What's a Delmer Look Like?

Posted by delmer at 6:19 AM | Comments (3)

May 29, 2006

Giraffes

As I've said before, Giraffes really don't play a big part in my life on a day-to-day basis.

I said that a while back (well, January 16, 2006 to be exact) and it holds true through today. Except now I notice giraffes more when I see one. I'm pretty sure that I would have always taken notice had one come strolling down Avery Road in Hilliard, but I would have probably overlooked photos of giraffes in someone's home.

Now I notice them. My sister and her husband have two pictures of giraffes in their house. One is a painting, watercolor, or drawing of some sort, the other is a picture of a big old giraffe head between them.

It seems they were on some sort of nature preserve in the back of a big truck. There were other people in the truck with them -- the other folks were all standing to one side of the truck petting a giraffe that was on that side.

Tony, my brother-in-law, noticed a giraffe on their side off in the distance a little bit. He took a leaf out of his pocket and waved it at the giraffe who, much to Tony's surprise, started loping toward him. The giraffe ate the leaf from Tony's hand and then became his buddy for life.

The giraffe was hanging around Tony so much that one of the grumpier safarians commented that he was sort of hogging the giraffe. (Of course, this same person didn't go out of her way to share the community giraffe that had stopped by earlier.)

Tony tried to share his giraffe but the other safarians really only wanted to give it a quit head rub and then move on.

Posted by delmer at 8:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2006

Home on the Range

We're back home in bee-you-tee-full Hilliard.

It's good to be home. Even though it is always a treat to spend a night or two in a motel room -- a room you don't personally have to clean but is always clean when you return to it -- it is always nice to be home.

We left our room around 10 a.m. local time and shot down to Pleasantview, TN. In an earlier post I said we were in Nashville, but it was actually Clarksville (the location of our motel, the graduation, and home of the alleged notorious spammer/scammer Rodona Garst) and Pleasantview, Tennessee (just down the road from the notorious speedtrap in Cooperstown, Tennessee).

We had breakfast with my sister, brother, their families and my parents. The kids swam. The adults looked over 10-year old movies of us boating on Lake Barkley.

We left Pleasantview at about 1 p.m., drove slowly through Cooperstown on the way to I-65 and then, pretty much, drove like bats out of hell back to Ohio. And this was just to keep from getting run over by the other drivers.

The boys and I were in Big D's truck. The AC in the minivan is broken and dad thought we might enjoy the truck a bit more. It was 91 degrees F today ... the truck was a good move.

Aside from working air conditioning the truck also features a V8 engine. Early on in the trip to Tennessee I glanced at the speedometer and noticed I was doing 75 mph. I wasn't passing gobs of people and the truck doesn't make the same kind of noise the van does at high speed so it sort of caught me off guard.

What the truck lacks is lumbar support. About three hours into the trip it was all I could do to sit up. Coincidentally, Big D has a lumbar pillow in the truck -- it made a world of difference.

Nothing exciting happened on the way to or from Tennessee -- which is good, I suppose. Well, Big D did almost slam into a woman who pulled out in front of him during a 10-minute typhoon we drove through, and someone almost clipped me when they changed lanes -- but, since both of these things start "almost," it's hard to get too worked up about them. (Dad did have to do some evasive driving to miss the woman vying for the T-bone ... my almost-clipping was over before I even noticed it.)

Six hours after leaving Pleasantview (seven hours really -- we had lunch) we were in Franklin. We had a quick dinner, did some visiting, and then cannonballed home.

The kids have crashed. I'm typing this.

Tomorrow I'll try to remember to tell you a story about my brother-in-law and a giraffe.

Posted by delmer at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2006

Sycamore High Graduation

The boys and I went to Emily's graduation today.

To prepare for graduation I had to make a trip to Target to buy Jack a shirt and Haydn some khaki shorts.

I wore my new suit.

Samson wore his new suit too.

Sam was less than thrilled at the prospect of wearing his suit pants and wondered if he could wear his camouflage jeans and his suit jacket. I told him that would not be a good idea and asked what the problem was.

The problem, according to Sam, is that the pants are too short.

I checked. They are not.

Another problem is that the pants are too baggy.

I explained that suit pants are not typically skin tight like jeans are. They were fine.

I went on to explain that the time to tell me he didn't want to wear his suit pants was early in the morning. Perhaps while we're entering Target with the plan to buy his brothers some new threads. Not while we're getting dressed and on our way out the door.

Sammo finally relented. He wore his jacket, pants, shirt, belt and tie. He looked very handsome.

I should point out that the first time Sam wore his suit he was decked out in new, black sneakers; not dress shoes. It looked like he'd probably out grow any dress shoes prior to having an opportunity to wear them again and, well, sneakers are always good. Naturally, we'd left the good sneakers at home and he was wearing the rattiest white pair of tennis shoes he owns.

They didn't bother him in the least.

Posted by delmer at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

Nashville

The boys and I are in Nashville, Tennessee visiting my sister and her family. We came down for my niece's graduation from high school.

It's an eight hour drive from Columbus and we broke it up my spending the night in Franklin with my parents. So, today it was a mere six-hour drive.

Before the trip I stopped by Target and purchased a dual-screen DVD player for the minivan. I figured it would make the trip go a bit easier for the boys if they could watch movies. I figured it would make the trip go easier for me if I didn't bring the Game Cube; that way there's no arguing over who gets to play what game when. (As it happens, one person could play a game on one screen while the other screen was used for DVDs -- but why complicate things.)

The DVD watching was a nice distraction but we still had time for a skirmish or two. I told the boys that if they didn't shape up they spend the drive home with a coloring book and a single crayon each ... and no air conditioning -- the trick being to do any actual coloring before the crayon melts.

The trip was mostly uneventful.

We arrived at the Ramada in Clarksville not long after my brother and his family.

As it happens the woman behind the desk at the Ramada is a Wells. We're not sure that we're related -- both of her grandparents are full-blooded Cherokee. I'm tired now and am having trouble remembering all the details of her family tree.

I do recall that she said that despite the Native American blood she's not very good at tracking.

Posted by delmer at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2006

The Grand Plan

Sometimes I have thoughts about things I'll blog about that never make it to the blog. It isn't any great loss to you, dear reader. You've seen the type of things that make it here and a lot of those things were rock-solid, fleshed out, ideas that sounded good while I was driving but sort of sucked in print.

Some of the things that don't make it are things that flit in and out of my head. Something that pops in when I'm strolling or riding my bike and then pops out when something shiny catches my eye and distracts me.

The problem, for you, arises when the thought pops back in my head and I have a wait, I've blogged about this ... no I haven't ... I was going to but didn't moment. And then I search for it, don't find it, and blog about it (again). Or I don't search and just cut loose at the keyboard.

I may or may not have blogged about parts of this.

Not terribly long ago I was at the gym. Well, it was months and months ago, maybe last fall. We'll say October.

At that point in time I'd been having thoughts that perhaps the people around me wouldn't recognize me as the big fat guy that used to come in and maybe they'd think I was a whole different person altogether. This played into my grand plan of remaining an anonymous gym rat and not having to answer too many of those, "How did you do it type" questions.

I had this thought ... hold on ... I formulated The Grand Plan on a Monday. Probably not really, but we'll use it as a point of reference. On Tuesday or Wednesday I was in the gym and someone came up to me and commented that he remembered when I started coming in and he admired how much weight I'd lost the last couple of years.

I always think it's interesting when things like this happen. I come up with the idea that maybe people will think I'm someone different from the big guy that used to come in and -- boom -- within a day or two that idea is shot down. OR, I marvel at how long it has been since I've been ill and -- boom -- I miss four days of work starting just a few days later.

A couple of days ago I found my gym paperwork -- (boom chuk-a-luka) -- the paperwork that shows I've been a member for six years. Three of the four employees I see most of the time at the gym have been there the whole six years. One of the guys has been that about a year.

Today I took my BFD picture to the gym and shared it with the folks I see several times a week.

One of the gals studied it and said, "How long ago was this? I remember this guy." She knew it was me when she said it but, well, I just do a crappy job conveying dialog.

I know this whole thing flies in the face of my desire to remain anonymous in life -- but I thought they'd like to know. And I'm all about helping people.

(Maybe, just maybe, there's some hope for The Grand Plan after all.)

I wish I could find my old general practitioner. He's they guy who first found the hormone problem and I'd like him to see the results of his handiwork. I think docs have a hard row to hoe these days and sometimes they need to be reminded when they do a good job.

Posted by delmer at 2:51 PM | Comments (2)

May 24, 2006

The Linux Circle

The other day I was installing a couple of packages on a Linux server. Trying to install might be more accurate.

When I tried to install package X I was given a message similar to:

That, naturally, isn't the real message. The real message involved words like 'dependencies' that needed to be satisfied. But, the original message was just as helpful; it told me what I needed and where to get it.

I downloaded package Y.

When I went to install it I received a message that I knew was going to create a bit more work. At first glance I could tell it was going to ask me to install something more -- something before package Y could be installed which, as you'll recall, needed to be installed before package X.

My hope was that this would be the last pre-package I had to load before package X finally went in.

And then I read the whole error message. It went something like this.

Sweet, eh?

Even though I know that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results each time, I tried, several times, to load packages X and Y.

Now, I can't blame Linux. The distribution I was using was somewhat customized.

Still, I'd hoped ....

Posted by delmer at 9:06 AM | Comments (1)

May 23, 2006

Meditating on a Lost Wallet

As you may recall, I've recently misplaced my keys.

About 18 years ago I misplaced my wallet. It was one of those situations in which I walked into my apartment and within ten minutes realized it was gone. At the time, I gave the living room a quick look and, when I didn't find it, decided it must be in the car. I wasn't real worried; I'd be in the car again soon enough.

To sort of speed things up, it wasn't in the car and it didn't appear to be in the apartment.

I told a coworker about it and she said she'd meditate on it to help me try to find it. This woman had never been to my home and I'm not sure she had a clear idea of where I lived past north of campus.

The next day she came into work and said she'd done the meditating. I asked if anything had presented itself to her and she said:

"At first I had the feeling that it was near a blue couch with birds on it. And then I got the feeling it was near a brown couch with dark brown squares on it. Do you have a brown couch with darker brown squares on it?"

As it happens, we did have a brown couch with darker brown squares on it. It sat right next to our blue couch that had birds on it.

I know what you're thinking: You boys really needed an interior decorator. What can I say -- we tried to pick furnishing that didn't clash with the weights and bench we had in the dining room. And free was important; both of the couches had been given to us.

But really -- the whole thing was pretty amazing. If someone asked you to describe 25 different couches you would never come up with a blue one with birds on it -- this couch had not been bought this way, it had been reupholstered with this fabric. And the brown one with brown squares was so late 60's. And to have them in the same room, next to each other. This certainly had a mystic feel to it.

The wallet -- well, it wasn't in either couch. I imagine I dropped it on the way into the apartment and a street thug picked it up.

I did learn a lesson from this experience: If you had something important ten minutes ago and you can't find it now, get off your ass and start looking for it. The more time that passes the more likely you're not to not find it.

Which brings us to my keys.

They came up missing last Wednesday night. I had them, I unlocked the front door with them, I made two trips to the van after that that may or may not have required keys. They came up missing Thursday morning. I was pretty sure they turn up over the weekend as I cleaned and bounced around the house.

They didn't.

Finally, yesterday I had to do some serious looking. I'm expecting an important piece of mail and, for whatever reason, the sender (a government body ... The Man to you hippie-types) has trouble sending mail to my house and keeps sending stuff to my PO Box. I needed the PO Box key; the Post Office (another government body) will not open your box for you simply because you've left your key at home (I don't blame them -- I don't think this is part of a larger conspiracy.)

I pulled the cushions off the couch (one with a southwestern thing going for it ... no birds), looked in cabinets, pulled open drawers, checked things I'd recently worn, moved chairs, etc.

I didn't check the kitchen table because I'd already checked it several times. I'd checked it so many times -- when there was so very little on it (an empty bowl and a bag of apples) that I'd since used it as a staging area for things that needed a home: my GPS, my MP3 Player, dress shoes, several books, kitchen utensils I can never identify -- things like that.

About 7 p.m. I decided I'd go for a bike ride. My sunglasses were on the table and as I reached for them I noticed dad's keys peeking out from beneath the bag of apples. I didn't want them to get 'lost' and picked them up. Naturally, they were my keys.

They'd been on the table the whole time -- during a time when the table had on it only an empty bowl and the bag of apples. Well, and my keys. I had scootched the bag of apples around when I was looking for the keys. I had eaten at least three apples out of this bag since the Thursday the keys came up missing. I had never noticed the keys.

The apples are supposed to be in the bowl.

There's a lesson here, somewhere.

Posted by delmer at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Press Here

There is a Donatos Pizza just a short walk from where I live. I eat there often enough to know how things work there. I know they'll ask my name when I order and I always have it ready. I know to specify "green olives instead of green peppers" when I order my Chicken Vegy Medly and, more importantly, know to listen to the order taker repeat it back to me so I know it took.

I know how the self-serve fountain-drink machine works.

For the longest time I'd eat there once a week. I always got the same thing. I never had a problem.

And then, one day, all of a sudden I had a problem with the drink machine.

The drink machine at Donatos serves Coke products. You put your cup under a nozzle and press a button just below the word Coke, Diet Coke, Orange etc. You get the picture. The important thing to know is that you don't push a lever back to get the pop flowing.

And, of course, the other important thing to know is that I'd successfully dispensed gallons and gallons of pop out of this thing. Until that fateful day.

I put my cup under the nozzle and pressed the icon for a large Diet Coke -- our machine has several icons ranging from small to super large -- you've seen the folks at McDonald's push one of these icons and then boldly turn their back on the fountain machine as the unit magically dispensed the appropriate amount of pop.

At this particular time I had an awareness that I'd never seen the series of icons before. However, like I said, I had poured a lot of pop out of this thing over time and I was pretty sure I'd just never noticed and it was something I did automatically. As a matter of fact, the only reason I noticed this time is because the button wasn't working very well. A spurt of pop would come out and then it would stop -- and this was with my finger constantly on the button.

I tried all the icons with the same result.

Eventually, using this method I was able to get a full pop.

A week passed and I was back at Donatos.

As I filled my pop I had the same problem ... briefly. Below the row of icons -- the row that would auto-dispense -- was a much larger "Press Here" button. That would have been the button I'd pressed the dozens of other times I'd eaten there. The button I would have pressed without ever thinking about the motion involved. The button that always worked. The button I think the folks as Micky D's press to top off your soda.

More time passed. Much more that a week. So much, in fact, that we're all the way up to yesterday.

I went to Donatos and found the place full -- I mean packed -- with soccer kids, soccer moms, soccer dads, some blokes from Manchester United and some old people that seem to have gotten lost on the way to MCL Cafeteria and decided to make the best of it.

I was third or fourth in line and there were people behind me. (Normally I stroll right up to the counter.)

Behind me a mother and daughter were talking. The daughter had noticed the pop machine -- we were standing right next to it -- and wondered about the icons with the different cup sizes. The mother explained that she thought they were auto-fill buttons, how they worked, and said she thought they had them only in places where the employees poured the drinks.

Always helpful, I said something like, "The auto-fill buttons don't work."

"They don't?"

"No," I said, and to demonstrate my point I reached over the pressed what would be the super-size button under the Coke label. I expected a splat of pop to come out.

Naturally, a super-size amount of Coke started pouring out of the machine and down the drain. There was no way to stop it.

"You have to keep in mind," I said to the woman, "that I am a man. How much can I possibly know? As a matter of fact it wasn't until I heard someone say 'a large with pepperoni and mushroom' that I realized I wasn't in Burger King."

FWIW, the icons for Diet Coke still do not auto-dispense.

To make things worse ... I forgot to specify green olives when I ordered my Veggie Chicken Medly.

Posted by delmer at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)

Trouble in Paradise

There's something unsettling happening with What's a Delmer Look Like.

Two Sunday's in a row the server has crashed at least a little bit. Web pages are served up -- at least the main page, archives don't appear -- but mail quits working and I can't connect to the various administrative pages I use for things.

Stuff like this is never good. Maybe I have a hardware glitch. Maybe a corrupt file. Maybe I've been hacked into and my server is being used as part of a Denial of Service attack against NORAD.

The monitor attached to the server always kicks out some sort of cryptic code when this happens.

Maybe it is coincidence. Maybe it won't happen again. It seems I had this same problem about 9 months ago and it self healed.

Anyway. I'll be looking at logs and checking things out.

If you come here and find WADLL unavailable, stop back, I'll be hard at work trying to figure out what's wrong.

Update: On a whim I went to the site I set up after the original delmer.com and prior to the current delmer.com. That site would have been www.delmer.biz. I honestly can't remember why I went there, but when I arrived I noticed that the Welcome message was gone. I thought maybe something had gone wrong with mysql and as I thought about it started clicking some of the other links.

The Guestbook had several entries -- well, about 36 -- from May 14 and May 21 of this year. Both are dates the server crashed. All of the entries were spam entries. They've been deleted.

As it happens, the Welcome message was gone because it had expired. Delmer dot Biz has been shutdown. We'll see what happens.

Posted by delmer at 9:56 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2006

Someone stole my keys

Actually, I've misplaced them.

However, I read somewhere that the older we get the more likely we are to say things like, "I've lost my keys."

Younger folks say, "Who took my keys?" or "Someone stole my keys."

And there's something about adopting the who-stole-my-keys rap that keeps us younger. Or maybe it keeps us from slipping into full-blown dementia.

I don't remember the whole article. Wait ... someone stole my memory of the article.

Anyway, I think the keys are in:

A) That sweet ride of mine

or

B) A basket of laundry I brought in from that same, sweet ride.

I had the keys when I came into the house the other night. I must have, I had to unlock the door. After that I made two trips to the minivan. On one of those trips I brought in the basket of clean laundry.

I have extra keys -- obviously -- so I haven't knocked myself out looking for the lost set. But, I have been in the minivan several times since the keys came up missing. And, I have the clean basket of clothes in the put-me-away staging area at the foot of my bed. Why is it I never think to check either location the multiple times I've been in or walked by both?

Posted by delmer at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2006

Covered Bridge of Dreams

Mom and Dad went to Knox County (Ohio) to take in the sites and visit some Amish areas.

Mom snapped a big bunch of photos. If you've ever been in the country -- someplace really flat -- then you will have a pretty good idea what a lot of the pictures might look like. They're all beautiful, don't get me wrong ... just nothing you haven't seen before.

Some of the photos are of my parents and a couple of their friends. If you've ever seen pictures of old people -- visiting someplace really flat -- then you'll have a pretty good idea what the other pictures look like. They're all beautiful ... some of the better-looking old people you'll ever see ... just nothing you haven't seen before. (Well, the men in the photos don't have any ear or nose hairs showing. Depending on the part of the country/world you are from, that might be new.)

While covered bridges aren't necessarily incredibly rare, they are always cool. Here are a couple of shots mom took of a newer covered bridge in Knox County.

Posted by delmer at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2006

Haircut

Last night I decided I'd cut the boys' hairs. Haircuts at the barber come in about $30.00 for three boys -- it may be $27.00 ... it may be $36.00. I should probably pay closer attention.

If the boys let me cut their hair I give them $4.00 each. That's $12.00. We all win.

I wanted to do buzz cuts all the way around. Jack declined at the last moment and went for a trim over the ears. He thinks he'll be able to get by all summer without a haircut and would like to have a headstart on the growth.

Sammo when the same route.

I'm not sure if their plan had anything to do with the fact they'd already received their $4.00, but I went with it anyway. As it happens, Haydn's cut more than made up for the lack of any hair I may have gotten off the other two boys.

He wanted to be shaved bald.

We called his mom to make sure she was OK with it. We checked the student handbook to make sure there was nothing about not-being-bald in there. Everything seemed to point toward a bald head.

I thought I'd go with a #1 comb on the clippers first. Maybe that would be good enough. I thought it was good enough. Haydn didn't.

He went to the bathroom with my beard trimmer. I decided he was determined and that helping would probably yield a better result.

I took the #1 comb off the hair clippers and went over the head with the bare cutter. I then lathered the head up -- using almost two cans of shaving cream -- and used a safety razer to shave closer. I repeated this last step one more time.

Haydn certainly looks bald headed. Not Telly Savalas or Yul Brenner bald. Certainly more bald than Sinead O'Connor.

He could be balder. But he's still pretty bald.

This morning his scalp had a velcro-like feeling to it.

How does it look? Well, considering the boy has a milk-carton head, pretty good.

And really ... it was probably something a lot less than two cans of shaving creme.

Posted by delmer at 10:34 AM | Comments (1)

May 18, 2006

How I found you

One the left you will find a list of some of the Blogs I read. I have murky recollections on how I found some -- others I have distinct memories of. Those I remember, for sure -- well and the murky ones too -- are:

Wil Wheaton: Years ago I was looking for some Network Management software and Googled on what I thought was the title of the package. Wil Wheaton's blog was one of the first several hits that came up. It may have been the first hit. I followed the link as I thought maybe he'd had something to do with the software, much as Robert Urich had with a project at the time. Wil seems to have absolutely nothing to do with that software item ... an item I've long-since forgotten about. In all honesty, I clicked the link to Wil's page out of curiosity -- I wasn't a big fan -- I expected Wil to be sort of full of himself. He wasn't. His blog is typically very entertaining.

Blogography: I was at the Movable Type site looking over their software when I was looking for a package to blog with. They have a scrolling list of Recently Updated Blogs and Blogography caught my eye. I've been reading Blogography for more than a year now and many of the other blogs I read I found by following that link.

Faster Pussycat: I use Ecto to post to What's a Delmer Look Like (I found Ecto via Blogography). While bouncing around the Ecto site I found their Ecto Site of the Week page. Faster Pussycat was the then-current featured blog.

Fighting Inertia: Was mentioned, as I recall, at Wonderings.

Kazaa and Textpatriate: I found at Blogography. Kazaa, I think, was the third blog I visited.

Crabapple Lane: Rob quoted a snippet of something one of my kids said and I found it. Maybe he made a comment and I followed it the link left by his name. Something ... I'm sure I could look it up but that would detract from the quick-and-dirty entry this is supposed to be. I recall going to his site, seeing a story about 'easy breezy beautiful Cover Girl stuff' and thinking, hey that same thing happened to me ... a second later I saw that the quote was attributed to my site.

Relevant Tangent: I found at Kazaa's site -- making it, quite possibly, the fourth blog I visited.

Learning Movable Type: Well, I needed MT tips and there they are.

Michael Gorey: I was looking for info on MRIs, I think, and Google turned him up. Of course, if it happens Michael has never posted MRI info, then I'm just plain wrong.

Wonderings: I'm pretty sure I stumbled there from Michael Gorey's site. But maybe not.

Kevin Sites: I used to work with Kevin, many many moons ago.

Whatiz: I currently work with the author of that site.

The Phoenix: Left a comment at Wonderings or Michael Gorey's site and I followed the link from there to his site.

Defective Yeti: I was reading something, somewhere, and someone said, I read at Defective Yeti ... etc ...

KEC Journal: I originally thought this was written by an American in Japan. I now believe it may be a Japanese person living in Japan. I like to have a little bit of far-flungness in my life (not too much, I have a trick knee) and this provides a little.

Deep Thoughts: Somehow I fell across an entry somewhere about her 24-hour blog-a-thon for something. I went to her blog from that link.

Daily Slacker: Did I go there from Single Scorpio?

Single Scorpio: Or did I find SS at Daily Slacker?

Huffington Post: You'd have to be dead not to find this blog.

Joe.My.God, Mike Tidmus, Ex-Gay Watch: Not long ago Ohio passed an amendment to its constitution banning gay marriage (that would have been the fall that we set our clocks back 200 years); maybe I was Googling on topics along those lines when I found one or more of these blogs. I know I found Mike Tidmus first -- and way before the amendment thing.

The others are sort of a blur ... which doesn't mean I don't love each and every one of you in a non-creepy non-predatory yet very special way ... it's just that sometimes when I'm in a clicking frenzy, I lose track of where I've been.

I am a man, after all. I thinks I've done a pretty good job remembering the above. As accurate or inaccurate as it may be.

Posted by delmer at 11:59 PM | Comments (4)

May 17, 2006

More Dreams

I believe I've mentioned in the past that I have very few erotic dreams. And when I do have dreams like that the women in them are typically women I don't know or can't identify. Sometimes I'm able to piece together why I had a particular dream.

Monday night/Tuesday morning I actually had two erotic dreams. In one of the dreams I was romantically entagled with Phoebe from Friends. You may recall that not long ago I dreamed I was with Lisa Kudrow; in the Monday/Tuesday dream she was Phoebe.

I believe this happened as, not long before bedtime, I saw a snippet of friends in which Phoebe was trying to keep her smoke detector from beeping. She has the detector off the ceiling and traced the wires before finally smacking the unit with a shoe and saying, "Good job Pheebs."

Phoebe was always my favorite female Friend.

That dream was followed up with another erotic dream. This one with another woman I can identify -- or I could when I woke up, I'll be damned if I can recall much about the dream now. And, therefore, I can't remember what might have led to the dream.

As is typical, I awoke from both of these before they got to far. I seem to have an awareness while I'm sleeping that it would be terribly unlikely that I'd actually be rolling around with Phoebe from Friends -- and this awareness wakes me up.

A week or so ago I dreamed that I was cuddling with a short dark-haired girl I knew in college. I had this dream, I'm sure, as earlier in the day I was reminded of a college incident that involved a group of guys, gas-inducing food, beer, that thing that guys do around each other that we think is funny and women don't, an ill-timed knock at the door followed by the opening of that door and the brief entry of the dark-haired girl and a friend followed by a really quick, "Well, we gotta go."

I wish this were a scratch and sniff blog; mere words cannot describe the room-clearing ability of the aforementioned event. And, while I hate to take this entry from an erotic-Phoebe-dream entry to a fart entry, the whole fart-thing was just so well timed ... not that there was any actual timing involved. There was the fart, the knock, and the entry all real quick. It took the fart about 5 or 6 seconds to fill the room and become a what, uh ... problem? It was a paint peeler. Then, of course, the "Well, we gotta go?"

I know one or two of you can relate.

Posted by delmer at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

May 16, 2006

I got a new suit

Hey, I got a new suit this weekend. Maybe I should simply say a suit, as I don't really have another ... and I was quick to point this out to the sales gal. At one point, while we were looking at ties, an associate said, "And if you have a blue suit at home this tie will go with it as well."

I said, "Wednesday, when I pick this suit up I will own one suit."

In the suit, without the beard and in my glasses I look like a Baptist on visitation. It was all I could do to not look the sales lady in the eye and ask, "Tell me. Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"

I need the suit for Samson's first communion. And then I have a graduation to attend the next week. Unfortunately, there is a much sadder event on the horizon that will require a suit as well. (Update: The much sadder event is tomorrow.)

A big sign in the suit store window advertised big bunches of suits for $50.00 off, which is always sweet. Upon entering the store I found thousands of suits available for the wearing.

These, of course, were suits for the non-ape-armed.

Suits for tall -- in my case extra tall (I've never felt extra tall) -- were in short supply. There were three. They were not $50.00 off. Ooops, I just checked the sales receipt ... it was $50.00 off, but $50.00 off a price that was $50.00 higher than suits for the non-extra-tall.

I picked up three shirts as well. I have a 16 1/2 inch neck and arms that are 37/38. The 37/38 sizing trick is one of my pet peeves. Something is either 37-inches long or 38-inches long. Can you imagine how buildings would look if carpenters allowed an inch wiggle room? What if studs were 16/17 inches on center? Ron Jeremy might get away with saying, "I don't know. Twelve ... thirteen inches," but I'll guarantee the rest of us aren't so cavalier when it comes to throwing numbers around. Why should shirt sleeves be any different. People see my cuffs a lot more often than they see anything else.

The old guy at the suit store measured me and assured me that 37/38 would fit me. As a guy with a closet full of short-sleeved shirts and several long-sleeved shirts that don't fit particularly well, I was skeptical.

I asked the sales gal if I could try one on and she apologetically explained that the old guy wasn't a big fan of opening shirts as they were so hard to rewrap. I believe here exact words were, "They're a f*cking bitch to get back in the bag." Of course, maybe she said something else entirely and I'm making that up.

I assured the sales gal that I'd buy one shirt regardless and take the three if the one fit.

Yes. I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I just leave look for shirts elsewhere? I wasn't sure I'd be able to find 37/38 anywhere else -- aside from the Big and Tall Store (and I hate the local one). And, maybe, 37/38 would fit. As it happens, it fit well enough. It might be perfect.

I picked up some ties as well. Tall ties. I have ties at home that are not tall ties and I'm tired of screwing around with them. From this point forward the only non-tall ties I'm going to wear are those my kids buy or make for me.

As I recall, about a year ago I found some size 14 dress shoes marked down to $10.00. I bought them simply because they were my size and darned near free.

I believe I'm set.

Posted by delmer at 10:51 AM | Comments (3)

May 15, 2006

Those Nutty Hobos

On Saturday the boys and I were on our way to run errands and, as often happens, a couple of the boys had got a head start and beat me out the door. They beat me only by a minute or two -- but, that seems to have been plenty of time.

When I stepped around the garage I saw two of the boys in the alley by a big puddle. Naturally. Sam's newest bike was behind him.

"Boys! Let's go," I commanded, and they started toward me. "Sammo ... don't forget your bike," I added, as he seemed to have forgotten his bike.

"I need to throw this bottle away," he said.

"Why do you need to throw the bottle away." I asked.

"Jack," which was all I needed to hear, "threw a rock and broke it, and a man told us we had to pick it up," said Sam.

I got some more information on the man and determined he was likely to be in the dry cleaning place right next to the rock-throwing-incident place.

I walked over to the Dry Cleaner's and asked to speak to the man -- I gave the description Jack gave me. The gal at the counter told me it was probably Joe and told me I could go back. I'd never been behind the scenes of a dry cleaner's and in a geeky kind of way was curious to see what went on there. It wasn't as hot as I'd expected or as chemically smelling.

I found Joe (and his wife) standing near a big machine of some sort. When I caught Joe's eye I said, "I understand you just caught one of my boys breaking a bottle in the alley." Before he could form the oh crap ... not an asshole parent thought I continued, "I want to thank you for correcting him and having him pick up the pieces."

I made the point that I'd talked with Jack about the incident and I didn't think it would happen again. I explained that I lived in the Yellow House up the street and that I didn't want him to think heathens had moved in next door.

Joe and his wife were very kind. They said they had a boy of their own and knew that "boys will be boys."

I told them if it ever happened again and if they felt the need they could unwrap one of their wire hangers and chase Jack down the alley striping his legs. "I grew up in the 60's and I'll understand," I said.

Back in the van with Jack I, again, told Jack that breaking bottles was unacceptable and that it creates a hazard. I explained that it was most certainly illegal.

"But hobos do it all the time and never get in trouble," he argued.

Just where the hell is your mother taking you when I'm not around??

Later, at Kroger, the boys and I ran across a Hilliard Police Officer as he was stepping out of his cruiser. I stopped him and asked if it was OK for little boys to break bottles in alleys.

He told us it wasn't as it was littering and that if we see trash on the ground that we've no intention of throwing in a trash bin it is best to leave it alone. Trash on the ground is trash on the ground ... if you pick it up it is your trash.

I asked: "Does the fact that hobos break bottles in the street all the time and never get in trouble have any bearing on this?"

The officer, obviously a father, smiled and replied, "No. Not at all."

Posted by delmer at 7:20 AM | Comments (3)

May 14, 2006

Cut and Run

Another movie Delmer.

Cut and Run

Posted by delmer at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

My blood work update -- Pituitary Tumor

To see the longer version of my blood work history and the chart click, well, click the link that appears earlier in this sentence.

Back in March my Dostinex was dropped back to 1.25 mg twice a week. I had blood drawn on May 11, 2006 and the results show that my prolactin has continued to drop even at the lower dose. My prolactin currently comes in at 7.3 ng/mL (the normal scale being 2.1 to 17.7 for an adult male.)

Click the Prolactinoma link under Categories for the full listing of posts on this topic.

Posted by delmer at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2006

Sprint 8 and simple math

Back on April 25th I posted about Sprint 8 and my plans of adding some high intensity intervals to what passes for training in my life.

At the time I weighed 242 (241.4 to be precise).

About two weeks have passed since I started pedaling furiously -- sprint pedaling -- three times a week. So, what would this give us? About six Sprint 8 sessions. (Note: according to that earlier entry I sprinted twice before posting ... so I have eight sessions.)

This morning I weighed 236.4 -- for a drop of five pounds in two weeks.

I don't know what it means. I was probably losing 2 pounds a week without Sprint 8, although some weeks I would lose zero pounds. It does make me sweat and gasp for air, and there is something comforting about that.

On March 23rd I recorded my weight as 249 according to the blood work chart I keep. Of course, I also recorded today's weight on that chart as 239 -- for a loss of 10 pounds. (I prefer to see a gradual loss over time in an application I use on my PDA. Since my weight will vary, up and down, from day-to-day I cheat toward the high end until I'm sure I'm actually going to keep the weight off. )

If I've lost 13 pounds since March 23rd, a period of seven weeks, I've dropped under two pounds a week. If you subtract two weeks, giving us eleven, and subtract the five pounds I lost during that time you have ... eight pounds in eleven weeks. (And then you'll do some proofreading and realize it is five weeks).

8 pounds
11 weeks
---------------
.75 pounds per week

vs.

8 pounds
5 weeks
---------------
1.6 pounds per week

Math comes to the rescue again. And English; that would be the proofreading part.

Well, this certainly kicks the 2-pounds-per-week idea in the teeth
vs.
One point six is close to two pounds, but almost a pound less than the two point five.

BUT ... if you were bored enough to look back at the April 25h entry -- and I'd link to it but something screwy happens each time I try -- you'd notice that I had a drop of 10 pounds that seemed to come upon me pretty fast in a short period of time. Maybe it happened again ... if so, and the trend repeats I'll stop at 229 and hang there for a while.

What can we gather from all of this? Well. I've had a busy day and was having trouble coming up with something to blog about. That would be the most obvious.

I also need to put together a larger time sample. That is, keep this up for a couple more weeks -- well, actually, for a good long time ... like I said, it makes me sweat and I feel good about that -- and see what that gets us.

Of course, if I hit 229 I'm going to be sort of screwed and the testing will have to come to an end. I'm stopping at 225 pounds regardless; I don't care to get any smaller and will move to the all-ice-cream diet if I have to to stop things.

Posted by delmer at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

XP and Me

I have a Dell Latitude 610 notebook on my desk. I have it set up so that I can see the notebook monitor and an attached 19" CRT; I can run two different applications and watch them on their own screen.

(In much the same way I don't care that the Europeans have been paying $6.00 a gallon for gas for 15 years I don't care that Mac people have been able to bounce around from monitor to monitor since the dawn of time. So, you Mac people bite your tongue. That goes double for the European Mac users.)

When I boot up at work both monitors come up. When I boot at home the display setting auto-adjusts so that the notebook monitor has what I need. If, for some reason, something goes wrong I can hit FN+F8 and toggle between settings. I've never had a problem.

Until Tuesday.

Tuesday I took the PC home and connected to the network there. I put the PC in standby mode and then made the trip back to work. I repeated a process I've done dozens of times -- that is, brought her out of standby and logged into our network -- except, this time she wouldn't find the network. And she seemed to be hung a bit. I had the login screen I needed, and I could tell she was struggling to connect but I feared it wouldn't work and I'd end up wasting valuable minutes while everything sorted itself out.

I pressed the power button and did a hard shutdown.

Once upon a time I did this and had something go horribly wrong that resulted in my having to reinstall Windows XP. And doing a hard press-and-hold-the-power-button is honestly not the preferred way to turn things off. But I am an IT professional and have the ability to take successfully do things that would send the typical user into computer hell. I have a computer-Karmanic field around me that would bring Carson Daily to his knees if he go too close.

I've also done this many many times without having horrible problems. I took the chance.

The computer came up. There was the Windows XP splash screen And then a black screen. No task bar, no desktop icons.

There was a mouse pointer, but with nothing to point to it was sort of useless.

I've seen the no-taskbar/no-icons thing before. Once a friend brought me a computer with the problem. Once it happened to me. Both times I spent hours trying to fix the problem before finally giving up and doing a reinstall (not just a repair install ... that didn't work either time).

So, I started the piddling. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say the valuable minutes I was afraid I was going to waste turned into valuable hours. I rebooted a lot. I spent a lot of time in the various forms of Safe Mode.

As I type I'm starting to think the time wasn't really wasted. Maybe you'll agree in a paragraph or two.

I had noticed right away that I could get the mouse pointer to scroll off the side of the monitor -- but not off the top or bottom -- as if I still had an extended monitor setup. However, when I attached the second monitor I got no second-monitor activity and the FN+F8 didn't do the toggling it should have. Also, there was no wallpaper. Just inky blackness.

Finally I thought, what if I just type my password in as if the NetWare client was on the screen? I gave it a shot, hit enter and boom! ... I was up and running. Both monitors lit up.

Jump forward a day (that would be Wednesday, y'all).

Some outside consultants were in visiting. You always want to look good for the outside guys. I don't know why ... you just do. And I did -- they had two needs that I met immediately and without a hitch.

As I was making my getaway one of our people said, "Delmer. My computer won't come up."

I sat in front of it and noticed an inky blackness on the screen. And a mouse pointer. No icons. No taskbar. I was able to move the mouse pointer off the screen to the side but not off the top and bottom. Just two days ago I had set this user up with a dual-screen setup similar to mine. I knew her password (I'm in IT ... I know everybody's password. Even yours. Please refer to the computer-Karma above.).

I typed the password in and hit enter. The computer lit up. I had it fixed in under a minute. Without the two hours I spent yesterday this could have been one of those embarrassingly long troubleshooting things.

I told the user how to fix it if it happened again. Another one of our guys said, "You're not supposed to tell us how you did it. You're supposed to leave and have us think you are a genius."

I told them I was more of an idiot savant and that the idiot part was me giving away my secrets.

(Let's see David Blaine fix that problem.)

Posted by delmer at 7:27 AM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2006

Gardening -- I rip myself off again

I am not above reposting comments I've left elsewhere as brand-new post items here. Something someone will write in their blog will remind me of something that happened to me at some point in the past and I'll post that as a reply. And then I'll think wait, I want the whole world to know about that.

But I don't know the whole world. I know only you (in a non-creepy-we're separated-from-each-other-by-miles-of-fiber-optic-cable sort of way.)

This first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man 116: The Green Goblin Takes a Holiday. Or maybe it was Karla's blog.

Please note, if you've read this at Karla's blog or the Marvel Website, I have corrected a misspelling.

Later I'd put a brass pole in the garden. She ran beans up it.

Posted by delmer at 7:03 AM | Comments (1)

May 9, 2006

Very Coarse Vein

A while back my mother gave me a varicose vein. Up until that point in time it had simply been a welt. A welt that wouldn't go away. A welt that didn't hurt in a welt-like fashion. A welt that I'd wondered about in the sense of what did I do to get that?

Mom pointed out that it was a varicose vein which, I guess, explained why it wasn't healing.

As soon as I knew it was a varicose vein I started keeping an eye on it and noticing it more often. Sometimes it was hard to make out. Sometimes it was big and bulgy and ran from the inside of my upper thigh almost to my ankle. Once it went from the inside of my upper thigh, down past my ankle, onto the floor and up the leg of the woman next to me at the supermarket.

Yesterday I went to a vascular surgeon to have him take a look at it. When he asked about it I told him that it ran down my leg anaconda-like and throbbed sometimes which, I said, was the main problem; I don't like anything that big, that round, and that throbbing that close to my manly parts as it detracts from the main attraction. (I honestly believe that with the right, tight jeans, and the vein at its bulgiest I would look very impressive as I strolled toward you down the hall. Let's see Enzyte top that.)

We went over some treatment options and the doc thought I should go to a local hospital to have a test run.

Before leaving I spoke with his receptionist and listened while she made my appointment. There was some sort of conversation going on that led me to believe there might be another Delmer Wells on file at the hospital. When I asked the receptionist about it she said that there wasn't another Delmer, but that they'd had my birthday down wrong.

"What date did they have?"

"August 23rd."

"August 23rd is my birthday," I mildly exclaimed, "what date did I give you?"

"August 26th."

I looked over the paperwork and pointed out that not only had I put August 26, but I'd also started to write 06 for the year ... I had cleverly changed it to 60 by adding an upper stem to the '0' but failed to notice the 26th altogether.

It would seem that varicose veins are the least of my problems. Maybe if I wait long enough I'll simply forget I have them. (The doc was kind enough to find another bad vein while I was visiting.)

Oh. I bought some really sweet compression socks. A pair of black and a pair of blue.

Update: I'm wearing the socks as I type, they are very comfortable and did a better job of coming up over the calves than I expected. AND, after the evening stroll, last night, I was giving my legs a baby-oil rubdown and noticed another bad vein on the same leg.

I'm kidding about the oil, but the vein is there.

Posted by delmer at 7:02 AM | Comments (2)

May 8, 2006

First Dates

If I thought for a minute that my son or any of his classmates read this blog I ... well, I'd do a couple of things. First I'd tell the parent's of the other kids to better monitor what their kids are doing on the web -- I'm not sure all kids should be reading this. I'm not sure my kids should read it on a regular basis and for the most part they seem to barely acknowledge its existence.

Secondly, I wouldn't post this.

Anyway. Haydn asked a female classmate out on a date. He did this without first advising either his mother or me, which sort of leads to the questions: How was he going to finance the date; how was he going to get there.

Oh. And Haydn is in 6th grade. He seems to be the type of sixth grader I was: naive. Though he certainly has a lot more guts than I had at that age -- or any age between that and my current age.

The whole point of this post is to tell the following.

Haydn normally dresses himself as if he just stepped out of a garbage can. He's a slob and his mother and I have had genuine worries about how this will affect his life. The other night -- the night he told me about the date -- he came into my room carrying church clothes.

"Do these look good together?" he asked.

"Yes. What are they for?"

"The date tomorrow ... if she can go."

Soooo. The boy does have some fashion sense. He does care about his appearance ... just not for me and mom.

As it happens the little girl's parents nixed the idea. I can't say I blame them. Sixth grade is mighty young.

I'm glad Haydn found out before he'd hired a limo.

Posted by delmer at 8:54 AM | Comments (7)

May 7, 2006

Cleaning, the gym and bloodwork

I cleaned out one of the rooms in the house. It had become a temporary storage place for things I moved from the apartment that I'd intended to get to right away ... but never did. In the clutter I found things like videos, DVDs, CDs, two of the final bills I'd received when I left the apartment (which cleared up how I missed paying them) and pictures of the kids.

I also found the original paperwork for my gym membership: I joined in April 27, 2000. Which means my anniversary was something like a week and a half ago. Did I get a cake from the gym? Or even a protein bar? Nope.

I also found some early blood work (you can see it all here). This one from LabCorp which uses the 241-827 ng/dl scale as the normal range for a man's testosterone level. Using this scale the lowest my testosterone hit was 29 ng/dl (using and adjustment I apply).

The best thing about the blood work I found was how easy it is to read. I always have the results faxed to me and sometimes the quality is lacking. This copy is easy enough to read that I can make out the scales for women and men across the various age groups.

And they are ...

What does this mean? Well, for me, it clears up something I remember once saying. And that is that at one point my testosterone was lower than that of some 12-year old girls. I remembered saying it but I couldn't remember where I'd gotten the idea. And really, I guess you could say at one time my T was lower than some 10-year old girls. (And, of course, most adult women.)

With my testosterone as low as it was there is no way I'd have ever gotten such a kick-ass table in a blog entry. Thanks to Pharmacia (Pfizer), we all win.

Oh, and that room that I cleaned. The one that was temporary storage ... what will it be used for now? I suspect it will be that extra room that every house has that no one ever uses.

Posted by delmer at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 6, 2006

Heritage Trail Bike Path -- Hilliard

I tried to make this a photo entry, however, I seem to have misplaced my digital camera. I'm not terribly worried as today will bring with it some cleaning and I'm pretty sure it will turn up.

The highlight of the day was a 20-mile bike ride. I haven't ridden 20-miles non-stop in 18 or 19 years and that ride was a 50-mile trek. It is also a much longer story than I have time for today (please refer to the cleaning reference above).

Today's ride was down the Heritage Trail Bike Path. The trail is right at 7 miles, so there and back is 14. I did a there and back and then went down the path again far enough to round out the 20. According to the computer on my bike I averaged 16 mph -- which is not bad ... and sort of makes me a rebel -- the speed limit is 15 (there were few other people on the bike path; my recklessness endangered no one else).

As for the photos, I'd intended to stop here and there and snap farmers plowing their fields. Maybe next time.

Posted by delmer at 7:41 PM | Comments (0)

May 5, 2006

I still feel warm inside

Tuesday of this week someone complained about the speed of their computer. This happens a lot. What once seemed blazingly fast overtime seems to slow down.

The user also told me that she'd received a Windows message telling her her drive was full and that she needed to do come cleanup.

This probably means she has a smaller drive, thought I, "perhaps I should check it out."

Yep. She had a 2 gigger. So it was small, old and slow based on today's standards. I told her I'd install a larger drive -- that day if I had one on the shelf.

And I had one. But, it was an 80-gig drive and I'd sometimes had trouble installing a drive that large on the motherboard in question.

The PC in use is one I put together. A couple of years ago I built most of the machines we have in here. As a time-saving method, and as a way to make the upgrade more reasonably priced and more appealing to the bean counters I used as many of the old parts as I could. Everybody went from 350 MHz or slower PCs to 1 GHz or better machines, but we held on to some smaller drives. Things were better, but not the best.

As it happens, we still have a few machines with older drives in them.

I'd upgraded several of the drives over the years. Forty-gig drives have always gone in without trouble. Eightys have been problematic and I wasn't thrilled to find that all I had in stock was an 80. But, I thought I'd give it a shot; it was a new 80-gig drive and maybe something with the firmware had changed since the last time I'd tried this. Maybe this drive was a different model number. Maybe this drive was a different manufacturer. Maybe maybe maybe.

I installed the drive. It didn't care to be set as Master but things picked up when I set the jumper to Cable Select. I FDISK'd the drive and formatted it to its full 80 gigs being sure to copy the system files. I installed it in place of the CD ROM and booted the PC to Windows 98. I opened a DOS box, went to D:\ and issued the command: xcopy c:\ /c /e /h /k /r. The copy complete, I removed the old drive, set the partition active on the new drive, reconnected the CD ROM and booted.

Everything worked. No problems. The system is faster. The user is happy ... at least for a few more days. (You know how they are.)

Aware of the success the upgrade had brought her coworker, another user asked for the same upgrade. Her old drive is 4 gigs. I told her I was out of drives and said I'd order a new one.

Online I found 40-gig drives ... the drive that works all the time ... for $54.00. Not a bad price. I remember when 1-gig drives fell to $99.00; back then this drive would have cost $4000.00. Okay, this drive couldn't be had for any amount of money back then and if I slip into I-remember-when mode things will just get ugly ... it always ends with I remember when gas was 29-cents a gallon and then someone says it hasn't been 29-cents a gallon since the 60's ... just how old are you?

So, there's the 40-gig no-fail drive for $54.00. But wait, two lines down is an 80-gig drive, with an 8 meg buffer, for $56.00!

Drunk with my success from the day before and unable to pass up a bargain I purchased the 80-gig drive. Forget the fact that the user was moving from a 4-gig drive that was only 3/4 full. More is better. And, even when it's not better more is always more!

I followed all the steps outlined above and things seemed to be working. I walked away and returned 10-minutes later to check on the progress. Things seemed to be hung. I told the PC to turn its head and cough while I checked. Yep. Hung ... and well.

I rebooted. I flashed the BIOS. I rebooted some more. I took a break and had the best BM I've had in a week. Nothing worked though I'll admit I was feeling better.

Finally I re-FDISK'd the drive to 50% capacity. She stands at 40-gigs now and things are working as they should have been all along.

Not too long ago this drive would have cost me $8,000.00.

Posted by delmer at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2006

Cuba

I have a utility that strips attachments from my e-mail and places them in a directory on my hard drive. I put this together to keep my Outlook .pst file from getting too large. Lately, though, I've come to wonder about the usefulness. I mean, it must have seemed useful once -- I've been using it for years and I always set it up when I set up a new PC for myself -- but, maybe it's time to do away with it.

Today, for example, I received a message I needed to forward. The message had a business-related attachment and rather than just simply forwarding it I had to dig out the attachment -- which took all of ten seconds, but that isn't the point ... though I could have used that time to better punctuate this entry. See -- the once-very-useful utility is now causing you to suffer.

My apologies.

The other day I was looking through the download directory and noticed a bunch of files named CUBA 001.JPG, CUBA 002.JPG, etc. A lot of files that come in like this are spam-related and would have nothing to do with Cuba -- neither the country nor the show me the money guy. These seem to be actual pictures of Cuba, however. Not that I can be sure; it could be Tijuana, Little Mexico in you pick the large city, or even Barcelona.

Before looking through all the pictures I did a search in Outlook and found two messages that had a reference to Cuba. Both from Jocelyne, one of the Sales Gals I buy from. I looked through all of the pictures and, I'll be damned, she was in a couple of them.

Cuba?! As you know, or as I believe anyway, American tourists cannot travel to Cuba; American terrorists can, but only so far as Guantanamo Bay. Coincidentally, in Hear No Evil, mention is made of traveling to another resort island and hopping a plane to Cuba from there. A strategically placed $20 in your passport seems to be enough to keep Cuban customs from stamping your passport and tipping off George Bush on the return home. You would probably want to swallow a mint to hide the cigar breath.

Cuba, I think, would be so cool.

This reminds me, it was 30 years and two weeks ago that I was in France. God. Thirty years. I've been saying, for years, that I intend to go back -- not because I have any big romantic memories, but, just because.

Between high school and college I've had 5-years of French but, if I were to all-of-a-sudden find myself in France, or even Quebec, I might starve to death due to my inability ask for anything other than directions to the swimming pool or library -- maybe the bookstore -- in any case I'd be able to swim and read. My encounter with the French Girl is proof that my French-language skills are poor.

Oh. And if I were dating a French gal named Sylvia, I'd be able to ask where she is. Of course, she's typically at the pool with Edith.

Posted by delmer at 7:35 AM | Comments (0)

May 3, 2006

Bigfoot and Bad Dreams

Last night I had a dream that there had been a bigfoot sighting in Franklin, Ohio, not far from where I grew up and where, in the dream, I was living again.

It was one of those dreams where I was going around and making sure the doors were locked but even as I was doing it I knew it was useless against bigfoot.

Why a Big Foot dream?