i have a feeling that the little family will be on a trip far far away... very soon.
Three little fuckers left.
The trap caught mamma and one of the babies just before sunset tonight. The pest control guys don't show up at work til about 9 tomorrow, so i guess the coons get a nice little room for the night. The 3 remaining babies are just hanging out and sticking close to mama. They'll pick up the trap tomorrow and transfer mama to another container, then leave the SAME trap on the roof so the kids smell their own mother and hopefully get caught too. They'll wait for a couple days before they release mama, so hopefully they can catch all the kids and release them all together.
I feel a little bad. This was almost too easy. Well at least mama and one of the kids got a good little meal out of it. The bait they left looked like a feast for a raccoon.
its 85 in my office.
I just had a feeling about the day when we got there. Its a weekday morning and this place is full of model san marino women. Most of them are nice people who are very polite and act just like normal people. BUT there's a element in this city that you have to watch out for. Take the woman sitting at the table directly behind me. She's alone eating breakfast, and on the cell phone. Now i have nothing against people sitting talking on cell phones. As far as i am concerned you can talk on the phone all you want as long as you are not operating heavy machinery. For those of you who are fuckin stupid out there.... An automobile is a piece of heavy machinery. So she's talking away. Now most people when they talk face to face with a person have one volume of speech. when you're on the phone, you have another volume that is usually a little louder. You speak as if you have headphones on and you have no perception of how fuckin loud you are. Well this lady was a little past that volume. She was just plain fuckin annoying. BUT that's not the best part. She sat on the phone the ENTIRE time Jen and I were there. She was on the phone when we sat down, and she was on the phone when we paid our bill and left. AND... she did nothing but complain about EVERYTHING while she was there. It seems that this woman had recently been to a wedding and needed to critique everything about it. It also been out to dinner with the In-Laws on the other end of the wedding and did not appreciate their methods on tipping in restaurants or really more to the point their ability to NOT TIP and smile and walk away. This was hilarious. Jen and I were entertained for our entire breakfast. Just when we thought she had calmed down she would start to say ,"thank you... thank you... THANK you... yes yes yes yes, i know, THANK YOU." progressively getting louder and louder and louder, then she would take the conversation again and start on another rant.
All in all the breakfast was good, but the atmosphere of it was just a little off.
So then we went home to deal with random crap. We still at this point of the morning have raccoons in a trap on our roof. The pest control guys have not come, and we're starting to worry about the coons cause they're sitting in the sun on a black roof and they are panting cause its so fuckin hot. We call them again and find out they will be there in an hour. I go outside and hose down the raccoons, and trust me on this one, Mamma raccoon was SO happy to get soaked. As soon as i turned the water on her, she started to rub her face like she was washing herself. She rubbed the water into her fur and tried to soak it all in.
We left the house now with the Getty Center as our next destination. Getting there was not too bad. I just had to drive around the westwood area for 20 minutes trying to find this fuckin parking lot that you have to park in if you don't have a parking reservation. So by this time Jen is already car sick. AND now we have to get on a shuttle bus to take us up to the top of the hill. So jen gets even more sick on the shuttle ride up. She's already pissed, but i am too blind to see it. I walk her around the gardens and through the galleries. And finally we sit down for 10 minutes to take a little rest. This is when it really hits jen that her birthday sucks so far. Well at this point we are both dog tired and we both want to go home. the 405 the 101 and the 134 all stand in the way of us getting home. So it takes us over an hour to get back to our house.... which is fuckin 90 degrees anyway cause the A/C does not work.
INTERMISSION
so we try to stay cool at home. we try, but there just no way in hell that we can. we take a nap for an hour and then we get ready for dinner. jen puts on a new dress and i (just after waking from a nap) say something that i will not repeat. My brain was not fully functional at the time i opened my mouth and so the dress comes off and Jen changes into another outfit. We go to cafe Bizu in pasadena and have a great dinner, but we're both so fuckin dead tired that i don't think we enjoy it as much as we should have. We both are in bitchy moods, so we end up going home, getting in a stupid fight and going to bed.
I get up in the morning and the trap didn't catch any raccoons. how fitting.
so that brings us to Thursday. Jen and i get up and try to let cold air into the house and then close the house up to keep it cool. Hahahah i know it's funny, and we didn't end up doing any good. jen runs out to say goodbye to the Bell's before they leave for their long trek across the nation. Later John stops by to check his mail and we went to Twoey's for lunch.
We stop by his house and i help him a little with loading things into the car. I say my final goodbye to both John and Kate and get back home... where jen is waiting frantically trying to figure out where i went.
It seems that we had been invited to the Hollywood Bowl that night by Jen's parents. So off to the bowl. I check the web site before we leave and i realize that the LA phil is playing July 4th selections as well as a performance by Kenny Rogers. So i spent the night looking up Kenny's nose cause the seats that Jen's parents got are in the box that is literally the front row.
Concert was good. I have to say that the LA phil's performance of Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring was by far the best piece of music played. I really hate to say this, but "the gambler" just does not do it for me much anymore.
We get out of the bowl and head directly for the valet line for the car. We were one of the first people out, and 45 minutes later we still don't have out car. So after bitching out a large number of valets we are told that we should have been handed the keys and the car was parked in a lot below the valet line and we could have gotten in it at any time. Well let me just say this... the hollywood bowl has always had bad parking. For a time they figured out how to deal with cars, but the addition of valet parking in the last season has just fucked over everything. They actually charge people $25 for valet and then make you wait at least 30 minutes to get your car. Can you say "SCAM". I think there were a total of 8 guys moving over 100 cars. Each of these guys was getting tips from everybody at the beginning. You can bet the tips were fuckin small by the end of waiting. So now i am sitting in my house that has finally cooled down to a reasonable temperature, and i think i am calling it a night.
Then yesterday when i thought everything in this house had gotten bad enough.... all the drains plugged up. I was in the shower and before too long i was standing in a few inches of water. Well i get out of the shower, use the plunger a little and then just figure i'll go to the store and get some liquid plumber. Well a WHOLE BOTTLE of liquid plumber later, there's still no difference. I start to run around the house and thats when i realize that the drains are ALL clogged, not just the shower in the master bathroom. Actually when i run the water in the kitchen it starts to bubble up in BOTH showers and then soon the bathtub as well. So liquid plumber SUCKS. I run to OSH to get something INDUSTRIAL. Jen runs up front to the neighbors to ask them if they are having any problem. When i get back Jen tells me that they are not having any trouble at all. So i get to work. I found this product "INSTANT POWER HAIR AND GREASE DRAIN OPENER". This shit has so many warnings on the bottle its just gotta fuckin work. And the fact that its in a bottle that's also in a safety bag that has a sticker on it that says "GUARANTEED TO WORK". I really think it was the sticker that sold me. So i bought two bottles of this shit. I now figure that the clog is somewhere "downstream" of my bathroom, somewhere closer to the street. So i pour about 2 cups (yes i did read the directions) of the "INSTANT POWER" into the shower drain in my bathroom, which by the way is now flooded as well. About 20 seconds after i finish, Anna from up front knocks on our gate and says that she just realized that her daughters' shower was clogged. We talk for about a minute and decide that we'll call the landlord and let them get a plumber. She leaves and i sit down for about another 30 seconds. Now i just have to say that the directions on the INSTANT POWER say that you want to wait at least 15 minutes before you rinse hot water down the drain, or wait a few hours for a really bad clog. It had been less than 5 minutes and suddenly i hear all the drains in the house start to empty out. Now remember, a full bottle of liquid plumber and a hour of waiting didn't do shit! This stuff did the job in 5 minutes!!
It just so happens that my shower is directly next to the neighbors shower. That shower is used by 3 girls all with LONG hair. Hmm that's right where the clog was.
Now comes the great part. I started to look online for reviews of this stuff or any other information. The first thing i found was a set of instructions on how to make homemade TNT!!!! and this shit is one of the primary ingredients!!
Well the new one should be installed in a few minutes and then i am back to a cool apartment.
In other news...
triple play on the raccoons.
I guess the bait i was using the other couple nights really didn't get em. Last night i threw a bunch of grapes and a cut up lime. I figured the lime would smell enough to get them interested and then the grapes would be a nice little treat. I never thought i would catch all three babies in one shot, but i am really glad they'll be together.
Jen and I went to Marstian's for breakfast. We're sitting there for a long time when i noticed that there was a group in the corner that was really talking energetically with a lot of hand movement. The girl doing a lot of the talking was Camryn Manheim and the person she was talking to "loudly" was Marlee Matlin. It looked like a little pre production meeting of some kind because you could tell everybody was throwing around ideas. I only hear a few things, but i think they're planning some children's benefit of some kind.
I got back from breakfast and gave the raccoons a good little bath with the hose and gave em a little dish with water in it. I think they're happy now. They've eaten all the grapes i had in the house.
In other news:
I've started to pack. I've got boxes and i've got two weeks to get everything out of the house and into the new place. I've gotta make a run to ikea for some table legs cause i'm ready to destroy all my desks and rebuild them. (insert 6 million dollar man theme here) I need to get all my crap into a smaller space, but the fact is, it is more than enough space if i would just be a little more organized.
I also have to plan for GoodWill picking up a load of old clothes and stuff we need to get rid of. I'll be cleaning out the storage shed for the next couple days.
Well...
maybe if Stockton would join the crew.
If you ever thought Metallica was just fuckin NUTS, then this will come as no surprise to you.
Metallica SUES over E and F chords
I believe it is time to bring a class action law suit against Metallica for just wasting everybody's time.
Robocop and now this
Threat rating: extremely low. You may think you can
subvert the
government, but if you should try
you will be smited mightily because God likes
us best.
What
threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
As i keep digging i find a keychain that has a bunch of little knick knacks on it. There's a little gold eagle that i got when i became an eagle scout, and a few other little stupid things. But the most amusing is the little key on it.
Back before i had braces i had to have a "upper palette expander" cemented into my mouth. My upper jaw was too narrow, and this thing would literally push the two sides of my jaw apart. The problem was... I had to crank it myself. I had to pop this little key into a hole in the fuckin apparatus that was inside my mouth and then push it back toward the back of my mouth. One quarter turn felt like someone was trying to force a crowbar into my mouth. i had to crank it one half turn in the morning and one half turn in the evening. I hated this fuckin thing. I had headaches for a month until one morning i woke up and the "expander" had finally broken the bone of my upper jaw. I didn't exactly know that this was what was going to happen,and that it was expected. So i wake up with a gap between my front teeth that was literally about a centimeter wide. I had to leave the expander in my mouth for another 4 months to wait for my bone to regrow, and all the time i sounded like a fuckin moron.
All this crap, and i'm in so much fuckin pain cause i've been hauling boxes to the new place. All i can look forward to is a nice dinner. Becham Grill is calling me. Jen and I are going to have a nice little anniversary dinner together and try to forget how much shit we have to deal with. yup that's right kiddies... 2 years.
It kinda sucks right now cause he's got no entries. But maybe if everybody yells at him a little, he'll do something.
But this one! This is just fuckin STUPID! If you are stupid enough to build and fire a rail gun, then you deserve the possible electrocution or the chance of being hit by your own projectile!
My ISP got everything set up finally and i actually have a client's site up now that works. Rich Romero owns a little product called Ducky. He's made this all around cleaner that actually works really damn well. The site is not much to look at, but it works.
Go buy some DUCKY now and make Rich happy!
BuyMusic.com has implemented a javascript that blocks mac users using any browser. :) this is too damn funny. If you would like to get to buymusic from a mac you can simply turn off javascript support and you're back in. Don't you just feel the love?
Using Safari - go to Preferences then click Security
Just turn off javascript
Windows Server 2003 -- You Can Do More With Less.
I don't know if this tag line strikes anyone else as a little ironic, but i just had to put it out there. Do they mean do more damage to your business with less security? Something to think about.
First they said that Tony, the guy in the front unit, sometimes likes to use the bathroom late at night. His bathroom window is directly outside our bedroom window. So when he flips the lights on at 3AM and starts to bang around in his bathroom, its like spotlight is shinning right into our bedroom. That and it sounds like the entire North Korean Army is marching around. Actually the North Korean Army Syndrome is not limited to Tony's bathroom. The marching is everywhere. Our upstairs neighbor Matthew likes to pace around. I myself like to pace. If you ever see me on the phone i can't stop walking around, but he seems to do it ALL THE TIME. It would not be a big deal, but the floors creek with EVERY step you take.
But none of this is really the crown jewel of the new apartment. The best part is the neighbor directly across the hall. John said, "she's needy". Kate said "she's nice". They are both full of shit. I was unpacking my car yesterday. I make a few trips back and forth. First trip. Neighbor's door is closed. Second trip. Neighbor's door is cracked open. Third trip. Neighbor is out in the courtyard on her cell phone. Fourth trip. Neighbor is out in the courtyard on her cell phone... crying. As i pass her on the fourth trip back into my house, she gets off the phone conveniently just as i pass her (still crying). She starts to talk to me, but her timing was a little off, cause i think she's still on the phone. I get all the way to my door when she finally catches up to me (still crying). So she starts talking. I am holding VERY HEAVY steel supports for one of my tables and trying to get my door open. She's blathering about some guy and clearing the tears from her eyes. I quickly get the door open, set the shit down in the house and then get back outside where she's still talking about the guy. She only will refer to him as "jack" short for jackass. She invites me into her apartment (which is not a really good idea on her part cause i stink like shit, and my smell is contagious as the plague). She asks me to sit down (red flag), then offers me a glass of wine (red flag), then asks me if i am married (RUN!!! GET OUT!!! RUN AWAY NOW!). Ok, so it comes down to this. I don't have to disclose all the details that she dropped on me, but I got cornered for a good amount of time where i heard about EVERYTHING going on in her life. I think to Ed Norton in Fight Club, "Strangers with this kind of honesty make me go a big rubbery one." After dumping all the details of her life, she turned to the "guy" that was helping me move my things into my apartment the previous day. There were two men helping me the day before, and i know she's not talking about my father. So that means yet another woman has swooned for my brother. I inform her that he is happily taken. Her reaction is much like that of Dick Tracy. Her arm swings down as she snaps her fingers and yells, "damn!". She pushes for details of his life and asks if i could set up a dinner with him. I tell her again that he is happy. She asks about his girlfriend. I tell her AGAIN that he's happy. THEN MY SAIVOR ARRIVES. Doug, who lives in another apartment upstairs walks by with two huge armloads of groceries. She races over to introduce me. Doug has the look on his face like, "Oh fuck she caught me. Now i am going to have to talk to her for an hour" We shake hands and he races away as quick as he possibly can, and at that point in the break of the conversation I make my break for it. I explain that i have some undisclosed business to attend to and need to get going. She left me with one standing order as i left. If i know anybody that wants to date a 50-year-old, three times divorced woman with no children, please send em her way. I can say without a doubt that John and Kate Bell are both laughing their asses off. Thanks you two.
The place is getting better now that we've got all our garbage into it. The most entertaining thing is the living room. We used to have a large amount of space between the couch and the TV. Now we've got more space behind the couch to walk and the TV is right there in front of you. Well the problem with this is... Jen gets violently motion sick, and i flip channels like a squirrel with a latte. Put the two together and you've got one pissed off wife. So needless to say we've moved the couch back a few feet from where it originally was placed and i try to give Jen a heads up before i go into "turbo mode" on the channels.
In other news: WE HAVE CABLE!
Yes, after 4 years without anything but local TV (and KCET) we've got more of nothing to watch. I found that all cable does now is bombard me with more commercials and less content. Oh well, at least i've already gotten it out of my system and i will not become a fuckin couch potato. (add the "e" for Quale)
So what has the power of cable provided me with? Well first of all i left Star Trek TOS on most of the day yesterday. I didn't watch all that much of it, but had it on while i was moving crap around. Then last night i finally watched the Dead Zone. Ok, i know i am usually about 3 weeks behind on my daypop, but i said it already, i am 4 years behind on my cable! Does anybody have the Dead Zone season 1 set on DVD, cause if i can't borrow it, i'm gonna buy it as soon as i get back from vacation.
Last night i went over to my parental unit's house to celebrate my brother's b-day. My brother made the decree that only Tony's Pizza could be served. So we ate 4 large pizza's from Tony's. We played a little bocce ball in the backyard and had a good time. I took pictures, but since my brother busted my camera... i won't be posting them just yet. Less than 2 weeks before i go to hawaii and i've either gotta get my camera fixed (fat chance) or run out and buy a new one. hmmm I might be calling on spidey.
176. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
(a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances
of extreme danger to life or property.
(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or
merchandise.
(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned,
drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged
with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk,
draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
(e) The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be
easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
(f) The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia,
letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should
not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed
on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should
not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may
be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The
flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica,
should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be
destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.
BUT I GUESS NONE OF THAT MATTERS
178. Modification of rules and customs by President
Any rule or custom pertaining to the display of the flag of the United States of America, set forth herein, may be altered, modified, or repealed, or additional rules with respect thereto may be prescribed, by the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, whenever he deems it to be appropriate or desirable; and any such alteration or additional rule shall be set forth in a proclamation.
I guess this means that our dumbass president has the right to use the US Flag as a means of advertising himself.
-------END OF LINE-------
We are happy to say (i am really sorry John and Kate) that we got rid of the gas smell in the apartment. Jen called the gas company and hit the "emergency key" and they had a guy out in 20 minutes. He used a fancy little gas detector doodad and found that there was a gas leak on the pipe that leads to the the stove. He fixed that up fine and bingo, no more gas smell. We also had him turn off the pilot light to the furnace, cause who the fuck would need a furnace in Southner California in July?
Well we're almost done. One more set of things from the old place and then we have a walk through at 5:30. We've got a pile of garbage out back that is going to piss off the garbage men, but it's all in cans and bags so... fuck it.
I'll be back online tomorrow in the afternoon when i get my own connection at the new place. Until then...
