Cell phone eraser

Today Emily showed me a cell phone eraser that she got for getting a perfect score in spelling. The eraser opened up just like a real clamshell cell phone and even had writing on the screen. And there was even a phone number on the screen to simulate calling someone. Emily said her friends recommended calling the number to see what it was. Figuring it was just a standard “555” number, I took the phone and looked. It wasn’t a 555 number but it was a number that I immediately recognized. It was the number to the White House switchboard! I used to prank that number in the early 90’s, trying to get them to transfer me to Willy.

Why the hell would they put that on a kid’s toy eraser? Emily was all ready to call the number when she got home. And I would have let her if I didn’t recognize the number. How weird…

Annoying Ebay guy

Today I got a private message from someone on Ebay named Bingo1996, who I sold something to about a month ago. Since that transaction, this person has sent me 4 similar messages. They were…

May 6th: Hi, Just wondered if you return feedback, Thanks

May 12th: Hi, interested in other pins but would like feedback from last purchase first so I know you appreciate my business, Thanks

May 17th: Saying thank you to your customers with positive feedback is a nice thank you for their business. Thanks, I left a very nice one for you.

May 26th: Hey, How about some nice feedback, like I left you, Thanks

So after today’s message, I finally decide to leave feedback so he/she will leave me alone. I leave positive feedback that says, “Buyer has been bugging the hell out of me to leave feedback. I hope you die.”

About an hour later, I get this message back:

That feedback comment is very uncalled for & I hope you die as well, what an asshole!!!!! Don’t look for anymore business from myself or anyone I know. Boy you picked the right user name, but leave off the phone part and just call yourself LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some people you just can’t please, no matter what you do. Tonight I noticed that Bingo left a followup to the positive feedback he/she left me last month. It says:

Follow up by bingo1996: ONLY WISH I KNEW WHAT A COMPLETE JERK THIS GUY IS BEFORE I LEFT HIM POSITIVE F.B

I left a reply to that which says, “We hooked up, made love, and I dumped her. Not my fault the sex was horrible.”

Today the kids and I went to see Over The Hedge and X-men 3. Both excellent movies. Over The Hedge restored my faith in kids movies. All the kids stuff has been so sucky this year. That was a great movie, though. X-Men was great too and Jammie rules for making me watch 1 & 2 last weekend.

Nate and Di rule…

Open up this mp3 file and then fast forward about 12 minute into the show. You’ll hear Nate and Di drive into a parking lot, find an unlocked car, both jump into the front seats and smoke an entire joint. This stunt alone has made me a fan of theirs for life. Though, they do lose points for not hiding out in the parking lot afterwards and taking pictures/video of the confused motorist.

Back tattoo

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about this. I was bored because Jammie was on the internet and ignoring me. As she hunched over the laptop, I commented that she needed a lower back tattoo. One thing lead to another and I drew one for her with Sharpies as she continued to ignore me. Here’s the result:

Surprise visit

No kids over the weekend so I planned to just hang around the house a bunch and work on boring miscellaneous projects which would mostly involve sitting on the couch and using the laptop for a few days straight. Saturday afternoon, while I was talking to Jammie on the phone, there’s a knock at the door. In an annoyed voice I tell Jammie to hold on while I see who it is, thinking it’s probably going to be my neighbor asking for weird stuff as usual. But it’s not. It’s Jammie!

Jammie flew across the country and then managed to find her way to Albany using a bizarre combination of Amtrak, Greyhound and some taxi service. All without me knowing until she showed up at the door. It’s probably the most surprised I’ve been in many years. Saturday is also what we consider our 1 year anniversary. So holy shit, Jammie shows up for the weekend. And she brought me gifts! 4 containers full of Malted Milk. The kind that I can’t seem to find anywhere in Albany.

jammie and brad geocachingOn Saturday we ended up going on a hike a mile into some woods to retry on that geocache that me and the kids failed on the previous weekend. And we succeed! It wasn’t my fault that last weekend was a failure – the coordinates were a little backwards. Hiked even further into the woods after that, until the trail ended. I think we went to Abby’s pizza on Saturday too. Or maybe that was Sunday.

On Sunday we went to Blockbuster Video, then Hollywood Video, in search of X-men. Neither of them had it. I’ve never seen it and Jammie wanted to prep me for the upcoming X-men 3 movie that’s coming out next weekend. Walked to Fred Meyer and found a copy there for $8.00. Then walked to Rite-Aid to buy lots of Pez. Then Big Lots, then back to the car. I forget the rest of Sunday. Applebees maybe? Watched some X-men on TV? Half an episode of Knight Rider?

Today I woke up first and Jammie slept in for another 3 hours, which gave me plenty of time to get work stuff done. Went to BTH for lunch, took it to the park by downtown to eat. Then explored the woods in that park. (There was a trail through the woods from one side to the other.) Stopped by Rileys to play a few video games, browsed at a couple of stores. Watched X-men 2 later in the day. Hrmmm, what else. That might be it. Left for the airport this evening, stopping at Denny’s for dinner. Hung out in the airport with Jammie for 30 minutes before heading back home.

Bedtime. Thanks Jammie, you’re the best.

Spider/Ant Battle

It was a long weekend so I’ll start from today and move backwards. Today we hung around the house mostly. I showed Emily how to make paper airplanes (what 10-year-old doesn’t already know how to make a paper airplane??) and she went nuts making lots of airplanes. They were all colored with patterns and stuff like “Delta” stuff on the wings. And she made a few for Payton too, which he colored. Plus they made mothers day cards for their mom.

We went to the park for a little while but didn’t stick around there too much, mostly because it was dead there. I’d brought my Flash book, too, all ready to spend hours there. The other day Payton got this battery powered “bug vacuum cleaner” which lets you suck up small insects and then look at them through a built-in magnifying glass. Kind of neat.

Well today I found a spider by the front door so I grabbed his bug vacuum and sucked it into the magnifying chamber. We spent awhile on the internet trying to identify the kind of spider it was but had no luck. On our walk to the park, Payton brought it with him and along the way spotted an ant and sucked him into the chamber with the spider. It was so great. They had a great battle while we watched. The spider lunged at the ant and we thought the ant was loosing. After while, Payton started arguing that the ant was winning the battle. He was right, because as we got to the park he released them both and the spider was dead. The ant ran circles around him and once even went up to the spider and drug him on the sidewalk about a half inch. I’ve never watched an ant kick a spider’s ass before.

Yesterday, after Emily’s piano lesson, we went geocaching. I wouldn’t call it a particularly successful day of geocaching, but we definitely had fun. We found one small cache which was magnetically stuck to the underside of a bench in front of a downtown bank. Another cache took us to a park that I’ve never been to where we watched a ton of ducks for about an hour. And yet another geocache took us into the woods for a very long hike. We failed at that one, mostly because the submitter did the long/lat coordinates stupid, but it was a nice deep woods hike. Countykid called during the hike from some airport and told me about some movie star he was hanging out with. Oh yeah, after the bank geocache we went to the Albany Museum across the street which was entertaining for about 15 minutes.

Hmmmm, guess I did Friday already. That was the wasp day.

Wasp nests

I kept noticing wasps around my car everytime I started to go someplace. Finally Emily noticed a nest being built on the inside of the door. Not inside the car, but kind of inside the part of the door that’s not visible from either the inside or the outside when it’s shut. But when the door is open, there it is. So we knocked it down with a stick and went on our way.

A couple days later, I’m opening the trunk to put groceries in and I notice a wasp hovering around the back of the car. Sure enough, I open the trunk and in the little hollow space around the edge is a new nest. I think I managed to ditch that wasp at the grocery store. Later we knocked that one down too.

Then today, we get in the car to go somewhere and notice another wasp nest, this time on the passenger side! And then, yet another one being built on my side again. Each one with a wasp crawling around on it. They are determined to make their homes in my car. So we were at the park at some point during the day and I took the pictures below before once again knocking the nests to the ground.

wasp nest on my car!wasp nest on my car!wasp nest on my car!wasp nest on my car!

We’ll see how long it takes them to rebuild. I don’t get what is so appealing about my car that they want to make their homes in it.

Found a Geocache today that was less than two blocks from our house. We walked towards it but my GPS wasn’t working at all. Most likely because I hadn’t charged it in several months. So we gave up and got in the car to go other places and I noticed that it started working once I plugged it into the charger. So I drove 2 blocks to the geocache spot and Emily managed to find it stuck to the underside of a fire hydrant with a magnet.

Went to a park, rented some movies, blah blah blah.

The Twisted Pickle

Last night I didn’t have much to do so I started searching around for some new podcasts to listen to and I happened upon a show called The Twisted Pickle. Now, I’ve been a podcast addict pretty much since the beginning of January and I’ve found a lot of really good and entertaining shows. And I don’t know exactly what it is about this show that I like so much, but I’m completely hooked on it. I listened to 3 episodes last night before going to bed. Then this morning I woke up and immediately started listening to more of them. I just added the show lengths together and I’m on my 8th hour of listening to this show and I’m not even close to being tired of it. It’s just really really good stuff.

It’s done by a guy named Corby in Nebraska and I can’t say there’s really anything particularly special about the show. He doesn’t do skits or pranks or play lots of music. He just talks about his average, ordinary life and it’s so…enlightening. Inspiring, maybe? I guess it’s just his delivery or something. He’s a good story teller and can make the most boring and mundane things interesting.

There is one very interesting twist to his show – his wife has no idea that he does a show. He’s been doing this podcast for over a year now and is up to 72 episodes. He’s got a domain name for it, a Frappr map, a Myspace and hundreds of listeners. He even went to the podcast expo. And his wife has no clue at all. Apparently his addiction to Everquest several years ago almost ended their marriage and he was afraid, when he first started the podcast, that she would disapprove of him getting involved with a new computer hobby. Which I suppose I can completely understand. He says he’s been trying to tell her for awhile now, but he just can’t do it.

So he continues to do this amazing show whenever she’s away. He’ll even record bits while she’s outside or in the shower or whatever. Even his 2-year-old daughter participates in the shows. It just seems insane, keeping something like this from your wife for over a year. It’s like he’s a celebrity and his wife has no idea. I sent him an email earlier today, telling him how great he was, and I suggested several ways to confess to her. My suggestions included sitting her down at the computer and doing a show with her where he confessed everything. Or writing the city newspaper with the story. Or going on Springer.

So I’ve rambled on for 4 paragraphs now about how great of a show it is. So it must be good, right? Go listen to it. His website is www.thetwistedpickle.com. If you’ve never listened to a podcast before, this is a great one to get started on.

About me…I have no kids this weekend. I won’t see them until Tuesday and this means that I’m incredibly bored. Although listening to The Twisted Pickle sure has entertained me a lot today. I biked to downtown today for lunch and then wandered around town, looking at various antique shops. I noticed a new store (I think it’s new) called Every Witch Way. They have tarot card readings there and all kinds of crazy witchy things. So Jammie, I finally found a place to get our fortunes read! Since every attempt we’ve made at that in New York has failed somehow.

Oh yeah, that sandwich place rules. It’s $1.00 cheaper than Subway (for what I normally get) and they have better seating and newspapers to read. So I’ve gone there almost every day this week, lounging around and reading the paper. Oh yeah, and they have Fritos! Neither of the Subways in Albany has Fritos. How the fuck can you eat lunch without any Fritos?? So this place is great just for their Fritos.

Stopped by the mall today and ended up buying a Flash MX book. I kind of thought learning Flash would be relatively easy, being all graphical and point and clicky. But it’s really not. So I bought a book, mostly for reference. Before buying the book I wrote down the name and author and went next door to Radio Shack used their speedy 56k internet connection to check Amazon to make sure it was a recommended book. I think that’s about the 3rd time I’ve visited this Radio Shack just to quickly use their internet connection and then leave. I could have saved about $5.00 by buying it on Amazon, but I’m a sucker for instant gratification.

Also went in Target to buy a few groceries. And to look for some Pez to stealthily put back into Emily’s room since I stole a couple packs from her. I couldn’t help it, they were there and looked delicious. In fact, it’s Emily’s fault because she left some clothes in the living room which I had to return to her room. I wouldn’t have seen the Pez if it hadn’t been for that. Target didn’t have any Pez, though. Maybe I’ll try Fred Meyer tomorrow.

Also this morning I worked on some promos for PLA Radio. They’re here:

PLA Radio Promos

With the Woodrow promo, I originally tried to call Orvil from Episode #6 but he wouldn’t play along. His wife is now screening his calls very well. I finally did get him on the phone but he hung up very quickly when he didn’t understand what I was talking about. In Episode #6, he told his wife that he thought I was with some “French radio outfit” or something like that. Maybe Orvil had an altercation with the French radio outfit after I called him for episode #6.

I also tried Mildred Monday and she was equally uncooperative. But I did speak with Mildred and I was happy to hear that she was still alive! I don’t think I’d spoken with Mildred since the 1990’s. We’d always reach her son or get a busy signal or it would just ring forever. I was sure she was dead. My original contact with her was in 1993 so it seems like she’d have plenty of time to die between then and now. She sounded just as healthy and snappy as I remember her.

Tomorrow I expect to be uneventful too. I was thinking of going to the movies all day. One theater has four movies in it that I would sort of consider seeing. The Benchwarmers, Mission Impossible 3, Scary Movie 4 and RV. None of them are worth the $7.00 alone, but if I were to sneak into all of them throughout the day I’m only paying $1.75 per movie so that’s a pretty good deal. It’s also supposed to be a little cold and rainy tomorrow so I could wear my coat and sneak in plenty of food and drinks for the day. On the other hand, I could live without ever seeing any of those movies. They all look pretty horrible.

It’s been a really crappy year for movies so far this year. Nothing really great has come out at all. Even the kids movies, which I normally enjoy, have sucked. I don’t even know what’s scheduled for this summer. Superman might be good. But I’m doubting it.

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