seagulls calling

Today got off to a slow start.  First off I was awake most of the night coughing.  Oh not from the pneumonia, but rather it was caused by gagging on the BS delivered in last nights Republican primary debate.

A guy on facebook said that after watching the debate last night, he was going to have to vote for Obama again. I ROTFLMAO.  Obama sounds like an idiot, when he tries to speak without a teleprompter.  I certainly won’t be voting for Obama.  But sadly I foresee another election where I have to throw up before and after voting for the Republican.  In 2008 I was shaking with anger, nausea and frustration, as I voted for the RINO McCain.  The mainstream media choose Romney.  The uninformed are backing Newt.  The high right are for Paul.   And Santorum…  well he just lacks something like fire, life, leadership, sparkle, electability, or whatever.

Speaking of Santorum…  Why do gays and lesbians HATE him?  His view of gay sex and marriage is just like Obama’s.  The only difference is that he had the balls or stupidity to say it on national television.   Obama did publically say that he did not support gay marriage, but apparently not one homosexual in the entire country heard it.

What do I have against gays and lesbians?  Nothing other than I resent them stealing being happy (gay) and rainbows.

Newt has a gay sister.  Does he get bonus points for that?  I don’t think so.  She is supporting Obama.  I’m not sure if the following is is true, but it does sound like something he’d say…  Newt promised to overthrow the Iranian government by dropping chocolate covered pork rinds, all over Iran, during the first cold spell of 2013.

Well all is not lost.  I did wash the cat.  She hasn’t felt good or acted like her old self ever since that stupid dog, Rascal, moved in with us.  She hates him, especially when he becomes confused and thinks she is a squirrel.    I heard her on the phone yesterday volunteering him for an Alzheimer’s study in southeastern Turkey.

This morning SquirmE was busy playing when suddenly he put up both arms for me to pick him up.  He immediately laid his head on my shoulder and went to sleep. It was a bit out of character for him, but still nice.  Every time I look at him, I remember that miracles do happen. 

In early December, SquirmE shared a cold with the entire family.  Our lowered resistance led to varying complications from ear infections to pneumonia.   On Christmas Eve, he had to go to the ER with a reaction to the antibiotics for his ear infection.  The hospital has a separate ER for kids.  The kid’s ER doctor was dressed as Santa and gave out gifts.  SquirmE got an antler, pajamas, wearing bear with a red nose.  SquirmE thought the mall Santa was Satan.  The ER Santa was cool. 

Christmas was fun despite the illnesses and YoDa’s constant attempts to spoil it for SquirmE.  She made cookies, but tormented him by limiting which ones he could eat and how many he could eat.  He could have eaten many more than her stingy allotment.  In total frustration, he was forced to eat dried cat food, which was surprisingly tasty. 

YoDa only put a few lights and couple stockings on the Christmas Tree.  Then she put the tree in the corner of the room with SquirmE’s playpen around it.  Later she put the gifts inside the pen too.   That created a dangerous challenge for SquirmE.   He conquered it by running down the couch and leaping over the pen, onto the tree and finally landing on the gifts!    This great feat should have been followed by cheers and applause, but instead there were screams of terror from YoDa.  The woman seriously lacked a happy Christmas spirit. 

SquirmE helped everyone open their gifts.  Normally we wrap the gifts in reusable bags, but this year, just for him, they were wastefully wrapped in paper.

Weekdays SquirmE stays with his loving, perfect grandparents, while YoDa is in class.  YoDa had about three weeks off.   So we, the perfect grandparents and dogs, have been suffering from SquirmE deprivation.  It is a very sad state, causing anxiety, sadness and nervous snacking.   Luckily, for us, life returned to normal Monday.  (The cat was purrfectly happy without him.) 

Cute SquirmE Side Notes:

 On his first day back we were snuggling while playing on the computer.  I pulled up his shirt and tickled his belly.  He thought that was pretty funny.  After about the third time he pulled up my shirt and blew a big raspberry on my belly. 

 I have discovered that SquirmE can be tickled with a flashlight beam.  Once he realized it could tickle via make believe, well…  game on…

 He can talk, but doesn’t do it much, well unless it is important.  He was shopping with his mother.  He kept grabbing things off the shelves.  She would put them back.  He grabbed a box of brownie mix.  As she was removing it from his grasp she said, “You don’t need this.”   He firmly responded, “Yes, I do!”  Ahhh the power of chocolate…

 Miguel has repeatably insisted that SquirmE call me Granny.  My GREAT grandmother was Granny so NO.  It makes me feel ancient.  Honey Badger Miguel don’t care.  He points to me and says to SquirmE, Granny.  I say NO.  He ignores me and repeats Granny over and over and over again.  So now SquirmE with a twinkle in his eye and a big grin calls me by my first name.  He seems to really enjoy making Granddaddy (Miguel) grimace.   You have to know I love it. 

 SquirmE Ham Posing

ESPN’s Pitiful Delayed Online Coverage of the National Collegiate Football Championship

Alabama 21   LSU  0

Once again we have a National Collegiate Football Championship Team without a playoff.  Oh please this is absurd.

Football is the only major NCAA sport without a playoff tournament to determine a champion.   Why?  Obviously money.  If there was a playoff, it would be much harder to buy the position of National Champion.

In his first TV interview after winning the presidency, Barack Obama revealed his first major policy initiative: college football reform.   What happened to that?  Why the hell didn’t he follow through?  He has had three years and he has done nothing. 

Some might ask why would the president have to be involved in college football?   Several reasons:

1. The system crosses state lines.
2. It is a monopoly.
3. It will obviously take an act of congress to get the BCS to reform the system.  Someone has to push them into action.

Also, why is it that the game was on a MONDAY night when it should be on Saturday or Sunday?  Why wasn’t it shown on network TV?  Some of us don’t have cable and can’t afford to hang out at a bar for hours watching ESPN.

So…  Obama…  If you want your presidency to stand for something positive.  If you want your ratings to rise.  If you want a legacy…

REFORM COLLEGE FOOTBALL!

Miquel jumping at the Annual January 1st Polar Bear Jump, which occurred this year on December 31st because the 1st was on Sunday.  Apparently, polar bears don’t jump on Sundays.  Who knew?!   ?We had no idea.   Upon further research we discovered that although they don’t jump, they do drink beer.   You can tell somthing was up with the bear judge in the photo who gave Miguel a 10 on form.

The air was warmer and the sun brighter than it has been the last few years.    This was Miguel’s 2nd jump of the day.  Yes, he loves pain.

Once again I resolve to remain as cute, sweet and smart as I am now.  Why mess with perfection?  And it is one resolution I actually keep.

FYI:  As a kid, the old commercial fishermen taught me to accurately predict the weather in Florida. ( It is the most difficult place to do so in the US.  It is on a peninsula where two climates merge, etc.) I took meteorology classes in college.   I accurately predicted the intensity and route of Hurricane Andrew four days out. 

Our local meteorologists are pitiful.  For some odd reason they think they must put out predictions a week in advance.  They are usually wrong to various degrees.  This is about how it goes.

5-7 days out      The weekend will be warm and sunny. 
4 days out          The weekend will be warm and mostly sunny.
3 days out         The weekend will be above average temperature and partly cloudy
2 days out          We will experience average temperatures for this time of year with a chance of scattered showers.
1 day out             Get your coats and umbrellas out.
Saturday             Currently raining with a high of 40.  Tomorrow will be more of the same, as temperatures drop.
Sunday                All major highways are at a standstill due to the overnight icing that we warned you about last might.   Stay home.  The high winds blowing the big trucks right off the roads.

Then they advertise that they were the first to warn you of the ice storm. 

They will literally change the forecast several times a day.

I try to get as much raw data as I can and determine the upcoming weather myself.  Today I was in a hurry and the NOAA site didn’t come up, so I went to one of the local sites to look at the radar.  (Just curious as they predicted a sunny day and it is raining (not fog mist but rain drops).  I know I shouldn’t be so critical.  After all this morning they did add “fog” into the mix.   Anyway…   this is what I got.

 
Please note that today is Friday.  I pulled up my PC calendar as proof.  (OK I could have reset it, but I didn’t.)  Their site is showing the weather for Wednesday.  Yes, that can just be a webmaster error, but seriously it just goes to the “quality” of our local weather programs. 

They must think we are a bunch of idiots not to notice how often and how extreme they change the predictions.   I can see their side.  People want to know what to expect, so they can make plans.  They hold the TV meteorologists accountable.  The TV stations compete for advertising dollars and viewers, so they each want to be first.   They are in a can’t win situation.  But please…

One station even gives you a weather rating for the day, just in case you are too stupid to figure out for yourself.  They call it the Wizometer.  OK I assume it is based on the weather.  Just looking at the name it could be based on someone’s urine flow.

Should law enforcement officers be held to a higher standard than the community at large?  Yes, they should be just slightly more law abiding then me.

In Georgia, as in most states, it is illegal to block intersections and entrances to fire houses, police stations, etc.  Common sense should tell you that but some people just don’t care about the safety or others, much less the inconvenience.

My old subdivision was located at the corner of two very busy highways.  There was no light at our only entrance.  When traffic was heavy and especially when a train was crossing down the street, the cars would totally block us in or out.    Occasionally a nice person would open a hole for us to drive through.  The problem was that it took two nice people and frankly the odds of getting two nice people next to each other isn’t good.  Getting two nice people with working brains is really rare.  So we were forced to edge out into traffic, like a slow motion game of chicken.

One resident got the bright idea to call the local police to enforce the “do not block the intersection” law.  But instead of ticketing the entrance blockers, he ticketed the residents for aggressive driving.  No kidding.  It was just crazy.

Last weekend I thought about that entrance while stuck in traffic near a fire station.  (It is my favorite fire station as the EMT’s there saved my life.)  As you can see in the photo, I complained about the cars blocking the entrance.  Please note that for the not so bright drivers, the entrance has big white X’s painted on the road.   But it doesn’t matter they ignore them and that doesn’t surprise me.  I was surprised to see that one of them was a police officer.   I wanted to knock on his or her window and then point to the fire station, but Miguel wouldn’t let me.   <insert grumbling noises here>

The entire area was a parking lot, because the biggest mall in Georgia is a few miles down the road and a local church decided to give away a turkey with a week’s food to 6,000 people.   It was a nice gesture but poorly planned.

We eventually found a way home but the entrance to our subdivision was blocked my law breaking, inconsiderate Christmas shoppers and turkey grabbers.  They would not let us through.  Finally I got out of the truck and knocked on the window of the main SUV.  I told her to move up.  As she started to move the idiot behind her also started to move.  I threw up my hand and gave him the look of death.  He stopped.  Apparently my insanity also frightened the guy next to him who not only stopped but actually backed up.  Miguel drove through and we stayed home the rest of the day.

SquirmE is conflicted.

Should he go with his gi and pursue a martial arts path?

Should he go with his camo pants taking the invisible hunter path?

Or should he follow his own internal, fearless, crazed Honey Badger path?

I was tricked into joining facebook.  YoDa signed me up, so we could play Mafia Wars together.  B O R I N G…   I had to give it up before my mind turned to cement.   I used an alias and tried to avoid adding friends.  I was doing pretty good, until I was high on post surgical pain pills and added a bunch of strangers at 4 AM.   Miguel harassed me into adding my real name.  Luckily that confused the system and no one can pull me up by alias, name or email.  Tee hee hee.  [Say it like Snidely Whiplash would.]

99% of my snail mail is junk.  .08% are bills.  .02% consists of other stuff.   I can’t remember when I last received an actual letter.  I certainly don’t write them.  Communicating with friends via snail mail is not an option for me.

We have a pay per minute cell phone, which is not used for casual chatting.  Miguel decided that the land line phone was a total waste of money.  We now have a computer linked phone.  The commercials lie.  It is crap, lots of dropped calls and breaking up.  But it is free.   We seldom use it. Communicating with friends via the phone is difficult.

Email is my favorite form of communication, but as more and more people get into facebook the number and frequency of emails diminish.

More and more people just want to communicate via facebook, google +, etc.

There are several problems with social media.
1. It is totally public.  If you think any part of it is now or will remain private, think again.
2. You miss your friend’s posts, especially on facebook.  You might think you see them all, until you go to their wall (home page) and see everything he/she actually posted.  Oops.
3. You aren’t really communicating.

People assume that because they have seen your pictures and posts that they know everything important that is going on in your life.  They assume that even though some of us only post what we consider OK to be public knowledge.  Of cours some people post every little personal detail …  TMI (too much information).   Other people are lurkers.  They seldom, if ever, post anything about themselves.  Somehow many of the lurkers assume that the act of reading about you, lets you in on everything going on in the lurker’s life.  Clear as mud?  Simply put, they know a little bit about you, so you know everything about them.  For example:

Miss Lurking Neverpost calls Mrs. Bigmouth PostTMI.  Lurking assumes that Bigmouth knows as much about her life as she knows about Bigmouth.   Lurking is confused and hurt that Bigmouth had no clue that she had triplets, suffered a heart attack and her husband was arrested, again.

Don’t laugh.  When is the last time you really had a one on one discussion with each of your online “friends”?

Yesterday, Trifle, a 13.5 year old (x7) Corgi bitch went for an unauthorized walk. 

She was arrested while jaywalking across a busy highway, without a license. 

That was so unfair.  How was she to know where she was?  She is pretty much blind and deaf.  She is either senile or just no longer gives a shit what any of us have to say.

Since no photographic equipment was allowed in the jail when Miguel bailed her out, she agreed to do a re-enactment.

I waited a few days before saying anything on this subject.  I wanted to get the screaming and cursing out of my system before I dared to write.

Dear Her man Cain

I am disappointed in you.

Do I think you are guilty?  Yes, without a shadow of a doubt.

You handled this mess badly.  Didn’t you learn anything by watching Clinton and Newt?

First off you handled the ladies wrong.  You should not have handled them at all, but since you did, you should have had the sense to know it would come out in a campaign,  When it did, you should have manned up and not lied about it.

I hereby resend my endorsement of you for president.