Musings and Meanderings

_______________________________ When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Turkey Trot Well Alexander did something remarkable yesterday. Those of you that know him well know that although he has MANY outstanding personality features.. His unfortunate tendency to crumple when the going gets tough and whine about it is one we have been working on with him. Well earlier this week he announced that he wanted to run in the Annual "Turkey Trot" which is Troy's Thanksgiving Day Marathon. Now because this is a family event there are quite a few distances people can run. Alexander participated in the Grade School Trot which was One Mile. He did it in just over 10 min. Not bad for a 9 yr old, as his dear old dad's best mile time was 7:47 in HS. Oh and it was like 20 degrees yesterday AM. So big kudo's to Alexander for this! I have reinforced just how impressed I was on numerous occasions yesterday. Thanksgiving We spend Turkey Day every year at the home of Liza's Aunt Sue and Uncle Ed. Don't create a mental imag...

Movie Time!! I have downloaded the full theatrical trailer for The Two Towers. First of all it is very exciting! Second it is very disturbing. I am positive I saw Legolis sliding down some stairs in a battle on a skateboard. Oi! More to the point it sure looks to me like they are really playing up the "love triangle" between Eowyn, Aragorn and Arwen. Please. This was barely a hint in the books. Yes we know that Eowyn pines for Aragorn.. but it is not played up in the books. Thank god. Also there are scenes in the Trailer that I cannot for the life of me place involving Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Arwen (Liv Tyler) discussing Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) having to do with Aragorn not returning or some such nonsense. Now I had major reservations about the Fellowship of the Ring and I was dead wrong. The theatrical trailer is mega powerful and very exciting. I just hope the Tolkien Scholars that were involved in the movie were conservative. Anyway if you ha...

Gore Speaks!!!!! "The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party," said Mr. Gore in an interview with The Observer. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole." Hmm .. I do think he has something here. Pity he couldn't speak from the gut two years ago... __________________________________________ A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the s...

Playing PAC man The Center for Responsive Politics reports that the Pharmaceutical Industry spent 14 Million dollars in soft money on the Republicans this Year vs. 5 Million on the Democrats. I assume that they are expecting some bang for their buck. I wouldn't expect the New Republican Front to disappoint them. So you can pretty much kiss good bye any hope of health care reform for at least two years.. probably longer. Read the breakdown here . And seniors. Get used to high prices for your drugs. Sheesh _____________________________________________ If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe

And so it begins He is not waiting for the dust to settle.. 1) Whitman announced major rollbacks of the Clean Air act.. thank god the States in the Northeast are going to challenge it. 2) Then there is that good ol Homeland Security thingy.. sounds very Mein Kampf to me.. where in the Freedom of Information act looks like it is getting a major diluting. More Time on the Road Did the 9 hrs on the road today. Albany to Lodi to Newark to Oakland to Albany (NO you Californians this was in NY and NJ not the bay area). What I didn't mention in my rant of a week ago is that I spent the last three "road days" listening to the unabridged Silmarillion.. which I have on MP3. The whole dam book on less than one CD. Anyway it was great to listen to and I got a better grasp on the whole Mythos by having it read to me. Bye bye!!

And awawaaaaaaaaaaay we go!!!! ________________________________ Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers. -- Daniel J. Boorstin

Today is Jam Band Day Started by listening to the Other Ones from Alpine Valley WI - The "first" shows... Last night.. dug it. So I brought my Jam Band CD Binder to work.. been listening to String Cheese Incident all day. Damn I love this stuff somethimes. Out

Why does this just NOT suprise me What Kind of Coffee are You? by Medox Thanks to my good friend and brother-from-different-mothers Project 2501for the link to this great and fun quiz. _______________________________ The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. -- Will Rogers

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER Thanks to my dear friend VacumKitty for passing along this one. it is so funny.. and very sad too. You have probably read most of the presidential quotes below somewhere before, but this poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged for aesthetic presentation by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson. MAKE THE PIE HIGHER by George W. Bush I think we all agree, the past is over. This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty And potential mental losses. Rarely is the question asked Is our children learning? Will the highways of the Internet become more few? How many hands have I shaked? They misunderestimate me. I am a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity. I know that the human being and the fish can coexist. Families is where our nation finds hope, Where our wings take dream. Put food on your family! Knock down the tollbooth! Vulcanize...

The Other Ones No that is not a bad horror movie. It's the core of the Grateful Dead with out Jerry of course. Jimmy Herring stands in for Jerry's guitar and there were two keyboardists: Rob Boroco and Jeff Chemeti. The band really shared the vocals around with even Mickey singing and Phil doing a very mellow Terrapin. Of course Bobby (beard and all) did a majority of the vocal duties. Those who know me well understand that I am just not good with song titles. Heck I knew 100% of the songs that we heard tonight but not all the names so bear with me. As I said we got a very tight and mellow Terrapin which really hung together well. They followed Terrapin and ended the second set with an instrumental Stella Blue that was very beautiful. I suppose it was the tribute song to Jerry. Allow us heads to hear the song with Jerry singing it in our memories. It was a bit jarring not having Jerry there of course. Something was definitely missing, but Jimmy Herring did a ...

2 days on the Road As the subj says I just spent two days on the road for the company.. Our normal driver was out with the flu.. so lets get the VP of Marketing to do it.. yea he'll do anything. Let Mikey try it!!!! NEVER again. I spent 12 hours on the road on Thursday, 7:30 to 7:30 picking up converters in the 5 borough area. I was driving a 16ft diesel truck, the largest you can drive without a CDL. The count was: 3 people gave me the finger, 11 people cut me off dangerously, and 4 people almost hit me! Right now I'd say that all of the roads in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (the major thoroughfares not the side streets) are being ripped up and there are detours EVERYWHERE. Never have I "met" so many people with their heads so far up their collective arses than what I saw in the boroughs yesterday. Not one act of kindness, say letting someone into a lane. How could these people think that their lives are SO important that their "important missio...

It's been raining for three days straight now. The weekend was very nice however, warm and semi-sunny, we did up the fall leaves and repainted the front porch. Changed the color too, it was battleship grey and now it is Aircraft Carrier Grey. :-) We created like 10 Leaf bags and that was after we gathered a lot of the leaves around the base of the house. Liza learned this trick from the folks in the more rural areas of NYS while out on her routes for work. This is supposed to insulate the house during the winter better. Apparently they don't get rid of the fall leaves until Spring time. We shall see. My clever quotes are brought to me each day by the Quote of the Day mailing list which can be found over on Topica . Topica is nice, it is an alternative to YahooGroups and is much less intrusive. Unfortunately it is much less known and therefor has much less available content. This is where I host a private discussion group consisting of some of my dear friends ...

Homeowner Fun and Games Well Veterans Day. Liza took the day off to spend with Alex and I got to work. The upside is that when I got home instead of hustling around to get out of the office a 5pm, pick up Alex.. go shopping and make dinner, I got to come home to a home cooked dinner. Folks it was VERY '50's! And I hate to say I loved it. Mentioned that to Liza and she just smiled and asked me if played the Lottery recently. So anyway JUST before we sit down to dinner Liza notices water leaking from under the sink. Homeowner Games! Got to run up to Home Depot and buy two new pipes after Dinner. Then install them. Weeeeeee. Honestly it was very satisfying. I know that is strange but it was. Oh and for those who think I have no home repair skills (including my dear wife who was almost on the phone with Uncle Ed 10 min into my repair) I was quite able to reinstall the new "s" pipe with out leakage. So there! Out ______________________________...

Those FORD commercials There are two commercials that are bugging the you know what out of me. Ok so maybe you think I watch too much Television but really I have a few select programs that I watch regularly. And I watch sports. Probably my downfall. Ok so if you are with me so far track this: The first is the Mustang Commercial with Bill Ford Jr. Dear Bill tells us how after seeing some movie with Steve McQueen he just had to have a Mustang. And because of that he has "oil in his veins". Ok Ok.. hold me back... Yo Bill! Did you check your last name?? I think you were BORN with Oil in your veins.. and if you can't have ANY Ford vehicle you want when you want it.. then what is the point of being CEO of Ford and having that clever last name of yours?? Second one gets me even more. To me this is a microcosm of what is wrong with America today. So here we have this country singer (first strike against him trust me on that one) crooning on and on a...

Pachyderm CT Ok before I explain that one I'd like to commend Rich Gephardt for reading my Blog of yesterday and saying he is stepping down from the leadership role in the House. Tom Daschel are you listening?? Ok I QUIT SMOKING using the Pachyderm CT method. Better than the Nicoderm CQ method and a lot cheaper. What does CQ mean anyway? So what is the Pachyderm CT method you ask???? Easy... Using a will as strong as a Bull Elephant I went COLD TURKEY . The only way to fly. I used the step down method actually... the first three days of quitting I cut back to a cig or two before bed so I could sleep. Then when the body said "I am ready to finally quit" I just did. Now I was never a heavy smoker. When people hear that I smoked some will be surprised. I was a one pack for every two to three days depending on stress and the day of the week. My biggest problem is that I used to read in the attic while I was smoking. That associated two pleasura...

Welcome back on Black Wednesday I'm in a LOUSY mood this am. It is patently obvious to me that the general voting populace in the US is a bible thumping, gun toting, jingoistic moron who will blindly do what they are told instead of thinking for themselves. The power of the right wing coalition in the South to elect Republicans is phenomenal. The Democrats have no such grass roots tradition anymore with the loss of power of the Union base it used to rely on. Personally as an Econ major I never liked this base anyway... but that is another story. However on the other side it is time for Dashel and Gephardt to step down from their "leadership" roles, a term I use very loosely by the way, and make room for someone with some vision and some brains. In any other business of "winning and loosing" from sports teams to marketing campaigns, a defeat of this magnitude is always followed by the resignation or firing the managers. Time for the Democratic Natio...

OMG 3rd Row seats!! Last night I saw Yes in Albany NY from the 3rd row on the floor. No more than 25 feet from the stage. It was like having my own personal Yes concert. A Yes show is a near religious experience for me anyway because the band is so full of positive energy and good thoughts. I did NOT have tickets at 1pm the day of the show. At 2:00 I had third row center on the floor at the Pepsi.. I was no more than 25 feet from the stage. How did I do this? Look for tix online 3 to 5 hours before a show. The Promotional seats must be used and if they are not given away they get released during this time frame to the public. I just kept hitting ticketmeiser until these great seats came up. For those of you that do not know.. Rick Wakeman is back with the band. They played stuff from all 30 yrs of their existence... from Roundabout to stuff off of the new album. This was one for the memory book. In the end it is impossible to put into words how wonderful...