Category Archives: The Obvious

The things that are so obvious that it is funny.

Swimming Lessons in a Pool Full of Tears

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Tonight Abby had swimming lessons, but as we left Evelyn just lost it.  She cried and cried and cried.  Tears streamed down her face that we would leave without her.  We could have been going to Hell [Michigan] and she’d have wanted to come with us.  Of course somewhere in Nebraska she’d throw an equally intense fit because she was still in the car.  She’s become quite the drama queen.  I’m praying the God sends a miracle our direction to cause her quaint little happy-all-of-the-time attitude to come back.

Pulling into the parking lot at the recreation center I realized that about 25% more people wanted to recreate than could park in the parking lot.  No amount of patience that I could have or have supernaturally given to me was going to free up enough parking spots for me to fit in and get Abby to her lesson in time.  So I parked around the side of the park on a side street and we walked to the pool.  I think we cleared the quarter mile in about 6 minutes which was good given that Abby is so short and I’m so slow for being in the near prone coding position I sit in all day.  [my legal team would like me to state that I don’t actually sit in the prone positionwhile coding lest I be released from contracts for being lazy]

Abby’s swimming lesson went well.  She didn’t panic when the teacher instructed her to rest on her back (while being supported by the instructor’s arms).  She didn’t panic when the teacher tied a lead weight to her middle and dropped her into the deep end.  Abby was well behaved. [My legal department wants me to tell you that no weights were tied to Abby and the deep end of the kiddy pool is only 4 feet deep at most]

Of course the teenaged girl who was doing the group lessons appeared to be maybe fifteen or sixteen years in age if I’m generous.  Its hard for me in my nearly-thirty state to just look at a teenaged person and say, “That person is [some number] years old.”  My ability to judge ages for people on the whole is weaker now, but the teenagers throw me for a huge loop.  I’m even finding some early 20 year olds hard to distinguish from teenagers.  It is as if there’s some conspiracy to make me feel very old now.  It won’t work, I’ll get plastic surgery and face lifts until I’m 45 and then I’ll just let it all go.

I’m hoping to bring the camera to Wednesday’s lesson.  That way you can see pictures of this instructor with Abby and tell me that she isn’t barely older than Abby 😉

Low Hanging News

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I shouldn’t pick on the news writers, except that its their job to write useful news… or is it?  Take this article for example.  I want to know what form of logic is consistent that allows you to have an influx of people into an area, that if removed, means that the area would lose population.  You could logically say that if those people stopped coming into an area that the populoation would stagnate and eventually, due to death and alien abductions the population would go down, but you can’t say that because immigrants are moving into an area that the population would go down if they stopped coming.  Its a false argument.

Let me put it forth in a formula because I can’t [SIC]:

Immigrants + population in an area = greater population

but that doesn’t mean that

population in area + 0 > population in area

I’m sure that’s a bad formula and I’m sure I lost most of the readers after the word forumula above.

Getting Up Early Helped A LOT!

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By reading this article (link) you will get the impression that the switch to daylight savings netted almost no gain in power efficiency in the United States.  I want to posit that the scramble that went into checking software out to make sure that it was ready for the change cost the U.S. more money in computer power and man hours than it will save for decades.

Sad.

Compost

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At our local mega-giant-club-store-where-you-buy-in-quantities-that-would-feed-third-world-countries they had a compost bin for a price I couldn’t pass up.  I bought the bin because I hate throwing away so much food.  We throw out so much stuff wrapped in plastic trash bags that could be recycled that I’m embarrased to be involved in the process.  So along with recycling glass, plastic, paper and metal products I’m also recycling some of our food waste.  That food will go into the compost bin, get eaten up by bacteria, and according to the line drawing that came with the instructions, will come out as small lines of garden goodness.

We’ll till the compost into our dirt and then our dirt will be happy.  Happy dirt for happy worms that will be eaten by happy birds.  I’m hoping the happy birds will then drop happy bird droppings on our car instead of the sad or solum droppings that they now drop periodically.  Because that would make me happy.   Not as happy as, say, not having the droppings hit my car at all, but better than sad droppings.  That’s why you should compost, too.

What environmentally friendly/fiendly things do you participate in?  Not “earth day” which is just a joke, but real things that you feel emotionally involved in like driving a Hummer or a Prius?

You Can Buy ANYTHING on eBay

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I have written in the past about eBay and man breasts. Today I think that I found out about eBay and breasts of all sorts. While reading a blog (that to my knowledge does not write about nude breasts every day) I saw this advertisement and just had to snap a shot:

a naughty advertisement

I never thought that you could buy those sorts of things online – I thought it took a plastic surgeon or a pixel surgeon.

American Idol’s Star of the Night?

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Tonight’s super-star was a girl who couldn’t have been more than 11 or 12 years old. She cried during several of the performances. How do I know? Because when she was crying the camera crew was on her. She got more attention than the artists when she turned on the water works.

Congratulations Ashley (Ryan Seacrest asked her name) for rocking America with your tears of joy. It was truly like the British invasion video footage I have seen of teen girls crying over the Beatles.

I’m Not Cleaning That Shelf

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Today at the deli, where I almost didn’t buy my deli meat I overheard an employee going over a health inspection sheet that apparently stated that some areas of the deli be cleaned by next inspection.  This is good, I’m not concerned that they needed to work on some areas because that is just normal for businesses.  I was, however, concerned that the lady was then broadcasting that she was not going to be cleaning that shelf!  “You have to actually move stuff on that shelf, you can’t just wipe around things,” she said.

I think I’ll be shopping at another ‘super’ market.  That’s just not super, and its not marketable.  [lies start here] I can get away with not washing my feet because I’d have to actually bend down to wash them, but I don’t believe any health inspectors will be evaluating how clean they are for preparing food on [lies end hear].

2% Milk

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Jessica went to Starbucks today and ordered some tea.  After asking the gal which teas they had that would not curdle the milk and having the gal tell her that all teas caused milk to curdle (which is simply not true), Jessica talked her into putting milk in with some sort of tea choice.

Jessica asked, “Can I have two percent milk, please?”

The gal looked at Jessica and said, “I usually put in half milk, half water.”

I wish I was making this up.

My Clever Wife

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Jessica is clever.  She’s got it in for a contestant on American Idol.  She can’t stand the Sanjaya fellow.  He’s Hawaiian, which would normally be a plus, but he’s like the Hawaiian version of Michael Jackson, which is a major minus.  Wait, he’s not like Michael Jackson in the dancing department, he’s like Michael Jackson in the weirdness department.  He doesn’t even sing as well as Micheal Jackson (the 12 year old Michael Jackson, not the one who is in the media now periodically for doing strange things like converting to Islam, touching little boys in naughty ways, and of course having almost as much plastic surgery as the now gone Anna Nicole Smith [whose body was probably no where near deteriorating at the time of her burial]).  Sanjaya just gets Jessica’s dander up, and she’s allergic to dander.

So Jessica’s scheme is to call in next week from our phones and vote for the second stinkiest performer (probably that Phil guy) who is male.  15 votes for Phil is 15 votes that can’t go to Sanjaya.  Of course once Jessica votes Sanjaya off of the island, she’ll be after Phil.  And Phil – you don’t want her after you like that, I’ve seen her game face and she’ll take you out.

Oh, and I predict here and now that Melinda will take the American Idol competition no matter how good Chris Sligh is.