Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Thursday, November 15, 2007
terribly early in the morning
David Letterman - What a great employer
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Strike or not, employees of the “Late Show With David Letterman” and the “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” will be paid through year’s end. Both are produced by Letterman’s Worldwide Pants banner, which notified employees in New York and Los Angeles that they will be paid regardless of whether the shows return. It would make Worldwide Pants the first known company to guarantee its staff a paycheck during the writers strike.
What a classy move by David Letterman. He stood by the writers and refused to cross the picket line (as did Jay Leno), and now he’s paying them out of his own pocket for at least six weeks. On the other side of the coin - Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen took one day off to supposedly stand by her writers, but she came back the next day. She took more time off when she was upset about breaking the contract for her adopted dog. I’ve read quite a bit of interesting talk about how poorly Ellen treats her staff, so I’m not surprised at her behavior. In fact, the more that I see the real Ellen, the more that I have no desire to watch public funny & nice Ellen. The contrast is just too great. The more I read about her, the more I believe that her tears for the dog were just a tantrum of spoiled rich person not getting their way. The dog was just the object that she wasn’t allowed to control.
A weird thing - I click on a “justify” button for each paragraph I type in my blog. When I started to write the first paragraph of this entry, I clicked on the “strike” button, which is next to it. I’ve never clicked on that button before. My fingers knew that they were going to be talking about the writers’ strike, I guess.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
late at night
Fresh & Easy - Store Opening Attracts Bored Seniors & Two Lesbians
Before I start my less than thorough review of the new Fresh & Easy on W. Lake Mead in Las Vegas, I’m going to give you a link to an actual review by someone else. We’ve been waiting for our Fresh & Easy grocery store to open up for months, and we’re no closer to knowing when they’ll start building it than we were then. However, on the way to the fancy pet food store to get some free cans of Merrick, I went the wrong direction for a block, and Leigh-Ann noticed the Fresh & Easy sign on a building. I decided to turn around and take a look-see, and lo and behold, the store was open. It was actually its opening day. The small parking lot was crazy. It’s in the heart of retirement city in Summerlin. There were golf carts (there was a Rolls Royce model driving behind me) in some of the parking spaces. It took us a while to move to the far end of the parking lot, where we were safe from opening day traffic, because in the first row of the parking lot there was a woman taking forever to back out of her space. I was ready to give her a break for being old, but no, she was on the phone. She was holding the phone to her ear, so she only had one hand on the steering wheel, and we all know how difficult it is to manuever out of a space backwards, with only one hand. She held up at least four cars and one poor woman trying to return her cart. People that selfish, dangerous, and rude shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
We finally got past Mrs. Selfish Phone Caller and parked near some office buildings in the back of the parking lot. We decided that we weren’t going to buy anything, we just wanted to look around inside. It was nuts in there. It was like “Attack of the Senior Citizens”, and they were armed...with carts. They ambled (okay, we do too), they blocked aisles (we don’t), and they were totally oblivious when anyone wanted to get by them (we aren’t). And, we didn’t even have a cart. Anyway, we browsed through the store to get an idea of what they had. The first products we saw were the ready-made salads at the front of the store. They looked different and tasty. Okay, and expensive. Then, we walked down the produce aisle, where most of the produce was strangely wrapped in plastic. Why? We don’t know. But, if the produce is good and doesn’t need to be pick through, I have no complaints about it being wrapped up. At the end of that aisle was the demonstration station (you know, if they don’t have it named that, they should), where they were giving out a free chocolate chip cookie (an average packaged Keebler kind of cookie) and some orange juice. We turned the corner into the meat section, and before we got too far, we were accosted by a nice gentleman from Fresh & Easy wanting to make sure that we each got a free packet of English Breakfast Tea. Much appreciated. Also, the meat looked good - lots of different varieties and some ready to grill combos that we don’t normally see in our stores. Further down the row, there was fresh whole fish.
The middle section of the store was like a big 7-Eleven, with small packages of toilet paper, paper towels, and very little variety of the basics, which I realize is the point. Alongside the back of the store, there was a section of ready-made desserts. From chocolate volcano cakes to fancy cupcakes (like the ones Starbucks used to have...and that we loved), their desserts, if they taste as good as they look, will be our main draw there. They had some interesting Fresh & Easy labelled frozen dinners that sounded good. The F&E brand bread looked tasty too - Flax Seed bread, I approve. Oh yeah, and in the middle of the store, in one of the rows, they had some fresh pizza dough. It’s something that I would definitely try.
We had appointments today with our pain management doctor, and we generally feel pretty old and worn out when we go there. “No, these meds didn’t work. Those meds had bad side effects. Okay, we’ll take prescriptions for our regular stuff. See you next month.” As we leave each month, we have to pay them $95 each, $2280 a year. That doesn’t include our meds, which are between $300-$600 a month, which is another $7000+ a year. Ah-ha, so that’s why it’s been hard saving for rainy days. Anyway, today was an especially bad pain day for both of us, but when we went to Fresh & Easy, we were probably the youngest people in the store, by about 30 years. I almost felt a little better, until I realized that the old people were much spryer...and that was sad. Nonetheless, I can’t wait until the Fresh & Easy opens a block away from our house. We’ll be able to pick the times to shop when it’ll be slow.
There was one funny thing at that store. There was a tiny Christmas section, with wrapping paper and other odds & ends. There wasn’t any Hanukkah stuff. We figured out that they hadn’t really researched their religion demographics. They’re going to get a crotchety old Jewish woman kvetching about them only having Christmas stuff. I wish I could be there when it happened. It was a pretty simple thing that they overlooked, I think. Aren’t there any Jewish neighborhoods in the UK?
Like I said, if you want a real review about the food at Fresh & Easy, check out the link to Chronicler’s review at the beginning of the entry. I’m not ambitious enough to do a real review. That said, I liked the store. They need a few adjustments, but they have some interesting food. I don’t know how they’ll compete, being a hybrid of Trader Joe’s and a grocery store, but I guess we’ll soon find out.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
late at night
If I wasn’t so lazy…
I asked my nephew, Michael, for his permission to post the picture he took of his hair. If I wasn’t so lazy (and, so old), I’d love to do this to my hair. I think I’d probably go more for blue tips, but I think his hair looks fabulous. My mother, however, hates his hair. She seems to think that it’ll stop him from getting a job or that people will think he’s..., I don’t know, different? Well, he’s only 19, which I think is an excellent time to have a cool mohawk. If he finds the right job atmosphere, he’ll be just fine with his hair. In fact, if his hair prevents him from getting a job that he’s qualified for, he shouldn’t want to work for that employer anyway. Hair is not an indicator of work skills. As for what people will think he’s like because of his hair - if they can’t see beyond the hair that he’s a smart, kind, creative (clearly, huh?) and just plain good kid, then who cares what “they” think anyway? This picture is a bit dark, but in real life, he doesn’t look the slightest bit scary.
Last year, when we went out to dinner at the Gold Coast buffet, we saw a whole family with mohawks - from adults to little kids, there were a bunch of them. They must spend a fortune on hair gel, but they looked so cool together. I wish I’d had a camera with me, because in my lifetime, I don’t think I’ll ever again see a whole family that’s been mohawked.
If you saw a kid with a mohawk, would it affect what you thought of him/her? If you were hiring, would you hire someone with a mohawk?
Monday, November 12, 2007
late at night
Stress = Fat
I miss the good old days, when stress = weight loss. It’s weird, I can’t stop eating crap. I think it’s time to start dieting again, but I don’t wanna.... Maybe I should switch back to Methadone, so it could make me slightly nauseous, which equals weight loss, and a big ol’ savings on food.
Hey, do you any of you watch “Chuck”? I wish I had a big spy day to write about in my blog.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
late at night
Whoa, Kind of Missed Sunday
I really need to fix this weird sleep, or lack thereof, pattern that I’m in. I didn’t go to bed until like 1p today, but I was so groggy and out of it while I was up, that it was just stupid to not be sleeping. I was just so sore, but of course, being sore is partially caused by lack of sleep for us fibro folks. I always have a hard time getting back onto a normal life schedule when we go to conventions. We’re gone all day, then there are things we need to get done when we get home, so we stay up. In general, I’d probably get more done if I would just give in and sleep the twelve hours a day that my body wants me to sleep. Work emails will still be there the next time I wake up. Since lots of the people writing to me have waited a month or two to respond to my intro email, it’s probably just dandy with them if it takes me a few hours to get back to them, instead of a few minutes.
Hey, I think we got a little rain today. Still, we haven’t had any cold days in about a month, that I can remember. It’s like a big long extended summer, which is requiring us to still use our air conditioning a lot. I thought this weekend was going to be the start of our big weather change. I was wrong. It’s going to be in the high 70’s for most of next week. Damn, I’m ready to quit needing the air conditioning until March. It’s time. If this is global warming...we can’t afford it. Our power bill in the summer is $500+/month. Dear Mother Nature, November is no longer summer, please let us turn the air off.
I’ll try to write more interesting blog entries next week. In the meantime, sign up for our CLIQ group by clicking on widget in the sidebar. It’s nifty. Plus, I must mention again...they gave me an iPod Touch, which is incredibly cool. I hate having to use iTunes for everything, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t like my iPod. Of course, Apple has done stupid things like making it so you can’t add anything to the calendar in the iTouch without syncing it from your computer calendar. Well, *I* don’t have a calendar on my computer right now, so when I want to add an appointment to a little gadget in my hand that has a calendar, a keyboard, and storage space...I think I should be able to type my little heart out. Apple is so unnecessarily proprietary. There’s something called a jailbreak that would hack the iPod and let me upload third party apps to it, but I’m afraid to mess with it, in case it screws anything up. Maybe I’ll let other people do it for another couple of months before I try it. So far, I haven’t added any music or videos, but I’ve surfed the web on my wireless home network, which was pretty cool. Granted, I have a laptop that does a much better job of it, but my laptop won’t fit in my pocket.
