The people who lived in this house before us replaced the batteries on their smoke detectors all at the same time (or maybe installed them at about the same time). Which has been my bane for the last couple weeks. Why? Because throughout the last couple weeks smoke detectors have been beeping for battery replacements. The smoke detectors are all about 10-12 feet away from one another [in different rooms] so it was hard to figure out why a freshly replaced batter was already dead.
Until I realized that the piercing sound that made my ears hurt was coming from a slightly different location. I am totally going to do this to the next home owners because its kind of funny in a super-weird sort of way.
Category Archives: Funny
Customer S… This mailbox is full, you are being transferred to the attendant
I tried to pay for my college classes today. Tried. As well as trying earlier in the week. Accept that the folks responsible are – shockingly – busy. And thus when I get transferred to their voice mail I also get transferred to the operator at the college because I can’t leave a message in their full mailboxes. So tomorrow I’m going to drive down to the school, between the hours of 9:30 and 12:00 and pay for classes.
Query: How many phone messages does it take to fill up a voicemail box? And why do critical-to-business employees have a quota in the first place?
If people want to pay for classes let the appropriate employees have a terabyte of storage space so that you can be making money rather than carefully limiting employee effectiveness.
With This Ring
Things have been a bit gonzo-crazy lately around here. I have had too much going on the last couple weeks (ha ha, probably years, but we’ll say its been more hectic this last couple weeks) – some of that is going to be wrapped up shortly, and some of it I’m going to put away. Some of it is going to stay. However, yesterday, after the 4 years birthday party for Abby (Tuesday she’ll officially be four), Jessica and I went out driving. We just needed some time to talk and catch up on what the last couple weeks had not allowed us to catch up on.
It is at times like that when I am so glad that I’m married to Jessica. I love to spend time with her and to share my life with her. I’m glad she shares her life with me. She’s a fantastically good wife, a stupendous mother, and a super cook. Three important things 😉 She also loves to discuss theology with me, which I appreciate immensely.
When I found out that the pretty blonde girl liked me and she was in honors math I knew that I had something good on my hands [1995]. When she said she’d take seminary courses with me and move down to Texas with me I knew that I was amazingly blessed to be married to her [1999]. And yesterday as I was driving and talking with her explaining to her why I had made some choices and she was genuinely listening to me as her husband and friend I knew that I was blessed beyond what I could comprehend in this relationship [2006]. October 3rd we’ll be married for eight years. That’s five years longer than we dated, which is pretty amazing.
If I could go back and do it all over again I’d probably change a few things [insert long list of stupid things I’ve said in 11 years or so], but I certainly wouldn’t trade my wife for anyone else.
That Cousin and His Blog
Abby was talking yesterday and said something that made us chuckle pretty good. She was telling us how her cousin Brennan was going to send her a blog. That’s right, send a blog. She said he just sends blogs all the time.
I wonder how my brother and his bride feel about all of this 🙂
Florida, the Unsouth State
If you love Disney[insert land mass name here] then you’ve most likely been to Florida and discovered that while Florida is technically connected to the South, but is not the South. It is much like California, which is west, but they killed all of the Western Californians with some political bill and so now only non-western Californians are allowed to live there. Florida has the most old people per capita, second only to cemeteries [and some have debated that it may be third if you count the US Congressional branch of government]. By old people I don’t mean over 50, which would be a wrong assesment for sure, but I mean people driving with their head over the steering wheel, peeping through the gap between their dashboard and the bottom of the top of their steering wheel.
Strangely enough, as dangerous as these drivers sound, there are actually few accidents reported in Florida because these old people are not able to sense the accidents they are involved in. They drive vehicles so smashed up that the new dents don’t look any different from the old dents. Of course the upside to this is that there are few deaths involving old drivers. Except when counting the ones where the person was driving 15MPH and no one noticed that they were dead because when they were alive they drove that slowly and hit that many obstacles.
The rest of the south doesn’t have this problem because no one lives to the ripe old age of 85 due to their cooking. If you’ve ever seen Paula Dean on the Food Network then you know what I’m referring to. Her low low fat recipes, when compared to the tofu eaters in California, are the highest fat recipes in California. You know the receipes where they fry the tofu? This is worse. The other mortality factor involved is religion. In the Bible belt they know how old old is, and if Methuselah lived to be 965 years of age then by golly 95 is spry and young. If the man can aim the car in the right direction, send him off – out into nowhere. A swamp or a river will take care of any of the dangerous ones!
So I propose that we create a new region in the US geographical terminology: the Unsouth. This would include all of Florida, parts of Texas where they have imported yankees to work with computers, and the parts of New Orleans where the Yankees on permanent spring break live.
Disney would be so proud!
Jingle Bells…
If you’re not ready for Christmas… why not? The stores are already starting to prepare. Get ready for the slow building of holiday music as you shop, get ready for the discount Christmas cards to be out ready for you to pick up. Get ready for the school children to swing by our door and ask you to help them raze funds for a school camp, class projects, or to pay for facial tissues because the schoolz no longer provide those. Get ready for long(er) lines at the stores. And most of all, get ready to pass around the Fruit Cake.
Although it is rumored that some readers of this blog like fruit cake. And so now I pass on the challenge to my sister: make a fruitcake that isn’t nasty.
My Nority
This is a highly opinionated, highly controversial post with satire, philosophy and predictions all built in. Read with discernment. If you don’t know what discernment is… don’t read this, please.
It turns out that being white, and being on Sesame Street no longer go together. When I watch television (with oh, so much regularity) the last thing on my mind is race or color unless the script/actor/marketer makes it a part of the show. For example, having Snoop Dogg do something automatically plays the race card because he’s been ‘pimping’ hard gangsta life for so long. But when you put Denzel Washington doing something, or Samuel L. Jackson doing something I don’t automatically switch to racial profiler mode. Nor do I freak out when I see Asians, Latinos or Jews doing something. Unfortunately on Sesame Street they’re so concerned for “minorities” to be represented that they’ve made non-minorities the minority*.
What this does is breed the problem. It is part of the postmodern America that we are becoming. Postmodernism says that I can’t understand you, and you can’t understand me, because we’re different. Different people can’t relate. However, it also says that I should strive to understand you, as long as I understand that I won’t fully understand you. So I get mixed messages, mixed cultures, and mixed chex, but I can’t understand any of them. Which is OK, because I’m pretty sure that you can’t understand me either.
At least we’ll all be ignorant, confused, and in the dark ages together. This time we won’t be under the religion of Rome, we’ll be under the religion of the universities, the government propoganda and the media. What’s ironic is that in a couple hundred years people could say, “The second dark ages were caused by ignorant people who were tribalistic. Ironically it was started by a group of people trying to end tribalism.” But then the students will all be bigotted towards the New Yorkers or the Los Angelinos or the Denverites. Or worse yet, Texas will have finished its conquest over North America and we’ll all be Texans changing our ‘All.’
And the children will watch Sesame Street and learn about Co-operation in a bar where more than one redneck has a weapon.
* I find the term minority to be offensive because it puts an emphasis on people that is unfair. Instead of being a person, the person is a sub-classified person. While that makes sense for a sensus or demographic marketing research for racial profiling in a capitalistic environment, it really, really ticks me off that we have to focus on this stuff over and over again.
Sniped
Jessica just got sniped on eBay. For those of you who don’t know what that means it means this: She’s really ticked off because just one minute before the auction was supposed to end someone else bid more than her and ‘won.’ Sniped means that I’m going to have to endure a woman scorned and I had nothing to do with the scorning. Sniped means that she’s going to go out and pay suggested retail on something out of anger. Sniped means… that eBay is not going to be her friend 🙂
Bad Parenting Choice #3,456,789
This morning Abby came into my office and said, “Dad, I wish you hadn’t had that last beer. I really love beer.” Which is a little tough to swollow given that she has never had beer. But she has had Root Beer. Which is not the same. She just doesn’t know it. The place where I should have piped in, “Sweetheart, beer and root beer are not the same thing.” was instead replied to by me giving her a hug and telling her that she can’t have beer. Which is close, but didn’t differentiate enough. This is where I should probably start fearing for her that she’ll become and alcoholic by the time she’s 5, but I’m not going to because cute children never do anything wrong.
Yew Nork
Yesterday Abby announced to us on the way home from church that she wanted to marry our neighbor Wayne, whom I believe is older than all of her grandpas. Jessica told her she couldn’t do that because Sue, his wife, had already snatched him up. After a little time of thinking she announced that she would have to go to ‘Yew Nork’ and find a man to marry.
Abigail, if you read this when you get older: you don’t have my permission to do that, but I couldn’t say it with a straight face when you suggested it 🙂