PaPaTevia's Xanga

Abandon Ship

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:12:47 GMT

I am tired of the foul ads that show up occasionally on this site so I've decided to bail. I'm heading over to http://fivemilesfromhome.blogspot.com/ and, in the next day or so, will be firing up http://www.fivemilesfromhome.com once the registration is completed. If you decide to follow, I look forward to seeing you over in blogspot world. If not, it was nice knowing you.

Fixing Things

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:35:02 GMT

As a guy, I like to fix things. Today I had both of my daughters in tears as a result of my attempts to fix things. Daughters don't always need things fixed. They just need things heard, listened to and understood. I was a little smarter with my wife today. I was tempted to try to fix things with her as well, but managed to just listen. It was a rare moment that I hope to repeat someday. Unfortunately I didn't repeat it in the evening when my daughters needed me to just listen. I opened my mouth and tried to fix things. I fixed things alright. God, who (unlike certain guys he created) is wise, decided to make women both complicated and forgiving. I am not the only guy who has benefited from that wise design decision.

Politics

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:10:54 GMT

NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, the Washington Post and pretty much everyone in Hollywood is unashamedly working to elect Obama. FOX, Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hanity, Washington Times and pretty much everyone who has a talk radio show with any audience is unashamedly working to elect McCain (well, at least now that Palin is the VP candidate). This is obvious to most everyone who spends more than 5 minutes watching, listening or reading, and yet most if not all of the media providers pretend to be presenting the facts for our consideration. It is a silly charade. NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, the Washington Post and pretty much everyone in Hollywood is going to do everything possible to make Obama look like a god and McCain look like Elmer Fudd. FOX, Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hanity, Washington Times and pretty much everyone who has a talk radio show with any audience is doing everything possible to make Obama look like an articulate puppet and McCain a spectacular running mate for Palin.

It is important to know you are being manipulated by people who are given vast fortunes because they are so good at manipulating.

Wow

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:46:31 GMT

I haven't been particularly excited about this election. Obama is an extremely articulate socialist. And I have been really rather ho-hum about McCain. But Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate is simply astoundingly brilliant. My respect for McCain has gone through the roof for the brilliance of the selection. Now I'm excited.

Jamaican Rum Cake

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:31:35 GMT

I noticed in my calendar a few days ago that it was the anniversary of my old office mate. The wedding was 10 or 15 years ago, I really don't remember now, but the one thing that still is vivid in my mind was the Jamaican Rum Cake. He is from Jamaica and his family knew the official way to make this terrifying concoction. I had some warning because he had brought in a piece for me to try a few months earlier. It was supposedly chocolate, but the level in which every molecule had been soaked in Jamaican rum made it impossible to tell. This isn't the kind of recipe where the alcohol cooks off. This is where the cake is baked and then left to soak in rum for weeks (yes weeks). It is essentially a rum flavored napalm and I was really nervous having a (very small) piece of it near the candles at the wedding. I emailed him this week to say congratulations (we have long since moved to different parts of the facility at work) and let him know that the ulcerations in my mouth from his Jamaican Rum Cake have just about healed. He told me that means it is time to bake a new one.

Happy Anniversary Alf - I miss sharing an office with you (and not because of the Rum Cake).

Digital Surprise

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:53:39 GMT

In a freak violation of all that is natural, our cable TV provider actually gave us the free HDTV they promised 8 months ago. The fact that we registered a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and a local radio station to pry it out of their bureaucratic hands was probably a coincidence. I suppose calling it free is a bit much considering how much per month we are paying for their service, but it was a pleasant surprise. And it turned out to be a much nicer TV than I expected (I expected something the size of a wrist watch screen). What was even more of a surprise was when I plugged it into our roof antenna. I don't have a wire run upstairs from the cable service but still had the old wire run from antenna. I was stunned when the channel scan on the TV found 60+ stations. I guess the rest of the world (well at least the thin layer of the affluent world) knew all about digital TV and the stations that are now between the regular stations (4.1, 4.2, etc.), and probably most knew that the stations were HD. I didn't. As if I didn't already have enough to distract me from things that matter...

Home and Piggly Wiggly

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:09:36 GMT

We have gotten better over the years at not taking everything we own with us when we travel. Our motto used to be, "If we own it, we bring it" and it required vans equipped with car top carriers. We actually made this trip with far less this year and came home with far more than we left with. That is because we decided to buy our food down at the beach. There was a very profound sadness when we arrived to discover that the Piggly Wiggly became a Lowes grocery. As far as I know, we don't have a Piggly Wiggly up here, at least no where near us, and we were so excited that to go to the Piggly Wiggly that we brought our little plastic customer cards. It was gone. I have a deep rooted fear that some marketing consultant from NYC is going to decided that Piggly Wiggly is not a good name and they should go with a new name like GrocCo or Stratford Food Market or some other marketing drivel. Not being able to shop at something called Piggly Wiggly was the only low point on an otherwise stellar vacation - one that the NYC consultants should note.

Here is a bonus picture from the trip. Yes, they are real and alive and our daughters got to hold them for a good 17 seconds.

Undisclosed Location

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:40:40 GMT

We are at an undisclosed location somewhere along the southern Eastern half of the United States. It is undisclosed because I have been overcome by a complete and self-centered desire that no one find about this amazing gem of a beach (except our friends who likely already know where we are). As I walked along the massively wide, flat, soft, white sand beach last night I was struck by how close to perfection this place is. The water is a perfect temperature; the waves are of a perfect height – intimidating but gentle. The beach extends out into the ocean at a perfectly gentle slope with no drop-offs and therefore no hydraulics so common and dangerous at the ocean. The temperature has been in the perfect mid-80’s, the breeze steady, the air crystal clear, the beach sparsely populated with families. I realized that when I dream about going to the beach, this is what I picture and every place else is disappointing. The beach is massive with huge stretches completely uninhabited as wildlife sanctuaries. The populated areas are all residential (except for one or two tiny hotels by the one lane bridge that gets across to the island).

The house we rented is directly on the beach with two a story great room that is little more than 3 walls of windows. We don’t even need to step out of the air conditioning to feel like we are on the beach. It is a beautiful place. For the first time in many, many years of vacationing, it is simply our family. We have loved vacationing with other folks over the years but after walking through what we consider to be the hardest year of our life (thus far), it is very restorative just to be together as a family. Morning we are taking turns leading a family devotion, the days are spent swimming and reading, and the evenings are spent on long beach walks or watching movies.

Some folks would not enjoy this place and the selfish side of me is glad. The sparseness of the island, the lack of any activities or boardwalks or carnivals or even restaurants would be a real strike against this place. That is what makes it so perfect for us. It is quiet and peaceful. Little happens but waves, and wind and pelicans and turtles and dune foxes and moonlight and breezes and sailboats and crabs scampering and families strolling. We are all overwhelmed at God’s kindness to us. The lavish, peaceful place we are enjoying right now something countless people will never experience. We don’t take it lightly and began the week talking about the parable of the talents. This week, this house and this undisclosed island are something we have been entrusted with and we are eager to be able to look back and see what eternally significant and fruitful things we did with this trip.

Thud, Thud, Thud

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:05:04 GMT

Our neighbor's girlfriend's son has a band. They like to practice in our neighbor's garage - the one with no insulation or sound proofing. They actually sound pretty good and the music is interesting, sort of a techno-african-jamacian sound with a lot of bass. And that is the problem. The bass carries through their thin garage walls, my wall of Leeland Cyprus trees that I planted to block the view of my neighbor's ever growing trash heap (which he burns in a spectacular bondfire every few weeks), and the well insulated walls of our house. I would probably like the music if I were given the choice of listening to it or not, but I'm not given that choice. I suppose it could be worse and my neighbor's girlfriend's son could be pulling the stereo out of our car or, the worst of all possible scenarios, we could be under the contractually binding dictatorship know politely as home owner's associations. I wouldn't need to plant trees to block the view of the trash, but I would need to get permission to plant trees anyway so I probably couldn't. I wouldn't have the thud of a bass coming through my wall at 11 PM at night, but I would probably have the thud of the HOA inspectors knocking on my door to verify it is made of the approved vinyl and not metal or wood. I'm not willing to sell myself into a polite, well manicured slavery.

Disturbing

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:45:38 GMT

There are a phenomenal number of disturbing things about public bathrooms. There are 3 things that I find particularly disturbing:

At work, the water fountain is just outside the bathroom. It disturbs me when I am drinking and the water pressure drops at the same time I hear the toilet flush. I understand the rational explanation, but it is very disturbing.
It disturbs me that soap dispensers in some bathrooms use yellow soap.
It disturbs me when you see the shoes of the person in the stall next to you under the barrier and they are facing toward you instead of forward.

On a completely different note, I heard about a computer cable for sale on Amazon that costs $500. It is a digital cable which means it either transmits 1's and 0's or it doesn't. A $10 digital cable transmits the same quality data as a $500 digital cable. The user comments (at 269 at last check) had me laughing until I could hardly breathe. It is definitely worth a look (one or two get crude):

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000I1X6PM/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1