January 22, 2007

Do you think I could stand the cold?

Are you a ski buff and ready for a vacation? Meribel, convenient to the 3 Valleys, the largest ski area in Europe, has ski courses that are perfect for everyone from beginner to expert, and English-speaking ski instructors to get you started or help you improve your style. If you’re up to a real challenge, take a turn on the 1992 Olympic Women’s Downhill Course. Snow, sushine and luxury accomodations await your pleasure at Chalets Meribel, where you’ll relax in comfort after a day on the slopes. Supertravel sponsored this post to help you plan your vacation. Check them out!

My celebrity look-alikes?

I think not! I sure hope this isn’t the same technology that our national security forces are using to pick mad bombers and terrorists out of a crowd.

I tried it with three different photos of myslef. The first time it gave Martina Navrotilova.

The second time it couldn’t find anyone. The third time I got the result you see in the collage above. Little hinky, wouldn’t you say, that they allowed me to pick my favorite look-alikes from a whole slew of them?

The link at the bottom of the collage will take you there so you can try it yourself.

January 21, 2007

Bowling

I used to bowl in a league. Most of the other bowlers were members of a Mardi Gras krewe. They didn’t have enough bowlers in their krewe so they invited me to be a member (of the league, not the krewe.) It was pretty embarrassing, really. It was back in the seventies and my memories aren’t as vivid as they once were, but I think I remember that my average was in the nineties when I joined and about 120 by the time I left the league. I’ve never been much of an athlete and was already dealing with a pinched nerve in my spine, but the other teams members were pretty supportive & I don’t think they laughed about me behind my back. I was always very self-conscious when with them, though, and finally got the nerve to bow out at the end of year two. They didn’t beg me to stay.

The bowling I did enjoy was midnight bowling with family and friends. The price was ridiculously cheap, so we’d fill a couple of cars with folks and head on down to the Bowling Lane. The staff was lax about rules for the scanty midnight crowds, so we’d crank the jukebox way up and dance between our turns at the pins. I had won a personalized bowling ball in a drawing and had my own shoes. The blue ball and shoes were carried in a blue bag. I always wore jeans and either a blue or black top when I bowled. I wasn’t a good bowler then, either, but at least I looked hot and was with friends who didn’t make me nervous.

I loved everything about that experience: the music competing with the sound of balls rolling down the lane and pins flying, the smell of the oiled-wood lanes and sweaty shoes and, mostly, the comraderie of a group of folks who knew each other well and were having a grand old time.

I was disappointed to find out recently that the lanes are no longer real wood. The synthetics used now are supposed to be better for ball control, but I’m pretty sure I would miss that old oiled wood and the sound of a ball thunking down on the wood lanes if I were ever to take up the sport again. I thougth bowling in the seventies was a wonderful passtime. I think I would feel that something was missing if I were to walk into a bowling alley these days. Some things should stay the same, don’t you think, for the sake of tradition and nostalgia?

It’s unlikely I’ll ever bowl again anyway, what with the effects of aging on a back that was damaged in my youth, but still I’m glad that encyclocentral.com sponsored this post so I could drag our some more memories to share.

Housekeeping for my blog

Sometime in the next day or two you will see your link disappear off of my sidebar. Don’t worry - I’m not erasing my friends. I’ll be replacing those unwieldy lists with a couple of links to lists that will be tucked away neatly inside. This will hopefully make my pages more appealing, and will also be better for you and for me, page rank wise. Search engines tend to ignore sidebars when determining ingoing and outgoing links. By placing links in the body of my blog, we’ll all “get credit” for our own links. I’m working on my PPP postie links today and will do my other links once this list is finished. If I’m doing it properly (I think I am) my postie list will be available as a word document when I’m done. Drop me a PM if you’d like a copy. You can install it too, and you won’t be giving me PR credit every time you link to another postie.

A procrastinator’s dream come true!

You know I love sending ecards! I send paper greetings from time to time. Most of them have something on the front like “Happy Belated Birthday” or “Ooops! I missed your big day.” It’s not that I don’t think about my friends’ special days until they’ve passed. I know what those days are. I’ll find myself thinking, way ahead of time and with warm fuzzies attached, about friends celebrating forty years of marriage or about how proud I am of a cousin who is graduating from high school Those are really special occasions, so I want to take my time and find just the right words to tell them so. The procrastinating side of me always thinks I have plenty of time, and then suddenly it’s just too late. Really shameful, I know.

I’m working on that, I honestly am, but until I get it right I’m really glad there are so many wonderful animated ecards to choose from. I can schedule them ahead of time when I first think about an occasion, and, of course, they don’t cost nearly as much as paper cards. For those that I just don’t remember until the last moment, I can send the same day without having to select from the “belated” catagory. American Greetings ecards on msn offer all of those benefits, and they have a wonderful selection of cards for every occasion. Yearly membership is only $13.99, and you can try it out FREE for thirty days. Free is good always good, but membership has its privileges, you know. You can even go through your address book and select and personalize ALL of the cards you want to send out for months to come, then just insert the date you want them delivered. I also like the option of creating and sending paper cards. I could do that, but, of course, I’d set them aside until mailing time and then forget to send them. I’ll probably just stick to the ecards option for now. That way everyone will know I’m thinking of them on or before their special days instead of having to wait to see an “oops!” from me.

I’m a huge fan of humorous animated ecards for happy occasions. I’m glad that American Greetings ecards on msn spnsored this post so I could share Chin Music with you. I didn’t notice the name of the card when I clicked on it, so it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. Hilariously funny! Make sure you watch the bloopers at the end!

January 20, 2007

A long, long time ago

How far back can you remember? I have some memories of the small town I was born in: the fire station with the donut shop next door, the orphanage with a farm where we visited most weekends, the rodeo practice grounds and the route I walked to school to take my older brother and sister their forgotten lunch money.

I don’t remember when I was the baby of the family.

I remember making mud pies, but not that I was constantly getting in trouble for eating them. Everyone says it was so.

I don’t remember when I quit being “the baby.” I only remember when we were four.

I don’t recall the puppy, or knowing that we were poor. I remember that the steps were scary and broken down, and that I was often told to go out, then come back in without slamming the screen door. I wasn’t raised in a barn, you know!

I don’t recall the doll and highchair, but I remember sleeping in pin curls every Saturday night, and on the eve of every special occasion.

I don’t recall when Mom was young and slim, but I can recall a lot of identical dresses that she made for me and Sis.

I remember how lucky I felt to get the hand-me-downs and wear those special dresses an extra year or two, but it took a stroll through old photos to remind me that mine always drooped off of my right shoulder.

I remember the year Mom made detailed costumes, too, and how lucky I was to get a Patty Playpal and a nurses bag to go with mine. It must have been the same year that Sis discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder. I can’t recall those stairs ever being uncarpeted.

There are bad memories in there, too. The world didn’t know much about manic-depression back then, or understand the terrible impact it could have on children whose mother could go from blissfull happiness to whacking off your hair in a frenzy when you said you wanted to have a pixie haircut like your friend. I know I quit wearing her homemade dresses about that time. I was old enough to notice that they had become bizarre and clownish.

Everyone’s father drank, so we probably assumed that everyone’s father passed out in the living room or the yard or the car each evening. We probably thought he was just tired because he worked so hard. There are no pictures of that, of course.

What we did understand, and what I choose to remember the most, is that we were four, and that we always knew we were loved.

I remember that year when I got my first bike. It was the same year that Mom told me the big secret that I was never, ever to tell anyone. I had always been her favorite. It was many years later that I realized that, despite whatever failings she may have had, she was wise enough to tell that same secret to each of the four of us.

Technorati Tags: children, family, memories, siblings

January 19, 2007

It sucks having tummy troubles

Carbonated beverages have been out of my diet for twelve years now. I buy one every now and then, but it causes me so many problems that my craving is cured for quite a while. I used to drink Coke and Dr. Pepper, but A W Root Beer and Cream Soda were my favorites. I think I probably kept A & W in business for quite a few years. Now I buy an A & W Root Beer or Cream Soda about once a year. I love both poured over good quality French Vanilla ice cream. Few things in this life can compare to the taste and sensation of a good root beer float, and a cream soda float runs a close second. I’d like to find some decent noncarbonated versions, but the selections available in Hawaii are limited. I’ve tried a few and they were just nasty. I’ve abandoned my search for now, but I’m sure I’ll be tempted again some day. Then I’ll just have to deal with the whole I-can’t-eat-ice-cream-either issue.

Did you know that A & W Root Beer was first served at a parade for returning WWI veterans in 1919? Roy Allan originally sold it for a nickel a serving from a roadside stand. It earned it’s name when he paired up with Frank Wright and opened a restaurant. It’s big business now, owned by a huge corporation, but it’s got a long and honorable history. I’d ike to go back to supporting it. Guess that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.

Today is a first. encyclocentral.com sponsored this post so I could whine about my sucky life. Check out some of their listings and see what you think.

It’s semi-official - I quit

I’ve been on the board for our homeowners’ association for ten years now. A few weeks after I bought my house, a stranger came to my door to tell me that the annual meeting would be starting shortly. As a brand new resident, I wasn’t even on anyone’s mailing list yet, so I hadn’t known about the meeting until that moment. I walked down the street to our little park, expecting a crowd. There are sixty homes in our community, but the meeting was attended by only about half-a-dozen of them. I was asked to fill a position on the board of directors. I explained that I didn’t even know how to own a house, much less how to help run a community association. The existing board explained that if all positions weren’t filled, another annual meeting would have to be called, at great expense. I caved in and was elected, the board having collected enough proxy votes to represent a quorum of homeowners. I served as a director that year, and was named vice-president the following year. During year three our president retired from the military and moved to the mainland. I was named president.

We’ve done some good things in the last ten years. No one had overseen maintenance fee collections for many years and a number of residents took advantage of that. Now we have only one or two who are allowing their neighbors to carry their financial burden for them, and we have a system in place to deal with them. We installed new streetlights throughout the community and repaved our streets. Our park has safe playground equipment with a protective fall surface underneath, and we have a gazebo with picnic tables and benches. Almost everyone in the neighborhood has been persuaded to maintain their homes and keep their properties clean, though there is one who seems to obsessively collect junk cars and rats. Almost everyone has replaced their old shake roof with something more fireproof. All homeowner have seen a significant rise in the value of their property.

I’m tired and I’m frustrated with the way things have gone for the last two years. The board has turned into a committee that talks about and studies many issues, but never accomplishes anything. We’ve been trying to get potholes filled and the pavement re-topped on our streets for almost a year. The rainy season is on top of us. The potholes will be beyond patching after a few months of monsoon-like rains & we’ll face a cost of $50-80,000 to re-do the entire job. The fence that keeps kids in the playground from tumbling into the stream was supposed to be replaced this year, but the contract bids languish while board members bicker. The list goes on and on. Whenever the board does anything concerning house rule enforcement, my home is vandalized and I recieve threatening notes in my mail box. My dogs no longer have access to my front yard because strange foods were thrown over my front fence and I feared they would be poisoned. The board feels that these are “my” problems and has allowed it to continue and escalate.

So I’m tired and frustrated and buned out. I told our property manager today that I want to step down at our annual meeting next month. He was quite alarmed at this. “But you’re the only one who does anything.” Um, yeah … that’s the problem. I’m done.

I’m shopping for a new cell phone

I still haven’t replaced my cell phone. I’ve been shopping around, but there are so many options it makes my head spin. I still have a few months on my contract, so at least I have the luxury of finding the right phone before my deadline.

The first thing I noticed about the Motorola Z3 is that it’s pretty. I didn’t realize phones could be fashion items when I was buying my current cell phone, but I see now that they can. That being said, I need more than good looks, so I’ve checked out some of the features of the MtorolaZ3. It comes with all of the usual functions, of course. I really like the slide open feature, allowing for more compactness than my old flip style. The Z3 is Bluetooth compatible, and an optional memory card allows you to carry music, photos and videos wherever you go. There’s a side camera key, too, of course. Looks like this one definitely belongs on my short list of phones to consider.

Another “pretty” phone is the MOTOKRZR1. It has a 2 mega-pixel camera and is also Bluetooth combatible, but mostley, well … take a look for yourself. Did you ever think you’d see a sexy cell pnone? Sure it’s a flip-phone, but so much more slender than my current old clunker that I know it won’t bulge and be uncomfortable in my pocket while I’m working.

I’ve bookmarked the site so I can I look at both of these again. Thanks to http://www.motorola-mobiles.co.uk/ for sponsoring this post so I could go phone-shopping!

January 18, 2007

Southern Fried!

Cass has posted the first edition of the Southern Fried Carnival. Go take a tour of ten blogs that will remind you, in the words of the immortal Phil Harris “That’s what I like about the South!” You’ll also find instructions for submitting your own Southern Fried post next time, or you can click on the Blog Carnival box in my sidebar & click on it there.

Go. Read. Have your heart warmed. But don’t forget: Y’all come back, now!