoe box on wheels. We may like out little family, but we don't need to be THAT close.

After we bought the Vue, we burned her business card. Kind of a sacrifice to the SUV gods.

A Nissan salesman chased me between cars for 10 minutes. He never did catch up to me. Maybe if he had spent more time walking and less time yelling to find me. Too bad they park the cars too close for the fat guys to fit between...

I saw a Mercury dealership that actually prices the udercarriage and upholstery coatings on the options list, along with a $200 VIN etching job. Does anyone ever actually pay for that stuff?

But it wasn't all bad. There was the Mazda salesman that I bet I would like to hang out with sometime. We did not talk about any great car deals, but he was a great storyteller. I know stuff about his kids, his nephews and his college years. I never did get much info about Mazdas, but it was an hour well spent.

And then there was the Honda salesman that told me "But you don't look like a freak." when I told him that I was interested in taking a closer look at the Honda Element. And from what I see, he is right. That is a freaky car for freaky people.

Spam this, buddy

The email for my blog sites gets a lot more spam than my other email addresses. No big surprise, since the address is right there in the sidebar. My email program lets me dump the spam folder with one click, so it is no big deal, really. Plus, if spam sits for 30 days, it is automatically deleted. But I can't stand for it to sit there, so I delete it every time I open the account.

Now I am curious. I wonder how much spam I will receive before the program automatically deletes it. So I am going to try it. I am about to let the spam folder fill for a month, just to see how many I actually receive.

I'll keep you updated.

What kind of new job is this?

The Boss Lady reportedly starts a new job tomorrow. They supposedly held a going away party for her today.

Yet she did not want me to bring the kids to the party. AND she came home with a stack of singles. $30 in one dollar bills.

Any guesses? And should I be worried about the new job? Or should I have been more suspicious of the old job? But most important of all... Where is my half?

Great timing

It was bound to happen. The Princess and I put a few plants in the garden yesterday afternoon. So of course, the temperature dipped below freezing last night.

I haven't been out to see the carnage yet. And since we only planted a few dozen onions (about half of what a neighbor gave us last week), it will be OK if the frost kills them off.

Trash or Treasure?

A hint for parents, especially the mother of my children:

If you are throwing toys and or toy parts away, take the garbage bag outside after you toss the toys. I just spent 5 minutes explaining why The Talker's party hats were in the trash and why the hotwheel carwash was under them.

And the Power Ranger's motorcycle underneath that? It almost caused the four year old to have a stroke. Until I agreed that it would get a reprieve.

I feel like the govenor, granting clemency to old toys. Wait a minute, I am in Texas. Our govenors don't do that...

I bet I opened a can of worms

When I was cruising the neighborhood, checking out every one else's junk piles, I found a treasure. A real work of art.

An 18 inch by 36 inch painting of a nude woman. On black velvet. It was sitting against the mailbox at a really nice house. And she was facing the street in all her velvety glory.

So I grabbed that painting and have now displayed it over at Law Talking Guy's house. It is hanging on his outdoor lamp, between the garage doors. Displayed like the fine piece of art that it is.

I mean, really, I would not want to mess it up. 'Cause I'll likely be seeing it again. Soon.