Sunday, December 21, 2008

terribly early in the morning

Depressing

We just cleaned out the Equinox, and I switched the cars around and put the Aztek in the garage.  The Equinox, with about 10 minutes of cleaning on the inside, will look brand new.  It runs perfectly.  It has a driver’s side window that works!  It doesn’t “seep” oil.  It smells like new car, instead of fake cherry air freshener.  It’s 3.5 years old with 12,200 miles on it, instead of 8 years old with 94,500 miles on it.  I wanted to beat it up before I gave it up.  I don’t know, maybe I’d feel differently if the guy who was supposed to fix the Aztek window would effin’ call me back!  Yeah, it doesn’t help if you charge less than the dealer, if you don’t do the job.  Big whoop.  I can say that I charge $5/hour for car/body repairs and people can get really excited, until they realize that I’m not going to leave my desk.  The Equinox is supposed to be picked up tomorrow, although the b*tch from the credit union didn’t respond to my email, so who knows.  But, the first day I’m supposed to use my windowless Aztek and drive across town for a doctor’s appointment...it’s supposed to rain.  Luckily, I’m still borrowing my dad’s Mustang or I’d be all wet by the time we got there.

Oh, and if you have any appliances, computers, portable heaters, that have plugs in the wall that are hot, don’t leave them plugged in if you’re not home.  Our heater started a fire in the outlet, and if we weren’t home, the house would’ve burned down and all of the pets would’ve died.  No wonder I’m not so cheerful.  Maybe it’s not all Equinox related.  Anyway, let this be a lesson that you can learn from too.  I don’t want anything to happen to you - I have so few readers as it is.

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?

Friday, December 12, 2008

the wee hours

I’m probably the last person to see this video…

but just in case, you’re the last person, you must see “Hamster on a Piano (Eating Popcorn)” - it will take you a while to get the tune out of your head, but it’s worth it.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

late evening

I finally decided to put the library employees to work

Since we got our library cards a month or so ago, I’ve just been ambling around the stacks, choosing books that strike my fancy, and not liking a whole lot of them.  Leigh-Ann has been smarter and has been going through her Amazon wishlist and requesting those books at the library.  She also sent me the NY Times list of top books for 2008, so I went through those and through my wishlist, then I put the library to work.  It’s great, you sit at your computer at home and request books and they find them for you (even at other branches), label them with your name, and then they shelve them in the room where you check-out.  So, I had all of these books waiting for me yesterday.

Beautiful boy: a father’s journey through his son’s addiction by David Sheff.
Patient by patient: lessons in love, loss, hope, and healing from a doctor’s practice by Emily R. Transue, M.D. (I really liked her first book)
Black fliesby Shannon Burke.
My custom van: and 50 other mind-blowing essays that will blow your mind all over your face by Michael Ian Black
Celebrity detox: (the fame game) by Rosie O’Donnell.
There’s nothing in this book that I meant to say by Paula Poundstone.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.
His illegal self by Peter Carey.
Bright lights, big ass: a self-indulgent, surly ex-sorority girl’s guide to why it often sucks in the city, or who are these idiots and why do they all live next door to me? by Jen Lancaster
Such a pretty fat: one narcissist’s quest to discover if her life makes her ass look big, or why pie is not the answer by Jen Lancaster
The night of the gun: a reporter investigates the darkest story of his life, his own by David Carr.
Are you there, vodka? It’s me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (these last two are waiting to be picked up today)
Tweak: (growing up on methamphetamines) by Nic Sheff (this matches up with his father’s book, Beautiful Boy - I thought the different perspectives would be interesting)

Now, I had a wealth of books to choose from, but didn’t know what I wanted to read first.  It was between Paula Poundstone, Rosie O’Donnell, and Michael Ian Black, whose book I hadn’t requested, but just saw on the new books shelf.  Rosie O’Donnell won out, but I’ve been kind of sleepy on this wild and weird rainy day today.  Other than getting icky cramps and praying for a hysterectomy.