Dr Copa

My wife and I were talking last night about how very weird it was that the Obama had decided to bring out that new “seal” to display in front of him during the campaign.  It was so MUCH like the Presidential seal that we both felt that it was being a little bit “presumptuous” to be using it.  We were both really surprised that the people in his campaign came up with that seal, and even more surprised that Obama agreed to use it!  It seems like the newscasters could not let go of talking about the seal, either.  I think it was quite a snafu in what seems to be an otherwise well managed campaign!

If you don’t put your life jacket on before you get on the boat, rationalizing that you’ll grab it when you need it, by the time you realize you need one, it could be too late to grab it!  I think that everyone who applies to register their boat should be required to take and pass a Boating Education course. 

When we lived in New England, we lived on a large lake and we enjoyed taking our boat out for a spin whenever we had a chance. Unfortunately, at least once a year we would read in the local newspaper that someone had drowned in the area due to excessive alcohol consumption which resulted in reckless boating. The law does not require everyone to wear a life jacket, simply that there are enough on the boat for each one. I think that is fairly useless; everyone should be wearing their life jacket – they should put it on before they get in the boat and take it off only after they have gotten off of the boat.

Every night after supper, I like to help myself to a bowl of ice cream.  It is my favorite dessert in the entire world.  My wife likes to eat it immediately after supper if she is going to eat it, saying that it gives her heartburn if she eats it too close to bedtime.

My wife doesn’t like to take me grocery shopping with her because I go straight to the ice cream freezers and load up on ice cream.  My favorite flavor is Natural Vanilla Bean, but sometimes I like other flavors, like strawberry.  My wife’s favorite flavor is strawberry cheesecake.

I want to buy an ice cream maker, so we can make our own soft ice cream here at home.  I’m going to check the wize.com website and see what their recommendations are for the best ice cream maker.  I think that it would be so wonderful to be able to make our own ice cream here, nice and smooth, creamy and fresh.

My wife showed me an article from a local newspaper today about how Red Virginia crabs have recently been introduced to the folks in Virginia as an additional choice in their seafood menus.  I’ve never been highly informed about crabs in the past, having grown up in New England, I’ve always been a lobster man.  In fact I can say with complete honesty that I’ve never eaten a steamed blue crab in my life.  My wife says that anything with a shell is too much work for her to bother with; she’ll eat it if its already been cooked and shelled, but she won’t cook it OR shell it herself.

Anyway, apparently Red Virginia crabs are caught in the ocean off of the shores of Virginia and are a lot larger than the blue crabs are.  The newspaper article said that the Red Crabs are at least a full pound larger than the blue crabs!  The blue crabs have been over-harvested and are becoming scarce, so the local restaurants are starting to offer Red Crabs, and the folks seem to love them!

My daughter called me last night to brag about how she got her green belt in karate earlier in the day!  Wow!  I can’t even imagine her in karate class at all!  She was telling me how much she enjoys the class, and that her favorite part of class is sparring.  She is thinking about entering some local competitions in upcoming months. 

I asked her what kind of body protection she uses to keep herself from being injured, and she reassured me that she uses the same proforce sparring gear from AMWA that the competitors use on the American Gladiator television show.  That made me feel a little bit better.  I don’t like the thought of anyone hitting my daughter!

I don’t mean to be rude, but it is getting quite annoying to get so many comments from my “loyal readers” that simply say “I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…” especially when the post is not about anything that could be agreed or disagreed upon! Come on spammers, give me a little bit of credit, at least put some thought into your comments!  At least READ my post and make your comment relate to it, it really shouldn’t be that hard!  It’s not like I’m typing in code!

Bankruptcy is a last resort that many people are finding themselves turning to.  I’ve heard that it is something some people have abused in the past.  I’ve also heard that there have been so many changes in the laws around bankruptcy that it does not even make sense anymore to declare bankruptcy, all it does is officially ruin your credit for years!  One of the best alternatives to bankruptcy may be debt consolidation. 

Well, this was an unusual Father’s Day for me this year.  Usually I spend some time grilling steaks for the family, but not this year!  I spent the day in Norfolk, having attended an Elks convention over the weekend.  I carpooled with some other Elk members, and attended hospitality parties, meetings, and went to mass this morning.  I returned home late in the day and mowed the lawn.  My wife was not home, she had gone to spend the day at her mothers house.  One of my step-sons tried to call me to wish me a Happy Father’s Day but I didn’t hear the phones ringing, so he left a very nice voice message which made me feel good.

My wife still isn’t home yet, and I’m tired so I’m going to bed.  Yes, it was a strange Father’s Day for me this year.

When we bought this house we knew that three of the outdoor wall-mounted lights were in bad repair and need to be replaced soon.  Lately my wife has been on a huge “save energy” kick and wants to put in those socket adapters that are photo-sensitive and don’t turn on if it is light out.  She’s been noticing that almost every day when she goes outside that at least one of the outdoor lights is turned on even if it is light out.

She bought some of those socket adapters, but once they are screwed into the socket and the light bulb is added, the globe to the light fixture is too small to go back on, so we can’t use the socket adapter. She has also been buying those CFL light bulbs for every light she can possibly put them in.  She’s also very unhappy that some of the outdoor light fixtures won’t accommodate the larger CFL bulbs.  She bought some CFL yellow bug lights to install in the outdoor light fixtures, and we can’t use them because they are too long for the globes.  So, she wants to buy new outdoor lighting fixtures that will replace the lights that are in bad repair and will accommodate both the photo-sensitive adapters and the CFL bulbs.

I’ve been looking for new outdoor lighting fixtures at the local stores and just can’t find what we need.  It doesn’t help that we live out in the boonies!  Not a lot of local stores to choose from.  I’ve found quite a few possibilities on the Internet that I am going to show my wife and see if any of them pique her interest.  I know we are going to want something that is extra tall globe, and we are going to want the globe to be frosted because we don’t want to buy decorator bulbs, we want to use the CFL bulbs (which are ugly!)

Anyway, I’ve bookmarked these sites from the www.farreys.com website for her to look at lights from these outdoor lighting collections: Fine Art lamps, Forecast lighting, Maxim lighting, Kichler lighting, and Quoizel lighting. All of those have some outdoor lighting fixtures that I think would fit the bill!

We spent hundreds of dollars on the pets last month at the vet.  Shots, neutering, buying flea/tick/heartworm/mosquito medicines, the K-9 Advantix topical ointment and the Heartguard chewable tablets.  We’ve been faithful about giving the dogs their medications, and the dogs are primarily indoor dogs.  Yet every couple of days I seem to be finding ticks on the dogs anyway!  I really don’t like finding ticks on the dogs, I have to pull them off, and pulling ticks off of a dog is nasty work.  So I am not impressed with this K-9 Advantix claim to repel and kill ticks.

Ever since we moved here, we’ve been having a hard time finding people to come to the house to repair or install things that we need repaired or installed.  It seems that people just don’t want to work anymore!  I schedule appointments for people to come over and give me estimates or to do the work and they don’t shoe up and don’t call.  I keep getting fliers in the mail for a pesticide company and I keep calling them and leaving messages that I want to schedule an appointment, and they never return my calls!  Very aggravating!  It must be nice to be wealthy enough not to need to return calls for new jobs!

Charlie told me that there is a new website in England that he has been using to help find that kind of help when he needs it. It is called http://www.myhammer.co.uk/.  They provide the service for free, the Builders and repairmen register on the website, and the homeowner can post their job on the website, and they get matched up.  The repairman pays a small fee when the job is awarded to them.

That sounds like a great service:  I wish they had something like that here!

We haven’t had a Ford in the family in a long time.  I’ve always been partial to Mustangs, however.  I’ve come across someone who is leaving the state and wants to part with her Ford Mustang.  Bright red 1989, automatic with fancy wheels and air conditioning.  Since it’s an automatic, my wife will want to drive it! (She knows how to drive a standard, but she prefers an automatic.)   I didn’t have a whole lot of money to spend, but the lady didn’t want much for it anyway, so I got it for a song.  I’m supposed to pick it up by the weekend.  I can’t wait to pick it up and bring it home and get it waxed up and start driving it next week!

I was a youngster when the first video games came out, but our family bought all of the home video games that came out on the market.  If it was not available for home purchase, I went to the shopping malls and video arcades to play the games.  I have skipped many a supper (much to my mother’s or wife’s chagrin) because I was too interested and involved in playing a video game.  I have always enjoyed playing the older (now called classic) video games. 

My wife tells me that she used to be pretty good at the Tetris games.  When I see her pack items into the grocery cart when we go shopping, I have to believe her!  When we moved here to Virginia, I was surprised to find that I still have the original Pong game console!  And then we found the old Pacman games, too!  When we found them we sure had a good laugh!

 
CDEarth has put together a software program called Greatest Classic Video Games CD that is a compilation of ten classic video games that I am thinking about ordering.  I was thinking about telling my wife that I was going to order it for our kids to play, but I don’t think she’ll buy that for a minute.  I think she’ll realize that I’m really buying the games for myself.

Looking on the Internet, I found this press release about the games:

CD Earth LLC,(www.cdearth.com) is excited to announce the release of the Greatest Classic Video Games CD now available for Windows PC and Mac OSX.

The new CD includes 10 classic games and will be a sure hit with anyone who played the original video games. Stack falling bubbles, break through brick walls, stack colors against the clock, eat cookies while avoiding pesky ghosts, pop balloons with harpoons, smash tomatoes plus rescue a princess all while putting your spaceship back together.

Preview of some of the games on the CD:

1. Break through over 50 unique, challenging levels. Power the bouncing ball to smash through brick walls. Lots of power-ups plus extra balls, energy balls, extra lives, weapons, glue, bonus floors, paddle expansion and extra score make the game even more fun.
2. Gobble up cookies while escaping from hungry ghosts in this updated version of the classic arcade game.
3. Smiling bubbles. Don’t let the friendly smiles fool you. Group the falling bubbles to make them explode before they reach the top.
4. Pop balloons with a harpoon and avoid being hit in this fast-paced game.
5. Run and jump through multiple worlds, fighting off enemies by jumping on them or bumping them from below.
6. Eat your tomatoes. How many tomatoes can you smash in ten short minutes? If you have the time to spare, this game has the vegetables just waiting to be eliminated!
7. Colorful, addicting game where you quickly lineup blocks of the same color before time runs out.
8. Guide a lost traveler from outer space, through towers and across cemeteries to collect what he needs to rebuild his spaceship.

Customers can get this Greatest Classic Video Games CD for free by test-driving the CD Earth Software Library Club: http://www.cdearth.com/classic-games.htm

About CD Earth, LLC
CD Earth (http://www.cdearth.com) believes everyone should experience the benefits of a great software library. To help customers expand their software library, CDEarth offers a wide variety of some of the finest quality software on the market today through its unique Software Library Club. CD Earth’s catalog includes software for families (http://www.cdearth.com/family-software.htm), children (http://www.cdearth.com/children-software.htm), home and office (http://www.cdearth.com/home-office-software.htm), computer graphics (http://www.cdearth.com/computer-graphics.htm) and, of course, computer games (http://www.cdearth.com/computer-games.htm).

Our dogs love to play with cheap squeaky toys that we can buy in the pet supplies section at Wal-Mart. It is so much fun watching our oldest dog go after they squeaker part with great enthusiasm. Most of the new toys that we buy that squeak, are “de-squeaked” within twenty minutes of giving the toy to her. She loves to play tug-of-war and “keep-away” with us with the toy, and we love to watch the two dogs play “keep-away” from each other. We’ll give them both a new identical toy at the same time, yet each dog thinks that the toy that the other dog has MUST be superior, so they are trying to steal each other’s toys. It really is funny to watch them play with each other and with the toys.

Income taxes, boy oh boy, having to pay income taxes really fries me.  I don’t get paid nearly enough money as it is to survive, and I end up having to pay the medicare and social security tax no matter what.  I’m usually lucky enough to get a full refund of the federal and state income taxes, but we don’t get the social security and medicare taxes back no matter what.  I’m probably going to have to pay taxes on the building that I sold earlier this year, so I am going to need some help figuring that out, it sounds complicated to me.  Fortunately there is an online Tax Preparation Company called Victory Online Taxes that helps the consumer prepare and file online taxes. The online filing part is free, which is good because in the past I’ve thought about filing online and found out that is usually not free.  They have a section of their website that offers tax tips for you to read, and I like that!

Anyway, the Victory Online Taxes website has a wizard that guides you through the process and helps you do your taxes.  They give you a 100% money back guarantee, which I think is really good.  I like money back guarantees!

I got up this morning at 3:30, a little earlier than usual. I looked outside; it was already 72 degrees out. I said “boy, another hot one.” I turned on the weather channel and they said, yes it was going to be 90 degrees but feel like 110. I thought about all of the poor old people out there with no air conditioning, how some of them will probably sit on their porches with their feet in a bucket of water or a wash cloth around their neck. Some of them have never had air conditioning, some of them never will. It was a sad thought, but the world seems to be a sad place nowadays anyway. Yes, it’s going to be another hot one today!

I have a great photo of me on my motorcycle.  I like it a lot.  I like it so much that I like to use it everywhere I can use it.  I found a great website where I can use it to make Photo Card Stationary.   The website is photocardsdirect.com.    All I have to do is send in a copy of the photo of me on my motorcycle and I can customize the verse to say anything I want it to say.  I can put whatever verse I want to create in my own words on the front or back of the card, or just leave it blank if I want it left blank. 

I send out a lot of cards and letters by USMail to a lot of different people – my mother up in New England, my aunt (also in New England) and my sister (in Iraq) to name a few.  They are always thrilled to get “real mail” and not just electronic mail.

So if I order blank-inside cards like that I can use them for any kind of card occassion, just mailing notes, thank you notes, birthday or Christmas cards.  I love my bike so much that having cards like that to use will probably motivate me to send out more mail!

I’ve included a picture of my favorite style card from that website so you can see that it is just the photo and no fancy borders.  I like that the best.

I can’t believe how hot it has been around here the past few days, in the 90’s every day.  The weatherman says with the heat index it “feels like the 100’s” and I sure do believe him.  I wanted to spray the lawn with some insecticide Sunday but my wife told me that if I did it would kill the grass.  I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t spray the lawn anyway.  Just my luck she would be right, and then I’d be listening to “I told you so.”  I don’t like listening to “I told you so.”

My mother needs to buy one of those mobility scooters that we keep seeing advertised on television.  She is disabled and can’t walk more than about twenty steps before having to stop and rest.  It is hard to take her anywhere because of her disability.

I’ve found a great website USMedicalSupplies.com that sells hundreds of different mobility scooters.  They have a low price guarantee, free one year in home parts and labor warranty, and free shipping on all scooters.  I’m going to see if I can get my mother to pick one out.

We had company over today and my wife kept asking me to help her do things around the house to get ready for the company.  She didn’t seem to understand that it is important to me when company comes over that the lawn looks perfect.  She keeps saying things like “they are only walking from the car to the house, and will only see the lawn for a moment; they will be in the house for hours and will be seeing all of the clutter, dust and dirt for hours, please help me inside!”

So, I think I was helping to get the house ready for company.  Obviously she has different priorities than I do; after all I think they will be judging ME by how nice the lawn looks, and that is much more important to me than how they are judging HER by how clean the house is!

I was out riding my Harley the other day and I got caught in the rain.  I had to pull underneath a bridge to stop because I couldn’t see.   While I was waiting for the rain to let up I saw a dozen motorcycles go by.  Most of them all had windshields.  The person I was riding with also had a windshield; he was telling me that we could have kept riding if I had a windshield.  I agreed with him, so the first chance I had I jumped on the Internet to look for a windshield.

I like the ShopWiki.com website better than the other shopping websites because they work very similar to Google - they search the entire Internet and they show everyplace on the Internet that sells the windshields; not just the few stores that have paid for advertising on the other shopping websites.  Just typing in the keywords into their search field brings them all up.  Then I can sort by relevance or price; it works really well.  So I searched for a Harley Davidson detachable windshield, and lots of results popped up.  So many results popped up that I decided I’d better refine my search by searching for a Harley Davidson Dyna Wideglide detachable windshield instead.  I found exactly what I was looking for, and was pleased to see some sites that I can use to save some serious money!

I showed my wife that shopping website and she looked at a page about gardening products. She thought that this is definitely a shopping site we need to bookmark for future use!

The weatherman is predicting the high today about 92 degrees, but says that the heat index will make it feel like it is about 104 degrees. That sure is plenty hot! I’m glad that we have air conditioning at work and at home; my wife especially has a hard time dealing with that kind of heat. She has to wear surgical support pantyhose all of the time, which is like wearing thermal underwear. I can’t even imagine wearing something that hot when the weather is this hot! She gets cranky when it is this hot, and I guess I can’t blame her for that; I’d be cranky too if I had to wear something that hot in this weather!

A smaller treasure that I got to have from my inheritance from my grandmother was an old mantel clock. I’ve always liked mantel clocks but never had one. So I actually was excited to get this one as part of my inheritance! I brought it home and showed it to my wife, who was actually pleased with it and we put it on our fireplace mantel. All was well – until we plugged it in. The clock ran, but instead of chiming it thunked. I should not have been surprised that it was broken, but I was very disappointed.

I was looking at the 1-800-4clocks.com website earlier this week and saw a silver colored mantel clock I’d like to have in my bedroom. I like it because it is silver colored, which reminds me of chrome, which reminds me of my Harley Davidson motorcycle! If you’ve been reading my blog at all, you would know I LOVE CHROME!

I was showing the clock that I like to my wife, who rolled her eyes and sighed when I told her that I wanted it because it made me think of my Harley. Then I showed her the blog that I read about how clocks can be used for adding personality to a room.

Not too long ago my grandmother died.  As I expected, my aunt, mother, brother and sister got their pick of the household possessions, and I got the leftovers that nobody wanted.  A broken dining room table set with broken chairs, an old broken desk, and half of a barrister’s bookcase, the bottom part missing.  My wife was quite upset with how shoddily my family was treating me, grabbing up all of the “good stuff” and just letting me “haul away the trash.”  I can’t blame her, I was upset too.  My aunt had told me to come over and pick out what I wanted, and every single item I pointed at she said was already promised to someone else.  Finally I asked her to just save us both some time and show me what was still available, and every single thing she showed me was broken.

Lately one of my favorite pastimes has been going to the local firing range and practicing firing my various guns.  I have several different guns; some hand guns, some rifles, and some shot guns.  Since I’ve started going to the range and talking with the other people there, I have had the opportunity to try some of their guns, and let them try some of mine.  I’ve been having quite a bit of fun doing that!  I have been thinking about upgrading some of my rifle scopes.  Rifle scopes are on sale right now at Opticsplanet.com, so this would be a good time to do that!  

Last night we had such a severe storm that it flooded our basement.  I realized when I went downstairs last night with my wife and we saw the water pouring in through some pin holes in the walls and under the door that we needed to buy some more plastic shelving units to get more cardboard boxes up off of the floor.  And the storm killed two of our cordless telephones (or it was a coincidence that they died last night!)

So I ended up taking today off of work and going to Home Depot to buy four more shelving units and I went to Wal-Mart to buy some replacement cordless phones.  Then I came home and put together the shelving units.  After that I power washed my riding lawn mower and cleaned up my Harley.  I had not had the time to clean it up after last weekend’s ride in the unexpected storm.  My Harley sure looks pretty when it’s cleaned up!  It sure does shine!

One of my friends at work was telling me that he found out that a backgammon website that he likes to visit every evening is holding a terrific campaign to help the victim’s of China’s recent earthquake.  The BackgammonMasters Online BlackJack, Poker and Backgammon Operator is planning to aid the victims of the earthquake by donating money raised through a special program they are running this month.  The Backgammon Masters runs online backgammon games that lots of people enjoy playing.  For every $1 that a backgammon player spends on their game, the Backgammon Masters will donate $5 to the UNICEF program that is set up to help the children victims of the China earthquake. 

This program was inspired by another gaming organization offering to match dollar-for-dollar spending of their players; the Backgammon Masters thought it was a great idea and felt that they could afford to match the donations with a higher matching amount.

A lot of the clientele of the Backgammon Masters business comes from the areas affected by the earthquakes, and the company felt it was appropriate to give back to the community by helping when and where it could with money for relief efforts.  It’s nice to know that some companies DO have a good heart!

My wife declared a short while ago that she is “fed up” with how I am “redecorating the house” by leaving little “pieces” of my Harley Davidson affections scattered around the house.  She says that she does not want the entire house taken over by Harley Davidson “stuff.”  Actually, she used a different word than “stuff” but I’m trying to keep my “G” rating by not repeating what she said!  So she said that until I get my “playroom/den” set up in the basement that she will allow our master bedroom to be the “Harley” decorated room.  So she has started hanging Harley things on the walls, and told me that she wants my old handlebar grips that I just recently replaced.  I don’t know what she has planned for that…..  It will be interesting to see!

My wife’s brother likes to take his family on an annual summer vacation in Wildwood NJ, going to the beach and spending time at the Morey’s Piers amusement parks.  They usually stay in one of the many Wildwood hotels so that they can be close to the shore.  This year they’ve invited my family to join them on the vacation.  They are planning to go in July.  I’ve never been to Wildwood, so I was asking him what is so special about it the other day.  He was telling me that it is a great place for a family to go; there are several water parks and amusement parks and rides, along with the regular lure of the sandy beach and boardwalk.  Also in July there is going to be a free Radio Disney Concert series, featuring a lot of Radio Disney stars at the Morey’s Mariner Landing Pier.

My wife and I went online to find things to do in New Jersey that might interest us, and it does look like there are a lot of things there that would keep us pretty busy, so we think we might join them if we can get the time off of work.