• Not a shingle dollar

    Thats right friends, no play on words is to lame; we’re officially poor. Late last week we employed a classic strategy for budget busting known as “roofing.” Any time you employ someone to perform strenuous labor in uncomfortable circumstances AND you involve a primary component of the structure of your house… you’re likely to end up hosed. What’s more, like the garden variety, there are several ways you can take your hosing… the traditional “soaking” method or the lashing technique are but two examples. Either way your bound to feel ill afterwards.

    I don’t know about you, but I’m about to throw my hose away. Not only is it harbinger of memories best forgotten, but everywhere it goes growing grass follows. Frankly, I’m surprised we’ve kept it around this long. I really hate to mow the grass.

    On a high note: I took in a most excellent hockey game Saturday night. Had it come later in the season, with graver consequences hanging in the balance, it might have been the best live hockey experience of my sheltered existence. And on a relieved note, we made a nice trip to see Cheryl’s family in Orlando. As astute readers can attest, I don’t normally relish an opportunity to see our old home town, but Sunday’s road trip wasn’t bad at all. It may not sound like much, but there’s nothing wrong with a weekend that’s not bad.

    **Author’s note: this entry was submitted in it’s entirety without proofing or editing of any kind. Just for kicks, I turned off the spell check too. (Boy we’re really having fun now!)

  • Bogota, we have a problem (another entry about coffee)

    I think I have the symptoms of a serious chemical imbalance. Specifically, America’s favorite stimulant doesn’t seem to be working as a stimulant. I am familiar with the concept of tolerance… but this goes well beyond your garden-variety tolerance issue. It’s as if I’ve punched my ticket to bizarro world, or left this plane of existence, did not pass go, did not collect my $200, and went straight to hell. You see I’m strapped in the back seat of a van barreling down the highway towards Orlando, Florida.

    *** This is a test of the Vacation Disaster System. In the event of an actual vacation, this alert would be followed by an intervention; to make sure you really wanted to spend your vacation in Central Florida. ***

    As it happens the occasion of this trip is not a vacation, but a visit with some blood relations of my in-laws. Anyway, I’m sitting in the van with my knees pushed back into my appendix, sipping some store brewed joe, when I begin to feel drowsy. DROWSY?!? I just sucked down thirty-two ounces like a horror movie monster; I should be wired like the gas tank of a ’76 Ford Pinto hatchback.

    I’m beginning to suspect foul play. I can just picture a disgruntled Dunkin Donuts employee indiscriminately slinging decaf to the unsuspecting a.m. customers with an evil gleam in his eye.

  • On the other hand, I may be completely alone.

    Following a bit of whimsy, I was pricing used G3 iMacs yesterday afternoon. For the 99.99999999999% of you who have insufficient background information on the G3 family of iMacs to sufficiently appreciate this entry… the G3 family of iMacs were fazed out by Apple in 2001, and were the original form factor for the iMac that was introduced in 1998. Anyhoo, I thought a used computer that sold for $799 new in mid-2001 might be pretty cheap these days… some six years later.

    I couldn’t find one cheaper than $400.

    Just in case you were wondering, that does not qualify as “pretty cheap.”