Blog Number 191

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Probiotic Digestive Wellness Cereal

Those were the words on the front of an actual box of cereal at the Whole Foods Market store.  For those of you (who like me) that have not heard this new term before let me edu-ma-cate you.  Probiotics are “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts, confer a beneficial health effect on the host.”  Mmm Mmm Good.  This just screams, "Eat Me!" doesn't it?  I could spend the next 10 blogs on things I saw in this store but suffice to say this store makes you want to give up, throw up your hands in numb despair, and live on Coke and Twinkies for the rest of your (albeit short) life. 

Speaking of Twinkies, the kids attended Vacation Bible School (VBS) 2 weeks ago and they had a snack each day.  Well on the last day of VBS the snack was a Twinkie.  This may or may not come as a shock to you but neither of my kids had ever had a Twinkie before.  No, I am serious.  According to my wife (who was there for the event) both had an interesting reaction.  The daughter did not even like it at all and the son (after eyeing it cautiously for some time and asking many questions) hesitantly took a small bite.  I don't think he is a big fan but anytime he can get pure, unadulterated sugar and bleached flour, he goes for it.

After my wife told me this story, I started to think about all the snacks I had as a kid.  Ding Dongs, Ho-Ho's, Twinkies, Snowballs, Cupcakes, Suzy-Q's, Fruit Pies, the list goes on and on.  Other than one time when I had a Snowball and offered a bite to the son (he did not like it), I cannot recall a time in my married life that we had any of these snacks in the house / apartment.  What kind of parent am I?  My kids know more about Probiotic’s Digestive Wellness Cereal than they do about Twinkies!  I hang my head in shame as an American consumer.

Tomorrow it is our turn to bring the breakfast snack to our Sunday School class.  I think I will take the kids out to get donuts for them and our class just to make up for lost time.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 190

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I usually call the wife on the cell phone as I am pulling out of the parking garage when I am heading home from work.  Today was no exception.  I detected a hint of "I ain't cookin' tonight" in her voice so I braced myself for the worst (the worst = eating out on Friday at any semi-respectable restaurant).  When I arrived home and dinner had not been started, my fears were confirmed.  Today was a hard day for her so I sucked it in and we started the discussion of where to go.  The wife and I wanted to go to Pei Wei but the kids were against that.  The son and daughter wanted to go to On The Border for the sole reason that they could eat all the chips and salsa they wanted.  I was against that since On The Border is typically crowded on Fridays.  After much discussion we just gave up and went to Wendy's.

After a truly forgettable meal, we walked over to the grocery store across the parking lot.  Neither the wife nor I had been to this store and it was sort of a low price store (as opposed to a Kroger or Marsh for instance).  Anyway, we killed 20 minutes in there before heading home for the night.  I did spend a large percentage of the time there in the wine section looking for anything on sale.  Six bucks is all I allow myself to spend on wine so that really narrows down the choices.  One thing I did see was some wine that was on clearance.  This seemed odd to me.  I don't recall ever seeing wine on clearance before.  I mean, wine is supposed to get better with age so why would you ever clearance out any wine?  Anyway, the clearance price was like 9 dollars and the regular price was something like 11 so in my mind that hardly qualifies as a clearance price.  We did find our 4 dollar a bottle wine that we used to buy back home at Wal*Mart.

In the end we did not buy anything and overall the store was truly forgettable (just like the meal that preceded it).  Such a so-so night it hardly deserves a mention in a blog.  The wife tells me that I am going grocery shopping with her tomorrow so perhaps something exciting will happen to me then.  Until then...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 189

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Recently at work we got a new coffee maker in the break room.  I don't think there was really anything wrong with the old ones but come to think of it when you hit the BREW button it only make about 80% of a pot.  I would have preferred they fix the old ones.  I was used to something like this...

Now however it has been replaced with another coffee maker.  It basically makes a "pot" of coffee into one of these things (called an "air pot").  Now there is no way by looking at this pot that you can tell how much coffee is left in it.  You pretty much have to pump it and hope there is enough left for a full cup.  With the old pot (see above) you could always tell how much coffee was left but with the new (see below) it is not so easy.  You have to unclick the lid and then lift the air pump mechanism and peek inside and even then you have to make an educated guess.

_____

I can tell that people in my building are not good at guessing how much coffee is left since several times I have came into the coffee room to find coffee everywhere after someone thought the air pot they were brewing a new pot into was empty.  This morning was one of those times.  The previous times I have caught this error and was able to swap out a slightly empty air pot for the overflowing one and limit the mess.  This morning however I came into the room and there was coffee all over the counter.  I could tell by the temperature of the coffee on the counter that it had been there a while (it was pretty cold).  So that meant that it was likely that some people had peered into the room and ignored the mess.  When I am getting coffee, about half the time someone else is in the room getting coffee, hot water or ice (we have an ice machine too).  So I would have to say that there were people (probably several) that saw the mess occurring but left it.  I cleaned up the mess (it took about a dozen or so paper towels).

We have lots of training classes at my company.  Sometimes you are not even allowed access to a tool or website until you have taken a class.  I believe this should be the case for coffee too.  You should have to take several classes in order to earn the privilege of drinking the free coffee.  Some classes I would recommend they offer...

• How to tell when it is time to make a new pot (hint: open the freaking air pot)

• Sugar and Creamer - Empty containers and how to replace them

• Bogarting the hot water - Should I get hot water for my tea and make everyone's coffee cold or not?

• Stir sticks and the proper way to dispose of them (hint: it is NOT throwing them on the floor)

• Will a whole pot fit in this partially full container (and other advanced volume math problems)

So if you work where I do, please sign up for any class you thing you might need a refresher on.  Thanks in advance!

Jon

Blog Number 188

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Ah, another Saturday.  Things are going pretty good at work lately so Saturday is not looked upon with as much anticipation by myself or my family as it has in months past.  The wife made a nice Indiana breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy (mmmm - it is also a favorite of my daughter).  Later this morning we made a trip to Fry's.  I had wanted a RCA switch that would allow me to hook up multiple devices to my TV (DVD, my laptop and the GameCube).  They are about $20 online (after shipping) and that is what I found one for here so it went into the cart.  The wife saw some (As Seen On TV) Dryer Balls...

They were $10 but the wife insisted that this will eventually pay for itself since we would no longer have to purchase dryer sheets.  I have heard the "it will pay for itself" pitch many times before and we rehashed that discussion once again.  "Do you promise to put back the cost of dryer sheets as you would normally purchase them and then when you have $10 in that fund do you promise to give that money to me to reimburse me for this purchase?"  This is really the old Wimpy "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today" explanation.  And just like on the Popeye cartoons, my "Tuesday" never comes (I am still waiting for my weekly payback that the water filter saves us since we do not have to pay for bottled water any longer - not that I am holding my breath).

After that (oh, she did get her hamburger / dryer balls) we made a trip to Central Market.  We really only needed coffee but you have to see this place to believe all the specialized foods they have to offer.  We ended up sampling (and subsequently purchasing) some red wine from Portugal (only $6 for the bottle).  The guy offering samples was full of knowledge so I dropped the fact that I really enjoyed some Argentinian Merlots when I was there this year.  He did not seem really impressed but did agree that the Merlots from there were quite good.  We then meandered around and eventually made it to the coffee section and then out to our car.

After a nice nap (the kids watched "Monster's Inc." for about the hundredth time) we headed out to Big Lots to look for another puzzle.  Big Lots is a store you have to visit every week or so since you their inventory changes so often.  The puzzle we picked out had the brand "Kodak" on it and was new from the last time we were there.  I also wanted to see if they had any more of the organic noodles that I take sometimes for lunch.  The food section really changes often so you have to take the time to wander through it all.  We ended up picking up two cans of soda...

 _____

They were only 60¢ so how can you go wrong?  Now I know you are going to throw the whole "New York Seltzer" thing in my face that I blogged about a few weeks ago but I checked and this is definitely NOT a diet drink.  Plus I had to try something that says "Blueberry Soda" on the front.  Both cans are cooling in the fridge right now so I will have to let you know.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 187

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

As I mentioned previously, we have been hitting the board games pretty hard lately.  Well the wife and I broke out the Scrabble game the other night.  Now I thought that I knew how to play Scrabble.  Actually, I know how to play, but I thought I knew how to keep score at Scrabble but now I am not sure.  My score was almost 500 points and the directions stated that a good Scrabble player usually scored between 300 - 400 points.  So either I got lucky or I have no idea how to keep score.

I started the game with the work "rite" and was off to a good start.  The directions also say that you should agree with the other players what dictionary you will use as a reference when a player is challenging that a word exists.  As husband and wife, I thought that we need not agree to this so I did not mention this fact.  This decision soon backfired on me as she added a "b" in front of "rite" and I immediately challenged.  Not having a dictionary in the house we used Mr Google.  The wife was using brite as in Lite-Brite however that is not allowed as proper nouns are against the rules.  I looked at a few dictionary sites but could not find the word brite (except for referencing Lite-Brite or other games / products with this mis-spelling).  But one last ditch effort resulted in finding an entry in Webster's 1913 dictionary...

Brite - To be or become overripe, as wheat, barley, or hops.

So I had to allow her to use the word.  But wait, it gets better.  Later in the game (when we had only the hard letters left) she asked if ***** was a word (since it sounded really familiar to her).  I am using ***** as I do not want to mention the actual word.  I knew what the word was so I smiled and said to her, "I know for a fact that ***** is a word."  She asked me what the word meant.  I just answered, "Let me put it this way, YOU have one and I don't."  Now this peaked her curiosity and Mr. Google soon revealed to her the meaning of the word and we had a big laugh over the whole thing.  We also decided that if we played this game with our (soon to be) 9 year old son, the we should abide by the rule - "just because a word exists does not mean that we should use it in Scrabble."

Anyway, I have to finish the blog as the wife has the Scrabble game out.  I just need to remind her that we are NOT using Webster's 1913 dictionary as our reference point.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 186

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We have been playing a lot of board games and card games lately (the cable is turned off, remember?).  Anyway, today we made a trip to Toys "R" Us and perused the games section.  There are plenty of new games out there and most of them are tied to a TV show or movie (especially SpongeBob Square Pants and Pirates of the Caribbean).  None of the new games seemed that exciting (once you got past the fact the SpongeBob was on the box) so we settled on some tried and true classics.

1. Scrabble
2. Yahtzee
3. Skip-Bo

We do have Junior Yahtzee but it is not quite the same as standard Yahtzee.  Also, we do have Uno which is similar to Skip-Bo so we are not stretching very far with these games I suppose.  After we picked out our games, we walked through the rest of the store.  The Legos section was impressive as they had many displays of all the Lego sets you could purchase.  I don't even want to think about what it would cost to build the Millennium Falcon!).  I was surprised at some of the DVD’s they had for sale.  Nothing rated R really but some really questionable PG-13 movies for sure.

We finally made it to the front of the store and got in line to pay for our games.  The line was not that long and we were in no hurry but the lady from the electronics section motioned us over indicating that we could pay for our stuff at her register.  The only thing they sold in her section were video games (X-box, GameCube, PlayStation, etc.).  I wondered to myself as she was scanning our items if there wasn't some sort of unwritten rule that said you could not buy board / card games in the electronic games section.  I mean, these industries are in direct competition with each other really if you think about it.  She did ask for my phone number (this must be some sort of policy at Toys "R" Us as the wife remembered them always asking this when we were in Indiana).  I sort of questioned her as to why they would need my number and she (not wanting to have this argument) suggested just giving her any number.  Then I wondered why I had to give her a fake number, why couldn't she just make a number up herself?  She gets numbers all day long probably and would be much better at fake numbers I would think.  At any rate, I gave her a number that was 1 number off of my own just for good measure.

Well, it is time to break in the Skip-Bo set, until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 185

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today was "Take Your Son To Work Day" or more generically "Take Your Sons and Daughters To Work Day" but since the daughter is a little young I opted only to bring the son.  He has been counting down the days since I told him about it 2 weeks ago.  He wanted to do everything that daddy did (including eating breakfast in the car on the way to work - though we opted for a bagel from the cafeteria at work instead).  There was a registration and a kick off meeting and then they were split up into groups for the next 3 hours.  The parents had the options of staying with the kids but he seemed to be ok on his own (and I did not really want to spend 30 minutes making my own trail mix which was the first thing they did - not sure how that has anything to do with what I do at work really).

I picked him up around noon, we got in line at the cafeteria and then met a friend of mine for lunch.  I have a friend that I meet each Friday during lunch for a game of chess.  I have never won a game against him so I opted to let the son play today and even though he eventually lost, he did play an excellent game.  By the time we were done it was about 1:00 and I had an important phone conference at 2:30 (that I was leading) so I spent some time preparing for that and answering the son's questions about what I do and what I was doing.  He did get to use my phone headset which he thought was really cool and then I took him and showed him a very vital skill set that would get him far in life.  Briefly, here were my instructions on performing this task...

1. Empty the old coffee filter.
2. Place a new coffee filter in is place.
3. Open and empty the pre-packaged coffee into the coffee filter.
4. Hit the BREW button
5. Wait
6. Poor cup of coffee

He was not paying attention so it might take a few more lessons.  My meeting went long but it went well and afterwards we walked around a little and talked to some co-workers.  He was still smiling as we drove home.  All in all, a great day.

One word of note, a co-worker has started blogging so check out his sight - http://www.xanga.com/skonecny.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 184

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

On Saturday I whispered into the daughter's ear that I thought we needed to make a snack run.  I pretended it was a secret and that she was to go put on her shoes and we (just her and I) would leave the apartment and not even tell the wife where we were going.  The wife could tell what I was up to so she played along.  We went to the Tom Thumb grocery store just down the road (our typical snack run destination) and proceeded to look for the desired snacks.

We usually buy a 1/2 gallon (or two) of ice cream, cookies (Oreo knock offs) and some soda.  We buy the same brand of ice cream (Blue Bunny) and the same brand of cookies usually however the brand / flavor of soda differs.  Up until know I had avoided the Tom Thumb branded soft drinks (fear of the unknown).  We opted for vanilla ice cream and (thinking that we could do coke / root beer floats) I took a chance on ye ol' Tom Thumb branded cola and root beer since they were on sale for 80¢ per 2 liter (and I have yet to try an off brand root beer that I did not like).

Wow, words cannot describe how truly awful these products are (but I will try anyway).  They both had a bite right after the swallow.  It almost tasted like pepper or a similar spice.  There was not a lot of sweetness either.  The carbonation was even a little funny (not sure how even to describe it).  Several scoops of ice cream could barely salvage snack time.  Neither of the kids appeared to understand why we would mix these two things polar opposite tastes together and since this was their first "float" experience I may have scarred them for life.  Tonight for dinner I tried some of the cola (sans helado) and wow (again)!  I will chalk the whole incident up to a learning experience.

Well I have just enough time for a quick game of Uno with the kids before bed time.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 183

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

After church this morning we were invited out to lunch with 2 other families.  One of the families were the ones we had over for our poker night two weeks ago.  We decided on Double Dave's Pizza hoping that it would not be crowded.  We had been there twice in the past but only went there because we had free coupons.  When the wife opened up her checking account that she uses for grocery money, they gave us 4 adult buffet coupons.  The pizza there is OK but nothing to write home about really.  They do have Peperoni Rolls™ there though that are quite tasty.

I had made my last trip to the buffet and had a piece of pizza on my plate along with a piece of desert pizza (chocolate chip cookie dough pizza).  We were just sitting around talking when the daughter asked if I would go up to the buffet and get her a piece of the desert pizza.  I asked her to bring me her plate as I intended to give her my piece since I was full.  As she went to her booth (all the kids were sitting together in a booth right across from us) my wife told me that I had to get a fresh plate and not reuse the daughters.  I was aware of this of course since we have been to countless buffets over the years and the "always use a clean plate" rule is quite universal I assure you.

I thought about this for a moment and came to the following conclusion.  My wife had to think before she spoke (in the second or two after I told the daughter to bring me her plate and the moment my wife reminded me of the clean plate rule).  She had to weigh the follow two possibilities in her mind...

1. My husband is being nice and giving our daughter his only piece of desert pizza. - OR -
2. My husband (though he has been to dozens of buffets before and though he has never before forgot the clean plate rule) obviously has forgotten this universal truth - AND - it is my job to inform him of this BEFORE he even gets up and walks toward the buffet with a used plate.  No, I must tell him now, before the daughter even returns with her plate and I can see for SURE that he is not really going to do option 1 (where I give the kid my desert pizza).  I must tell him this in front of friends and I cannot wait until I have an indication of his plans one way or the other.

So anyway, I pointed out that I knew about the clean plate rule and that I was indeed just going to give her the pizza off of my plate.  She said, "Oh."  That's it!  No apology or nothing!  Hence this blog entry.  Double Dave's Pizza was not really that great again but the bill only came to $23 so I guess all in all it was not that bad.  We did have a good time so I don't have anything else to complain about.  I will just make sure I voice my intentions verbally so that next time she does not have to guess at my intentions.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 182

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

In preparation for our poker night over the weekend, we made a trip to Big Lots in hopes of more poker chips.  We came up empty but back in the toy section (where we thought we might find the chips) we came upon some puzzles.  We have only done small puzzles with the kids (100 pieces or fewer) but we took a chance on a 1,000 piece puzzle.  It was only $3 so no big deal if we didn't like it.  Also in our cart in the checkout were some freezy pops, some Black Cherry New York Seltzer (see below pic) and some organic Raman noodles (please, no comments).  The soda was quite horrible and after a few sips we knew we had made a bad purchase.

Fast forward to tonight when I get home from work.  The puzzle is out and the edges are complete and the wife is engrossed in putting together some of the middle section.  The kids had long since given up and decided is was not going to be fun to do a puzzle with > 100 pieces.  I counted the number of pieces the puzzle had on its bottom/top (37) and sides (27).  Doing the math (27 x 37 = 999) you will see that we did NOT get a 1,000 piece puzzle at all.  In the past I could muster up a paragraph here about how this irritated me but I have a DVD and some ice cream waiting for me (along with the wife) so I will say so long for now.  I would like to say once again how really bad the soda was though (yuck!).  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 181

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Highlights of my weekend...

1. Conversation with a strawberry
2. Our first Poker Night
3. The daughter turns 5 1/2

1. Dad's are really the entertainers of the family.  Saturday breakfast consisted of bagels with cream cheese and some fresh strawberries.  Toward the end of the meal, I picked up a strawberry and started looking at it with a goofy, dad face.  This solicited laughter from the kids (especially the daughter) and since I love an audience, the antics quickly escalated into a full fledge conversation with the strawberry.  I would hold the berry up to my ear as if it were talking to me and then I would talk back to it (with some hand gestures).  The initially conversation took only a few minutes and resulted in me getting very angry with the fruit and eating it.  Of course the next words out of the kid's mouths were, "Do it again Daddy!"

2. We invited a family from our ABF over for pizza and poker.  Other than watching poker on TV, they had not really played so it was truly a pile of amateurs attempting to bluff and check/raise each other out of our chips (we were not playing for any money, just honor).  The pizza was from Brooklyn's (of course) and the wife had made some home made ice cream and cookies.  The guests brought the snacks and drinks and we had ourselves a party.  There were six of us playing and after about 90 minutes there were only 2 people left with chips.  After one final "all in" pot, we had ourselves a winner and vowed that we would do this again real soon.

3. Sunday was the daughter's 5 1/2 birthday.  I forget when I quit counting half birthdays but this was very important to her and she had been counting down to the day for a few weeks now.  We did not do anything special really (she was not expecting us to) but she did decide that since she was "older" now, she would stop taking baths and start taking showers so she took her first real shower yesterday (with much assistance by the parents).  Although she did not like the constant water in her face, she braved through it.  I will admit it is much nicer than bathing her as I can at least stand up during the whole ordeal and it does take less time (though I am much wetter when done compared to a bath).

All in all, it was a great weekend.  The weather co-operated somewhat but we had a great time.  I have found that since my life / job is going better, I have less things to complain about and as such the blogs are further and further apart.  I will not apologize for this fact as I much prefer not needing to blog than the alternative.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon