Monday, October 30, 2006

Halloween Humor

Some BAD Hallowwen jokes for you!

1. Q - What is a vampire's least favorite meal?
A - Stake !!

2. Q - What do vampires enjoy most about baseball?
A - The bats (and the double-headers)

3. Q - What does a monster wear when it rains?
A - His ghoul-oshes.

4. Q - How did the monster predict his future?
A - With a horror-scope.

5. Q - What did the monster do when he lost his hand?
A - He went to a second hand store.

6. Q - Why wouldn't the skeleton cross the road?
A - Because he didn't have any guts.

7. Q - What is in the red blood cells of monsters?
A - Hemogoblin !!!

8. Q - Who did the boy monster take to the Halloween dance?
A - His bootiful ghoul-friend.

9. Q - What two types of music do mummies like best?
A - Rag time and Wrap.

10. Q - Why couldn't the skeleton go to the dance?
A - Because he had no body to take!

11. Q - How big was Dr. Frankenstein's castle?
A - "Monsterous" !

Friday, October 13, 2006

It's Snow Good!

Regarding yesterday's post on the weather I heard on the morning news today that it set a record for the earliest date we have had an inch or more of snow. Joy! Though the analysts say we are supposed to have a milder winter this year.

After last year's natural gas bill debacle, I have decided when the kids are not sleeping overnight at my house to keep the heat much lower than last year and just wear a fuzzy pullover. I am not paying $450/month again during December/January to heat my house!

You know, if everyone did that you would see the prices go down!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Oh the weather outside is frightening!

I turn on the TV when I awake on workdays and put the local news channel on. They mentioned snow! October 12th, and it is snowing out! Weird, even for Michigan!

Last night around bed time I thought of putting a latter out in the mailbox. I decided I would just do it in the morning. So, this AM I walked from the garage to the curb to mail a letter and I was literally encased with snow. When I made the right-hand turn onto cascade I thought the light a quarter mile down the street was out as I could not see it or the lit up signs at the gas stations until I was right on top of them!

Cheeze!

Monday, October 09, 2006

Pray if you got 'em....

For those of you who are religious please say a quiet prayer for my Dad. Over the past weeks has dropped about 50 pounds. I fear for him, he sounded terrible on the phone yesterday and after weeks of tests (more to come tomorrow) they can find nothing wrong. He is too nauseous to eat!

I am, preparing myself for the worst; the fact that he is over 700 miles away does not help. I have found it very hard yesterday and today to focus on what else is going on around me.

Stairway to Heaven

Well, if you can call dry stairs heaven, and I can, then, hence the tittle for this post. Many of you know that I have had a leak problem on the basement stairs of the house I bought after the divorce. I had a company come in who sealed outside around the foundation three times and after the last treatment, and no leak for a year, I thought we were good! A few weeks ago we had a torrential storm with tornado force winds and the stairs leaked again (along with a crack in the foundation in another part of the basement that had been fixed when I bought the house. I ended up spending the whole weekend ripping up carpet and padding to dry the carpet after moving most of the fur nature off it.

I did a bunch of Internet research and ordered three things from this place called Ame's Research. A 'Super Primer' which is a chemical that bounds with concrete (and other things) and makes it stronger, seals cracks, and is waterproof, and plastic waterproof sealing tape, and a top coat of another sealent and leak stopper.

So, this past weekend I began Friday evening by using a portable steamer (thanks again Josh!) to remove the carpet from the lower part of the flight of stairs. Saturday it was up and off to Lowes where I snagged a 6AM electric drill, assorted wire-wheels, goggles, filter masks, etc. and headed home. The best thing though was the A23 battery for my garage door opener that died a couple of days before! They actually had them there and I could use the garage again!

I spent a fun filled three hours cleaning the areas on the stairs that had to be treated with the drill and wire wheels. i had a large fan at one end of the house blowing and at the back end of the house where the stairs are I had the sliders open and a fan blowing up the stairs which are right in line with the sliders. So, other than me and repeated cleaning of the stairs with the vacuum while I worked dust infiltration into the rest of the house was all but avoided! Yay science!

Next, I spent the rest of the day applying coats of the Super Primer which needed 2 to 3 hours in between coats. With my back having to bend of so much and stand on unlevel footing (one stair above and below on each foot) by the end of the day I was in considerable pain. Thee evening cooled off rapidly (it had been high 60's during the day) and soon it was in the 50's and dang cool in the house!

Around 6PM my daughter Danielle had called me because usually she (and Scott most times) sleep over many Saturday nights when it is their Mom's weekend (thanks X for letting them do that) and they already knew they would not be doing that this evening. She wanted me to come over and watch TV, so, with a groan in my heart I got cleaned up and wandered over there (I would have preferred to stay attached to the couch I was so sore) because I just could not say no to her wanting to see me.

I got there around 9PM and we watched an hour of TV together along with the X's brother, I put her to bed and after some additional chatting with the brother in law I headed out. As I was leaving Scott wanted me to go downstairs to look at some of his flash. I was just too sore after already traversing the steps the Danielle's bedroom I declined, but, I felt bad!

I got home, and ran the fans again to keep the smell of the primer down. I finally turned the fans off shortly before bed.

Sunday arising I could barely move, and I seriously considered putting it off for two weeks until the next weekend I did not have the kids. However, with a groan and the realization that today was going to be even warmer than Saturday (plus who knows what the Michigan weather will be like in two weeks, they are predicting lake effect show this weekend already!) I decided to bite the bullet. So, the next couple of hours was spent applying the tape down the stairs where the wall meets the steps (the parts that were cracked already and the rest all the way down as preventative medicine) and then I was ready for the top coats. This took the remainder of the day until around 7PM when I was finally done. At least it was not so cool as Saturday night with the fans running!

As I crawled into bed last night I was both glad that the job was done and I had persevered without help. Since I did not treat the foundation crack that leaked when the stairs did, I figure I can use this as a test if we get a really heavy rain. If the wall leaks and the stairs do not, I will be good, and then I will treat that area the same was as the stairs.

Cost for the chemicals and tools needed: $200
Cost of Satisfaction for doing it on my own: Priceless!

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Lord, I was born a rambling man

Trying to make a living and doing the best I can........SO, what's up with Chris? Well, here are some random ramblings below.

Work is incredibly busy, now that I inherited all the folks from the Enterprise application group I have more than double the people in my department as I had before. I believe I have the largest number of direct reports for IT globally for the company. While this is only supposed to be temporary it has been a month now and if I thought my workload was incredible before it is insane now. It takes me most of the day Friday to do the weekend report to my boss as I have to go through everyone else's reports....... If we get our sometimes yearly bonus this month I have promised the kids I will get a cat. I miss having cats around and have decided one of the automatic cleaning litter boxes will be in order.

At home well, we all have been enjoying the XBOX 360 and Danielle too her new DS Lite. The basement steps, which have not leaked in over a year leaked when we had tornado class storms. I went out in the rain and cleaned out the gutters by that part of the house as they were clogged. I have also ordered a three step sealing process to treat the stairs. I have to start this this weekend and it will be no fun! I have borrowed a steam cleaner from my good friend Josh and will use this to remove the rest of the carpeting from the stairs and the paint on the side concrete so I can do a proper surface prep and so the first chemical, which bonds molecularly to concrete, can do its magic. I also have to steam the remainder of the carpet adhesive from the stairs that used to be carpeted. I am SO not looking forward to this!

Was distressed that Stargate SG-1 was cancelled, have been enjoying the second season of the new Doctor Who, along with Stargate Atlantis. The show Eureka is also very good! Battlestar Galactica starts up again tomorrow night, so that will be great. I love my Sci-Fi Friday!

New shows I have been watching this season: Jericho (excellent!) and Heros (Good).

Really miss my daily e-mails with my brother in New Jersey, but, with his job from hell we can no longer communicate so readily. It really stinks!

The fall is upon us; weather doing the seasonal ups and downs temperature wise, soon the leaves will be falling......summer is so gone!

Working on getting my mortgage refined to save some bucks......will be going down about 1.5% and have a fixed rate instead of the adjustable rate I have which is scheduled to go up next month.

As to me? Well, still Miss the X and having the kids full time....will never ever get used to that, but in a few years they'll be out of the house anyway....so.........what the heck will I be doing then? We shall see!

What the heck is a blog??

I got an e-mail from a long time good friend of mine on the east coast. He too has gone through a divorce.....which is neither here nor there for this post, but, I feel a special bond with him as I do all divorced folks whose spouses have ripped their hearts still beating from their chests and held it in front of them with an expression on their face like the girl in the "Cold as Ice" music video ...... cough ....cough ......anyway...back to the story at hand!

In his e-mail he asked me what a blog is. I have always figured it for being my on-line log or diary, but, when I really thought about it I realized I did not know what blog really meant.

SO, thanks to the folks at Wikipedia (you can read the full, much more extensive article here) I know now that 1) I am not all knowing in computer Jargon, and 2) blog means the following:

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The term "blog" is a contaction of "Web log". "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.