Whatever

Somebody Needs To Take The M Out Of MTV

In my extremely lazy day around the house today I have watched a bit of TV. Everything from a rerun of SportsNight at 7:30 AM to some of the Saints/Bucs football game at 9:30 PM. As my habit, and probably most men’s, as soon as a commercial break happens we go hunting other things to see. In the probably 25 times I passed through MTV today, not once did I stumble onto a music video being played. Because it is of no interest to me, I didn’t stick around to see if it was Road Rules or Real World or whatever. VH1 is falling into the same rut as well, only about half the time we they playing videos. The rest was Behind the Music stuff….

Look Back With Sadness

Blogging early because it is baby-sitting night. We still call it that even thought the boys are no longer babies. Ten years ago Donna gave as a Christmas gift to another couple in the Bike Club our services as babysitters for one weekend evening a month for the next year. At that time their one son was 2 years old. This gave them to opportunity to go out on a “date,” have dinner out, see a movie, whatever. Four years later we got a year off after their second son was born and he got old enough to leave alone with us. The boys have gone from not wanting to leave our sides and go to their bedrooms until their parents came home to going immediately to their rooms to play Nintendo. One thing that hasn’t changed it they still don’t want to go to sleep.

In January when it is 35 and raining I’ll look back with sadness of today’s missed opportunity. Another perfectly beautiful fall day and the Miata traveled whopping 5 miles today. A morning trip to the grocery store and a lunch time trip to retrieve sandwiches…

Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 306

Still Icky

The eye looks a lot better because of the drops the Doc gave me, but I felt so crappy otherwise I stayed home from work. I don’t know whether I feel crappy because of a reaction to the medicine or it is just a coincidence that I got the flu the same time as the pink eye or maybe whatever virus I got caused both.

$345 Squirrel

The chimney sweep had to do some masonry work to extract the carcass of the squirrel that had somehow managed to lodge himself into a crack in some bricks. We think he squeezed past the chimney screening, fell down the flue and when he couldn’t climb back up he tried to escape via a loose brick and failed. So instead of the $150 he added another 50 for brick work and another 50 for the tighter fitting (and hopefully squirrel-proof) chimney cap. Add that the 95 smackers on last Friday for the pest control visit. We get one expensive squirrel. Should have had the thing stuffed, rotting looking skull and all.

Still some flys appearing on the living room window and dead on the floor in front of it. Donna asked me to put a black plastic bag over the fireplace opening for a couple days, hopefully whatever flies aren’t dead by now will be when we take the plastic off in a couple weeks.

Manny Rameriz’s Batting Helmet

Geez, I’m sure it is superstition not wash it or whatever, but that thing is gross. It probably started as a little pine tar transferring off a batting glove, but it is now officially out of hand. I think the players have been spitting tobacco juice on it, that is the only way it could have gotten so bad in just the 6 weeks you’ve been off the DL – Yeck!! By the way, those Shirley Temple curls poking out from under it aren’t helping either.

Good News, Bad news

Top down for the ride to work. Another hot day in the afternoon, so it went up for the ride home, stayed down to the Bike Club meeting and even home from that. Good news was that the garage door opener is fixed and it only cost the $55 for the service call. Bad news is that all it took to fix it was that the repair guy had me shut the breaker off for 5 minutes and then turn it back on. He said that there is a prection chip on the cicuit board that can be reset sometimes when the unit takes a power surge. One of the remote controlled ceiling fans on the screened porch was discovered not working this afternoon, and for whatever reason, that same trick worked on it as well. Go figure. Also good news is the insurance agent called to say that any TV under 25″ is just a replacement thing, no need to even try and get a repair estimate. Makes sense, a new 19″ TV was $100 at Target, the TV repair shop wanted $20 just to look at it.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions sine 02/02/02: 128

Hollywood II

I was 1 for 2 against them Saturday night. It was our yearly trip to the Big-Mo Drive In and the double bill was Showtime with Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy and Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock.

I was suckered in by Showtime. I think I was suckered in because the movie didn’t try to be something other than exactly what it was. It was a silly little plot littered with holes and full of clichés, but I still was entertained – here’s why: Eddie played a caricature Eddie, DeNiro play a meld of every DeNiro character since, well, the beginning. William Shatner played himself or what we have come to believe is himself and he is just like that in real life or he is as brilliant an actor as Andy Kaufman was. I laughed and I wasn’t even upset like I usually am by the every-car-in-the-sector police chase/blow ’em extravaganza.

And I almost bought into Murder by Numbers, but it tried to take itself to seriously. I’m sure when Sandra took the role it was because the character she was to play appeared to have depth because of her tortured past. For whatever reason it just didn’t come out that way. The collapsing balcony fight scene and subsequent rescue thing looked like it was thrown in because everyone involved knew it was a dog of a movie and felt that it would punch it up. Then when we got our now Hollywood standard triple twist in the end about the actual killer nobody really cared.