Snowstorm from space

Last week the East Coast had a terrible snowstorm. Here’s an image from outer space of it.

Fight the glitter card!

Glitter cards are everywhere. You go to any store and everything has to have glitter these days! I mean you can’t even go and buy a card in the same row or above/below because the glitter spreads! It attaches to everything! Then the stuff that falls to the floor collects on your shoes, and then all the sudden your infection every public place with glitter! They need a quarantine section of non-glitter cards like a non-smoking section…….

I think we need to assemble a team called “Fight the Glitter” and register a website. We could have fund raisers, runs, events…. Even brochures talking about how glitter DOES kill dolphins! Little dolphins!!! Who is with me?!?!

FIGHT THE GLITTER!

Bob Dylan: Must be Santa

I have to say, this is not as bad as it appears. It’s funny, catchy, and Bob Dylan has a Santa hat on!

Up and running…

For those of you who view this site, you have seen the “upgrading” page for the past two months.. I had to re-install my wordpress files.  All is back minus a few images I lost accidentally, so some posts might not show them.  Few new things in the past couple months…

I recently got married, it was a fantastic wedding. My wife planned such a good wedding.  And I say she, because she worked so hard at it for at least a year.  I had some input but it wasn’t nearly what she put into it.  She found the perfect place for a cake, Rochester Deli.  If you have never been there, it is really good.  Chef Dan makes a fantastic ribbon torte.  I don’t think we could ask for anything else in the cake.  Jen also found our photographer, Kim B. Anderson at KB Image Photography. Kim has an amazing award winning portfolio.. She specializes in those awesome spontaneous shots, not those pose shots you usually see.  I cannot wait to see the photos when they come out any day now.  We were married at St. Marks Lutheran Church in Waukesha, and had a great private ceremony.  Pastor Jim is a great person, and really did a great ceremony.

We went to Bristlecone Pines for the reception.  This used to be a public restaurant but now its private.  Receptions are still public from what I understand… If you need someone to run your show, Deb is the person.  She is unbelievable.  She was involved in EVERYTHING and was there to serve “our” needs, not to their rules.  DJ D (aka Kevin “Darkwave”) ran our music show.  We ran a laptop to a rented PA system.  We did NOT want the usual wedding music you hear at receptions.  We don’t dance, and we ended up playing (to the crowds delight) a great mix of rock (current and classic), soul, pop, and alternative music.  I think it was exactly what we were looking for.

From there it was off to Maui! Maui is an amazing place. I’m not saying that from just a warm tropical place to visit.  The people are so relaxed and pleasant.  Sure they live in paradise, but seriously these people live life how it should be live.  If people could adapt their philosophy and put it in their own environment no matter where in the world it is, people would have such better lives.  I swam in the ocean every day I could.  It was so relaxing to lay there and see mountains in the background and see the sunset come in each night.  I was stung by a man-of-war (Physalia) though.  It is one of the dangers they warn you about.  It just so happened that tropical storms were bringing that stuff closer to shore and odds were I got hit.  My leg was not too bad.  I had a lot of lines and marks from its tentacles, but did not affect my vacation.

The airplane ride is quite the bear… 7-8hrs being cramped in a plane isn’t a joyride but it is worth it for the journey to the islands.  I’d do it all over again.  We had a fantastic resort, The Royal Lahaina.  The staff is incredibly nice.  They greet you with a “welcome home” when you return to the resort and drive past the check in booth.  And it was sincere too.  It wasn’t like “welcome back drive up” … they look at you and actually “welcome” you with kindness. I’m glad Jen chose this resort, I’d go back again if we stayed on Maui again.  Anyhow we left the 80’s and came back to the 50’s.  We had a great number of friends and family helping us out at home while we were gone, incredible people…

Here it is a month later from being back from Maui about and I’m looking out the window at rain and 40 some degrees.  It’s almost time for Thanksgiving…how the year is wrapping up so fast…

People of Walmart

I have to thank my old classmate Amy for posting this to Facebook. This is truly a great site!

http://peopleofwalmart.com

Introducing Tommy

Below are pics of the cat, Tommy. Tommy was adopted almost two weeks ago from HAWS in Waukesha. He is a 12 year old male tabby. It is kinda funny how his name is Tommy, as it completely reminds me of Chris Farley – “Fat cat in a little coat”. He’s a sweet furball, and soon will have the run of the house along with Milton. More stories to come..

Bing challenges Google (and that Yahoo thing too)

Bing is the new search engine from Microsoft (formerly LiveSearch). It has gone live in a preview format on www.bing.com. Google has been the dominant search engine for many years now, offering stripped down graphics and fast results. Yahoo on the other hand gives you a busy, congested looking page. I’ve always been turned off by Yahoo and its search page. (Does anyone even use Yahoo search anymore?) Bing offers some things Yahoo does, like travel and hotel cost results in searches where Google does not. Bing also apparently has a great health and symptom related search where Google steers you more towards their GoogleHealth service. Both Bing and Google appear to have good satellite images for maps, but I think Google still wins that one with Street View. I so far like the sidebar of Bing but I have not used it too much overall yet and need further thoughts on it. Don’t expect me to say “Bing It” though… I’m going to start using Bing for fun and see how it goes. Maybe it’ll be more efficient than Google, but we’ll see. This is Microsoft remember!

PC World did a recent Bing vs. Google vs. Yahoo and gives their results here.

Waukesha: (Indian for “poor roads”)

The city I work in, and lived previously most my life, Waukesha, sure has issues when it comes to a safe intersection. There is an intersection right outside my office that was re-done recently and it has only gotten worse. It is a five way intersection and the way the lights are confuses most of the drivers each day. As you turn right (Northbound) from going Eastbound, people stop directly in the middle of the intersection because the next light they see is red. The light they just went through was green and they pass this “do not block intersection” sign.. yet they block it anyways and stop of the lines of paint that show you cannot stop there. (The pic below is before the revised intersection)

Next, we have Sunset and St. Paul Ave. For almost 15 years now this intersection has been programmed wrong. The East/Westbound traffic enjoys a nice 7 second light most times where the North/Southbound traffic get a 60-90 second light. The Westbound traffic builds up in both lanes that end up one quick lane right after the lights. This equals lots of accidents and horns. This has been voiced on, and many written gripes in the paper, but it remains unchanged.

You see, Waukesha doesn’t care about how people gripe about their roads. It doesn’t matter to them. I can tell you we have called no less than three times to the city about the intersection by the office. Each time they say “there is a sign though that says do not block” and we say “yes we know”. They just can’t admit their brand new intersection is very flawed, since they don’t have money to re-do it. We even alerted them today that a police officer was even blocking traffic and didn’t know he was supposed to keep going through the intersection and “not block traffic”. They just don’t and never will get it. In fact for humor sake, I have counted 3 cars that were laying on the horn in this 10 min it took me to get the pictures and words for this blog post. Times that by each hour and hours in the work day. I bet you could count 50 horns daily easily in my work day from this intersection! I just shake my head… Oh and no, most of the pot holes still exist from the previous two winters…

Scaredy cat

Whether you believe or not in the afterlife, ghosts, entities, or something that can exist in the same dimension as our human world, you have to leave the door open to a possibility at least. People all around the world each day have witnessed things they can’t explain. People you would least expect first off. I’ve never encountered such a thing, but do believe something can exist in this world. What about the world of animals? There are claims all over of ghost animals throughout the world and history. Castles with ghost dog sounds, and other things.

Last year, Milton our cat was adopted and spent a few weeks with our other cat Skittles. Skittles had been dealing with heart and kidney failure for 3 years and was on constant medication. Skittles passed not soon after last year. They were mostly separated in two rooms but knew each other was there. At times we’d let them see each other and sometimes see what they’d do without being held back. It was always just stare downs and a few growls of getting used to each other.

Last night we heard a noise and suddenly Milton was under the futon extremely frightened. Nothing had been knocked over or out of place. When a cat clumsily falls, or knocks something over they get over it in seconds. Milton wouldn’t move. I finally got her out, and she was just sitting there looking around between the hall and the back room. She crouched slowly, puffed her tail, and was extremely nervous looking. It took her about a half hour to start going back in the back room again. Eventually she just went back to routine and sitting in the living room. A couple hours later one of us made a noise for no real reason, and Milton got up from laying down and ran in the kitchen looking where the sound came from. I thought about it and that random noise sounded very cat meow like for some reason to me. Wasn’t intended that way, but that’s how it came out. Apparently Milton reacted to it strongly and this was hours after her initial scare.

One thing tells me Milton heard something to freak her out. She’s pretty brave and I’ve never seen a cat get so scared, even in a thunderstorm. Two, she seemed very alert to a sound that was very cat like, in fact immediately following it. I’ve had cat noises on computers, tv’s and cats usually just look up like “whats that?”. I’ve never seen one chase the noise before so intense like that. If I had a guess, I’d say Skittles came back to say hello… but I’m not going to jump to conclusions, I’ll never know what she saw/heard but she was definitely scared out of her mind.

Menards (revisited)

Yeah Menards…. you still suck.

I can’t simply win at all with this place. I went last night for something so simple… 4 cycle lawnmower oil. I walk around and I can’t find it anywhere. I found one bottle of 2 cycle oil, and that was it. So I wander for 3-4 minutes back and forth in the same isles, then to the tools area, then back. No one is around to help me. I got near the registers, and they have two open with about four in each line. Thinking it was time to give up, I walked out (seems like a usual move for me there) and went home… I even went to the Kwik Trip and they actually did have lots of mower oil, but only 2 cycle. Funny – they had more stock than Menards did!

I’ll have to go back to Ace, where they seem to always have what you need. They ask you what you need (without being annoying like Best Buy) soon after you get there too. Kudos to Ace Hardware.