Saturday, January 03, 2009

early afternoon

Happy New Year!!!

I have a whole boatload of resolutions to write out, but the main one is...please, let me make 2009 way better than 2008, or 2007.  Well, or even the end of 2005 (the end of September onward, to be herniatingly specific) thru 2006.

While I’m making up my list, Leigh-Ann got an awesomely funny book as a Xmas present (The Joys of Engrish), and since you might not have the book (yet), go to the Engrish website and I promise you will laugh out loud numerous times as you scroll through the poorly translated signs in Japan, China, Korea, et al.  If you live alone, you will want to share the laughs with your pets.  If you live with other people, you will constantly be either reading the signs to them or telling them to come and look at your monitor.  You will be telling them that so often, they will tell you to stop it and they will go to the site on their own.  In the future, you will be buying the book for others.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

the wee hours

Merry Catsmas Eve & Catsmas

For now, TJ would like to dance with you.  When the holiday is done, I’d like to have a little word with Melissa Etheridge’s wife about “Yamaka(s)” and Rick Warren.  I want to wish you and yours a continued Happy Hanukkah, a Merry Christmas Eve, and a Merry Christmas.  Stay tuned for some serious ranting in a few days.  Right now, let’s party!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

early evening

Groovy Las Vegas Snowstorm of 2008

Yes, Virginia, sometimes it does snow in Las Vegas, albeit never this much, I don’t think.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing some weather records listed in tomorrow’s newspaper.

This is taken from the garage.  I learned a lesson earlier that my beloved Crocs that I use for roaming around downstairs and in the back yard, are very very very dangerous when worn on an icy driveway.  I got really lucky that when I slipped and fell, no major damage was done.  I think I have a disk that’s just waiting for any little reason to ooze out of its little protective nook.  Anyway, if you click on this picture and look at the bigger size, it looks like I faked the jumbo snowflakes with Photoshop.  They’re huge and fluffy.

This was after I smartened up and went upstairs to get boots to wear outside.  Boots that actually have tread.  And it was still slippery.

This is the back yard - wanna go for a swim? 

This is the front of the house, lit up with a tiny outdoor heater for the stray cat that we feed.  It’s very festive looking, huh?

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

terribly early in the morning

Pet pictures & car stuff (good & bad) & Las Vegas snow

But, stay tuned for more episodes of the Days of Our Poverty Lives, where we lose our “with still new car smell, 2005 Equinox, w/ 12000 miles on it”, but buy a rode hard/put away wet, 2001 Aztek with 94,500 miles on it.  We’ve always missed our Aztek and it was a big mistake not getting it fixed when we originally had it, but we didn’t have the money to put out all at once and made a longer-lasting bad decision.  Oops.  The Aztek comes as-is (we pick it up on Wednesday) and it has some cosmetic issues and a driver’s side window issue (no drive-thrus, unless I put Leigh-Ann in the back seat to order...or use an ATM, or pay for parking somewhere) that we hope is fixable, but if it’s not, they’ll make sure the window stays up, instead of down, like during the test drive when it was 35 degrees outside.  The heater works nicely though, but the poor salesman in the back seat couldn’t have been too comfortable.  Anyway, the expensive car payments will be gone and car insurance will be cut in half.  Keep your fingers crossed that the car gets us to the grocery store, the doctor, and to visit family, which is about all we need it for, hence the 12000 miles on an almost 4 year old car.  We’re easy on a car, so it’ll be like the Aztek is getting a vacation by moving in with us.  We will, however, get our big ol’ cup holders back (the Equinox has wimpy little cup holders, not up to holding large drinks from Sonic) that we’ve missed for years.  We’ll get even more storage space, and we won’t have to worry about getting that first ding.  I think dozens of people/things have taken care of it for us.  Also, instead of another boring white car, we’ll have a red car.  We can be official ambassadors of the Las Vegas Wranglers.  Maybe they’ll want to put a wrap on the car, thereby covering the damage of the dings AND advertising the local hockey team.  Win, win, no?  Also, as lovely as the Equinox is/was, the Aztek seats are a lot more comfortable.  And the Aztek has a kick-ass stereo with like 10 speakers, so if we were teenage boys, instead old fogies, we could blow out your eardrums at stoplights.  Because we’re nice (and old), we’ll just listen so’se we can hear it, not you.  We would, however, like to figure out a way to get that kick-ass (older) stereo to play our MP3s.  We got a couple of cheap dealies from Woot that were supposed to work on an unused radio station frequency here, but alas, either all of our frequencies are used or it just doesn’t work well here.

Hmmm, I wasn’t going to write all of that, but it burst forth.  But, I’ll mitigate the sadness with new pictures of some of the pets.

This is Bunny, with her awesome checkerboard coloring, which goes right down to her gums.  It’s amazing.  I love her coloring, plus she’s an adorable & spunky cat.

Here’s Blackjack, looking curious.  For the moment, she’s not yelling at the dogs/cats or barking or saying, “No smoking!” Usually our parrots get short shrift when it comes to blog publicity.

Eli romping in the snow.  It snowed allllllllll day here yesterday, although not a lot of it stuck in our area of town.  I’m sure there are zillions of new pictures from the Lakes/Summerlin area of town on Flickr w/ snowmen and such.  We mostly ended up with icky puddles in the back yard.  It hasn’t rained much here in the past year or so, so the ground is hard (harder than normal) and isn’t very absorbent.

Our snowy yard, which could use a little palm tree trimming.  Any volunteers?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

late at night

Keyword Analysis - The Top 20 keywords for finding my blog recently

flippy - totally makes sense
mystery shampoo in newspaper - the big reveal is Friday, I think
fruitables pet food - I don’t think they make food, but they make the most deliciously scented dogs snacks evah!
dante and mariana bichette - it’s been a long time since I wrote about them.  Their son was in the Little League World Series several years ago - he was really good and rather cute, but mostly I wrote about how cute his mom was in the stands.
belinda boobies - I don’t think I’ve ever written about Belinda Stronach’s “boobies”, although I may have written about her breast cancer, but I don’t recall doing so.  Regardless, who does a search for someone’s “boobies” after they’ve had breast cancer?  Crass, man.
photo of mariana bichette - Hey, I do have one of the few Mariana Bichette pictures online.  It was taken from the tv.
good shoes herniated disc - Definitely Earth Shoes tennis shoes w/ the negative heel and Crocs.  My back surgeon, who has a herniated disk, wears Crocs daily.
complaints about lyrica med - Yeah, cuz Lyrica’s side effects suck!  Weight gain, extreme fatigue (I fell asleep, several times, while sitting on the toilet), horribly swollen feet & ankles.  It worked well for a couple of weeks, but the side effects were SO not worth it.  I’m in a clinical study for Reboxetine right now and it’s a far superior Fibromyalgia drug.  It gives you energy (rather than fatigue) and lessens your pain.  I felt the changes within the first week.  The side effects for it aren’t great either, but they’re better than the Lyrica ones.  The med makes me a bit jumpy (it’s a reformulation of the ADHD drug, Strattera), it makes me sweat at random times (which I loathe), and it makes it hard for me to fall asleep.  I now need meds to get to sleep most nights.  Although, I can still sleep throughout the day, but I just can’t sleep when I’m supposed to be sleeping.
james rincon - A friend from elementary (Nevada Ave), junior high (Columbus), and high school (Chatsworth).  I don’t know what ever became of him because apparently the people who are doing these searches don’t know the same James Rincon.  If they do, they’re not telling me.
leanne domi - gee, the real one or the fake one who professed to be my friend for a couple of years...and is probably a guy?  I admit, I do miss fake Leanne - “she” was entertaining and we had some good talks.  Alas, the real Leanne Domi, I don’t think I’d like.  It’s too bad she isn’t more like the fake.
nuddle blanket - do a search for nuddle on this page to find the entry...and buy one from the link.  They look lovely.  Bah, don’t do a search, here’s the link!
tricia kean breasts - they say hello sometimes when she does the news.
im addicted to kool-aid - isn’t it delicious!  I like to freeze it, so I can have slushy Kool-Aid.  It’s too bad about all those sugar calories, and it’s too bad the sugar-free ones don’t taste as good, nor do they freeze as well.
flippy kissing - sounds like a good idea to me.
pazzano, sam - toronto - I don’t recall who this is.  Lemme look it up.  Oh yeah, he writes for a Toronto newspaper and he was writing about the nasty Tie & Leanne Domi divorce
michelle caruso haircut - I don’t recall who this is either.  Oh, she wrote an article about Mel Gibson.  I’ll bet no one is looking for that Michelle’s haircut.
kettlemania - delicious popcorn
bissell proheat 2x select coupon - I wrote about how Bissell was going to donate 5% of sales to Petfinder.com, which was ultimately cheating them out of the 3% more that they would’ve gotten if they’d signed up for Bissell’s affiliate program, which pays 8%.  I hate when companies treat people like they’re stupid and pretend they’re being so very very generous, when they’re not even being fair, much less generous. 
marijuana weakness in leg disc - Using marijuana for weakness in leg due to a herniated disk?  I don’t think the marijuana would help that, but I do believe it would help the pain a lot.
where to buy fruitables for dogs - Buy Fruitables from Amazon, right here!

I promise that you’ll want to longingly sniff each snack you give your dogs.  Oh, and your dogs will love them too!