Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last

SO much to blog!!! I keep thinking I'll do better, but there's always something else, it seems. Oh well, it is the way of life.

Welcome to my year end wrap up!!! If I finish before 12 tonight, I'll have one more in for 2011!!! I'll go over a little of this & that interspersed with the pictures from this year's Christmas.

Completely unrelated thought, know how some stores (most, I would estimate) shun using the actual word "Christmas" in any of their advertisements and promotions??? Perhaps all us consumers should thusly shun doing any of our actual Christmas shopping at their establishments...

I like the way my son caught my wife giving me the sideways eyes in the first shot.

I think I did all my Christmas shopping online this year...

Bought our cat a catnip apple for Christmas. It's always lost. He never tells where it's at, if he knows.

Seems like work was busy all year. Goodie day came and went, and our department didn't do the T-shirt exchange that we usually do. Kept me from having to find one for a co-worker, usually with only a week or so of shopping time. Gravy day elicited a roar of approval from packing when it was announced to them, moments before our department. Biggest one I've ever had, bigger than everyone was thinking it was going to be, much to our delight. Not too far below the amount it was the one year prior to my arrival that the employees ended up shutting down the local branch of the bank the checks were drawn on because they ran out of cash!!! Signs so far tend to indicate this coming year will be at least as good!!!

Too much zoom in the shot of my wife getting the DVD set of Dexter season 5, boy. Actually, it came out a pretty good effect, though!!!

Now, to get on to non-Christmas related news, and in relation to the post title... Two weeks ago today I was actually up fairly early for a Saturday, when I got a call from my dad. He found my mom keeled over & unresponsive when he got up. She was already on her way to the hospital, and he was heading over.

They managed to bring her around, and the thing everyone (including myself) goes to is a stroke, so that was what they were treating her like. Turned out not to be the case. Arrhythmia and cardiac arrest was what was actually going on. Of course, we visited her that day, but she was heavily sedated and had, among many others, a tube down her throat. Somewhere between 13 and 30 times they've had to defibrillate her to get her going again. THEN she gets infected where they had the IV inserted in her hand, so it was later before they could implant the ICD... Pretty impressive device, they're able to externally adjust it, which they had to do a couple times in the next days. She seems to finally be in fairly good shape.

One bad thing, though, there's been illness within my household, so we haven't been able to visit much. I've called my dad most every day, and my mom several times also. My dad's been there every day, of course. Best Christmas ever, he says. I agree. My oldest sister has been there a lot, too, which is also a good thing.

I'm sure I could say much more, but don't want this post to be nothing but. I think I've covered most of the salient points. Oh, a little insult to injury, she went out with her leg on the little electric heater. Looks nasty, but it's healing up. Oh, another one, one of her rooms at the hospital got flooded out by the toilet. My dad was the one who discovered the extent of that one.

Got my boys a night vision viewer with video capabilities. It's pretty sweet, for the money I paid. I think they managed to delete the one pretty hilaras video of the older boy spooking the younger by coming forth from the darkness.

Massive windstorm last month. Knocked out power for something like four days and blew a sizable branch off the tree, narrowly missing the Falcon. My wife finally finished the book she was working on for a year or more. Had to use watches and phones to wake up. It was an adventure. I was very glad we have a gas heater.

I don't think I saw a single movie in the past year, with the exception of the documentary "Born to be Wild" when we were vacationing in San Diego at the Science Center's domed IMAX theater, and that was included with admission. It's about orphaned orangutans and elephants and the people who rescue them. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman, which was pretty epic. The movie was pretty decent, but you could tell it wasn't designed to be projected onto a dome, it didn't come out right around the edges. Much like facial piercings, I found that to be... distracting. They had another movie coming on after that one that I'd wished I'd opted for instead about storm chasers (which may have been the title of the movie, as well).

The couple of pretty good books I got in this year were one we'd got from my mom, John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Had that for a long time before I got to reading it. My wife started on it, but found it too dark. Got Stephen King's 11/22/63 when it came out, and went through that in fairly short order. It ended, I though, surprisingly upbeat for a King novel. I certainly enjoyed it. I'm currently going through Douglas Adams' HG2G books. I'd long ago gone through at least the first three (and in the middle of the third is where I currently at) but know I never made it through the final one. A couple years back, I think it was, I bought the five in one ultimate one for my first born, and that's the one I'm currently in. The one the seller shipped at first was a collectors edition with photos and such, but not all five books. They made it right, though.

Hey, it's already 2012 on the Eastside!!! Happy New Year!!!

Car news. The last week my wife was working this year, the traitorous starter on Janice went out again, less than three month later. Do NOT buy your starters from Auto Zone, their rebuilders suck. That was what I was going to be doing the weekend my mom went down, so that was delayed. Oh yea, we had been planning on doing the family Christmas the following Monday (I had it off, along with the Tuesday after Christmas as my last personal days) so needless to say that has yet to happen.

The Wednesday following THAT, Baby started showing some problems... First sign was she stalled right after starting up!!! That never happens... Had to two-foot her when coming to a stop and such. Checked forums and it sounded like (along with a previous symptom I'd noticed) a bad coolant temperature sensor. Bought a new one, as well as a fresh set of plugs and wires, the next day. When I went to install it, made the mistake of giving it one too many cranks tightening it down and snapped it off down in the hole.

Didn't want to try and get it out in such an awkward area, so I JB welded it back together. That seems to be doing fine, and it seemed to be working fine until it warmed up, then it was worse than before!!! Limped her home again, and popped the hood and heard what sounded like a major vacuum leak. Turns out both ends of the PCV hose has elbows that were both cracked open. Of course, no one makes anything like that, so I've fabricated a lengthy section of hose and an elbow from one of Janices' repairs. So far it seems fine, but I've yet to drive her any distance. At this rate, that won't happen this year!!!

Counting Crows' "A Long December", in case you didn't get the title reference!!!

And, finally, a little Christmas something for all you that read or happen across my low traffic blog, a shot of my wife's boobs (or at least cleavage) in her Christmas Victoria's Secret push-up bra and pajamas!!!

And to all a good night!!!

Pepper Jack!!!

First time in a while that I've made the time to do some artwork on one of my cups. This one may require a bit of explanation...

At work, there's several different way to get a difficult order. You could get a cut, a big count, something bulky, or something heavy. At some point a month or two back, one of the guys started to announce when he'd get a heavy order by announcing something to the effect of "I got a 122 pounder... With cheese!!!" Kinda like a quarter pounder with cheese, is the idea, if you didn't get that.

So, that became a thing, where a few of the guys would say that. I decided I was going to start calling out all different types of cheese whenever I'd get a bad order. Limburger!!! Gouda!!! Deep fried mozzarella (I particularly liked the way that one rolls off the tongue..)!!!

Then I threw out "Pepper Jack!!!" That struck a chord!!! A play on the term "jacked", and now whenever some of us would get a bad order, we'll say, "I got pepper jacked!!!"

One day I'm working on one of the printers where you're likely to get a difficult order, and I penned this on my cup. Several people got it right off, but some aren't quite clear on what was going on. A couple of people wondered, "what, no funfetti cake???" No, no, I love that stuff. A couple of people thought it had something to do with the Green Bay Packers. Ha ha, closer but no. I'd have used my highlighter and yellowed it some for that.

I used this cup for more than a week.

I like the way the picture I took of it came out, with the shadow and light. This is on the end table I have next to my recliner now, since my older has moved a new desk into the corner here. He's got the best seat in the house, I think.

The connotation attached to pepper jack is unfortunate. I rather like pepper jack.

Gotta Find a Geekier Neighborhood...

So last Monday was Halloween. As we often do, we went to my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat, as it's much flatter lands with sidewalks there.

First up is the youngest. He changed his costume idea from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. The diamond sword was the trickiest part of the costume to come up with. The rest of the costume was just getting the boxes cut to shape and colored. One other kid recognized it for what it was supposed to be.

Next up is my older boy. His original idea was to be a Halloween decoration. I thought that'd be great, to get a large circle, cut a hole in the middle and put a tablecloth on it and stick his head through the middle. He'd changed it to Discorda from My Little Pony, but finally went with Dr. Who. Bow tie, and a light stick fashioned into a sonic screwdriver, and he was set. He'd trick or treat, then tell people he was the doctor. Only one customer had the proper response, "Dr. who?" To which he responds, "Precisely!!!" I don't know if anyone got it.

For my own, I already had a mask (don't know where it came from or how long we've had it, but it's been a decoration in our basement for years) and was easily able to fashion a mohawk from the leftover foam I'd made the boy's diamond sword from. Used a piece of cardboard to make the name tag, and my wife had some beads to complete the look, and I was Geoff from Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show!!! A few people called me by name, but I'm not sure if I was recognized for the costume or the name tag. Balls!!!

Yep, definitely have to find a geekier neighborhood to get the references!!!

More Rage (At Work)

Another true story of real life adventures made into a Rage Comic. This time from my work life. Funny how you get into something like the Rage Comics, and suddenly you filter all your experiences through that filter!!! Once again, click on the image & hopefully it'll enlarge enough to be readable.

The Catalina Zip Line

What is widely regarded as the high point of our vacation this year was the Catalina Eco Tours Zip Line.







It was over $100 a person, but it's 5 different lines on the course, and some of the best scenery, so it's money well spent!!!






The younger boy didn't meet the weight requirement to go solo, so him & I went tandem. I was a bit concerned that he'd be too apprehensive, but he was the first to step up on more than one of the courses.



In the group shot, you can see the Casino in the background.





















The last shot is where the course ends up, the beautiful Descanto Beach Club. Five Stars!!!

Night of the Coyotes

Did I ever post here that my son got himself a pet chicken??? I don't know that I have, but he's had her since before his last birthday (actually, he bought her as a chick and she was pretty well full grown by then) and I may have a picture of her in that post.


Anyway, I made this Rage Comic up about the true story of how coyotes came calling one night & how I felt about our encounter afterwards. I've submitted it to that site, but I never even see my submissions on the voting pages, so who knows. I have a feeling the image may come out too small to easily read here, try clicking on it to see it larger!!! Better yet, hold your ctrl key and roll your scroll wheel up.

Zippy!!!

I've got more pics from when we went on the zip line, but I thought I'd post the on ride video that my boy shot. It's not a great video, as he couldn't hold the camera real well, but it gets the point across.



More to follow...

OM NOM NOM Every Day!!!

Here it is, almost a month after our vacation & I haven't posted any follow ups yet!!! Just tonight I finally copied all the pictures off my old camera, which my son has inherited.



One thing he did on a fairly regular basis while we were on vacation was to take pictures of what we ate. Just yesterday I got the charge card statement with almost $700 worth of meal charges on it, and this reminded me. Also, the interwebs were out tonight, so it gave me something to do. Never never NEVER get AT&T for a broadband provider, they SUCK ASS!!!






The first & third shots are of the Awesome Burger from Coyote Joe's right off the main drag in Avalon. It consists of three 1/3 pound angus burgers (LOL spellcheck wants to change angus to anus, hehehe). See his eyes glazed over??? He was running out of steam towards the end, but he triumphed.




The next couple of shots are from Antonio's right on the harbor in Avalon. Oh, it was good!!! Everything over there was rather spendy, but I was never disappointed.



Good thing he was taking pictures, I couldn't remember everything we had... We had a bucket of onion strings for appetizer there.







The next three shots are from the Descanso Beach Club, after we'd done the zip line tour. I'd seen a place right by the Casio that had Nathan's hot dogs, and had been wanting to try, but they turned out to have them there. If I'm not mistaken, we had nachos at four different places!!!



The Descanso Beach Club, it's AMAZING!!! There had been talk of building another five star resort on the property, but for now they've got the zip line there. The rest of the property is five star caliber. One of those places where, when we'd arrived, I kept expecting someone to come up and tell us "Excuse me, I don't believe you belong here".



The last couple of shots are the only mainland shots. This was near to the site of our breakdown, Joe's Crab Shack. Excellent food all around!!!



At our last hotel (actually, it bills itself as a resort, but I couldn't bring myself to type "last resort") the night we got there, they had happy hour going on there, and we were able to get four or five appetizers (more nachos!!!) at half price, probably the best deal on high end food we got the whole trip.

My boy was talking of starting a food blog. I either beat him to it, or have given him a template to copy with this post!!!

The Vacation Where Everything Broke

Back from this year's epic vacation, and it was (for the most part) excellent!!! We spent 4 nights on Catalina Island, two nights in Carlsbad (for the Lego parks) and 3 nights in San Diego. My logic in planning this year's trip was that usually we spend a few thousand just getting where we're going, as well as a day on each end in airports and flying, then spend a lot of the day just playing at the beach. Might as well stay semi-local and spend the extra money on better food & lodging!!! I think this worked out very well!!!




To get the part where everything broke out of the way, I'll lead off with that part. Once we returned from Catalina we were heading down to Carlsbad, and on the way there stopping in Oceanside to pick up these passes I'd gotten, good for admission to dozens of San Diego area attractions. We were travelling in Janice for the trunk space. As we were driving down a side street, the hangers for the muffler gave out and it started dragging!!! I had just replaced the hangers probably only 6 months ago. There was a parking lot right there, so I pulled off into it and stopped. As luck would have it, there was a Auto Club truck there already. Unfortunately, he didn't have any wire to hang it back up with, so we ended up having to get a flat bed out to haul her to a muffler shop. They didn't have the right hangers in stock, and didn't have time to fabricate new ones, so the guy did a very effective job of wiring up the tailpipe.



It was fairly late by the time we got out of there, so we headed back to the same parking lot we'd been towed from. There's a Joe's Crab Shack in that lot, and while waiting there we'd been discussing eating there, so we did. Cracking crabs takes a while!!! Headed out, and went to start the car, and nothing!!! I've seen this before, bad starter in the most inopportune time. Looked for a lug wrench to bang on the starter with, because that's worked before, and discovered that there is none in that car. Good to know before I have a flat!!! Called AAA again, and the guy had a jack handle that fit the bill. Got her fired up, and I'd been on the phone with my parents. They were good enough to let me borrow one of their cars for the remainder of our trip.



Didn't want to shut the car off again, so we drove down to our next hotel, and left the car running while I checked in and unloaded the trunk. Left the rest of the family, and did the night run back north then back. Made for a late night, but better than the other alternatives.



The next day we went to Legoland for the day. Afterwards, we went to the TGIF on the opposite side of the hotel. On the way back, we spotted a bunny rabbit. Of course, the boys are off chasing it. Unbeknownst to the older boy, there was an edge border by one part of the sidewalk, and he went down, hard. His ankle swelled up fairly nice (funny how you don't know how lumpy ankles are until you're inspecting them...) so I got ice and made up an ice pack. Ended up taking him to the Scripps emergency room, for my second late night in a row. I would have posted his X-ray, but I left the CD with those in my parent's car. Not much to see anyway, it wasn't broken, just a sprain. They splinted him up, and gave him a pair of crutches.



That's almost all that broke, if you don't count the rental wheelchair we got for him the next day at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. The screws were coming out of the wheel handles, and they'd click on the side. When they found out, though, they refunded the price of the rental, so it's all good.



Other than that, it was great!!! The zip line course in Catalina is the one thing that everyone says was the best part. The older boy & I went parasailing. The younger boy had wanted to go when we were in Hawaii, but we didn't end up having time, so I was doing that mostly for his benefit, but he chickened out.



Didn't make it to the new Lego water park or sea life aquarium, because the boy's foot was bandaged up for the former, and figured we'd see sea life at Sea World when we made it there. On the big breakdown day, we'd been planning on going to a paintball park, but that got scrubbed. The actual San Diego Zoo we missed, too, as well as Belmont Park.

I'll go into more depth-things we actually did!!!-in further posts!!!

This is me Tomorrow...

Soooo much!!! We went up to the mountains again a couple weeks back, last weekend had the celebration of my sister & my birthdays, took several pictures worthy of sharing...

So what do I end up sharing??? Another cat picture!!! This was so cute, he was being his lazy self, and then he went & covered his eyes with his paw!!! Not real easy to see with the black on black furs, but there it is.



In other news, I've finally upgraded my laptop. Bought some memory to bring it up to 4gb, bought a hard drive twice the size and faster, and (the finally part) installed Windows 7, up from Vista. So far, I'm reasonably pleased. I have yet to try and install my favorite imaging software, PaintShop Pro (don't even know if I'll be able to, it's an older version), but instead used MS Paint to work on this picture.

Oh, and I seem to have lost the little round ball off the end of the ring in my piercing. One day after the cat tried using it as a play toy. Hmmmm...

Mysteries of the Deep

As mentioned in my previous post, when we visited Leo Carrillo State Beach last week, we'd found the lid to a baby grand piano. It worked as an incredibly effective, if somewhat cumbersome and heavy, skim board. I got fairly winded dragging it back to a good start point over and over,



Of course, the underlying question is how did it get there to begin with???
Was it on a ship from whatever the country of origin was that was caught in a storm??? The piano from the Titanic??? (Not likely on that one, I suspect it had a concert grand) A wild party at someone's beach house??? Being an affluent area most anywhere along the beach, could it have been a mishap while a piano was being delivered??? Insurance fraud, disposed of the evidence in the murky depths??? One of the images I found was actually of a mystery piano that appeared in Biscayne bay... I notice the lid is absent in that picture, could it have come loose there and migrated to the West coast???



Since this encounter, I've been considering making a smaller skim board for next time...

The Dyson Sphere

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. I was going to put those first two introductory sentences in my own words, but Wikipedia did such a fine and succinct job that I thought I could do no better.

After the completion of my last creation while I was killing labels, I was at a loss for what to make next. My older boy told me I should make a Dyson sphere. I responded, "everyone makes a sphere while they're killing labels." He counters with, "A hollow sphere???" Hmmm... once again, I was presented with a challenge. Could it be done??? Well, why not??? It started out looking like a chip bowl, then it started looking like a big 'ole dinosaur egg. (this didn't happen all in one day, so I was punching a hole in the edge and hanging it from the hook in my locker. That is what caused the distortion visible in the second picture.)



It came out WAY huger than I'd intended, but yes, that is a hollow shell of labels!!! It has that odd taper to the one end, but it's still pretty cool.



Looks a little bit like a giant pear, huh??? Second shot my boy is pantomiming that he's eating it.

In other somewhat related news, here's a picture of my son's MP3 player. He went on a weekend with one of his friends, and their dog got a hold of it for just a few seconds, ate the part where the headphones plug in off of it!!! I believe that you can still plug it in and access the files, so it can be used as a storage device. Terrible picture, I used my old camera for the shot. If I'd been using my new one, I'd have been sorely disappointed by the results.



Today we made a return trip to Leo Carrillo beach. It was cloudy down there, where it was nice and sunny at our house on both ends of our trip. Didn't get started as early as I'd wanted to, but did get there sooner and left home sooner, so the drive wasn't quite as bad as last time. Once again, I kinda wished I'd brought my camera with me. Saw porpoises by the dozens, and cool pelicans and even ducks. My younger boy chased a duck into the water, and it went submarine on him. He thought that was cheating. We dug a tunnel through a little cliff of sand, probably around four feet of digging through sand. The coolest thing, though, was we found the lid to a baby grand piano. Used it as a skim board, it was incredibly effective!!!

Carmogedden??? Not Quite

This was the weekend of the dreaded 405 closure. I almost never go over to that part of town because 1. I have no business over there 2. Every time I go over that way, the traffic really sucks!!! I have a feeling the extra capacity they've added will do nothing to improve the situation!!! The predictions had been dire, and the warnings have been going on for more than a month. Guess everyone got the message, because there were no real problems!!! In honor, I made up a little thing on CoMixed. Feel free to click on the image and vote it up!!!



The "Everything went better than expected" guy is one of my favorites!!! It shall be my theme...

The Random & Shirt Post

I've had these shirt pictures for quite a while. I've been meaning to make some kind of post of 'em, and finally here it is, along with a bit o random!!!



I'm up in the middle of the night after having gotten up early for the Saturday shift this morning. Hadn't planned on it, but here's how it worked out: I took an energy drink to have with my lunch today. When I got home this afternoon, my wife made me a delicious iced coffee. That would have been plenty enough, but we went to Big Lots in the evening. They were having an extra 20% off, and I bought a few more random energy drinks, as well as almost $100 worth of other sugary beverages and salty crunchy snacks, as well as some school supplies (in early July??? Blasphemy!!!). When I went to put them away, discovered some of the energy drinks I had stashed had corroded through!!! One of my my favorite kinds, Monster Mixxed, was just starting to leak, so I opened it and tried it. Tasted fine, so I iced it down and drank it. I think that was too much.



I bookended the normal work week (as abnormally normal as it was) with a couple of ironic shirts. On Tuesday (1st work day this week...) I wore one not pictured here, from the first year we did the Christmas-goody day shirt exchange at work. It merely has the words, "Don't rush me, I get paid by the hour" on the front, so it's not especially photogenic, but it is pretty amusing. All my co-workers love it, because doing what we do you won't be there long if you're not at least kinda rushing. The irony was double that day, as I was working an hour early for overtime, and I ended up killing labels, one of the few tasks where you're not quite as rushed!!!



Since I worked today (yesterday now, but doesn't seem like it to me) I was able to have one of the weekdays off. Usually it's Friday, but when I signed up I was offered Thursday or Friday. I opted for Thursday, so I worked two days, had a day off, worked two more days, have a day off. Friday they had this coming Saturday available. I can choose any day but Monday for off this coming week. Think I'll take Wednesday so I'll have another two days then a day off. Unfortunately, that will leave three at the end of the week.



On Thursday I took the family to Leo Carrillo State Beach. It's a bit of a drive, but a couple of my friends at work always go there and say how nice it is. It was pretty good, but lots of rocks. I think we spent almost as much time driving as we did at the beach. I think it was around 60 miles each way. I didn't take my camera, but wising I had did some searching for a web image. The one I've got here is from the Virtual Tourist website. The first one that really got me was from Craig Wolf's blog. I didn't feel right about borrowing his AMAZING image, but I did set it as my computer's wallpaper!!!



On the other end of the regular week, I wore my "Weekdays-Weekends" shirt. The irony here was I wore it on Friday, and I was coming in the next day. At morning break, I noticed one of the girls who used to be in our department sitting outside with a girl who looked a lot like another girl who left the company a few years back. As I was heading back from break, I got a better look at her, and it was who I'd thought, only with her hair darker. I stepped out to say hey, and remembered that she'd always gotten great amusement from my shirts. She'd already seen the front of the shirt, so after I asked her if she'd seen this one, I showed her the back. She LOLed heartily, and fived me!!!



I had a strange dream this morning. I'll not relate all of it here, but at the end of it I was bitching out a little kid, and was hailed as a hero for having done so. I woke up (like one minute before my alarm went off) and was laughing and wondering where that came from!!!



A recap of the unmentioned shirts here, the second down is called 3037, and it's my most recent acquisition (with the exception of the Old Navy flag T-shirt I bought on July 4th. My oldest got the exact same one, and my wife got a red tank with the exact same print. Youngest got the coolest of the lot, a Captain America shirt). Can you make out the writing hidden it that shirt??? Also represented it the Filthy Hippies, one of my favorites that always gets comments. The blurry question mark I don't actually have, it's the icon Woot has when they're doing a random shirt. They actually came out with a shirt like that!!!


Missing from the mix is my Schrödinger's Cat shirt. It's another amazing shirt, but every time I wear it I seem to end up having to explain who Schrödinger was & his experiment. One of my friends at work, after having heard the story, commented, "Wow, he was like, a mad scientist!!!"