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Rare Chinese cat captured on film.

Leona Helmsley leaves $12 million to her dog.

Moxley does not seem to have a problem with this type of estate planning.

If you’re a troll with a VERY DISTINCT writing style and you have been banned from a site and keep coming back under different pseudonyms and don’t bother to change said writing style, don’t expect people to actually believe you aren’t the same moron.

Just sayin’.

We may get our Constitution back!!!!!!!!

Alberto Gonzales Resigns

Stumbled on this today - looks like a great challenge for anyone - should get some good ideas taking this tack.

Eat Local Challenge

With the heat back, we’ve got our storms back.

Power went out, back on, cable out, half-back with audio, now getting some video.

FedEx field emptied because of the lightning - game delayed at least 20 minutes - if they let them play, hopefully there will still be a few fans around. My buddy Melissa is probably rather soaked and pissed off right now as she is at the game. (Or in the parking lot.)

The lightning has been great, but I’m glad I’m not out in it.

The dog is in the basement, the cats are simply annoyed.

Susan Dennis‘ Mom had a great saying: “You know, it just takes time to live!”

Spot on.

This has been a really good week, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I apparently need to cut sleep out of the equation or figure out a way to add more hours to the day. Hey, if Hugo Chavez can just change Venezuela’s time zone by 30 minutes, the US should be able to add 6 hours on to the day for me. For someone that supposedly does nothing at all, I seem to have a lot to do and not enough time to do it.

First, there is the market - this pays the bills and I am completely engaged from 9:30 to 4:00. (It makes my brain happy.) Then there is research after hours. Studying. Errands. Cooking. Eating. Attempting (and failing) to keep this house under control. Reading for fun. Contemplating the meaning of life. Exercise. Some quality couch potato time with the TiVo*. Baseball. (Until hockey is back.) Socializing. Spending time outdoors. The occasional road trip. Keeping up with folks on LJ, the Stockpickr forums, BT, and a near metric ton of RSS feeds**. Writing. Fighting writer’s block. Trying to figure out what the dog’s paw wave means today.***

Just doesn’t seem to be quite enough time for all that *and* sleep.

I’ve always found it interesting (and mildly frustrating) that life will manage to find a way to fill all the time that you have. Lord knows in the past year and a half, I have never once thought “I’m bored” nor have I had to actively look for something to do. It’s also a great way to find out where your priorities really lie - and looking about the house, it would seem that housework doesn’t quite make the “high priority” list.

It’s so very easy for the low priority stuff to just fall off the radar, cause I am truly a slacker at heart. Gotta unslack a little this coming week and slam a few more things in the week that have got to get done. Haircut. Cooking some real food. (I’ve been greatly lacking in ideas & inspiration the past couple weeks.) Take a flamethrower to the living room. Restock the wine rack. Laundry. OMG, laundry. Get car to dealership for recall repair.

Now, we’ll see this time next week how much of that actually gets accomplished or if sleep gets in the way.

* Guilty summer pleasures: Burn Notice, Deadliest Catch & Dirty Jobs (or pretty much anything w/Mike Rowe involved)
** 202 feeds - ranging from news, food, cooking, to comics, photography and cute overload. Probably too many, but I enjoy reading them all.
*** It changes. Constantly.

Last night I commented on the Yankees being “crushed” by the Angels, 18-9.

Well, “crushed” has been well and duly redefined by Texas today after their game with the Orioles which ended 30-3. No, that is not a misprint. Lord knows that was my first thought when I saw it.

Think very smart thoughts for my bartender buddy Wes tomorrow - he’s got an important exam and we can always use all the help we can get in these things. :)

Also, why is it that thoughts that will drive you to giggles only seem to happen when you really can’t laugh? I went up to the pub for a beer and some west coast baseball tonight to shut my brain off. I am contentedly sitting there watching the Yankees get crushed by the Angels, and I glance over at the guy to my left and all I can think is, “Dude, where is Snowy??” Had he been further down the bar, I could have burst into hysterical laughter, but nooooooooooo… Even worse when I realized that there was probably NO ONE in the place that would have had any idea what I was referring to - being the oldster sucks some days.

An acquaintance is in a family where all the cars are basically shared and such and everyone has a set of keys to all cars. Good if you misplace your keys or lock them in the car, or need to take the bigger vs. smaller car, but it does have it’s hazards.

It’s not at all uncommon for cars to be left overnight in the side parking lot of the pub on the weekends as folks pile into cabs or seek alternate transportation when leaving for the evening. This motley crew regroups the next morning to retrieve the autos left behind, quiet nods are exchanged and all are usually thinking the same things…

Why do the birds have to be so loud this morning?
Does the sun have to shine that brightly?
Will I ever learn that shots are not a good idea?

or

Um, where is my car?

Inquires were made in the pub, no towing operations have taken place. The morning crew says the car wasn’t there when they got in. We’re all quite sure the car was still there the night before. Finally a cell phone rings. “Oh, I needed your car so I came up and got it this morning and forgot to leave you a message…”

Quite the way to get your day started.

Somewhere, in a drab little cubicle, there is a government accountant that bursts into tears every month trying to reconcile the rent accounts because the Cubans won’t cash the damn rent checks.

For the locals: If you’re contemplating a trip to Lucky’s Sports Theatre & Grill - they do not have pool tables. (I don’t know why I thought they would, but I did, and they didn’t.) It’s as if Glory Days, Q-Balls and the old video arcade at Springfield Mall had a drunken threesome and produced a love child. The OTB feed is a nice touch if you like to watch the ponies, though.

A little fashion and etiquette advice:

First, there is really nowhere outside a gym or 1986 where a muscle shirt is acceptable. Second, wandering around the pub and flexing and hovering around the women gets you absolutely nowhere - as a matter of fact, it quickly makes you the subject of ridicule. Third, when you take a seat at the bar and someone tells you that someone is in fact sitting there and you will need to vacate the seat, vacate the damn seat already and don’t try and walk off with someone else’s beer.

Following these easy tips can make the evening at the pub enjoyable for all. Not following these tips could very well result in someone taking a swing at you, or at minimum declaring, “Dude, you suck.”

Yup, watched the Washington Nationals become an unfortunate footnote in history as Barry Bonds hit #756 this evening. After beating my head into the bar a few times, I did at least applaud for him. (I don’t begrudge him #756, but why against the local team??) Juiced or not, it’s still an accomplishment. Doesn’t matter anyway, cause give it a few years and A-Rod will take care of the entire asterisk issue. (Against the Nationals, Orioles or Padres, I’m sure.) As we all said at the pub, “We’ll all know the answer to *that* trivia question!” as we watched “history” happen.

Doping in any sport really bothers me A LOT**, and I will admit that I am very disappointed that Hank Aaron’s record was broken by someone that will always have the steroid cloud over his head. C’mon guys, go old school and get there with beer and hookers like everyone else did back in the day.

I guess the thing that bothers me the most about doping is trying to figure out how someone can still sleep at night after “winning” something w/the help of modern chemistry. Even if you don’t get caught, won’t you always know that you didn’t get their on your own? Won’t you always wonder if you could have done it *without* being juiced?

Here’s to the next broken record not having an asterisk next to it.

** The past 2 years of the TdF have driven me up a wall.

Who all out there is actually familiar with “Spoon River Anthology“? (And if you don’t mind saying…your age?)

Not necessarily “read it and remember every detail” so much as having some idea of what I’m talking about when I say it.

I’ll admit I was struggling for the exact title last night when I was joking around with my brother about the “Tales from the Pub” version, but there was no recognition whatsoever of what I was talking about.

I’m just trying to figure out if this was something I learned via my Mom the English Major or something we read in school that was abandoned by the time my brother got there.

In the spirit of “Spoon River Anthology”, there will be a series of short stories entitled, “Tales From the Pub”.