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January 31, 2008

My Eldest is Applying for a Scholarship

[And this is the letter he cranked out in about 10 minutes.]

 

January 31, 2008

Mrs. Teacher's Name

St. Brendan School

 

 

Dear Mrs. XXXX,

 

I feel I would be a good candidate for the Aquinas Scholarship Endowment Fund because I think I could accurately represent the high academic standards St. Brendan School and its teachers uphold.  

 

I would also like to address the fact that I am involved in many of the extracurricular options presented to me because I attend St. Brendan. I have been involved in Power of the Pen (8^th grade), Youth-to-Youth (7^th and 8^th grades), football (4-8^th grades), basketball (4^th grade), In-the-Know (6-8^th grades), Math Counts (8^th grade) and track and field (7^th and 8^th grades). I also served on the Student Advisory Board in 5^th and 8^th grades. I qualified for the Spelling Bee several years (1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th and 8^th grades). In 5^th grade, I placed 3^rd and went to the Diocesan Spelling Bee as an alternate. 

 

I am also active in the St. Brendan Parish and attend the V.E.R.Y. Edge meetings before Mass. I was an altar server as well in 5^th and 6^th grades. After Mass, I hand out bulletins to parishioners. I will represent St. Brendan this summer at Catholic Heart Workcamp as part of the LIFE TEEN program. 

 

I plan to attend St. Charles Preparatory School and continue my Catholic education there. I do realize that it is very academically challenging and I believe I am ready to accept that challenge. 

 

My mother has always told me that, no matter where I am, I am representing my school. Even without my uniform, I am representing St. Brendan and I would be proud to continue to do so through the Aquinas Scholarship Endowment Fund. 

 

Thank you for this opportunity and thank you for taking the time to read this letter.  

   

Sincerely,  

   

   

   

Haydn Wells 

 

Posted by delmer at 10:54 PM | Comments (4)

January 30, 2008

Dreams are Back

I've heard that we all dream and that those who think they don't dream are simply not remembering them. 

In the past I've had some great… wait, before I go on, let me share something Samson said the other night. He was telling me about a dream he had in which he was at school, but he didn't have all his clothes with him. I can't tell you the number of times I dreamed I was at school naked; in one I recall turning a corner by the lockers, looking down, and noticing I'd forgotten to got dressed that morning.  It's nice to know I've passed this trait on to Sam.

Anyway, in the past I've had some great dreams. Vivid dreams. Odd dreams that were just a lot of fun.  There was the dream with David Letterman. The push-ups dream. This odd dream.  This odder dream.  This dream about Jennifer Aniston and sewers.  And a host of others. In one dream Courtney Thorne-Smith sat her breasts on the top of my head (we were both standing).

There was a time I could write about my desire to dream about someone (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and I would dream about that person in pretty short order. (I was hoping for a little more action with Ms. Thorne-Smith.)

A while back I noticed the dreams had stopped and it bothered me just a bit. It seemed I'd gone from dreaming all the time to not dreaming at all. As I considered it I got the feeling that the dreams had stopped after my cabergoline was reduced from 1.5 mg weekly to 1 mg weekly. 

After that it was further reduced to .5 mg weekly and this made me think that if it was the meds reduction, the fun, vivid, dreams might be gone for good. I mean, it made sense — I'm pretty sure medicines can affect how a person dreams. I know that when I quit doing mushrooms several years ago the way I dreamed changed; I found I actually had to be sleeping to have any.

And then, a couple weeks ago, I dreamed I was cuddling up with a female person. As luck would have it, she was our high school homecoming queen (This would be "luck" as it applies to me).

In the dream we were about 20.  And we were just cuddling; snuggling on a couch or something. There's no chance we were ever going to have sex and it has nothing to do with the fact that she was homecoming-court royalty and I was a normal guy and everything with the fact I never have sex dreams with people I know. If her pants had ever come off in the dream she would have instantly turned into someone else. And this, I suspect is quite the opposite of what used to happen 25 years ago in situations involving her and naked couples in which she was not a physical participant (You might want to read that again.).

Actually, I don't really have sex dreams at all. I have close-to-sex dreams.  And I don't mean dreams in which I've gone out with a woman twice and then I wake up before the magic third date. I mean dreams in  which I'm very close to having sex and in the dream I think, "wait a minute, this is a dream."  Then, of course, I wake up. (It is unfair, isn't it. If it helps you feel better for me, when I was younger and I'd have scary dreams I'd be able to insert the this-is-a-dream awareness and end the dream.)

I think I dreamed about the homecoming queen as someone had been talking about class reunions that week.  At our last class reunion I was talking with some people and our HCQ walked by me and gave me a hug and that was the only interaction we had. Afterward I'd regretted that we hadn't had a chance to talk; not because she was homecoming court royalty and I was a normal guy, but because she is a sweet person.

Anyway, since that dream I've had dreams nightly.

Just the other night I dreamed I was dating Alyssa Milano (she's been in My Name is Earl recently).  In the dream she was (a still living) Johnny Carson's daughter and he was still hosting The Tonight Show.  Alyssa thought I was funny and wanted me to be on the show to do stand-up.  I didn't want to and was relieved when the guy at the door said the show had been running two minutes long since the something sketch.

Posted by delmer at 11:00 PM

January 29, 2008

Upcoming Posts

This morning as I climbed out of the shower I had about a thousand things I wanted to blog about. Really, this isn't all that uncommon — ideas (or what passes for them here) come in waves and I'll have several things I want to say.

What I'll do is focus on one idea, write a rough draft, storyboard it on a couple big sheets of poster paper, run it by a focus group, seek advertisers, enter a meditative state and play the post over and over in my mind to see if it sings to me, lose interest in it, and then write some piece of poorly-formed tripe in about two minutes.

And what's worse, at the end of all that I'll have forgotten what the other 999 things were I wanted to write about.

We all lose.

Today, we'll try something different.  I'm in a pretty good mood (and for some reason that's when ideas seem to rush in … rush, limp, crawl, whatever, the point is I have more than one) and I'm going to list a few reminders to me.

• Stories from my DJ days. As suggested by a reader.
• Evidence that something as simple as 'hello' can lead a woman to believe you want to bed her.
• This Year's Big Tally (miles on the bike, books, blood work, etc.) 
• This Year's Big tally whacker (Dubya)
• Gay men hitting on me and SE (and before anybody gets offended, let me point out that I'm fine with it and that I think all men could benefit from having a gay guy hit on them once in a while.)
• More on accents (Disney, Samson, WWDTM)
• More Driving Tips (Stay in your lane, Don't pull out and slow down) 
• I've got tickets to see Bruce
• My weight and how I've quit eating ice cream, and my wonderment over whether or not it's related to my meds. (This will require a bit of records research.)
• Dreams are back! Are meds involved?
• Weight loss in the army
• Why my computer is trying to kill me
• A book I read that didn't leave me feeling cheap
• Quotes from books (Kirby 168, Berry the AG 2-something) 
• How going to school late pisses God off

I may add more later. I may not. I am a rebel, after all. (And I'll never be any good.)

[You can't possibly know this, but the Dreams are back! which is something I've meant to post for weeks, is a reminder that came to me just as I was going to post this. Technically, it's one of the I-may-add-more-later ideas; I just wanted you to know that I wasn't BSing you when I suggested I'd add more.]

Posted by delmer at 11:04 PM | Comments (4)

January 28, 2008

The Lamest Thing At Disney

In all the things I've mentioned about Disney, I think I've failed to talk about one or two really cool things. 

While the boys and I were there we went to

• Mickey's Philharmagic
• It's a Bug's Life
• Muppets something in 3D
• A live evening show that featured fire on water. I don't remember what it's called.

The first three items in the list were 3D presentations and were incredible. You really need to see them. The last thing was really cool, but in that list of four things it's listed fourth for a reason.

The Indiana Jones Stunt Show was very cool as well.  I knew one guys was going to get chopped up by the airplane props and when it came time to happen I was looking for the magic that would allow him to disappear. And I still missed it.

In the Haunted Mansion there comes a point where the room you are in is being lowered into a basement area. Even though I knew it was happening I was unable to detect the motion of the room we were in. It didn't jerk to a start or a stop. It was a great effect.

All of this would make Sounds Like Danger (or whatever the Drew Cary thing is) seem lame by comparison ... if it weren't for the fact that it need not be compared to anything else at all to appear lame. It stands alone (like the cheese in The Farmer in the dell) in its lameness. I love Drew Carey, I think he's funny, I think he's a good guy, I know he's an Ohioan. I'm certain that as soon as he saw Sounds Like Danger that he thought it was lame. Any one of my children could have taken a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a webcam and made a similar item as a school project and when any one of my children presented it to his classmates they'd all have screamed LAMO-O.

It was so monumentally bad that when I got back to work one of the guys I was talking to asked, as he made a sour face, "Did you see that Drew Carey thing?"

Anyway. How about some more photos.

 

A street performer.

 

The Indiana Jones Stunt Show.

 

Betty White's bust. Because I know Dave stops by.

 

Some sort of Mickey Mouse Evening Show. They eventually set the pool afire.

Posted by delmer at 9:55 PM | Comments (3)

January 27, 2008

Expedition Everest

I can't remember if I've said that almost any "fun" ride I got on at Disney made me sick or not. So I'll say it here:

• Space Mountain
• The Aerosmith Roller Coaster
• Tower of Terror
• Cinderella's Bordello
• Space shot mars

All made me ill.

Most of the time I became just a little bit motion sick though one time I required the smallest pit of penicillin.

And so when talk turned to climbing aboard Expedition Everest I decided against it as I really wanted to end one day without any stomach greenness.

Then, as time drew near, I had a what-the-hell thought and decided to go for it.

Up, up, up we climbed.  Down and around. Maybe up and down some more before we stopped on a hill and beneath an overhang where it looked like the track was ripped up.

So far, no motion sickness.

As we sat there we could see a shadow of a Yeti (the Yeti? how many are there supposed to be?) on the overhanging rock. He made some noise, danced around, and we started moving backwards.

And I got a little green.

After the ride, and as we were walking through the park, some of us had our picture snapped by a Disney Photographer with Everest in the background. I went to the Disney site yesterday and collected some of the prints and as I looked at them I noticed that some of the people in our group had their very own Yeti traveling with them.

 

Me. 

(Also in the photo: Mr. Orozco (Tony's dad), Michael (Tony's brother) Samson, Tony (the World's Best Brother-in-Law), Jack and David (Tony's brother).

[I would be such a bad witness should I ever see a crime. If a cop were to ever ask me to describe a fleeing criminal, I'd say, "He looked average. About my size."]

 

There are 17 of us in this photo. Depending upon the day of the trip there were as many as 25 of us. On the bus from Disney World to the ship my sister introduced us to a woman she worked with and her family (not pictured).  She pointed the boys and me out as being her brother and nephews and then said "Everybody else is part of Tony's family."  I followed that up by saying, "Later in the trip we'll play 'Guess the Catholics'."

 

The boys and me in front of the giant Epcot ball.

  Millie (my sister) and me.

Posted by delmer at 8:34 PM | Comments (9)

January 26, 2008

More Disney Memories

And now, my favorite Disney memories by child (and you'll notice the clever use of blurry photos in this entry).

Samson: Having him drive me around in the motorized race cars. This was Samson's favorite ride and we took several turns at it. What I thought was interesting was that Samson complained that the cars with the steering wheel on the right-hand side were harder to drive. I told him that I knew exactly what he meant.

 

Jack: Jack and I sat next to each other in the Aerosmith Roller Coaster. The cars whip around the track to the tune of "Dude Looks Like a Lady." The whole time Jack was sitting next to me he was singing along with as much as he knew of the song which was pretty much, "Doo doo… doo doo… dude looks like a lady.  Doo doo… doo doo… dude looks like a lady." Coincidentally, that's the same parts of the song I know.

 

Haydn: Spent a lot of time with the Disney Club that's set aside for older kids. He went off on his own, to this supervised activity, and came to the stateroom when he was supposed to, a bit after 2 a.m.  It was very late, and it was something new for us. Even though we were on a boat and he wasn't just running around wild, I had worry that I wouldn't normally have.  Haydn behaved responsibly and didn't do anything to make me regret the trust I had in him. 

 

 

 

Posted by delmer at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)

January 25, 2008

Kids have gotten tougher the last year

This morning at 7:15 a.m. it was:

 

That's -17 C for you metric system folks.  Last year when it hit zero, school was canceled for a week.

I wrapped a towel around me before I went out to start the van.

(I will leave it to you to find your way to my blog entries, of a week ago, on The Bahamas and Florida)

Posted by delmer at 7:18 AM | Comments (7)

January 24, 2008

The Love Hate Meme

Greeneyezz, over at Greeneyezz Reflections, tagged me with the Love & Hate Meme.

The meme, unlike your typical woman, is self-explanatory… so let's get to it.  I chose to do 18 things, simply by accident.

1. I love my children more than anything else in the world and the rest of my family just a teeny bit less.
2. I hate too many things the current administration is doing to even begin to list them.
3. I love little baby ducks, old pickup trucks, slow-moving trains, and I'm sure any of you that know I used to be a country & western DJ won't be surprised by this, rain.
4. I severely dislike people who treat sitting behind the wheel of a moving automobile as if driving is secondary to whatever else it is they got in the car to do.
5. I love a woman's tongue in my ear. And on my neck. Really, just about anywhere.
6. I hate the fact my children might have moments of sadness due to the divorce.
7. I love chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
8. I hate the fact that people who run companies into the ground, or generally f*uck the common worker, get tens of millions of dollars as the way of a parting gifts when they leave or are forced out.
9. I love seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert.  Ted Nugent as well.  I'll be seeing Bruce in late March.
10. I hate spammers of all kinds.
11. I love promoting world peace.
12. I hate the fact that, as recently as last September, 33% of Americans continued to think Iraq attacked us on 9/11. They didn't, regardless of what Toby Keith would like you to think.
13. I love The Mighty Schwinn.
14. I severely dislike some of the practices of my bank though I accept full responsibility for the stupid thing that I let happen to me.
15. I love the place I work. They are incredibly family friendly.
16. I hate injustice.
17. I love old dogs, children, and watermelon wine.
18. I hate tagging people; feel free to grab hold of this meme and make it yours if you are so inclined.

Posted by delmer at 5:39 PM | Comments (11)

January 23, 2008

Least favorite vacation things

Recently the blog has been about the fun the boys and I had on vacation.

As you are probably aware nothing is fun all of the time (though I come close) and there were one or two things that happened that were not fun at all and really sort of sucked royally.

I'm going to say there were two things and both things happened right at the end of the cruise which isn't really too bad considering the vacation was about ten days long.

Sucky Thing Number One:  And this requires some setup. The ship we were on had something like ten or eleven floors and our stateroom was on the second floor.  Second floor, aft, to be precise.  Depending upon which elevator we got off of the walk to the room, after we entered the hallway, might be rather short or something a bit longer. Once or twice, depending again on the elevator we exited, we'd pass through a bulkhead doorway each time we went to our room.

If you find yourself on the Disney Wonder and you're walking toward the aft staterooms, and you pay special attention as you come to the last bulkhead doorway before the hallway that contains stateroom 2147, you'll notice a sign just above the doorway. That sign says "Watch Your Head," and right under the word "Your" you'll see a piece of my scalp.

I'd walked through that doorway many many times without banging my head and didn't have a problem with it until I'd noticed that the ceiling in the part of the ship that would be mid seemed taller than the aft ceiling.  As I walked that part of the corridor I noticed I didn't have to duck to avoid knocking my head into the overhead lights; I'm not sure I had to duck in the aft part of the ship to miss the lights but it seemed like a good idea each time I tooled down the hall.

Despite my confusion over the need-to-duck with respect to the aft lights, I knew, without any doubt, that I had to duck every time I went through the doorway. And still I ran my head into it the morning before we sailed home.  And it hurt a lot. Bulkheads have no give at all.

Sucky Thing Number Two: Change And still I ran my head into it the morning before we sailed home to And still I ran my head into it the night before we sailed home and you've got it.

That's right. Twice in one day. It probably won't surprise you to find it hurt a lot more the second time. And not only because there was a guy coming toward me who saw the whole thing. (By the way, Sam witnessed me banging my head both times; Jack was on hand for the second show.)

I'm not sure if it was paint or dried blood I felt as I washed my hair the next morning.

Time for a photo:

 

From the Arabian Nights show.  This is the giant hair-removal tool the performers use to give their bodies that oh-so-smooth look.

Posted by delmer at 5:16 PM | Comments (5)

January 22, 2008

Welcome Home

Two days ago I walked out into this:

 

Today, this:

 

The footprints might provide a clue as to why I wore my shorts home yesterday despite the fact I knew it was supposed to be about 15 F (-9 C). That fact is either (A) The cold doesn't bother me or (B) I'm too lazy to dig out appropriate outerwear. (I'd like to point out that I did put on shorts before I went outside, rather than go out in the towel I'd had wrapped around me. And why go out at all? To start the van so it would be warm when I got in it to drive to work.)

 

Posted by delmer at 7:20 PM | Comments (8)

January 21, 2008

On the way home

I set the alarm for 2:30 a.m. and left a message with The Mouse for a 2:30 a.m. wake-up call. I figure anytime you've got to meet The Magical Express at 3:35 you can't be too cautious.

In true Disney-Magic fashion both the alarm and the call worked as one would expect and the boys and I were downstairs and waiting with time to spare.

Rodney, our Magical Express driver, was very pleasant and quite the humorist. After we were all loaded up he gave us a two-minute Welcome to the Magical Express greeting that was friendly and funny.  He got us safely to the airport in plenty of time for our 6:55 flight.

The first leg of the flight took us to Charlotte, North Carolina.  The boys and I managed to sleep for most of the trip.

We landed in Charlotte sometime very close to 8 a.m.; our flight to Columbus was to take off at 11:55.

That's about four hours.

When we made it to our gate I noticed another flight leaving at 9:55, or two hours earlier.  I checked with the gate and the attendant said he might be able to get us on the plane, but that it would be a $25 per-bag (I think) charge to change the bags over and he may not be able to transfer the bags at all. I told him I wasn't worried about the bags and that I'd rather make a second trip to Port Columbus airport rather than fork out $75.00.

As the flight was almost full the attendant asked that I check back in 30 minutes to see about the status.

In the 30 minutes that had passed the flight had been moved to another gate.  The attendant there said it might be too late to get my bags and that since they wouldn't be on the same flight as I was the boys and I wouldn't be able to switch planes.

Really, it wasn't a big deal. We were hungry anyway and decided to get some food.

We left Charlotte at 11:55 and arrived in Columbus around 1 p.m.  We made our way to baggage claim and while we waited for our luggage we heard a page: "Will passenger Wells please report to someplace."

I wasn't sure what the last bit of the announcement said but I was pretty sure I was a passenger Wells. I took a look to the right and noticed what appeared to be my luggage sitting outside an office.  I walked toward it and the attendant there told me my bags had come in on an earlier flight.

I believe that had I gone back to the first gate attendant the boys and I could have made the same flight my luggage did.

I was napping by 3 p.m. or so.

 

Jack at the airport.

 

Different child. Same airport.

 

Samson took this picture of a plane marked "Philadelphia Eagles."

Posted by delmer at 6:39 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2008

Off the boat and to Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas

Today the plan was to have breakfast at 7 a.m. and then roll off the boat. I, honestly, had some concerns about being able to mobilize everybody in time to make breakfast and was tickled when I woke up around 6.

Without getting into all the magic (some of it Disney, some of it mine) involved I'll skip to the part where the boys and I decided to scoot off the boat at 7 in an attempt to avoid the going-through-customs crowd.

Around 7:15 the all clear was given to exit the boat. As fast as we could walk we had our luggage, cleared customs, and were sitting on our butts drinking pop. It couldn't have taken five minutes.

When you compare this to the fear I had of standing in a customs line for an hour, with 2000 other people, with three boys poking and prodding each other … well, there is no comparison. [I have no problem waiting in line with other travelers as I have a full awareness that the line will eventually wither to nothing and I'll get to where I'm going. Teen and pre-teen boys lack that awareness.]

The downside to the whole thing is that we haven't eaten. Fortunately, we've been storing about 10,000 extra cruise and park calories per day for the past week and we're unlikely wither away to nothing.

Let's do a travel recap:

In Columbus: 

• At the airport early
• Zipped through security (Samson declared it the most fun he'd ever had)
• Had a great flight to Philly
• Great weather

In Philly: 

• Made it to our connecting flight without a problem despite the fact its gate was in a different county that the plane we flew in on
• Zipped through security again
• Great weather

In Orlando: 

• Took a train to get our baggage
• The World's Greatest Brother-In-Law picked us up at the airport

Getting on the Cruise: 

• We took a chartered bus
• Disney had plenty of people to help with check-in. It was painless
• As you know, the cruise was great

Getting off the boat: 

• Well, you read about it earlier in this entry

Things could not have been better, and this is a problem.  My kids have no appreciation for how rough traveling can be. (My niece, who joined us for the cruise portion, had her 6 a.m. flight canceled the day the boat was to leave. Naturally, she found out about it only after she drove, in the snow, to the airport.)

[Later that day, and too tired and lazy to care about tense change and opting instead to insert a blurb in brackets, he typed…]

The latter part of the day was spent at Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas. We got there some time before noon (via chartered bus) and had the boys swimming in the heated pool shortly thereafter. It was rather chilly out, though the boys didn't seem to mind.

I ordered pizza for dinner and had a moment of pause when I said, "We're at Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas" and the order taker asked me for the cross streets so the driver could find it. I thought maybe I'd called the wrong Papa John's; I'd thought correctly.

 

Samson and Jack swim. You'll notice the lifeguard is all bundled up.

 

Haydn crashed before the other boys. He'd been up late the night before and was going on four hours sleep.

 

A shot from my sister's room.

 

Zebras.

 

A shot from the pool area.

Posted by delmer at 11:52 PM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2008

Castaway Key

Today we docked at Castaway Key, the island Disney owns.  It was windy and the water choppy enough that glass bottom boat tours and some other things were canceled.

They were not things the boys had an interest in so we were unaffected.

And, despite the wind, it was still almost 80 F (very close to 28 C and, as I don't have Internet access at the moment I'm unable to check and I'll likely forget to proof this before posting ... 82 F would be 28 C).  And, (to throw another italicized "and" your way) the beach was in a protected area that didn't suffer from out-of-control wave action.

All the boys got off the boat and went to the island. Only Jack, Sam and I stayed to swim, dig in the sand, and drink beer. I did a lot of the swimming and all of the beer drinking. Jack and Sam did most of the swimming and all of the digging in the sand. (Haydn returned to the boat as he's 14… parents of teenagers will know what I mean and will understand it was best for all involved.)

We were all back on the boat by 4:30 and cleaned up and pretty for 5:45 dinner. (I forgot my camera, but I had duckling. We all had snails.)

When dinner ended Jack asked if he could go to Oceaneers Lab. 

Samson, despite my best efforts to enroll him in something, resisted and asked to go swimming.  He and I went to the Goofy Pool where he joined another boy in the water.  I joined another father who was sitting with hit back to the jumbo screen and using the light from one cartoon after another to read.

Samson grew tired around 10:15 and I had him tucked in in front of the TV by 10:30.

I was having an Amber Bock in the Promenade Bar in time to hear the duo there sing Come On Eileen.

 

This guy sounded just like Captain Jack Sparrow.

 

Samson, Donald, and Jack.

 

Goofy and a guy we don't know.

 

Goofy acting like he's just been caught by a big fish.

 

Boys in the ocean.

Posted by delmer at 7:38 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2008

Nassau

We arrived in Nassau early this morning.

We rolled out of bed several hours later.

Haydn got it in his head that it would be beneficial for all involved if he had on/off boat privileges independent of mine. That seemed like a really, really, bad idea to me and I opted for the you-stay-with-me model of visiting Nassau. (In all fairness, Haydn was more concerned that I might want to go off the boat when he didn't want to.

Yesterday, Jack heard an announcement in which a Del Sol stuffed dog was going to be raffled off. In order to win the dog, which changes color in the sun (sort of like a Wells without sunscreen, only more colorful), we had to attend a Shopping In the Bahamas meeting. Coupons for freebies were given away at the meeting and today the boys took me from jeweler to jeweler to collect free jewels.

Just about everything they got had a "value" of $50; the boys had trouble seeing it.

We are currently underway and heading toward Castaway Cay which is the island Disney owns. The ride is a lot smoother than it was last night.

 

The boys in Nassau

 

A cool looking boat with Jack's name in it.

 

The appetizer I had tonight: Salmon trio.  I had grouper for dinner.

Posted by delmer at 10:24 PM | Comments (9)

January 17, 2008

On the boat

This morning we climbed out of bed and set about packing up our stuff. The World's Best Brother-In-Law climbed out of his bed earlier than anybody else and used the remaining parts of our meal plans to get breakfast sandwiches.

Our bus arrived at 10:30 and whisked us away toward Orlando and The Disney Wonder. We must have arrived by noon though I'm not sure; there was a lot going on, I had three boys to take care of, and paperwork was involved.

I want to start right off by saying that everybody involved with the Disney Cruise has been wonderful, helpful, patient and, in many cases, in possession of exotic accents.

That almost makes it sound like there's a "but" coming. There isn't. It just needs to be said.

Our luggage was taken at the curb and would eventually appear at our staterooms.  The check-in process was painless; there were some forms that needed filling out, but not too terribly many and in cases where I made errors I was given polite help.

I needed to wait in, I think, two lines; one of them moved very fast and one of them moved so fast it never backed up far enough to really become a line.  The point being that Disney has hired enough staff (Cast members) to take care of the people they are serving.

We were on the boat and eating at a buffet in pretty short order. (Having been a Baptist in a previous life I totally kick ass when it comes to working my way through a buffet line. If I currently had reasonably-priced Internet access (instead of 75-cents unlimited access or 40-cents a minute in 100-minute blocks I'd post a link to the quote "Nobody works a buffet like a Baptist.")

I thing we cast off around 4 or 4:30 p.m. We were eating dinner at 5:45 and Haydn had motion sickness to the point he wasn't able to order dinner with the rest of us — after a couple sips of ginger ale he was able to order and was fine.  Samson had to leave dinner early due to motion sickness; after some Dramamine he was fine and I checked him into Oceaneer's Lab with Jack (where the two of them stayed — a mere beeper beep away from me — until midnight).

Haydn went to an age-appropriate activity as well.  I went to a bar with Michael Connelly's new book and had one beer an hour for three hours.

 

The World's Best Brother-In-Law, Tony.

 

The Disney Wonder

 

One of the kids asked for some catsup (ketchup) [that's one messed up word no matter how you spell it]. At Disney it pours right out of the bottle looking like Mickey Mouse.

Posted by delmer at 9:45 PM | Comments (1)

January 16, 2008

Almost Paradise

My children who, as you know, are incredibly adorable and, generally, the best kids in the world, have never known the thrill of driving from Ohio to Vermont in an air-conditionless mid-60's-era van.  A van in which the only form of recreation was coloring fast with Crayons. Fast because it was hot enough that the Crayons were not so much melting as going straight to vapor.

There may be just the smallest bit of exaggeration there.

Still, my kids know the life of DVDs playing or X-Boxes X-boxing while they are driven, in air-conditioned comfort, from point A to point B.  And if point A to point B are too far from each other — as Ohio and Florida often are — they fly.

And this trip they are staying "on property" at Disney. This means they get to partake of extended hours (that is, the park closes at 8 p.m. and we get to stay until 11 p.m. some nights), they get bussed to and from the parks and they get to make use of Fast Pass.  They are at Disney in January when the place is all but deserted (and Fast Passes aren't really needed).  They were also taken out of school for a week for this vacation. Tomorrow they hop on a Disney Cruise Ship (and, I'm pretty sure, they get to drive it out of port).

Sounds like a little bit of Heaven on Earth, eh?

And yet, they can't leave each other alone.  At times they bicker, poke, prod, and do anything else they can think of to get on each other's nerves. Normally they succeed in getting on my nerves.

And this led to today's end-of-day corrective measure that featured Jack and Samson.

The day was over, the park had closed and we were on our way to the bus and then dinner and swimming. Not the bus and then an evening of breaking giant rocks into smaller rocks with a sledge hammer.  Bus, dinner and swimming.

Somebody poked and prodded for the billionth time on the trip which led me to grabbing him by the collar and pulling him toward me. He received a micro-correction and was told to stand at a particular point near a building. I had the second boy stand next to him and I then proceeded to read them the riot act. As I made my point, which involved some hand gestures and mean looks, I noticed I had them in front of a window and that I could detect movement on the other side. I was a little curious as to what our conversation might have looked like to people on the other side of the glass.

After the correction-session ended I turned and, as the boys walked away from me, a woman walked, handed me a card and said, "I'm so proud of you."

"Why?" I asked, "Because I didn't beat them?" (And the tone was "because I resisted the urge to beat them?")

The card said, "God Loves You and God has a Plan for Your Life."

(The impression I got was that she was happy to see someone discipline their children during these times in which it seems to have fallen out of fashion.)

I'm not sure what God's plan is. I just hope it's not being in charge of the Heaven's Daycare.

Posted by delmer at 10:33 PM | Comments (7)

January 15, 2008

Epcot

We all went to Epcot on Tuesday.

I could go on and on about how Epcot is all about the future and making the world a better place through technology, but I, as a person, lack that depth.

Instead I'll tell you about a couple of the rides and attractions I visited.

One of the first rides I heard about was something called Sauren, which I assumed would be some sort of roller coaster featuring a dragon in a Middle Earth setting. I was pretty sure Samson would take a pass even as I did my best to get him interested.  He'll ride a dirt bike all day, or snowboard down steep hills, or jump his bicycle over ramps, but he isn't much on riding (much safer) things over which he has no control. 

As it happens the name of the ride is Soarin' and it's an attraction in which you sit on something that is lifted off the ground and taken toward a giant screen. The seat tips back and forth to simulate flying. It is really super cool.  And David Putty gives the pre-flight instruction.

What is even more awesome about this attraction is that during the wait you spend part of your time standing in front of a big screen. As Sammo (who was convinced to go on the ride after the tameness of it was described to him) and I stood there he looked over and said, "I've figured out which ones are us." When I asked what he meant he pointed to the outlines of people on the screen (and when I waved my arms I became aware that the outlines weren't just random outlines but those of us in line) and said we were supposed to hit that balls that were bouncing around.  So, I started swatting at balls.

And it worked.  A ball would come by and I'd swat it. I was like a humongous Wii.

Later in the day we took a ride in which Lt. Dan gave us our pre-blastoff instruction before we were to shoot off to toward the Mars (via slingshot around the moon).  Pre-blastoff instructions included keeping our eyes open and heads back and steady if we started to nauseous.

My sister, Jack, Samson and I strapped in and the car leaned back for launch mode. As we 'blasted off' it felt like my nose started to run (sorry for the imagery) and I was a little surprised to feel the trickle of moisture briskly move down my face and under my chin as the G-forces increased.  Even as I got more and more nauseous I couldn't help but wonder how the Gs could increase and decrease depending on when we fired our booster rockets. I mean, we were in a car in a room.

Well, the room was a centrifuge.

We also went on a ride in which we traced the history of man and what life might be like in the future. At the very end a snapshot of Samson was integrated into an in-car on-screen display which depicted what a typical day in his future life might be like. Bond's M voiced this ride (I'm pretty sure it was her.)

 

The giant Epcot Center Golf Ball

 

One of the bonuses of Disney in January is that the place is not all that crowded.

 

From Epcot's greenhouse: The pumpkins of tomorrow will look like Mickey's head.

 

I had this for dinner; I was sure you'd want to know.

Posted by delmer at 6:54 PM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2008

Old Key West Resort

The boys and I are staying at Disney's Old Key West Resort.

It is very nice.

It offers:

• Heated outdoor pool
• Outdoor hot tub
• Restaurant
• Bar
• The best fitness center I've ever run across in a hotel/resort
• Tennis courts 
• We have a kitchen in our room
• A washer and dryer as well
• Great view
• Free bus service to and from the Disney Parks
• Many other cool things

It does not, however, have free Internet access. The access it has is wired and costs $9.95 per day.

As you know I would easily pay $9.95 to spend a day with any of the WADLL readers. I'd likely go as high as $15.00 and a foot massage for the female readers. (The usual rule about unmarried women and women not related to me applies.)

What I won't do is pay $9.95 to connect a rather expensive room to the Internet for 24 hours when I'll only be using 10 minutes, or less, of connect time. Especially as the rather cheap room I stayed in not long ago had free access … as does almost every bar, restaurant and gas station in North America.

It's the principle of the thing; if I were to pay $9.95 a day for Internet access I'd feel like I was supporting a racket of some sort.  I'm already supporting the Disney pin-collecting racket my kids have become a part of (and it's costing me more than ten dollars a day … but, it's for my kids, and at their ages they're not held back by principles).

If you're reading this you can assume I've left the resort area and have stumbled across a free hotspot.  

[We needed Internet access for something else, so the room sprung for it.]

Posted by delmer at 12:45 AM | Comments (4)

January 13, 2008

The Magic Kingdom

The boys and I checked out of the Radisson this morning and had breakfast at the IHOP with the World's Best Brother-in-Law.  We then picked up our Disney tickets and shot off the The Magic Kingdom to meet up with the rest of the group;  there will be between 17 and 25 of us depending on the day of the week.

At the park, we took the Monorail from the parking lot to the Magic Kingdom. The sky was overcast and a raindrop fell here and there but the temperature and humidity were pretty much perfect.

The first thing we did as a group, to get our initial taste of Disney Magic, was to step into some sort of Lilo and Stitch attraction where we pretended we were space cadet trainees at a detention center who encounter Stitch as a new detainee. 

And magic it was. We exited the attraction to find it raining impossibly hard considering we'd had no indication whatsoever it was raining at all when we were detaining Stitch. My first thought was that the storm was part of the attraction and I had just an instant of wonder about how it continued the storyline.

That instant was followed by a longer period of wonder about what I was going to do to keep three boys entertained during a typhoon.

Rain does not do much to stop the Disney Magic — mostly all it does is make you aware of the low spots and the spots that don't drain well — and we were able to find plenty to keep us occupied dispite the fact the rain came and went the rest of the day.

 

While this blurry photo shows Jack and Tony, The World's Best Brother-In-Law, this ride was, in fact, Sam's favorite ride and we returned to it several times over the course of the day.

 

This is Samson in the Tea Cup ride. I am not the best Tea Cup rider as spinning around will make me sick faster than almost anything else. This is a condition that seems to affect many dads as when we were getting in line we were passed by a dad on his way out who said, "I can't get on that. I'll be sick all day." Samson was kind enough to keep the spinning to a minimum and I was smart enough to keep my eyes focused opposite me and on him rather than trying to look around.

 

Windsor Castle in England is based Cinderella's Castle (shown here). Cinderella was in this day, her flag is flying, and she was easy enough to spot rumbling around the Magic Kingdom and hitting on hot dads.

Posted by delmer at 11:08 PM | Comments (4)

January 12, 2008

Dinner

The boys and I are in Orlando "Bloom" Florida.

Actually, we're in Kissimme, but it's hard work anything to do with an actor into the name.  I guess you could go a little Colin Farrell with Kissimme-ass Florida, but that's a stretch.

We're safe and sound.

Something interesting happened on the first leg of the trip — the flight to Philly.  The stewardess asked me to give her a hand with an overhead compartment door and when the task was done said, "You've taken this flight before ... a couple of months ago."

And I thought for a second and said, "You're right, this past summer." 

It was late July to be exact.

I'm not sure that I knew that the same flight crew worked the same flights for such long periods of time before today.

We went to something called Arabian Nights for dinner this evening. It's a sort of dinner theater with horses. If it isn't odd enough that a stewardess remembered me from a flight this summer, the gal on this horse seems to own the same pair of pants I do.

 

Posted by delmer at 11:18 PM | Comments (6)

Through security

The boys and I have gone through security.  Samson said it was the most fun he's ever had (I'm not kidding).  I'm thinking I could have saved a bunch of money and just brought Sam to the airport and run him through the security checkpoint a couple of times rather than take him on a cruise.  We'll have to see how Disney stacks up to going through a metal detector and having his shoes X-rayed.

I'm plugged in and recharging and thought I'd post the photo of the boys I took earlier.

 

Haydn and Jack are giving their iPods a workout.  Jack is reading a gaming magazine I bought him.  I'm drinking a $2.10 Diet Coke.

Posted by delmer at 9:54 AM | Comments (3)

On the way

I bounced out of bed this morning at 6:15 a.m. and had the boys bounce out of theirs fifteen minutes later.  I made quick trip to Micky D's while they got ready and we were all fed, dressed and ready for our pickup at 7:15.

My friend, The Dark Haired Girl, who, at some point in the past made the mistake of telling me she's in the habit of getting up around 6 a.m. regardless of the day, scooped us up around 7:30.  We were at the airport by 8:00 (and that included a stop for a Diet Coke).  The boys and I had our bags checked curbside while our ride took off to her Yoga class. 

We are three hours early for our flight.  This might seem absurd to many, but parents will recognize the wisdom of mobilizing the troops first thing, before they have time to dig in and settle in front of televisions.  And there's something about rolling them out of bed early, for a 7:30 pickup, that creates a sense of urgency that a 9 o'clock pick-up lacks.

And I prefer to be early as much as anything.

The boys are doing a fine job.  Haydn and Jack are watching movies on their iPods.

My battery is dying.  I'll have to post this without the photo. Sorry.

Posted by delmer at 8:45 AM | Comments (2)

January 11, 2008

The Mouse

Have I mentioned that the boys and I are going on a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas?  We'll be spending a few days at Disney World as well.

We've just finished packing and blast off for Florida in eleven hours.

We've been planning this for about a year and  half.

I can't believe I didn't say anything sooner.

Posted by delmer at 11:52 PM | Comments (4)

January 10, 2008

Sam came home sick

I received a call yesterday from Samson's school.  He was in the health office looking pale and puny and reporting a stomach ache.  His temperature was in the 96-point-something range, which is cool, I know, but not uncommon for my family (which is one of the reasons we'll survive after global warming has killed all the rest of you ... btw, when you feel you're about to perish in the heat please leave your car keys on the kitchen counter so I don't have to do a lot of rooting around when I'm looting.)

Sammo had gotten ill during Mass and the teacher, noticing his lack of color and the ill look, took him to the nurse.

I told the school I'd be by to pick Sammo up and went to retrieve him.

When I got to school he did look pasty and the pastiness continued until we were almost home. As he settled in and made himself comfortable his color started to return and by the time I'd left for work he was rather robust.

I don't think he was faking.  There have been one or two times in my life when I've gone from feeling great to feeling like crap and then great again in a very short period of time.  Sometimes a trip to the bathroom, with some literature, is the thing that fixes a bout of brief illness even while the illness didn't appear to bring with it a sense of constipation.  What I'm getting at is that I'd expected Sammo to spend some time in the library prior to feeling better and when he didn't I was just a little confused.

Last night I got a call from a parent. The mother asked if her child could speak to Samson as something had happened during Mass that her son would like to apologize for.

Thinking there may have been an argument and Sam's feelings had gotten hurt, I asked, "Is this related to the reason Sam came home?"

The mother wasn't aware that Sam had come home and told me what happened.  During the "sign of Peace," which, for those of you who are members of lesser religions, is when the kids shake hands, her boy licked his palm before shaking.

I think this may have grossed Samson out without him knowing it and led to the paleness, puniness and stomach distress.  I asked Samson about it after the phone call and he told me that he'd just wiped his hand off on his pants.

And, as for the palm licker?  Well, a couple of the nuns backroomed him and it's unlikely it will happen again. (Actually he did get in some sort of trouble. My thought is boys will be boys. Especially 9-year olds.)

Posted by delmer at 7:50 AM | Comments (6)

January 9, 2008

Today's Headlines

In a separate story, Bush called a pot black.

 

Posted by delmer at 7:14 PM | Comments (5)

January 8, 2008

An apology

Dear Readers,

I must apologize for the lackadaisical posting style I've adopted lately.  This post, while it has a date of January 8 was actually written January 9.

Why?

My beloved Buckeyes lost to the heathen horde that is LSU and I have been shattered and in tears ever since. I don't know how I manage to go on.

Wait.

That's not me.

I realize I don't actually suit up and take the field when Ohio State plays football.  I realize I didn't go to OSU.  I have a life... and a life to the point that I didn't even know OSU was playing LSU until I was at Monster Jam and the announcer announced that the reason the van was painted yellow and purple was due to the fact those were LSU's colors. 

I believe LSU is likely Louisiana State University but wouldn't bet the farm on it.

I know OSU is Ohio State University but sort of get lost as to why they insist on calling themselves The Ohio State Univerisy  and yet you never see TOSU shirts.

Other signs I lack the watching-sports gene: 

Not long ago my mother told me that dad had asked her if she thought Chris Wells might be related to us. When mom mentioned this my first thought was, "I should probably try to figure out who this guy is."  I assumed he was a basketball player. (He is unlikely to be related.)

A year or so ago I bought Samson an OSU jersey with #10 on it.  He was wearing it around the house and I asked if it made him feel like Ted Ginn. He said, "Do you mean Troy Smith," and then went on to explain that Troy was number 10. (I just Googled Troy; it would seem he was the quarterback.)

Marie Millard, (a Michiganer) left a comment saying she hoped Michigan would beat OSU in their game "for so-and-so and so-and-so."  I thought the so-and-sos might be nephews of hers who went to Michigan and it wasn't cleared up for me until I was telling my buddy Roy about it and he filled in actual names for the so-and-sos and explained they were seniors.  He also told me what "the big house" was (if that's what Marie called it) [I did some checking. It was Mike and Chad and The Big House.]

And this.

 

Posted by delmer at 11:53 AM | Comments (7)

January 7, 2008

A Wicked-Late Varicose Vein Update

It has not been quite a year since I've had the varicose vein zapped.  I'd meant to give this update a good long while ago.

If you'd like to read the history of the varicosness, you 'll want to do it in this order.

My mother gives me the vein 

Just a mention of the vein but more about Mel Gibson's ass

It's compared to a muscle 

Possible cause and my BJ at the hospital 

I get it zapped and promise pictures 

And finally, almost a year later, a picture of the new leg.

 

 

Posted by delmer at 1:49 PM | Comments (6)

January 6, 2008

Monster Jam 2008

As he did last year and the year before and, yes, the year before that, Samson took me to see yesterday's Monster Jam at Nationwide Arena.

 

This is Gravedigger  on his first run. Going up, over some cars.

 

This is how he came down. He was rolled clockwise to get uprighted.

 

Superman and Gravedigger race. The start line is just behind the first car (a hair past Superman's back tires). That's the finish line you see just in front of the trucks.  It's a small venue so the races are short. This does not seem to negatively affect the happiness it gives Samson. (Click this image to enlarge.)

 

Brutus going up.  You'll notice a van has been moved into place for freestyle. Insane OSU football fans will notice it's in LSU's school colors; I had no idea until it was pointed out by the announcer. (Click this image to enlarge.)

 

Captain Curse rolled over. 

In between racing and freestyle there were mini-quad races and some freestyle dirt bike action.  One of the dirt bike riders did a back flip with his motorcycle.

Sam and I are already making plans to go next year.

Posted by delmer at 5:55 PM | Comments (7)

January 5, 2008

World Peace and Guinness

I would have posted this 10 minutes ago, but I got hung up.  I went to Otie's for a Guinness and while I was there decided to have a second Guinness, a shot of vodka and five Diet Pepsis.  I also had fish and chips.

Anyway, after I paid and as I was pushing myself back from the bar the Divinyls came on the stereo (incredibly loud, by the way) and her voice (whoever she is) is just sooo sexy.  And I don't think it's the singing about female masturbation that I find sexy; had She Bop come on I would have been able to resist (and I am a big fan of Cyndi Lauper and love her vocal stylings) and Darling Nikki would have had sent me fleeing the bar. It's just the way she (alright, Australian Chrissy Amphlett) sort of moans the song.

As that ended I caught the first few beats of The Proclaimer's I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) and that's another song I can't resist sitting through as Craig and Charlie Reid are just so goddamed sexy.  Okay, that's not the case, I just like the song.  I liked it in Benny and Joon, I liked it the other night when it played (over and over) in How I Met Your Mother and I liked it several weeks back when I saw the guys on Graham Norton (and if you aren't watching Graham Norton, you really have to start.)  You know, I'm not certain The Proclaimers sang I'm Gonna Be on Graham.  Please refer to the first paragraph where I mention two pints of Guinness and a shot of vodka. 

Anyway, as I'm Gonna Be played I was reminded about something I'd heard about The Proclaimers that affected their popularity in the US. And that thing would have been their accents.  They're a little heavy, on the Scottish side, which I think made them hard to interview in a non-Scott country.  As I thought of that story it reminded me of something that happened the other day. I was on the phone with a British person and one of my American children walked by. When I asked if he wanted to say "hello" he, a nine-year old, said, "I can't understand her."  So he declined.

As The Proclaimers wound down I heard the opening part of Come On Eileen and, as I love songs about Johnnie Ray, I had to stay a few moments longer.  As you may suspect, I honestly don't know who Johnnie Ray is but I do love that song. I can't hear it without thinking about being at the bar beneath Lottie Moon's (Oxford, Ohio, 1983) and hearing the DJ play the song while Pat Cogan, behind the bar, banged out a beat on some partially-filled water glasses.

And all the while these songs were playing I was thinking about how the combination of the music, the Guinness and the vodka, had put me in the best mood. That thought ran into thinking that the other day Greeneyezz had a post about how cunnilingus would go a long way toward bringing world peace about and how I, at a bar alone, may have stumbled on a different world-peace recipe: again, two pints of Guinness and a shot of vodka.  Of course, with the one you're sort of left with a bad taste in your mouth — but I think this can be prevented by staying away from the cheaper vodkas.

 

Posted by delmer at 9:31 PM | Comments (13)

January 4, 2008

Ripping CDs to MP3 players

I'd heard that the RIAA was going to raise a fuss, that is sue, people who were ripping their CDs for their own use in their MP3 players.  That sounded sort of messed up, even for them.

The following snippet comes from an article at About.com. 

For those of us who just want to convert our original CDs to digital music files for use in MP3 players etc., the good news is that the RIAA still don't have a problem with this as long as you don't use file sharing programs. It's also OK to burn a copy onto CDR as long as it's from an original you own.

So, we may not have to worry about it just yet.

Posted by delmer at 6:37 PM | Comments (3)

January 3, 2008

My Cupboard

I was digging through the cupboard looking for something, I really can't remember what, when I noticed I seemed to be canned-fish heavy. So  I started an inventory.

 

 

You'll notice:

• 12 cans of sardines: half packed in water and half in mustard
• 6 servings (1 can) of Jack Mackerel
• 1 can tuna
• 92.5 servings of pink salmon (per the serving size on the cans)
• There's a big jug of Whey Protein, a can of the best Sauer Kraut in the world, two tubs of rolled oats (if you care, since the picture was taken I've purchased another tub… and I have two at work (for a total of 5) along with another jug of protein).
• In the pill bottle I have about $1000.00 in Cabergoline (street price)
• Domestic and Imported tea

I've been buying sardines and pink salmon whenever it was on sale. Five and ten cans at a time. 

I'd eat a serving three times a week (sometimes more) for about a can a week.  Right now, at that pace, I have enough canned fish to last almost all year.

The oats, well, they're easy to prepare.  I fill a cup with hot water at work and dump the oats in; lately I've been pouring raw oats into Vanilla or Peach-flavored yogurt. What I wish I knew is if a person gets all the wholesome oat goodness from uncooked oats as he does from cooked oats OR does putting them in hot water do something to the structure that keeps them from passing through me undigested. I guess I could apply the corn test to the process. 

I know horses get pretty big eating raw oats. They're also pretty fast… and hung. I eat oats every day. I'm not very fast, but as Meatloaf said, two out of three ain't bad. (And I think one of the two other things keeps me from being fast.)

God, I crack me up. 

This is my favorite cupboard picture.

 

What is up with the blurriness?

Posted by delmer at 11:03 PM | Comments (14)

January 2, 2008

The Fifteen Dollar Can of Pop

Let me start by saying everything that happened is my fault. That doesn't make what happened right. I will bet you that none of you would allow what happened to happen to anybody if you were Overlord of Fucked Up Banking Processes.

I have an account with US Bank.  I'm pretty sure this is the one that I've had for about 21 years and that it started as a Household account, then became a Star Bank account and is now a US Bank account. Not that it matters, I guess.

The ex is on the account and when she divorced me I tried to close it. Alas, I couldn't without getting her involved in the closing process and I chose not to do that.

Every two weeks $20.00 are deposited into the account. Once a month $12.00 are automatically withdrawn by Forte to pay for Usenet access.  Once in a while I'll notice I have a surplus of several hundred dollars and I'll buy a hooker.

Over Thanksgiving I lost my wallet and dutifully canceled all my cards.  The first replacement card to arrive was my US Bank card and when I checked the balance I found it had over $300.00 available.  I decided to do something about it.

Fast forward a month to right around December 21. I was at Kroger and decided to make an withdrawalrawl so I'd have some money in my pocket. The Kroger has a US Bank machine, and rather than use my Chase Bank card and suffer the $2.00 fee, I decided to drain a little more out of the US Bank account.  I withdrew $40.00 and took a look at the receipt. I was disappointed to see that the machine was screwed up and my balance hadn't printed.*

As I left the ATM I decided to grab a pop.  I really wanted a Diet Pepsi but as I was closer to the 7-UP case and it was right by the self-checkout aisle, and self-checkout was empty and I didn't feel like walking the 10 steps to get a Diet Pepsi and run the risk of of the delay having me end up in a line full of people who have always been intrigued by the self-checkout but afraid to use it but have decided they'd give it a go tonight even though the sign says 10 items or less  and they have a full cart.

So I grabbed a Diet 7-UP.

It cost $1.33.  I used my US Bank debit card to pay for it (if you've seen the commercials you'll know all the cool kids do this to keep the action going and the music playing).

As it happened, at the time of the purchase, my balance was $.30; that is, thirty cents.

Rather than deny the transaction, and force me to reach for one of three other cards in my wallet, OR, break one of the two twentys I'd just gotten, US Bank floated me a loan. And then they charged me $31.00 as I was then carrying a negative balance.

And they sent me a note in the mail. 

I am responsible for knowing my balance. It is my fault my balance went negative. I'm certain US Bank has sent me a mail item full of very small print that told me what happened would happen. This whole thing, once again, is my fault.

My balance went negative on December 24.  I'm not sure when the note was sent but I do know that four days after it was sent I was going to be charged $7.00 a day.  I collected the note from my mailbox December 31 and 15 minutes later when I was at the local bank branch I found I'd accrued $14.00 in late fees, which seems to suggest the note had been mailed six days earlier. Let's say it was mailed December 24.

This is where something else that happened was my fault. That thing is that I'm not in the habit of collecting my mail daily.  I normally get junk. I pay all of my bills online. There are days I get nothing at all. So there's a good chance the note was in my box Saturday and had I got it then I could have avoided the additional $14.00.

Anyway, there I was, at US Bank with $45.00 in fees that had come about as US Bank had 'loaned' me, without me even having to ask, $1.03 seven days before. (Can any of you math whizzes calculate the interest on that?)

It was totally my faul. I'm sure Tony Soprano would have agreed, but he'd gone home early as it was New Year's Eve.

In the end I was able to get the $31.00 fee waived. Due to some sort of bank rule, probably described in great detail in something US Bank has sent me, I would not be able to get both fees waived ... I chose the $31.00 fee.

Which brought the cost of the Diet 7-UP I didn't even want down to $15.33.

Irony Time: While I was at my parents' house over the holiday, quite possibly while the note from the bank was on it's way to me, I read an article in Reader's Digest about the things banks do to increase their profits. The thing that happened to me (that I'm at fault for) was one of the things described.

*It is likely that the transaction receipt said my balance was .30 and I didn't notice it.  I remember thinking that the balance had shown zeros all across and I knew that was unlikely, especially since I thought it was something over $50 even after the $40 withdrawal.

Posted by delmer at 8:32 PM | Comments (9)

January 1, 2008

Ode to The Mighty Schwinn

[Unless, of course, an ode involves rhyming and anything resembling song. If it can be described as free-form BS, well, I'm dead on.]

As you know, I love The Mighty Schwinn.  And The Mighty Schwinn, I think, loves me in the way that only a cold piece of metal can love a person. Not necessarily like a Sybian; it would be a more spiritual love.

Sure, sometimes The Mighty Schwinn and I have something of a Sado-Masochistic relationship more than anything else, but most times we get along like faithful lovers. Our outings always result in a lot of heavy breathing and a happy ending.  Sometimes I squeal and more than once, toward the exciting climactic end of a particularly long romp through the countryside, I've chanted oh f*ck oh f*ck oh f*ck (I don't know why, but that really seems to help). 

The Mighty Schwinn is happy to spend hour after hour between my legs, (which, I guess, makes me its bitch) gently massaging … wait a minute… there's nothing gentle or massage-like about that!

And come to think of it, I do all the work — all the pumping! 

Alright, as a lover, the Mighty Schwinn might fall into the 'selfish' category. But as bicycles go, it's a darned fine one.

Lately The Mighty Schwinn has been sort of noisy. There was the grinding noise of the bad bottom bracket. There was the twang of the broken spokes. The chunka chunka chunka of the freewheel that eventually seized. The tink that arrived not long after the bottom bracket was replaced. The new, lighter, chunka chunka chunka that appeared in the same gear position as the first one that made me wonder if the freewheel had been the original cause despite the fact it did seize up, and the most recent tink tink tink that appeared when the right crank arm was at 4, 5 and 6 o'clock. 

I said the new chunka chunka chunka was lighter, but there were times it was bad enough that I'd quit pedaling if I was biking past pedestrians.  I already look like a goof when I'm on the bike, I don't want to sound like one. Oh yea, when it got that bad I could feel it through the frame.

Anyway, this year I've replaced: The bottom bracket (the original disintegrated), the rear wheel (and I had all the spokes replaced in it following the replacement), the bottom bracket (yes, again, searching for the chunka chunka chunka and the tink), and the freewheel (gears on the back wheel, after it seized), the chain (it was just time and I was running out of things to replace that might be noisy), and the rear wheel again (I got a much nicer one).

A few days ago Samson and I took The Mighty Schwinn to the bike shop. I'm always willing to ride something until it breaks and waiting for something to fail is a money saver over replacing things that might be the problem; as I continue to prove.  But really, there's more to it than that. I'd much rather spend a bit of money to fix something that doesn't need fixing in the hopes it will solve a problem than run the risk of being out somewhere and have something break. The tink, as non-problematic as it sounds, I'd have gladly dropped a few bucks on just so I didn't have to hear it.

Cutting to the chase, the other day I replaced the freewheel again, and this took care of the lighter chunka chunka chunka; so the freewheel I'd purchased a month or so ago came with its own problems (and since you don't expect a new item to be noisy, when the noise continues, it sort of makes you wonder about other components). I also replaced the pedals, and this took care of the tink tink tink.

What blows is that I almost replaced the pedals this summer as I'd thought they may have been responsible for the tink. But the other pedals were only a year old then and the pedals those replaced had been 16 years old. Of course, the one-year old pedals may not have been of the same quality and by the time this summer rolled around may have had more than 2000 miles on them. They certainly had over 3000 miles on them by the time I replaced them.

Anyway: The Mighty Schwinn is now super quiet.

Much like I am.

[It seems I replaced the first bottom bracket at Christmas last year.]

Posted by delmer at 9:06 PM | Comments (8)