CupDate and a Bit-O-Random

Got the annual notice from the Fire Department. Brush clearance time. Actually, I never got one, but my parents, who are the owners of the adjacent lot, got theirs. Anyway, my parents came up today and my dad and myself and the oldest attempted to make the yard compliant. It certainly is more so than it was, but still a long way to go. We exceeded the yard waste allotment by quite a bit.



This picture was in my camera when I took the shot of toofy boy. I had no idea where it came from, but the oldest just told me that he'd taken it a few weeks back. It was in the yard, and he was impressed by the bug.

Speaking of bugs, tonight on Baby's rear trunk reflector, there was a little moth with a very wide wingspan. If I had my camera with me, I would have gotten a picture.



This cup was from a week ago on Friday. I had been throwing totes, and in that area they have the yellow circle stickers, and the numbered bar codes. I had downloaded Microsoft's Image composite editor to try and stitch the rotational view of the cup together. The documentation on it is very lacking, and it doesn't work, at least in this case. I'll try some other time.

I've never updated on Janices' starter. The day after the starter post, I exchanged it for another of their "lifetime" starters. Spent the afternoon installing it, and it didn't even make the little whirr noise, the only noise it made was the relay on the opposite side of the engine compartment!!! Actually, I think I did put that in comments to that post. Anyway, before I got going on the yard today, I disconnected the starter from everything but the battery and tried to jump it to test my wiring hypotheses. That was a fail. Jacked the car up again (naturally, she's parked on the street, which has about a 10% slope to it, makes for good times and a dicey proposition!!! Also, my sockets will roll away if I'm not careful) and pulled the starter out. I'm actually getting pretty good at that, didn't take me long at all. Doesn't work loose from the transmission, so I tried it first just on cables to the battery, then on Bessie's battery. Dead on arrival!!!


There was a meeting last week by the investment firm that handles our deferred profit sharing account. It was interesting for the first half. The second half, the other guy had a rather droning voice, and that combined with being in a darkened room for the presentation in the afternoon, had a narcoleptic effect on several of us!!!



While working in the yard today, I happened on one of the old brake drums from Bessie. The one that had one of the wheel studs cross threaded, and I had drilled out. There's a nasturtium growing up through the drilled out lug stud hole!!!

Ever hear of Stupid Fun Club??? I had heard of it, and just the name sounds like something where it could be the exception that proves the rule of the Groucho Marx adage "I would never join a club that would have me as a member!!!" Unfortunately, their web site doesn't seem as fun as the name implies. Guess I'll just have to make my own stupid fun!!!

Sammy contacted me a bit ago. Thursday before last I went to see him at his and his new wife's (new wife makes it sound like he had an old one... no, just newly married to her) new place. He'd gotten married, moved to this place, then those scumbags at my old job laid him off. I'm glad I got out of there at the time I did. He made some great chicken tacos and guacamole and salsa. The guacamole was a bit on the sweet side, I've never had guacamole like that before. I don't think it was intended that way, but it was pretty good. I'm actually craving some of that right now.



My wife took the oldest to the recycling center ($23.00, way to go!!!) this morning when I was starting in the yard, so I had her exchange Janices' starter. They tested it for her, and declared that it had a faulty solenoid. I asked her if she made them test the replacement. She hadn't. This evening, after cleaning up, I took the jumper cables out and tried it out. It doesn't seem to work at all, either!!! The solenoid kicks the gear into place, but it doesn't spin!!! It will be tested before I bring home another.

They called Sammy about coming back to work some. I have mixed feelings about that. Kind of how you feel when a lady friend tells you she's getting back together with an abusive, or even just scummy or loser ex boyfriend. I think those guys qualify as all of the above, but it ain't easy out there these days.

Apparently, according to the statement they mailed me, my deferred profit sharing account lost almost $4,000. Pretty impressive, actually!!! As I often say, if you don't sell when it's down, you don't lose a thing!!!

I Have Dreamed of a LOLcat

I don't usually remember my dreams, and it's usually something of a treat when I do. The other night I had one, and as usual had forgotten it upon waking. While I was showering, my wife got home from taking the kids to school and was getting some food for the cat. Our cat (who is awesome) is an outdoor creature, but she ventured all the way into the kitchen this morning. When my wife told me, it immediately brought my dream to remembrance.



Two components I'm fairly sure came from pictures on Failblog and Icanhascheezburger. Both are pictured here. The third component, I have NO idea where it came from!!!



The family and I were someplace, and near the door they had one of these fancy gum ball machines where the gum ball drops through a series of passages before coming out, think of it as a gum ball and a show. It was unlike the only picture I was able to find, in that it was more of a large glass cube, much like the claw machines. Prominently in the middle of the cube area was a platform with this white longhair cat sitting perfectly still on a platform. In front of it is a wire cage vortex that the gum ball spins down near the end of it's journey. I'm fairly sure that's what the Cat's Hit toy does, has something inside that the cat will bat at to make spin around the inside.



Of course, my boys want me to buy them gum, mostly for the spectacle of seeing it make it's way through. I'm fascinated to see what happens, so I oblige. The ball drops, and as it enters the vortex and begins spinning around the edge rapidly. At this point, the cat begins to move, watching the gum ball spin around. It moves tentatively, then decisively, and bats the gum ball out of it's orbit, at which point it drops to the bottom of the machine, and then out the spout.

To-Do List

You may have seen my weekend to-do list on my twitter feed over there <---- If not, it went something exactly like this: Weekend to-do list: buy tires, hang with super models and starlets, install starter, cut grass. Hopefully in that order!!!

For this post, I think I'll likely be focusing on the one part that didn't fully come through!!!



Getting the tires was pretty straightforward. A bit of back story, though, on that. On the junkyard post, I made mention that the tire on the Maverick AKA Ol' Bessie had gone flat. My wife managed to get her over to the tire place to see if they could fix it up. They made her wait an hour, then looked at it and told her they couldn't do it because it had belts poking out. Granted, I'd changed it in the dark, but I don't recall seeing any belts poking out. Anyway, I knew they were getting worn anyway, so I called 'em up and asked for a price for a pair, as well as a quote for a set for baby. I've used this place because they are close, have competitive pricing, and they offer a lifetime alignment. Last two times I'd needed to get the alignment done on the Maverick, first was after I'd swapped disc brakes onto the front end and replaced one worn ball joint (which they'd told me was worn) and a couple of days later when I'd hit a sand patch and slammed the front tire broadside into a curb. Upon seeing that it had new components, the guy starts saying that it's like a whole different car, the lifetime alignment deal doesn't apply, but he'll do it this one time anyway. Funny thing, not only did they tell me that the ball joint needed replaced, but the contract doesn't say a thing about that. Go ahead and don't do it, I'll take your asses to small claims for rescission, and claim for all the cars that I've gotten aligned there, and aim to get the cost for all the alignments I may future do on them!!! I doubt I'd prevail on the latter, but I don't think I'd have a problem on the former. Anyway, long story short, I get the feeling that they are trying to weasel on their deal. When I changed the tire for another I had around, I noticed that the hub cap was missing from the trunk. After I got prices for tires from them, I asked the guy if he'd seen it while he was getting the tire from the trunk. Of course he hadn't. No one else had been in the trunk. You want to lose my paying business over a chicken shit hub cap, not even in particularly good condition??? Go ahead. SO, when one of the back tires on Baby started getting some tread separation and the timeline for getting new tires moved from three to six more months to now, I took my business elsewhere. The fact that I got a price $30 less was a bonus.



The second item on the list: Supermodels and starlets!!! Ever since I bought some items online from Victoria's Secret for Christmas, I get a couple of E-mail messages from them a week. Usually it's for an offer or sale, but towards the end of last week, I got one that Marrisa Miller, one of their models, was going to be doing an in store appearance and autograph session at The Grove Farmer's Market not too far from here. Also in attendance were to be Shannon Doherty and another actress from the new 90210. Cool, sounds like an interesting, fun diversion for a Saturday afternoon. Also, my wife has always loved Shannen Doherty. We got there about 10 minutes before the announced time, and located the store. There's a line already a line, but not too bad. The attendant informs us that we have to buy some of their newest lotion, then we can get in to get autographed photos. Shocking that they are using this promotion to try and make money!!! We asked about Shannen, and were told that she had been there, but had already left. Oh well. We did end up buying a bra, so their fiendish ploy worked. Just doing my part for the economy!!!



It was the first time we'd ever been to this place. The older boy said it reminded him of a theme park, and it did rather have that feel. They have a cool dancing fountain, and a trolley from one end to the other. We didn't stay that long, managing to get out just before the free one hour parking was up.

The starter on the Falcon was pretty easy to install. I remember it being more difficult, but that was before dealing with the one on Janis. However, the lower mounting hole is almost completely stripped out. I'm thinking it should be fairly easy to get a repair insert in there from the back, but I was also thinking that I could easily just use a small C clamp instead!!! I could even likely put a nut on the back side, if I were to grind it around halfway around for clearance. In related news, the bolt was fairly loose on the old one, that may have been all it needed to work. I've probably got a perfectly viable starter in storage now!!!

Cut a few more branches from the pepper tree, then cut most of the grass. It was full dark by the time I was done.

Today I managed to get Baby washed, she was looking really bad. The previous rain hadn't done an effective job cleaning her off, and the wheels had some clean spots in the brake dust from the tire installation. It rained last night quite a bit, and it looked like it might some more even as I was washing her, but quite a breeze has picked up tonight, and the skies were very clear.

Momentous Occasion!!!

Here it is, the 500th blog post!!! It might have come sooner, but you know how I get distracted. I had been hoping to have something moderately cool for this post, and here it is!!! The younger boy lost his front tooth, and looks pretty adorable without it!!! Not his first lost tooth, but it does seem like it's been a while. He quite literally lost it, it fell out in his sleep and he couldn't find it. He was worried that he'd get no tooth fairy money because of that, but this morning he found a piece of paper with his name on it folded up around cash money. Inside was the message, "You owe me a tooth. Signed, the tooth fairy". He told me, "I know it was you!!!"

A Tale of Two Starters

Or "What's up with all the starter troubles???"

I had been getting estimates on the removal of the pepper tree near the edge of our property. It grows like a weed, and regularly encroaches on the neighbor's house. Incidentally, this is the same end of the property that has the driveway, and the tree is at the end of the driveway. And the driveway is full of cars. A few weeks back I was going to take the Falcon down to my parents house and do some work on it there, and possibly get it two-toned. However, the starter was acting up. Actually, the starter sounds like it has a handful of gravel thrown in.

This morning, after taking the oldest boy to a breakfast fundraiser, I exchanged an old Ford starter I had sitting in the basement (possibly from the original six cylinder that used to be in the Falcon, it looked slightly different) so I wouldn't have to do that while I'm greasy.



Last Wednesday, after my wife took the boys to school, Janice wouldn't start up again. Didn't even crank, just did a click, and nothing more. Hmmmm, I've had something like this happen before... and it ended up being the better part of a year before she was back on the road!!! Only thing was, this time she didn't crank right before she stopped. I would try the starter, and it would click but not turn, and make a rather faint high pitched squeak, perhaps like something was slipping. Anyway, I had the idea, as I'd had last time, that the engine got on a compression stroke and the starter didn't have quite enough to kick it past there. Instead of cranking it back as I'd done last time, I had the brilliant idea of pulling the glow plugs out to relieve the pressure. I'd remembered them as being much easier to remove last time I'd worked on her. Got them out, and it still did the same thing. The main reason I'd been avoiding just pulling out the starter is that it's a major pain to do so. It requires every one of my socket extensions to be used from the opposite end of the transmission. After putting the glow plugs back in (and breaking one terminal off and losing one of their little nuts) I finally relented and went ahead and pulled the starter out. Lo and behold, it does the same thing with no engine load on it!!!

Of course, I'd asked wifey which car I should work on first, and she'd opted for Janice. By the time I'd gotten everything back together and cleaned up, it was nearing full dark. And I'd been thinking I'd be able to get the grass mowed today, it's full of weeds and really has liked all the rain we've had in the last couple of months.

So that's what happened today, I got one new starter, which I didn't get put in, and I got one old starter that doesn't work pulled out.

Seems To Me...

Now, I'm no financial genius, but it seems to me...



The thing to do here, is to NOT do one of these, and the other is pretty much taken care of!!! Both of these headlines were on the front page of two different sections of the paper over the weekend. I wonder if it was a test to see if anyone was paying attention!!!

In somewhat related news, there was a California tax protest over the weekend. 15,000 citizens were in attendance. This same paper had no coverage of the event, and when questioned, responded that it wasn't a relevant story. Typing in "Fullerton tax revolt" on YouTube netted 44 results, as of yesterday. Can we officially say that this particular print media is, in fact, the one that is not relevant??? I'm thinking yes, as well as thinking of canceling my subscription.

Goin' Back To Cali

Yesterday we went to Disney's California Adventure. Good Times!!! I did several tweets while we were there, but none of them seemed to work. Disney phone filters???



The back story on how we came to be going to California Adventure: Disney has been doing commercials locally about Disney is giving free admission to both parks on your birthday. A brilliant ploy, it is my contention that Disney could let everyone in free and still make good money. This way, I would guess on average there are at least 2 paying guests for every birthday pass they give away. Of course, the youngest sees these commercials and says that's what he wants to do!!! I considered doing it, they are having the 2 parks deal for residents these days. I mentioned this to one of my co-workers, and she tells me that her nephew works there and can get us in gratis!!! Whoo hooo, I'm there!!!



Both the boys stated preference to go to California Adventure. I knew one of the main reasons the younger wanted to go there was to ride on the ferris wheel there, the Sun Wheel. It's pretty cool, 2 of every 3 cars are on elliptical tracks, and slide from the outside to the inside as the wheel rotates, causing it to swing wildly, and considerably increasing the excitement. Alas, it was under some sort of construction!!! All the cars are off, and it is sheathed in scaffolding. The conceptual pictures have Mickey's head in place of the sun in the center.



The lagoon has been drained, and there are a lot of barriers up, too. 512 corner was blocked off, but at least it's still there.



Took everybody to Soaring over California, a large hang glider simulator, for the first ride. The youngest had never been on this ride, and he now has a new favorite!!! From there we went to the river raft ride and got fairly soaked. We were aiming for the Sun Wheel, but stopped for the Golden Zephyr and Jumping Jellyfish rides along the way. Also, we realized that it wasn't working. The Jellyfish ride we'd never been on before.



Actually, there are several attractions there we've never been on or seen. We also rode Mulholland Madness for the first time, and saw the Aladdin stage show.



Another new addition is the Toy Story Midway Mania ride. You ride through, while wearing 3-D glasses, and shoot a ball launcher gun (simulated) at various targets. Here's a shot of the older boy's and my scores. I won the beaver!!! My wife would not allow me to have another beaver at our house. Both of our accuracy levels were fairly low, but our scores were higher. My wife and the younger both got much lower scores, but their accuracy was something like 72% and 68%!!!



We managed to ride the river raft ride again, and the big coaster (California Screaming, the second best Disney coaster in my opinion), as well as a couple spins on the Jumping Jellyfish, rode the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (didn't seem to have too many long drops on my ride) and got to see the parade. The weather was quite nice, but cooled off in the evening. Also, the park wasn't too crowded.



Our passes were good for both parks, and as California Adventure was closing, the older boy had the brilliant idea to go over to Disneyland for some bread bowl gumbo. We did just that, and then rode Pirates of the Caribbean, which is directly below that, and had almost no line. After that we proceeded to the newly refurbished Small World to check it out. They split us into two rows, and halfway through I looked around at the younger, and he had a look on his face like, "Enough with the song already!!!" I looked again a moment later, and he shrugged at me. It was pretty comical. It was near midnight when we finally left, and with the hour of lost sleep last night, we slept fairly late this morning!!!

Boy's Birthday Post

As alluded to in the previous post, here's some of the pictures from John's Incredible Pizza!!! As always, the food was, well, incredible, and most of us ate too much.



The present that seemed to be his favorite was this plush weighted companion cube. His face lit up when he saw it.



He was very happy with all his other presents, too.



Tickets!!! Many of the games there distribute tickets, which can be exchanged for prizes. The older boy had something like 600 on his card from last time, and got his balance up over 1,250, the amount required for the small lava lamps (makes a dad proud that his boy would want a lava lamp, it does). Unfortunately, they were sold out of that particular item, so he's saving 'em for next time.



This is the John's Incredible Pizza version of making it rain!!! The bear comes out and dances, and they toss a bunch of tickets in the air. I saw a little kid picking some off my nephew's back.




Now this was pretty funny. When we got home, there was a traffic cone by our driveway from this morning when some workers were clearing brush up our street. The log on screen for Garry's Mod (also mentioned in the previous post) features one of these, and the older and I recreated this scene for a picture!!!

Friday CupDate

It's been a long while since I've actually had a cup to cupdate about!!! It has been quite busy of late at work, which is a great problem to have!!! We're shipping around 10,500 orders a day pretty consistently, and most nights it stays pretty busy right up to the end. Apparently the shift from phone in orders to web orders continues, and I heard something about the form being redesigned so people could build their order all day and complete it at the end of the day. Makes more financial sense than having half a dozen throughout the day. I'm not sure if we're actually that busy, or if they've cut the staffing.




I had the good fortune of working with the same girl who did the hula girl artwork on a previous cup, and she made this one up on my cup between batches. I thought it was pretty cool and clever, as well as apropos of nothing. As a collaborative work, I colored in Pac Man with my highlighter and blacked the eyes of the creature.

The younger boy's birthday was on Thursday, so we're going to Johns Incredible Pizza to celebrate today. His greatest wish was Steam games with Garry's Mod, which he has been playing ever since. One of those things where he sees big brother playing it a lot, so that's what he wants. Actually bought him the Orange Box set, so now he's got Portal, too. I had tried to set up Portal on my laptop to see how well the graphics card in it would do, but since it was already installed on the boy's comp, that did not go well.

Fun with Shirts

Over the past few weeks, we've been having fun with shirts at work!!! I think it was on Thursday that several of the girls spontaneously all wore pink shirts. They decided that the next Thursday they would all purposely wear pink. The word was spread to those who were not in the know, and even the guys were invited to participate. Shockingly, none of the guys actually did participate, but I did wear a shirt that could easily be mistaken for pink. It's a button up of very fine alternating red and white stripes, and it looked close enough. I think I actually spent too much time explaining that to people.

This Wednesday the theme was decided to wear shirts with your hero or superhero on it. I didn't actually have a superhero shirt of any kind, but a week before w00t had a pretty cool shirt that could qualify...


At first glance it looks like some kind of crazy dragon or something, but upon closer inspection, you see it actually has a giant, spiny shelled turtle being attacked by a plumber!!! Doesn't come right out and say it, but it's Mario!!! I ordered it. It came two days too late to use for that day, so I wore my purple shirt with the flaming skull on it, and told people it was Ghost Rider. One of the girls had a Barney Fife shirt, that was pretty cool.

Today was to be sports shirt day. I thought I didn't have a sports shirt. My boy has a Dodgers Gange shirt, I had him pull it out and tried it on last night. It went on, but I'd be showing off my lower belly. I remembered that I'd been given a very cool long sleeve tee shirt with the words "Athletic Dept. RFD" on the front. I didn't want to wear a long sleeve to be working in, but would have. This morning, however, I remembered that I have a Sobe Racing shirt that I won in one of their contests, and I wore that.

Wonder what they'll come up with next??? I'm set if they decide on Aloha shirt day!!!

Happy (belated) VD!!!

Another great shot from the LOLcats!!!

I've always found it amusing that Valentine's Day and venereal disease use the same initials!!!

Hope everyone had the happier of the two!!!

Junkyard Jaunt

Over the weekend it was half price day at the junkyard again. It didn't look like the weather was going to co-operate, but in the end it did, and in a quite nice fashion. It had been pouring buckets of rain since morning Friday, and it continued on into Saturday morning. Oh well, my dad and I headed over anyway, figuring we'd just get wet. As we got to the junkyard, it was just a few big fat drops, and by the time we got in, there was no more to be had!!! Nice.

I scored on many items. The funny thing was, right as I pulled up to my parents house and hit Baby's door lock button, the button failed. Stopped returning to center on its own, and wanted to stay in the lock or unlock position. I'd wanted to get a replacement door panel for that side, it has been worked on by someone who didn't know what they were doing in the past, and is slightly damaged. I only saw one Saturn of the same vintage and model, and it didn't have the door panel, or even the door from that side, for that matter. Note to self: Do NOT run it into an immovable object!!! This one had, and the whole roof had been jaws-of-life'ed off. I did get a couple of missing fasteners off it, but found the lock switch, as well as a door limiter off four door models.

For Janice, I finally found one with the missing vacuum valve for the transmission function. Didn't need it, but bought it anyway. Someday I may even test it, but it only cost a couple bucks. Also found a replacement for a damaged under dash panel, and a receiver for one of the back door latches that hasn't been shutting correctly.

For the Maverick, I bought a couple of seat belts. This was the most expensive items that I purchased. The part that the belts snap into blew up several months ago. I got a couple of heavy duty caribiners to connect the belts to, but they're a pain to use. Also turned out to be the hardest thing to remove. They were out of an LTD. The only Maverick there was an early 70's 2-door with the V-8 engine. Very little body damage, I was actually rather surprised to see it there!!! I got the headlight rings from it, someone had removed them but not taken them, so I did. I considered pulling the tail lights off and getting them, too, but really have no need. Funny thing, when I got home, the Maverick had a tire that's gone flat. I pumped it back up, but it has leaked back down again.



Some of the fun stuff I found were these pins from the back of the Maverick, and the homie that I can't remember exactly where I found.

Weelend CupDate

Over the weekend I had been thinking of taking the family to Six Flags again. However, my wife had neglected to remember that she had a blood donation appointment that day. A couple of weeks ago, I'd donated, and her iron level was too low to give.
Oh well, maybe the older boy and I could go, the younger one can't and doesn't want to go on a lot of the rides there. I woke him up on Saturday morning, and he didn't want to go!!! Man, I've got a family of PUNKS!!! Oh well, I'll get some stuff around the house done. Took the whole family to the red cross instead, and once again, her iron was too low!!! Bought myself a new pair of work shoes, New Balance again. Seems to be the choice of the majority of the fillers. Also cut my hair, it was getting unruly. No one at work noticed either.

Enjoyed what I saw of the Super Bowl. My metaphoric money was on the Steelers, and it was a good game to watch, especially as I almost never watch football. Today at work I inscribed the Steelers logo on the side of my cup, with the 512 reversed out of it. Came out pretty cool. Unfortunately, last time we visited my parents I forgot my camera there. I found my old Vivitar, but not the Compact Flash cards for it!!! Oh well, at least I've still got my webcam, even though the pictures generally don't come out as well.

My Favorite LOLcats

I frequent the icanhascheezburger site for my daily dose of LOLcats. When I come across ones that particularly tickle me, I save 'em.







Thought I'd share some of my favorites here. The second one technically isn't a cat, but a sloth, but I thought it was even better with the expression on his face.










I found it interesting that two of my favorites were derivatives of Schrodinger's cat!!!

He's Everywhere!!!

This is on the log in screen on Runescape this week. Is it just me, or does this guy look more than a little like our new President???



I'll let you in on a couple of things that you won't hear about Obama in the media.

1. His middle name is Hussein. I made mention of this to a few people after the election, and they were surprised to find this out. One of my friends from work and I actually had an interesting discussion on this, how the media had a double-edged sword with this, and kept fairly quiet about it during the election.

2. He's only half black!!! Shocking!!! The day after the election Doonesbury had a strip that mentioned this point.

Cup Cake Cupdate

Haven't done one of these in a while, a blog post OR a CupDate!!!



These cups are actually from a couple months back, I took their picture, and put 'em in the bank for a while!!! Now, they're back and here for your enjoyment!!! I did these around the same time I did the other Portal themed ones.

First up is the weighted companion cube. This plays a part in the game, and you are supposed to form an emotional bond with it, ala Wilson in Castaway. This makes the part of the game where you need to incinerate it that much more painful.



The second cup features the cake, which is promised as a reward throughout the game. Turns out the cake is a lie.

For a game I've never played, I know quite a bit about Portal!!!

But there's no use crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake...

First Random of 2009!!!

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!! I'm gonna random a bit, we'll see how this goes...



My parents took the boys and two of their cousins up to the snow on Mount Baldy last week. There was a good amount of snow up there, and it looks like they had fun!!!



As I mentioned in my last post, I worked Saturday and had Friday off. I liked the idea of having Thursday and Friday off in a row better than just Thursday in the middle of the week. I chose wisely. That Friday I took the family to Magic Mountain again. This visit worked out much better in many ways!!! First, we didn't get soaked and freeze. Second, I remembered to put on extra layers, and that worked out well. The day wasn't nearly as cold, anyway, but it did cool off in the evening.


Not sure if I'd made mention, but one of the things I got for the older boy was a pair of work gloves, fabric with rubberized palms. I'll hit him across the face with them, and give him the line from "Waiting for Guffman": "It's like in the olden days, in the... days of France, when men would slap each other with their gloves... say, y'know... ”D'Artagnan!"... y'know, "how dare you talk to me like that, you!," and... smack 'em!" I was looking around for somewhere that had a WAV file of that, but couldn't find any.



Of course, if you've been following my Twitter feed, you know there were no pretzels to be had. I had been planning on a mid-day snack of pretzels (dollar to ounce, the best value in the park, I'm convinced, these pretzels are HUGE!!! Honestly, I've seen steering wheels smaller across than these pretzels!!!) and hitting the Wendy's between the park and the freeway on the way home. Instead, we snacked on fries from the fresh cut fry shack across from where we ate last time. $30.90 for three fries (garlic, nacho, and plain) and three sodas. What a rip!!! At Wendy's, we bought three combos, plus an extra shake and fries for $30.92.


Does anyone really think we can tax away an economic downturn??? Besides the Democratic lawmakers and greedy union heads, that is???



I saw an article that they've made a new Oscar Mayer Wiener mobile out of one of those fake Minis. I thought that was very apropos, those things are already wiener mobiles.



Mixed in here are a few screen shots from Runescape. I liked this better shot I got of my character in my gold trimmed armor. The other two are of my character, and when I had to change it's gender for a quest. Unfortunately, when I changed back I lost my facial hair and dreadlocks. Maybe the barber in Falador can fix that up for me.





The evening was the best part of the day at Magic Mountain. The weather cooled off to a point where it would have been nice to get the heavy jackets from the trunk of the car, but that likely would have taken half an hour or more. The crowds there were less than last time, and even less as the night fell. The older boy and I went to ride Colossus while mom and the younger played some games in the arcade. Colossus was practically a walk-on, so we rode twice. We went back to switch, and ended up all going back. Mom and the older went on it, and didn't come off. Finally, we walked up the exit ramp just as mom was walking off. Boy wasn't with her. Turns out they let them stay on the coaster for three rides, four for the boy.


I've said for years that unions were at one time a good thing, but have outlived their time. I have been referring to them as dinosaurs wandering the country looking for a tar pit big enough to hold them. Perhaps the current economy will be just that tar pit!!!



Over in the same area is a coaster I'd never been and didn't know much about, Scream. We went to check that out, and it's pretty cool. Near no line for that one, either. It has several inversions and nicely banked curves. When it gets ready to go, an air horn sounds and the floor drops away. We rode that one twice, too.


On the Saturday after Christmas family gathering at my parents house, we all went down to Naples island to view the Christmas lights down there. Some of my favorites were the palm trees with lights on them.



After work yesterday I went to Big Lots for some of the Ace energy drink they have there. I think it may be my new favorite, and it's a great deal there. Along with everything else I decided on there, it came to $12.74. Next stop, I bought gas for Baby (31.57 MPG for this tank, w00t!!!) and of the $20.00 I'd put on the pump, I ended up spending $12.79. I marveled that, of my last four transactions, each pair came out within a few pennies of each other!!!



Last picture here is from where I was uploading pictures to here. I thought it was pretty interesting how it came out looking like a bar graph.


X2 is my favorite coaster at Six Flags now. It has great effects (FIRE!!!), and cool drops and loops, and the chairs rotate!!! Waiting in the line, they have video screens showing all kinds of funny crashing videos. Nicely done!!! Now, if the wait wasn't so long...