Blog Number 194

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Great News!  A new Veggie Tale movie is due out this winter!  This one I might even pay full price to see as opposed to waiting for it to come to the dollar theater.

After dinner tonight we threw on our shoes and took a walk.  We headed down to the local Braum's for some ice cream.  I am estimating that the hike was over a mile round trip (the wife is guessing 1 1/2 miles total).  We were quite hot when we arrived and the ice cream was a nice way of cooling down (not to mention the AC at Braum's was working very well).  We sat down to eat our treat (me: Rocky Road, wife: Butter Pecan, son: Chocolate, daughter: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough).  It was then I noticed the muzak playing in the background.  I couldn't quite make out the song though it sounded very familiar.  After the verse, chorus, bridge and solo I recognized it as being "More Than A Feeling" by Boston.  Faithful readers, some songs should not be defiled by being recorded as musak.  I recall feeling the same way about 20 years ago.  I can recall it quite vividly.  I was in a Steak-n-Shake restaurant when another song came on and sounded familiar.  It took me an equally long time to recognize "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds.  Words cannot describe how upset I was at the desecration, the degradation, the perversion of a favorite song of mine.  That's why I am in full support of the No Muzak website.  The refer to muzak as "aural pollution" and that sounds about right to me.

Anyway, once the Boston song was over I went back to enjoying my ice cream and then we walked home.  We were all quite tired when we got home so it was bath / shower time and then off to bed (without even any time for Uno).  I am working tomorrow morning to play catch up as it was a busy week and then it is likely time to grocery shop again.  I am sure I will find something to blog about then.

One noteworthy event to mention.  July 9th will mark the one year anniversary of my very first blog.  I did not think that when I started I would be nearing my 200th blog in only 1 year.  I mentioned this to my wife (who by the way is still a faithful reader of the blog, though I do not allow her to read over my shoulder).  I asked her to promise to have my blogs published when I die.  She agreed but now that I think about it I guess I will have no way of knowing if she did or not.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 193

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

It now has been over one month since we canceled our satellite tv.  We have watched a few movies from the library with the kids (most recently the A&E version of Jane Eyre) but for the most part we have been sans tv for the entire month.  As I have mentioned before, we have discovered a love of card and board games, especially Uno.  So much so that a friend of mine from Sunday School actually blamed me for his family wanting to play more games.  He did so in jest but it is neat that it is catching on.

Uno is one of those games that can require strategy but has enough luck that the 5 year old can join in.  I discovered a site recently devoted to alternate rules for Uno so we have been adding a few here and there.  As the variations that we use pile up the game hardly resembles the original one as outlined in the rule book.  Tonight we played our most complex variation yet...

• Anytime someone plays a 7, they have an option to trade hands with any other player
• Anytime someone plays a 2, they then immediately give 2 cards from their hand to the player who follows them
• Anytime someone plays a 0, everyone trades hands with the player next to them in the direction the play is currently going
• Anytime someone plays a Draw Two, the next player can pile on another Draw Two thereby making the next player Draw Four (or he can add another Draw 2 making the next player Draw Six, etc).
• The player who goes first for the hand gets to choose how many cards we start with (from 5 to 10)

We added these rules one at a time over the last few playing sessions otherwise it would be too confusing.  We did try adding one more rule for the last few hands tonight.

• Naked Uno - Each player plays with his/her cards all facing up so everyone can see what everyone else has and play accordingly

This variation involves some strategy, especially if you play with all the above variations too (which we did).  One problem with all these rules is that you can end up with LOTS of cards in your hand and if the hand (the one attached to your wrist) is small (like, say my son's or daughter's) then it is quite hard to hold all the cards and the wife and I are forever fanning the cards out for them.  In one hand tonight after a few brutal turns, my son's hand looked like this...

He had close to 20 cards.  After he played a 7 though he passed them on to someone else (and breathed a sigh of relief).  Such is the life of an Uno hand, who knows who will end up with the big pile?  There are lots of other variations that we will try out soon so I will keep you posted.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 192

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

My kids do not quite grasp the concept of Independence Day just yet.  The only meaning they tie to July 4th is that Daddy does not have to go to work.  I suppose as long as they know it is a special day I can let it be.  The daughter was jumping right in to the "daddy's home" thing when she jumped on my lap and wanted me to play with some of her toys.  She has an elaborate set of wild animals along with a collection of just horses.  She was bringing me some of her wild animals (specifically some big cats) when I noticed something...

Do you notice what I noticed?  These things are freaky / scary!  After studying them for a few seconds I wanted to put them down and not look at them any more.  I mean, if I had had these faces to look at every day as a kid there is no telling how scary my nightmares would have been!  She does not seemed phased by them at all.  I showed these to my wife and she agreed with me.  They remind me of something out of Day of the Animals or The Island of Dr. Moreau!  I am shuddering here even blogging about them. 

Those two movies (along with The Food of the Gods) were movies I watched as a kid.  In the mid seventies when HBO first was available in our area, my brother and I were allowed to watch these scary movies over and over again.  We would quote lines from them to each other all the time.  Recently the wife and I watched The Island of Dr. Moreau and it was not quite as scary as I remember.  Actually the plot line was quite boring and the half man / half animals were more funny than scary.  I would imagine if I watched the other movies from that time they would get a similar review.

But the above plastic toys that belong to my daughter, they will probably haunt me in my dreams tonight!

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

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