New Year Trashy Tuesday - 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
I am slowly emerging from my food-induced coma.  My coma was caused by an over-indulgence of all the foods that are bad for you - fudge, little smokies sausages, cookies, pie, cake, and so on.  Yum, Yum, Yum!  Yesterday I began to get blurry vision around 8 pm and a twinge of carpal tunnel from watching all of the football games and switching continuously from one to another.  My simple evaluation of the college bowl season is that the BigTen conference as a whole sucks this year.  I mean most of these teams looked like JV teams playing pro football teams. Next year it will be different I am sure.

Our trusty Garbage Gestapo have started the New Year basically as I would expect.  They bit the bullet and maintained their regular pickup schedules over the holidays.  Way to go dudes!  They also started off 2012 living down to my opinion of them.   My current wife, yes the one with the cane - Sue, decided I should set out our glass jars to start off the year.  Dutifully, I placed my designated glass container next to the GARBY and CURBY.  The Gestapo is so pumped up with the New Year, the glass truck and CURBY pickup truck has been past already and it is just before 9 am.  The GARBY trucks, true to form, have NOT been here yet and probably won't be until this afternoon.  Anyway, back to the glass bucket.  The city has not come up with a specific container for recyclable glass so it is up to the homeowner to supply their own.  We have chosen a 2 gallon white bucket with a red cross.  This is a cherished bucket left over from the 2008 floods.  It has a lot of memories connected with it.  I was sitting here at the computer performing my morning duties which, as you know, includes consuming French Roast coffee.   In mid-swallow of my authentic Organic Pure French Roast coffee, Sue let out a scream that curled my toenails.  Frantically, I tried to determine the cause of her angst.  My mind raced to her falling, perhaps a large twinge of pain in the back, or even a broken fingernail.  Nope, she managed to blurt out that the  d**m glass truck guy confiscated our beloved glass bucket.  He didn't even separate the glass from the bucket.  He just unceremoniously tosses the glass and bucket into the hopper of the truck and off he went.  Where is the justice?  Is there no accountability?  How can a glass guy haul off with a plastic bucket? I cannot for the life of me understand what is going on.  We are 3 days into the New Year and already they are taunting me.  grrrrrrrrr!

As you can imagine the grand dogs have been over here quite a bit.  The spa staff gave us a direct drive Stairmaster for the spa.  We have exposed this unit to the pugs, Barney and Max.  True to their personalities, Barney kind of liked it but had little endurance.  After a couple of minutes, he decided it was time for a nap.  Max, on the other hand, assumed his traditionally petrified pose when confronted with something he doesn't understand.  I gently urged Max onto the Stairmaster and started it real slow for him.  He gradually resumed regular breathing and decided it was pretty cool.  This was the way he was taught to go up and down stairs.  When he was a kid, he refused to go down the stairs, he had to be carried.  He had no problem going up just down.  His aunt Jenny took a slow methodical approach to training him how to go down the stairs.  Shoot in 15 minutes; you would never have known he had a problem.  He has raced up and down stairs ever since so the Stairmaster was a natural.

I can't remember if I told you about the French Press coffee maker I received for Christmas.  Well, I received a French Press coffee maker.  I have used it ever since and have gotten pretty good with it.  Any of you that have read this drivel, will remember that I have had my share of problems with coffee makers in the past.   This coffee maker eliminates all of my problems with the traditional Mr. Coffee coffee makers.  It does, however, present a couple of new issues.  You must purchase a tea kettle and you must dispose of the ground manually.  The tea kettle- no problem - got it.  We had to seek counsel from Jenny, our organic and recycling expert.  She states that we can put coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable leftovers, and other food stuffs in the Yardy container.  My current wife, always a traditionalist, inquired about what type of container we put this stuff into in the Yardy.  Jenny states you just toss the stuff in loose.  Sue's jaw dropped as she couldn't comprehend that this was permitted. Well, we are trying this disposal technique for a short time to see how it works.  I will keep you posted.

Tomorrow morning is our Men's Breakfast at church.  We congregate twice a month, have a light breakfast, fellowship, and vigorous discussions.  Before I started attending regularly, they had decided to use a Jimmy Carter book titled "Sources of Strength".  This has been at least 2 or 3 years back.  Well, our group tends to wander a bit and we now have 4 chapters left and we will be done with it.  The books are really dog-eared as you can imagine.  Shoot, I think the book may even be out of print by now.  The rate we are going, we probably have at 6 or 7 months to figure out what comes next.  Terrance usually heads this up but he is a nice guy and we tend to sabotage his efforts sometimes.  We like to keep this informal which may be one of the problems with keeping on target.  This malevolent group of over-the-hillers knows that I have an aversion to eggs.  Why?  It's a long story and one that isn't terribly interesting anyway.  This has become quite the teasing point with these geezers.  They do go out of their way to insure I have something to eat that is not egg based.  At our last meeting, we had pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs and fruit.  I walked in only to be informed that our "cooks" had made a special meal for me.  Briefly I thanked them and almost immediately realized that the "special" would be one of suspect.  I went through the line; they presented me with an egg-shaped pancake, smaller than a teaspoon.  Okay, ha, ha, ha!  I drizzled a drop of maple syrup on it, grabbed a banana and sat down quietly.  Yum, it was actually very filling.  Yea, right.  They got a big laugh out of this and, of course, stung me with a series of not so flattering barbs.  I have broad shoulders, a long memory and your time will come, I promise.

Sue is always finding ways to get into my head.  She is always finding material for the blog, as if I needed help, well she forwarded an email to me the other day which originated with the word meister, MacBlu.  Here are a couple of items from his list.
FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMBIGUITY, AS WELL AS THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ENGLISH:

1. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.

2. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.

3. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?

4. THE MAIN REASON THAT SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE
ALL THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.

5. I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF-HELP
SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.

6. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

7. IF A DEAF CHILD SIGNS SWEAR WORDS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?

Just 7 things for us to ponder as we plow through our daily rituals.  Thanks, MacBlu.

We watched the "Christmas Story" over the holidays and Ralphie's encounter with the soap is a classic scene.  Number 7 above has been on my mind since then.  I don't really have an answer but I will continue to ponder it.  I presented my cohort in the A-V church service presentation, J the fisherman, with an 18" high Christmas tree decorated with a leg lamp ornament from the "Christmas Story" that said "Hmm, Fragile, must be Italian". Another classic line from the movie.  J, the fisherman, runs our 24 channel Binford 12000 sound board.  We don't really need the Binford 12000 you understand. We could easily get by with a Binford 24 sound board.  Bigger is always better evidently.

I can feel the French Roast high fading and I still have most of the day to face.  As I am coming down, I had better let you resume whatever it was you were doing before I interrupted.  I wouldn't want you to hear me crash back to earth.  Kind of embarrassing, if you know what I mean.  By the way, have I mentioned lately how much I hate Iowa winters?  Looking for someone to give some ideas of warmer places to winter.  Let me know.  Well, gotta go.  TA!