All I ever wanted....

What's that? You can't wait for me to get home tonight so I can upload all of my vacation pictures? Okay, okay, here's one to tide you over. That's me poking a dead jellyfish with a stick on Sanibel Island.



















Still not enough? How about one of Red Sox captain and catcher Jason Varitek at spring training?















I hope that's enough for now. I have plenty of photos coming from our eight day trip. We had a great time, got a tad sunburnt (my ears just stopped peeling today), helped put a new roof onto a hurricane-damaged home, saw the Red Sox spring training, and did much more. And now we're back in cold Baltimore. Oh well, all good things must come to an end at some point.

Stay tuned!

Home

I have arrived home safely from Florida, and I had a great time. Will update soon.

Also, yes, I've noticed that Blogger has now become evil and attached a pop-up ad to my site, and I'm not particularly happy about that. I'll see what I can do to fix that, but my guess is that it's just another way for them to try to get us free bloggers to become a paying customer (No Pop-Ups!).

Vacation!

Why am I up so damn early? Because I'm about to get on a plane to Florida - woo! Have a great eight days, gang!

Tech Support Fun

Kate N.: Right. I need to escalate this issue for you to the server level technician to get this issue fixed for you.
Me: thanks, I appreciate it.
Kate N.: You are most welcome.
Kate N.: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: Well, I am hungry right now.
Kate N.: Me too.
Me: But I can take care of that myself. But, thanks for your help today. I don't need anything else.
Kate N.: So nice of you.
Kate N.: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
Kate N.: Bye. Take care.

Snow

Well, you think you move away from the massive snowfalls when you go from Boston to Maryland, but not this time. Our homestead got 21.3" of snow according to the National Weather Service - that's vs. Cambridge's 18".

We spent our Sunday digging out the white lump that was our car. Marylanders are an interesting creature. Most of them freak out when it snows more than one inch. Schools close, drivers become more insane than usual, etc... But man, throw almost two feet at them and the world ends. I think maybe 12 people in our entire complex had shovels (including us). So while we dug out our cars, the rest tried to slam on the gas and back over the two feet of snow. It was great entertainment watching them fishtail and get stuck, and it also snapped our "good neighborism" into gear as we would then go help them shovel out the tires and then push them over the great hills of snow.

But, now begins the Parking Wars until the snow melts. Neighbor shall fight against neighbor to keep their clear spots while the others circle like vultures until you leave. Oh well...next week we'll be in Florida. Woohoo vacation!

Misc., again

-Well, the Super Bowl wasn't that great. Mostly because the Steelers won, but also because neither team played that well and the officiating was pretty bad. Also - The Rolling Stones just need to stop. Please.

-And the best part of Super Bowl Sunday was really the Animal Planet "Puppy Bowl.". We turned it on during half-time to see the hilarious Kitten Half-Time. Watch the clips, it's so cute your head will explode. And then you'll think - wow, how much time did I just spend watching animals run around in a pen attacking each other?

What also made the Puppy Bowl funny was when they would actually have a ref come on the field and penalize the pups for something. Those of us watching the game had a good time imagining what that young man was thinking about knowing that his acting career had now come to wearing a ref's outfit while kneeling in an animal pen and calling an "unneccesary roughness" penalty on a dog.

-Video: Because I like spending time with Google video, I found this clip to share. It's five minutes long, and it's a clip from Trading Spouses. Safe for work. If you like watching crazy people rant, you'll love this!

-Books: Sometimes I like to tell you guys what books I'm reading. I just finished an excellent book on a horrible topic, "The Rape of Nanking." I'm now getting into "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Ride and Scandalous Fall of Enron" and a favorite of mine that I've read before, "Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement."

-House-hunting, keep your fingers crossed for us folks - Amy and I put in an offer on a house yesterday. Let's hope it goes well. The same day we saw this home, we also saw some other crapholes that were fantastically horrible. One place had water leaking through a light fixture as we stood there and watched it. Another place had tenants in it who let us in warily, but then 15 minutes later told us they were buying it. Very sketchy. Plus, we didn't want to cross them because they had at least 25-30 photos and posters of mobster movies up around the home - including drawings of Al Capone and other notable real-life mobsters. Nice.

The IRS?

The IRS sure does have some horrible hold music. I'm on the phone with them right now, and they just have "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" playing on a loop. Seriously.

Somehow I don't think anyone feels that way about the IRS.

State of the Union

Folks, I'll be honest - I don't normally enjoy watching the State of the Union. I know it's important, so I always read the transcript the next day, but having to watch it is painful. It's always full of drivel and things that will never happen and "ra-ra, my administration is amazing! whee!" type speak - whether it's a Republican president or a Democrat. Then there's an hour of applause for every other sentence spoken.

So yes, it's important, but I can get what was said without watching the circus it is.

Yet yesterday, I figured I should watch it...in a more interesting manner, though.

I'm not a big drinker by any means. I'll have a beer every month or so, tops. Yet last night I decided to make watching the speech a drinking game. As research, of course. *ahem* In any case, I was not alone because Amy also joined in the research.

We decided that because Bush has buzz words, we'd drink a sip/half-shot of beer for certain ones. We started off with a list of six and said we'd each choose three.

Our list of six: liberty, family, terrorists, America, freedom and democracy. Amy, sensing my distraction to what was on TV before the speech, quickly chose her three: liberty, family and terrorists.

I immediately objected. "No way, you left me with the worst ones!"

"Not true, I took 'terrorists.' That alone will be bad."

I eventually agreed to the decision. What we also added to our list was one word for each of us that would require us to drink an entire beer - basically meaning we lose (we're lightweights, one whole beer in anything less than an hour is destruction). It would have to be a word that had a slim chance of being said, but most likely would not come up.

I told Amy her Destruction Word should be "Mississippi." This is because we knew Bush would bring up Hurricane Katrina, but maybe wouldn't say all the states that we affected. She agreed to it.

I had a harder time figuring out mine. Fortunately, D called. Now that I look back on it, my word choice was just plain stupid. Perhaps D was working with Amy to bring me down. After a few emails this morning, I discovered this was true, D did set me up.

They chose the word "oil" for me, and stupidly, I accepted. I thought he would bring up energy policy, but there's no way he'd say oil. Dumb dumb dumb. Anyway, enough foreshadowing.

First of all, I had the worst word list. America? Come on, Bush said that five times in the first few sentences. And freedom? Argh.

Anyway, as the speech (and our tiny little half-shots of beer) continued, I took notes. The image to the left shows a smattering of them - they were taken on several pieces of paper lining our coffee table. Click on the photo for a full-size image. As the hour-long speech wore on, my handwriting became much much worse.

I pieced the notes together better for you here.

9:20pm - Michael Chertoff has huge hands. Dammit, stop saying America!

9:25pm - Cheney and Hastert look bored. Please say terrorists. Come on. Amy hasn't taken a drink yet, dammit. TERRORISTS! TERRORISTS!! SAY IT!

9:27pm - Amy is trying to write our rent check. I don't know why she chose the middle of a drinking game as the time to do this. Perhaps because drinking beer takes away the pain of how much this dump charges us.

9:28pm - Mother of ass, stop saying America. Please. Also, our shot glasses are appropriate. I'm using one from my college - which signifies the huge cuts the government just made in federal financial aid for students. Amy's shot glass is the one I got while in New Orleans back in the spring of '98. 'Nuff said there.

9:29pm - Speaking of Louisiana, one of their congressional reps is hot.

9:30pm - haha, look at hillary's face, she's all "f*ck this shit" when bush mentioned wire-tapping without actually saying wire-tapping.

9:31pm - Mikulski! There's our 3-foot-high senator! Yeah! Also, stop saying America, shit! Stop it! I need a break.

9:32pm - Our cat is staring at us from next to the entertainment center. The look on her face is one of shame. Tuesday is ashamed of us. I think she just shook her head.

9:33pm - "WTF? Who said we wanted a centralized economy?" Amy yells out. I'm giggling, Bush recently went through a long spate of the word 'terrorists.' Also, because she was so far behind me, I made her drink any time he said any derivative of the word 'terror,' including terrorism, terror, and terrorist.

9:34pm - I am so losing.

9:36pm - "Is he really saying that?" Amy yells out in rage. "Permanent tax cuts?"

9:38pm - For the love of all things holy, i need a break. bring out the second beer. NOOOOO!

9:39pm - Thank you, president Bush for only saying "the united states" that time and cutting it off after 'states.' god bless you for that. I need a break.

9:40pm - Haha, a joke about Bush's dad liking two people who are turning 60 this year, Bush jr. and Bill Clinton. Hillary's face is again priceless, again with her own smirk and a "f*ck this shit" look.

9:42pm - DAMMIT, DAMMIT - LOOK AT CHERTOFF'S HANDS! THEY ARE FREAKISH! THEY ARE SO BIG!! HE COULD CRUSH A COCONUT WITH HIS BARE HANDS!! I need another break.

9:43pm - blah blah blah. Amy got the easy words. Liberty? Please.

9:45pm - "Whee! Look at me, I'm Bill Frist and I'm a DOCTOR! Terry Schiavo was alive!! I saw the tapes!!!! RARRRGH!!"

9:50pm - F*CK! HE SAID OIL! DAMN YOU AMY AND D! NOOOO!

9:50pm - Son of an ass, he said OIL TWICE! ARGH!! Stop laughing, Amy.

9:51pm - 3 times! 3 times he's said OIL.

9:52pm - dead.

9:55pm - oh yeah, here come the tortilla chips. thanks, amy. what, Bush? blah blah "redefine marriage", rrrrright.

10pm - Amy just gave the cat a tortilla chip.

10:03pm - NOO! He ended with "America!"
------------

Here are two final tallies based on Bush's speech.
America: 71 times
Freedom: 16 times

Amy did better. For her words, as that one dude in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said, "She chose...wisely."

Because I finally made Amy start drinking on any derivative of "terror," he must have said those about 10 times. In any case, it may sound like our living room was beer-soaked and covered in tortilla chips by 10pm, but actually we'd had a total of 3 beers by then. Each of us drank 1.5 beers. Yup. Lightweights.

So, I'm glad I watched the speech. I absorbed what was said and enjoyed the fun of our game. Perhaps next year we'll make it a group event. I will not choose my words so poorly next year.