Yes, I'm Still Kicking....

Nothing much to report.

Summer with the swamp cooler was fine, again.

Winter with the wood stove should be good. Got a nice stack of wood out by the water tank that should keep us warm all season long.

Recently got sucked into World of Warcraft. I guess I really am a geek now....

The Toothpaste of Terror

After a nice week -- HA! The weather pretty much sucked the entire time. But I enjoyed it. California doesn't get weather. Well, I suppose we do now up on my hill. Where was I? Oh, yeah. After a miserable week in Detroit (Ok, Roseville and surrounding areas.) I'm headed back home. Once again sitting on a plane. (Seat 21F if anybody cares.) I pretty much breezed through security. Except for one thing. My far-too-large tube of toothpaste I had in my carry-on. Apparently, you're not supposed to have anything larger than a couple ounces of toothpaste with you at any one time. And mine was a large size. So, rather than leaving security to check another bag I had to surrender the Toothpaste of Terror!

Having to surrender it (i.e., throw it away and waste money on the fairly new Tube of Terrifically Terrible Terrorist Toothpaste) doesn't really bother me. It's pretty much my fault for not knowing that toothpaste is a tool of the terrorists. But, it's that the same damn scary tube of dental hygiene was in the very same carry-on when I went through security on the way out of Fresno and it simply wasn't a problem. This inconsistency is annoying as fuck! And I thought taking airport security out of the hands of private companies and making them all government employees was supposed to solve this sort of crappy, absurd, ridiculous problem.

And, exactly how much damage can a fucking 6.4 ounce tube of toothpaste cause on an aircraft that a 2.0 ounce tube can't? And, wouldn't it just take only 3 or four terrorists each carrying a 2.0 ounce tube of whatever to make the same amount of whatever that was in that 6.4 ounce tube? Thank you, George W. Fucking-asshole Bush, the President of the United States. Yes, I do blame him. He is the CEO of the country, isn't he? Ok, back to your regularly scheduled life.

Bubba Gets a Phone Call

Here I am, sitting on the plane to visit a friend in Detroit, MI. (Ok, so he lives in Roseville, but nobody knows where that is.) As I'm getting ready to leave for the flight out of Fresno, the phone rings. It's some woman whose native language is not English asking to speak to a “Booba Jones”. Really, that's how she pronounced it. “Booba”. But, no matter; after a bit, I finally realize she's asking for Bubba Jones. I simply tell her that she has the wrong number and she apologizes and hangs up.

Thing is, I am Bubba Jones. That's what I've filled out on these Supermarket Cards and any other place I don't wanna give my real name. (Well, I've also used Bubba Smith and Buford Smith and Buford Jones.)

Bubba's phone call caught me so off guard I didn't quite know how to respond. But it really did make me laugh all the way to the airport. I'm so easily amused.

What was that you said about "No Snow"?

I'm not complaining a whole lot because I actually kind of like it but when we moved up here, the neighbors told us that in the five years they'd been living up here there had never been snow. Now, we're in our second winter up here and we've gotten snow both seasons. This picture (ok, it's really just a snapshot) here is of the snow we're getting *RIGHT NOW* outside this window next to me.

And, on the local radar, there was one tiny little blob of yellow and it was right over us. It made me chuckle.

The snow should be gone by tomorrow afternoon--despite the record low temperatures we're supposed to get tonight. Supposed to be down into the low 20's upper-teens. BRRR!

On the plus side, the snow will act as a light insulation for some of these plants and keep the ground from getting too much below freezing.