Day Eighty-Eight - Made for TV Movies and Other Time Wasters

How do crummy movie makers continue to exist as movie makers?  I don't understand how this works.  I watched a movie last night when I couldn't go to sleep that I had DVR'd from the Hallmark Channel back in March.  I knew it wouldn't be great, so I kept putting off watching it.  But last night at 2 a.m. I was actually slightly surprised at exactly how bad it was.

First of all, no one should ever refer to Nicollette Sheridan as an actress.  Just because you proclaim to be something, does not make it so.  If I proclaimed myself to be a doctor but had no training or ability to perform the duties of a doctor, you wouldn't introduce me to others as a doctor.  You might introduce me as dillusional, but not as a doctor.   So, why do people just go along with no talent celebrities who call themselves actors and continue the charade?  And don't even get me started on pseudo-celebrities who have become famous due to their sex tapes on the internet.  The Kardashian's and Hilton's of the world who have no talent or source of income other than their names have no business taking up time on TMZ when Harvey and the gang could be telling me about what is going on with the really important matters like the TomKat divorce!

Second, the plot of this "movie" was that an ad executive in LA and her fiance who owned resorts were supposed to be going to Ireland for a honeymoon, the week before the wedding she finds out that he is cheating on her.  She calls off the wedding and goes on the honeymoon by herself.  When she gets out of the car at the Irish castle that her ex-fiance owns where she is spending her single honeymoon, she immediately meets Mr. Right who is a lonely, slightly bitter, widowed father of a 12 year old girl.  It probably never had a chance at being a good movie, but I am almost certain that if any of the characters were the least bit believable or likable or were portrayed by someone with an ounce of talent, it could have been a cute movie for 2 a.m. watching.  No characters were really likable and the story jumped around so much that it was hard to figure out what was going on.  It continually jumped from LA to the Irish countryside.  Sometimes there were Japanese businessmen and at other times there were Japanese tourists and I am pretty sure that they used the same "actors" for both the businessmen and tourists.

The fact that the movie stunk doesn't bother me in any way.  I expected that.  What I find interesting is that these people are probably making money from this movie.  Okay, granted, I am one of the reasons that movies like this make money.  I am a sucker for any romantic comedy or any movie that is marketed as one whether it actually is comedic or not.  I DVR about 30% of the movies that are aired on Hallmark.  Then when I get around to watching them, I always have the same reaction.  They are practically never any good.

My theory is that I have to have movies on the bedroom DVR so that on nights when I am having trouble going to sleep there will be something to watch besides infomercials.  With a romantic comedy, there are usually no sudden noises or crazy plot twists that might keep me from going to sleep if I start to drift off.  So, romantic comedies are my genre of choice.  The movie that I watched last night included a scene in which the couple were fly fishing in Ireland.  That resulted in non-stop fishing dreams for me last night when I finally went to sleep.  Fishing dreams are okay.  In fact it was kind of nice.

In my dream, I lived on a boat and I was married and everyday my husband would take me out fishing in a smaller boat.  Apparently, fishing is all we did except when we got off our house boat and went to a dinosaur park near our house boat / home that was apparently on a body of water in California.  I think the dinosaurs played into the dream because a friend asked me the other day if I remembered a scene from Jurassic Park and I had to admit that I have never seen it.  This fact always gets a big reaction from people for some reason.  It is as though I am admitting to being a puppy killer when I say I have never seen Jurassic Park.  Now, for me, this is like a line that I have drawn in the sand.  I am sure that it is a really good movie and I would probably enjoy it if I were to watch it.  But because people act like I am some kind of communist puppy murderer when I say I haven't seen it, I refuse to watch it.  I will NOT be pressured into watching Jurassic Park even if Steven Spielburg personally brings a copy over to my house and sits down in my living room refusing to leave until I put it in the DVD player and watch it.  It is a matter of principle now.  I took a stand and I will not be swayed.  It even bothers me a little that I won't watch it because I love Steven Spielburg.  The man can't make a bad movie!  So, now I am to the point of cutting off my nose to spite my face where Jurassic Park is concerned.  But don't try to change my mind.

I think today, I will go through the Direct Movies on Demand channel and see if I can find anything cheap to DVR for tonight.  Now I am starting to wish that I had DVR'd that Hallmark Channel leprechaun movie that came on in March immediately following that jewel I watched last night.  How can you go wrong with a romantic comedy that features a leprechaun????

Day Eighty-Seven - The Cantore Effect

Do you think it bothers Jim Cantore that he appears in peoples nightmares?  I really cannot think of a lot of other people who could show up somewhere and people would suddenly become frightened with the exception of known murderers.  But even with murderers we probably wouldn't recognize most of their faces.  If I lived in a coastal town anywhere and Jim Cantore showed up, I would immediately start packing my house up so that I could leave town.  


So, here is my question.  Where does Jim Cantore go for vacation?  Does he go to the beach???  During hurricane season????  If he does, does he have to use an assumed name to check in?  If I ran the chamber of commerce in a beach town I would tell all of the hotel owners not to allow him to stay there.  After all, what happens with the other guests when he walks through the lobby?  Do they all erupt in a state of panic thinking that although the sky is perfectly blue, a hurricane must be on the way?  


I wonder what would happen if he showed up in Idaho for vacation.  First of all, the people in Idaho probably don't even know who he is.  They probably only watch The Weather Channel in the winter to find out if it is likely to snow.  I don't recall ever seeing him report on a snow storm.  But if people from Florida happened to be vacationing in Idaho and he walked through the hotel lobby would they suddenly go into hysterics?  


My guess is that if they are true Floridians they would immediately ask the Idaho hotel manager if he knows of a place where they could rent surf boards so that they could go ride the waves before the storm hits.  Then they would fill the bathtub in their room with water and go to Home Depot to buy lumber or tape (depending on the size of the non-existent storm) to put on the hotel rooms windows.  After that was complete they would find a hurricane lamp fill it with oil and make sure that they had plenty of matches so that they could ride the storm out in the comfort of their Boise hotel room.  Once all of that was done, they would head to the nearest bar and wait for the reporters to show up and interview the drunks who are planning to ride out the storm.  The catch is, they will only interview you if you are toothless, shirtless and drunk.  So, if you really want to be on TV, you'll have to take the dentures out!

He was on the ABC news the other night reporting from Florida where Debby was making her way across the state and I started thinking about what a crappy day it would be if Jim Cantore showed up and started doing a live report from in front of your house.  In my mind, that would be a lot worse than having a 60 Minutes film crew show up at your workplace.  


Do insurance adjusters track where he has been and then call to make hotel reservations in the same place for the following week?  I would think that this would be a very effective manner of planning your schedule if you are an insurance adjuster during hurricane season.  Just turn the TV to The Weather Channel, watch for half an hour or so, see where Jim Cantore is today and then plan your travel for the following week.  I am sure it would also make it easy for your spouse to know where you are going and where you have been.  Who cares where Matt Lauer is at.  The more important question is, "Where In The World Is Jim Cantore?"


In August of 1983, me, Ronnie and Mom sat in our house in Bay City as hurricane Alicia made landfall just west of Galveston.  During the day before she made landfall I had to work at the former employer (who shall not be named).  My store manager was Gus Seeker, I was scared to death of him.  The store had metal doors that pulled down over the windows and doors in back, but the front windows and doors had to be taped.  So, Mr. Seeker went to the hardware store and got tape and had someone get a ladder and tape those doors and windows up.  He kept the store open until 5 that afternoon which means I was at work until 5.  I was starting to get pretty anxious by the time he let us leave.

When I got home, everybody was outside.  Our windows were already taped but we had a huge pear tree in the backyard that was loaded with fruit.  Dad had called and said to get all the pears off the tree before the storm hit.  I was trying to figure out why Dad wanted those pears so bad until Mom explained that the pears would fly through the air like missals once the winds hit.  Suddenly it became important to me to get the pears out of the tree.  Dad was at work because the phone company was on strike and since he was management he was having to do the job of a lineman.

I had a little 13 inch black and white TV in my room, but it was hard to see the weather radar on it so as the storm got closer Ronnie and I went to the living room and watched channel 13 out of Houston to find out if we were going to be blown away.  My mother came to my room before she went to bed and told me to let her know when it made landfall.  I couldn't believe that she could sleep through it but she did!  When the storm made landfall, I woke her up and told her, she asked where, I told her that and she went back to sleep.

Dad said that when the eye of the storm went over Alvin he was there driving down the road checking for down telephone lines.  He said the only other people out were news crews.  I wonder if an adolescent Jim Cantore was among them.

Day Eighty-Six - Ahhhh..... Comfort!

It is a nice, pleasant and relaxing 74 degrees in my house at present.  Thank you for asking.  The air conditioner repairman arrived around 1:30 yesterday afternoon and was finished and leaving by 2:00.  It took quite a while for the A/C to catch up with all the heat.  When I went upstairs last night, it was still in the mid to high 80's up there which was considerably better than the mid to high 100's where it was the night before.  But by 3:00 a.m. I woke up and was looking for covers because it was getting a little cool.

I postponed the master bathroom sink work yesterday since it was so hot upstairs.  Now the plumber is slated to be here between noon and 4:00 today.  Quite frankly, I hope he is on the later side of that window since I have a lot to get done today.  When I know someone is coming to my house, I am usually inclined to get a lot more done than I would if I no one were on the way.  So, if he doesn't show up until close to 4:00 this house could be really close to spotless before he arrives.

Going two days without air conditioning in this oppressive heat gave me pause to think.  How did our ancestors survive all of those years and actually accomplish anything back in early 20th century Texas?  When I was growing up we used to go to Lovelady, Tx where my Uncle Jim and Uncle Martin lived.  They were my grandmothers brothers and lived in houses on their family land.  I guess my great grandparents gave each of their children a section of the land and at the time, Uncle Jim and Uncle Martin were the only ones who still lived out there on it.  Lovelady, in case you don't know, is near Crockett in Houston County.  It gets hot there.

I can remember going there at various times of the year to see Uncle Jim (Uncle Martin died when I was fairly young) but I remember going there in the summer most of all.  You see, Uncle Jim never had running water or electricity on his land.  So, when we went there, my brothers and I couldn't wait to bring the bucket up out of the well.  This fresh well water tasted better to us than any other water in the world for some reason.  It was also very cold water which I am sure was welcome to Uncle Jim on hot summer days as he worked his land.  His light sources were lanterns and candles.  He was his own entertainment.  For him there was never a question of Plasma or LED.  He was his own Itunes account.  He played the accordion and if you were there in the evening after all the work was done, he would sit in his living room and play for you as long as you would listen.  I still do not understand how anyone could learn to play an accordion.  It seems like such a complicated thing. But Uncle Jim did it well.

In my grandmothers family, everybody played an instrument.  Grandma played the zither.  It is a stringed instrument that according to Wikipedia, is most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria and Hungary which makes sense as that is the part of the world that Grandma's family came from.  This is a picture of what one looks like.  I think one of my aunt's still has my grandmothers instrument.

Uncle Martin played the piano.  I am not sure what instruments her other brothers and sisters played.  I guess back then with no TV or anything, once it got dark, playing an instrument was about all you had to do so it gave you a lot of time to practice and become good at it.

Aunt Bessie, Grandma's younger sister, lived in Rosebud.  It also was close to Crockett.  They also didn't have running water or electricity in their house.  When our family went to see Uncle Jim, it was always just for the day, usually on a Sunday.  But I remember once there was a Meyers family reunion in which all of us went to Uncle Jim's house then later in the day we went to Aunt Bessie's house in Rosebud and we spent the night at Aunt Bessie's.  I was probably about 5 years old at the time.  But I remember in the evening a big galvanized steel tub was brought into the kitchen and filled with water.  That is where we bathed.  I really thought it was neat.  I am sure that for all of the women who were hauling that tub and the pots of water around it was a lot of work.  Now I can't imagine dealing with all of that each time I wanted a bath.  But at the time, I thought I wouldn't mind taking a bath if I got to do it in a big tub in the kitchen every night!

That night I slept in a big bed that was really high off the ground.  I thought it was great!  During the night I remember waking my mother up because I had to go to the bathroom and could not wait until morning.  It was the only time she ever got mad at me for wanting to go to the bathroom and I didn't really understand why she was so mad until we got to the outhouse in the middle of the night with nothing but a flashlight.  All I could think about was how many spiders might be sitting out there watching and waiting to bite me!!!

For us it was a novelty to go to Uncle Jim's and Aunt Bessie's during the summer and live "like the pilgrims" for a few hours.  But for them it was a daily reality.  I cannot imagine living a life in which you grow you own food, working for hours each day to do so, canning it and putting it up all summer long so that you have vegetables for the winter.  In addition to working in the garden and canning and preserving there were the day to day tasks of cleaning and cooking all of the meals, washing laundry with no machines and hanging it out to dry.  While all of these household tasks were being done, in the summer months, it was 90 to 105 degrees both inside and out all day, everyday with no air conditioning to look forward to!  I just went through two days of no A/C and you would think I was being tortured by Nazis with all the whining I did.  Meanwhile, I had three fans running full blast in my living room all day each of those days.  They had no fans at Aunt Bessie's house since they had no electricity!  How did they survive?  I guess they were just tougher than us.  I like to think that I am pretty tough, but when it comes to being either being too cold or too hot, I whine like a baby!  


Once when I was a kid, I broke my foot doing something that my dad had told me not to do.  I was jumping barefoot on a pogo stick.  The rule was you always had to wear shoes on the pogo stick.  He caught me on a Saturday morning jumping on the pogo stick in the driveway with no shoes and told me to go in the house and put shoes on.  When I jumped off the pogo stick to go get shoes, I heard a pop when my foot hit the ground.  It hurt so bad I thought I would die, but I just continued to walk in the house because I had been doing something he had told us not to do.  I limped around on that foot for two weeks without saying anything to Mom or Dad.  They asked why I was limping and I think I told them I thought I had pulled a muscle or something.  I would have continued to walk around in pain for as long as necessary to keep them from knowing that I had hurt my foot while jumping on the pogo stick barefooted.  But one day at school Mrs. Tutt made us run laps around the playground during P.E. and I stepped in a hole.  When I stepped in the hole it hurt so bad I started crying and so I had to tell Mrs. Tutt that my foot was hurt.  I remember her lecturing me about why I had not told her before we ran that my foot was hurt.  


That day I went home from school and had to tell my mother that my foot was hurt.  But at least now I was able to say that I had stepped in a hole while running at P.E. and hurt it!  Woohoo!  I thought I was off the hook.  My parents looked at my foot which was pretty severely swollen and decided that I needed to go to the doctor the next day.  So the next morning I stayed home from school and mom took me to the doctor who took x-rays and pronounced my foot broken.  He then asked my mom when I had originally hurt it.  Then they both turned and looked at me......  I could practically see the question mark over my mom's head.  That is when I had to admit that I had hurt it two weeks earlier on the pogo stick.  Dr. Klein explained that when I had "hurt" it two weeks earlier I had actually broken it two weeks earlier and it had begun to heal until I stepped in the hole and broke it again.  He put a cast on it and we went home.  That night I got a lecture about not hiding injuries from my parents, yada yada yada....


The reason I tell you all of this is not to make you think I am some kind of super human with a remarkable pain threshold or anything because I am not.  It is to illustrate that I can deal with discomfort when it is necessary without whining constantly unless of course that discomfort has anything to do with temperature.  Then all bets are off!  I cannot deal with being too hot or too cold, end of story.  I am pretty sure that if I HAD to keep a secret no matter what happened, I could do so as you cut each of my fingers off individually with no anesthetic as long as the temperature in the room remained a constant 72 degrees.  However, if the temperature ever fluctuated 10 degrees in either direction during the process, I would probably tell you where any hidden treasure I knew about was, the names of anyone I knew who had ever committed a crime or cheated on anything or even anything I personally had ever done wrong.  


All I can really say is thank GOD for central air and heating.  Climate control is our friend and I for one will not take it for granted in the future.  Stay cool my friends!

Day Eighty-Five - "Let's Call It Dallas!"

I wonder what made anyone ever decide to settle in the Dallas area back in the old days.  Supposedly, they settled this area because of the Trinity River but it must have been in the late fall when they got here.  I am certain that they didn't show up here in late June when it was 106 degrees with no breeze and not a cloud in the sky and think "Ahhhh.... this is nice, let's call it Dallas!"  They also probably didn't show up in late January when an ice storm was just getting started and think "Why this is practically like heaven and the covered wagon only slid off the trail 10 times before we stopped.  I think we should call this place Dallas!"  I also doubt the they arrived in late April when the cottonwood is floating around in the air and said "Cough!  Wheeze!  I can barely breath, but that white stuff floating around is pretty.... let's call this place Dallas!"  Nope... I think they definitely arrived in the fall.  Then when winter arrived, they broke up all of the wagons and used them for firewood because they were freaking freezing to death!!!!  So, by the time spring arrived with the miserable cottonwood, they couldn't have left if they had wanted to.  And believe me by the end of June....  they wanted to.  Please ignore my hallucinations.

Even Jingle is hot now.  At least I assume that is why he has been whining since 5:45 a.m.  He hasn't been in his new little cat magnet bed that is supposed to keep him warm since 3 p.m. yesterday.  So that has been my biggest clue that he is becoming miserable.  I, on the other hand, am not becoming miserable at all.  I got there yesterday around noon.

The A/C guy is supposed to be here today sometime between 9 and 5 with a call 30 minutes before he arrives.  Meanwhile the plumber for the sink in the master bath is supposed to be here between noon and 4.  I am contemplating calling the plumber and moving that appointment to tomorrow.  Yesterday afternoon, it was hotter in my master bathroom than it was outside since it is upstairs and on the west side of the house.  If he got here before the A/C was repaired he could have a heat stroke in my bathroom and then there would be that mess to deal with on top of everything else.

So, yesterday around noon, I remembered that I had a free night available to me on Hotels.com and so I started shopping for hotel rooms on line.  I found plenty but then I talked myself out of going.  The biggest reason that I talked myself out of it was that I was planning on taking the cats and taking cats anywhere is such a huge production.  When Jingle was an only cat it wasn't as big of a deal to check into a hotel with him.  I did it on a couple of occasions.  Don't get me wrong, it was a big deal, but not AS big of a deal.  The last time I checked into a hotel with Jingle, I needed a cart just for Jingle and his stuff.  Then I had to go back downstairs and get my little overnight bag.

It's not like he is traveling with a lot of special stuff.  But cat litter and litter boxes are heavy!  I don't feel like I can just carry a big litter box already filled with cat litter in.  I mean an open litter box is kind of gross even if it has no actual poo in it yet.  Just the thought of it can gross out anyone on an elevator.  So, here is what I would have had to carry into a hotel last night just for the cats:

Empty Litter Box
Liners
Cat Litter
Cat Food
Food Bowls
Water Bowl
Jingle's Bed
Jingle in a Carrier
Shiner in a Carrier

Meanwhile, everything I needed for me would have been in a backpack with tons of room to spare.  So, then around 7 last night, I started thinking it should be cooling down in the house now.  The cats have survived this long in the heat along with me.  They could survive the night if I left them here.  So, I almost talked myself into leaving.  But then I started watching a show on the DVR and I looked to see what was on TV last night.  I am behind on most of the shows I watch so I needed to watch a previously recorded one before I could watch last nights broadcast.  That is ultimately what kept me from leaving.  Pathetic, right?

At about 11, I decided I was a total idiot and should have gone.  But then, I thought, I would have to get dressed and by the time I got to a hotel it would be midnight and I had to be back at the house and dressed by 9 to wait for the A/C guy.  So, why waste a free night in a hotel?  Maybe after all of this is over, I can take that free night and go to Galveston or something.  There is one thing that I can tell you for sure, if the A/C is not fixed today, tonight I will go to a hotel even if it means packing up my entire household.  


Here is something exciting.  I just looked over at my atomic clock.  It has the inside and outside temperature on it.  Currently, it is 86.9 degrees in my house and 86.8 degrees outside.  That is downstairs of course.  Upstairs it is about 10 degrees warmer.  I guess I'll run upstairs and open some windows to let some hot air out.  Be right back.  Ugh!  It is miserable up there!


Well, I am going to go hop in a cold shower just to stop the incessant whining for a few minutes.  While I am in the shower I will probably contemplate what the settlers who first decided to move to lovely places like Tombstone were thinking.  Thanks to everyone who offered to let me and the cats come over last night.  We survived just fine here with only a few major bouts of whining from either me or Jingle.  


Stay cool but not thirsty my friends!

Day Eighty-Four - Triple Digits and Crappy A/C's SUCK!

Okay, I get why air conditioners only break when it is hot.  I mean, if it wasn't hot, it might break, but you wouldn't know it until it was hot.  So, the only time an air conditioner can break successfully is if it is hot enough outside for you to notice it.  The good news for my home air conditioner is that it is hot enough outside for me to notice that it is broken.  

Last night when I went to bed at nearly midnight it was 84 degrees downstairs in my house.  My bedrooms are upstairs and it is usually a few degrees warmer upstairs than downstairs.  My master bedroom is the hottest room in the house.  I slept with two fans on high speed all night.  I woke up at 2:53 and it was still 83 degrees in my living room downstairs.  At 3:35 I decided to change the air filter in the A/C.  After all, there is no point in having brand new ones and not using them.  I think that helped slightly.  

I finally went back to sleep during the third episode of I Love Lucy on channel 312.  I think it must have been around 4:30 or 5:00.    Channel 312 is running the ones where the Ricardo's and Mertz's have moved to the country.  I like most of those but I like the Hollywood ones the best of all.  My favorite one of the country ones is the tulip one.  That one wasn't on last night. 

Right now it is 81.5 degrees in my living room.  The thermostat is set on 77.  It won't get there.  I have already called the home warranty company.  While I had them on the phone, I decided to go ahead and report my bathroom sink too.  The master bathroom sink has been draining slowly for about two years.  When it gets really bad, I usually pour some liquid Drain-o in and it helps.  But it has never done away with the clog entirely.  So, when the guy at 1st American Home Warranty asked if there was anything else after he took my A/C claim, I thought "what the heck?".  Of course, I have to pay the service call fee of $55 to each of the people they send out.  So hopefully, for the price of $110 total, I will be semi-cool again and be able to wash my face AND brush my teeth without pausing for 5 minutes between each task for the sink to drain.

The funny thing is that this is Texas and it is June, so I consider the A/C thing to be an emergency.  The guy at 1st American said that I would hear from each of the two vendors by the end of business tomorrow to schedule an appointment.  I hung up the phone and within two minutes the plumbing company who will handle the bathroom sink called and scheduled an appointment for tomorrow afternoon between noon and 4:00.  I have not heard from the people who are supposed to handle the A/C.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!  The A/C people just called!!!!!  They will be here sometime tomorrow between 9 and 5.  That is as much as they can narrow it down to at this point and considering that it will be 105 here today, I am okay with that!  I have just changed my thermostat to 82 degrees so that the A/C will shut of periodically and to see if it is capable of keeping the temperature at a higher setting or if it just isn't cooling at all.  When I stand under the vent I can feel air that is slightly cooler than the 81.5 degree air in the house.  So, maybe setting it at 82 will make a difference.  

The cats should be happy today.  It will be almost warm enough in the house for them.  I, on the other hand, am going to have to figure out what I am going to do outside of the house.  I went to the grocery store and Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday.  So, all of those errands are out of the way.  Maybe I will go to a movie when it gets really hot this afternoon.  I'm not much of a movie goer.  But if it is hot enough, I can put myself through it.  The grocery store yesterday may be what finally pushed the A/C over the edge.  I came home and waited as late as I could to cook supper.  But finally at 6 I had to start cooking the taco meat for my tacos.  When I turned the stove on, that is when the temp in the house went over 82 degrees.  It was 81 before I started cooking and when I finished it was 84.  It is hard to believe that taco meat on the stove for 20 minutes can make a 3 degree difference in the house temperature.  It never cooled back down after that.  I always consider 82 degrees to be my magic mark.  It is the temperature that I judge whether or not the air conditioner is working properly by.  If it can't get my house below 82 degrees then I figure it is broke!  

If I was still working at the former employer (who shall not be named) I would have gotten a new central air unit at the end of April.  I had been saving for one and with my comp check and income tax return I was going to take the dive!  I was so excited.  But when everything happened, I decided that I should wait in case I needed to live on that money.  I would give just about anything for the A/C guy to come out here tomorrow and say it has to be replaced so that 1st American would pay for the bulk of it.  But I am sure that they will just put another band aid on it or he will say it needs to be replaced but the cause of the problem isn't something that 1st American will cover.  That is sort of the way my year has gone.

Is it sad that I am jealous of those people in Florida because they got a hurricane and we didn't?  I mean, I don't want death or destruction or anything like that.  But 3 days of rain would do a lot to keep the temperature down below 100.  Granted, afterwards it would be like a steam bath here.  But the 3 days of rain would be nice while it was happening.  I have discussed my stance on weather and temperatures here before.  I don't think I am that demanding weather-wise.  I don't complain when it is 90 degrees outside.  In fact, I am fairly happy at 90 degrees.  Triple digits are when I get ugly about it.  Triple digits do no one any good.  I can understand the benefit to the environment of the temperature dropping below freezing occasionally.  I don't like it, but I understand it.  But I cannot believe that the temperature going above 99 ever helps the environment in any way.  So what's the point?  And don't start preaching to me about global warming.  There were triple digit temperatures long before power plants were ever built.  

Okay, I am going to turn this computer off now.  It is back above 82 degrees in my house and this thing puts off some heat.  So, I should shut it down.  Have a good day and stay cool!

Day Eighty-Three - The Wonderful Difference Between Cats and Dogs

I wonder how the people who live in my complex with dogs deal with all the issues that a dog creates.  I know the ways that a cat can drive you insane if you live here.  But I wonder how it is different if you have a dog.  The one thing that I am certain of is that dog people are more social.  You sort of have to be more social if you live in a condo with no yard to let the dog out into.

The fact that you have an animal that has to be walked on a leash several times a day forces you outside several times a day come rain or shine.  If you take the dog outside 3 times a day, that is 1,095 times a year that you are forced to walk outside with a cute, fuzzy, four legged bundle of joy in front of you.  When you walk past other people they will invariably say something about your dog since, after all, our own pet is always the most adorable creature known to man.  At the very least "Fluffy" will bark at or sniff the passerby resulting in a "don't worry, he doesn't bite" comment from the pet owner or a "what a cutie" comment from the passerby.  This then turns into a whole conversation about the dog.  The passerby must know the dogs name and then there is conversation about breed or if the dog is a mutt - rescue shelters.  Then you are launched into a big drawn out conversation about the animal in question, past pets of either participant in the conversation and that could even lead into other topics.  I know this because I am usually the passerby.

It is beyond me how someone as antisocial as I am can continually be drawn into conversations with complete strangers because of a dog.  They are like conversation magnets.  I know the name of half of the dogs in Willow Greene Condominiums but I only know the names of 3 humans here.  This is why single people go to dog parks.  If a single person ever tells you that they take "Fluffy" to the dog park because the little fur ball loves it, they are lying to you.  They take "Fluffy" to the dog park in hopes of starting up a conversation with Mr. or Miss Right - end of discussion.  In 9 out of 10 cases that same person sat and stared at "Fluffy" yesterday while it was raining and "Fluffy" was sitting at the front door with his leash in his mouth whining and he cursed "Fluffy" because once again regardless of the weather he was going to be forced to walk the dog.

Yesterday was supposed to be our first 100 degree day of the year.  According to the NWS it only got up to 99 at the airport.  But on my patio according to my thermometer it was 102.  I get very little circulation out there so it is usually a little warmer out there than at the airport.  Anyway, for the next several days the anticipated highs are supposed to continue to be at or near 100.  My guess would be that this will continue until about the second week of September.  But I am no meteorologist.  With that in mind, it will be hard for me to open the door for the 30 seconds it takes for my cats to walk out on the patio and get a little fresh 100 degree air.  I cannot imagine taking a dog for a walk 2 or 3 times a day for the next couple of months.

A few years ago, before I got Shiner, I really wanted a puppy.  I thought it would be good for Jingle and I love dogs despite the fact that I have always had cats.  The cat thing is really just a result of cats being easier pets and we all know that I am all about easy.  Anyway, my mom talked me out of it because she kept reminding me that the dog wouldn't care what the weather was like when it was time for a walk.  If it was cold and raining at 5:30 a.m. and he needed to do his business, I would be soaking wet at 5:30 a.m. and walking along side of him.  Worst of all, I would be carrying a little bag to pick up after him when he was done.  That was all it took for me to continue as the cat person that I have always been.  Being a dog person when you don't have a fenced backyard takes a lot of dedication and no consideration of the elements.

A month or so ago, I was trying to think of businesses I could start.  At that time, I was brainstorming, writing down anything I thought of.  Dog walker came to mind.  It was immediately dismissed.  Too many of the people who live near me are retired and stay at home with their dog all day, so they don't need that.  Plus, my complex isn't big enough to have many clients and there are no other places around here that might have clients.  Let's face it the people in the "projects" on McCallum probably don't require the services of a dog walker.  And the people in the expensive homes north of me have backyards.  The place where this would work would be in uptown.  If I lived there, I might have put up flyers a month or two ago to see if I could get a few clients and I might have started walking their dogs and then today would have come along.

I carried out the trash at 10 this morning.  When I walked outside it was 88 degrees and already so hot that the wall of heat just sort of hit you.  I mean, 88 degrees really isn't even all that hot unless the humidity is just right.  But apparently, it is just right today.  Because it seemed REAL hot.  As I was coming back from the dumpster thinking about calling the air conditioner people today to set up a maintenance appointment a neighbor with a dog walked by.  I didn't think, "Wow!  She must really love that dog!"  or "What a cute dog" or even "Today is a good day to be a cat owner".  Nope!  I thought "I bet every time she bends over a big steaming pile of poop to pick it up until the second week of September she is going to think of a new name to call that dog and it won't be Fluffy".

So thanks Mom, for making me see reason a few years ago when I thought a puppy would have been a great thing.  Thanks to Ed Lowe, the inventor of clay based cat litter.  And most importantly thanks for Jingle and Shiner for being smart enough to know that when it is this hot outside, asleep on my couch is the best place to be.

Day Eighty-One - Jingle and Heat

If you live your life in a fur coat that you are never able to take off, how can you always be cold?  This is Texas and it is June for the love of Pete.  The temperature yesterday on my patio got up to 98 degrees and yet my cats were cold.  Shiner insisted on spending most of the afternoon on the patio.  Jingle on the other hand, is warmest when he is in the car which sits in the garage.

This creates two problems for me as their human.  The first is that with Jingle in the garage, I feel a need to keep the door to the garage propped open slightly so that he can get back in when necessary since I can't see out there to know when he wants in.  Also, he goes nuts if he can't get back in when he wants and then I worry about what he might do to me for revenge while I sleep at night.  So with the door propped open 3 inches, I am basically attempting to air condition the garage.  That isn't very cost effective.

I also like to grill for dinner at this time of year in order to keep from heating the house up just in case I don't have a door propped open for a cat.  My grill is kept in the garage.  When I am ready to grill, I have to open the garage door and roll it out into the alley in order to do so.  I can't do that if there is a cat in the garage.  For a long time I kept my grill on the patio so that this wasn't a problem.  But when I got my most recent grill, I spent a little more on it than I was comfortable with so I decided it needed to be kept out of the weather when not in use so that it would last longer.  Then once I started keeping my grill in the garage it freed up so much patio space that I don't think I could ever go back to keeping it out there.

I already know what you are thinking because I consider it 20 or 30 times a year.  Why don't I just get a cat door into the garage????  My reason is that I park in the garage and I don't want to have to worry about where the cats are every time I leave or come home.  I understand that there are pet doors that you can close that don't allow the pet to use them except when you wish for them to use them.  But I just think this would be opening an whole new can of worms that I don't want to deal with.  For one thing, there is no pet door for cars.  So I would still have to manage that one.  So, here is what would end up happening....  Jingle would go out through the cat door and realize that he couldn't get into the car.  Then he would come back in the house, jump up on my desk, get on the printer turning it on because for some reason he can't stand on the printer without standing on the power button and then he would start messing with the Bob Hope autograph in order to get my attention just in case the cat meowing incessantly, while standing on my printer with it powering up while I am writing a foot and a half away didn't get my attention.  So, while a cat door would definately help with my electric bill, I really don't think it would do anything toward saving my sanity.

Shiner prefers the patio to the garage.  Shiner on the patio is not a bad thing.  In fact if anything it is kind of great.  I know I have mentioned it countless times, but he is the most laid back and contented cat ever.  He goes out on the patio when it is 97 degrees and plops down almost immediately sprawling across the patio and taking up as much room as any 11 pound cat can possibly take up.  It is so funny to see him all spread out across the rug out there.  It is as though he is trying to claim the patio "MINE!!!!  ALL MINE!!!!!"  Incidentally, he does the same thing to any other surface that he lays on including my bed.  It is not quite as cute when I get in bed at night and he has already claimed 2/3 of the queen size bed as "MINE!!!!!  ALL MINE!!!!"  When he goes out, he is perfectly happy whether the door is opened or closed.  That door is glass and I keep a pretty close eye on it, so I can always see if he is sitting at the door wanting in and I open it for him.  He has learned over time that I get a lot less hysterical if he rushes through the door not letting inclement weather inside the house, be it winter or summer.

Jingle will only go out on the patio if I go too unless I leave the patio door opened.  He has figured out that if the weather is either too hot or too cold I won't leave the door opened.  So, as the temperature increases, you couldn't get Jingle out on the patio without me going first without drugging him.  When I walk out first and he goes out along with me and Shiner he keeps a paranoid eye on the door at all times to make sure that I don't make my way in the house without him.

I tell you all of this because knowing that we were about to start the 100 degree days for 2012 I went to the pet store the other day to get cat food.  While there I saw these white cat beds that were all rolled up for about $12.  On the package, it said that cats were drawn to them like magnets and that they were made of a material that would help cats to feel safe and warm.  So, I decided to try one.  I thought if it worked for Jingle, I might go back and get one for Shiner too.  Here is Jingle yesterday afternoon in his......

It's kind of hard to tell, do you think he feels safe and warm????  :-)  Since I got it for him, he has generally slept in it about 12 hours a day all curled up in a little ball.  But yesterday afternoon, he just sort of spilled out of it like this and slept that way for a few hours.  I think he must have moved around while he was sleeping and didn't even notice that he was half way out of it because he was sleeping so hard.  The poor baby has a very hard life that no animal should have to endure!  Here is what Jingle is doing right now as I write....

So, anyway, I guess Shiner will be getting one too.  If you have a highly neurotic and cold natured cat, I cannot recommend this highly enough.  I wish I could remember what they are called.  But I am sure that you can find them at your local pet store.  Just look for the one that is rolled up and says that they attract cats like magnets.  Have a good weekend!

Day Eighty - Ahhhh.... Friday!

Can you believe that it is already Friday?  Okay, for those of you that had to go to work today, you maybe looking at it more like, "Can you believe that it is finally Friday?"  But either way, it is Friday.  Friday, to me, for the last 80 days has been kind of a sad day unlike the previous 43 years of my life when Friday was always the best day of the week.

Now Friday signifies that I am another work week closer to being forced to find a real job again.  While I don't mind the idea of working for my living and I must admit that there have been like two days out of the last 80 in which I was slightly bored this has really been sort of great.  I think I would be an excellent "kept" woman.  I wonder how you get "kept"?  I suppose the first step involves a little bit of hard work in the form of working out.  I have never minded staying busy during the day, in fact I prefer it when I am working to make the day pass faster.  But actual physical exercise is always a little iffy for me.  You've seen what it takes to get me to the gym.  If there isn't a trip on my calendar, it kind of takes an act of congress to get me to Planet Fitness.

A number of years ago, I had a membership at 24 Hour Fitness and used to go to the one at Marsh and Trinity Mills.  When I was on PTO, I would go around 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  At the time I was slightly more dedicated to a fitness regime than I have been in more recent years.  I would go for practically no reason at all other than my health.  Crazy, I know!  I would get on a treadmill or elliptical trainer which faced the areas with strength machines and free weights and proceed to people watch.  That particular 24 Hour Fitness had some very interesting people to watch at that time of day.

You could always count on seeing the "meatheads" there, you know, the guys who lift as much as they possibly can while grunting very loudly and then dropping the weights on the floor as they back off.  They only do this lift once.  So, I never really understood the point other than to show off to some random skinny girl that he could pick up three of her at once if he chose, but only once.  These guys always wore tank tops and those weight belts presumably to protect their backs.  I think it was actually acting as a girdle to hold more than a few beer bellies in.

The other people that you saw at that 24 Hour Fitness were the strippers who had slept until 1 p.m. then headed to the gym for their 2 - 3 hour workout and were leaving from there to go straight to the club on Harry Hines where they displayed their "wares".  The first couple of times, I just thought there were a lot of very fit girls at that 24 Hour Fitness in the middle of the day and I wondered what that was all about.  But then one day I noticed this one girl who I had seen there on a few other occasions talking to one of the "meatheads".  Well, she was speaking in a high pitched annoying voice, while he grunted back, but you know what I mean.  They seemed to understand one another.  On this occasion, she was having a similar conversation with another "meathead" but she had already showered and changed and was holding her gym bag as she was preparing to leave.  Strapped to her gym bag were 6 inch platform shoes that were dangling off the shoulder strap (work shoes).  While they talked another of the tall blonds who was always there came up to them.  She also held her gym bag with a strappy pair of platform shoes dangling off the shoulder strap.  I looked around the gym and realized that I was the only female in the place other than those who worked there who was not a likely stripper.

I really don't think most of these woman were any closer to being "kept" than I was.  While I know that guys often fantasize about women with great bodies in 6 inch heels doing naughty things to them, I don't think they also fantasize about making her $700 a month Mercedes payment along with all the other bills that a woman like that can create to have those things done to him.  Okay, I also get that most guys are probably capable of overlooking the $700 a month for a few months, but when the money gets tight, a more average girl will do.  After that day I started noticing the cars in the parking lot at that 24 Hour Fitness when I was able to go in the middle of the afternoon.  Many of them were very expensive cars no doubt paid for using $1 bills.  None of these women really had any interest in the "meatheads" that they conversed with while at the gym, who incidentally drove the beat up Chevy's in the parking lot.  They just talked and I am sure did other things with them while they waited for a sugar daddy to come along.  I am sure they all had dreams of being the next Anna Nicole Smith and we all know what a lofty dream that is!

Their idea of "kept" and mine were probably two slightly different ideas.  I am sure that they fantasize about expensive cars, lavish homes with a cleaning service to do the housework and little yappy dogs that they carry around and a hot young guy who comes over while the sugar daddy is off doing whatever it is that sugar daddies do during the day.  Not me!  My idea of being "kept" is having everything that I have right now but not having to work outside of the home for it.  If I was "kept" think of how much time I could spend writing without ever experiencing any stress over how I was going to pay the bills a few months from now.  I love my Kia.  I hate yappy dogs.  Who wants a bigger house to clean than the one I clean right now?  No, I don't want to be "kept" in the same way that a heroin addicted exotic dancer wants.  I want to be "kept" under my own terms.  This, I believe, is where the problem arises.

I don't think there are many men out there looking for an overweight, lazy and slightly opinionated woman who wants to stay home and write and perhaps someday be compensated for the writing although, that's not really what it is all about.  I think most of them are looking for a hot girl, whose only thoughts are centered on being at his beck and call.  This is where strippers come in.  They have already proven that they are willing to sell themselves for what they want.  The only point of negotiation is whether or not they are willing to settle for what the average guy can pay.  Fortunately, for most of the overweight, lazy and slightly opinionated women of the world, most strippers think their value is higher than it really is and hold out for a rich billionaire until it is too late.  Then suddenly, they too become overweight, lazy and slightly more used up.

I think the key here is that most of us actually do have to work for whatever we get.  And usually what we get in return for that work is worth it.  I envy those who worked all their lives for what the wanted and now sit on the front porch holding hands with the person they spent the last 50 or 60 years earning those moments with.  There can be nothing more precious than sharing your life with someone who understands you and who might be willing to overlook that you are overweight, lazy and slightly opinionated.

So, since I don't have rock hard abs and buns of steel, and I have not found anyone to sit on the front porch with, I guess the number of Friday's that I have left to write my thoughts down and express them to you are starting to fade away.  But until they are all gone, I will just keep composing paragraphs on the off chance that someone reads them.  Have a happy Friday!

Day Seventy-Nine - I SEE STREETWALKERS!

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day for me.  I had a couple friend requests on Facebook from people who I didn't know.  Now, to some of you, this might be alarming or at least annoying.  But to me, it is the best thing that has happened to me in a week.  You see these requests came from people who are already friends with other friends of mine and I am lead to believe that they may have friended me as a way to get to my blog.  If so, I am officially being read by people who don't even know me!!!!!!  Woohoo!!!!!

So, now I am feeling pressure to really entertain.  I don't feel like I can simply tell you about some lame genealogy work that I have done in the last 24 hours with the knowledge that I have new readers who would think, "why the hell would anybody tell me to read this?"  So, I have a couple of topics to choose from.  I could tell you about the two doves that my cats are currently stalking on the patio or I could tell you about the funniest thing that happened in San Francisco.....  The doves / cats story is already starting to wind down as Jingle has already come back into the house.  So you are going to be entertained by the San Francisco / Streetwalker story this morning.  Enjoy!

For those of you just joining this blog, my friend Jenny and I went to San Francisco a few weeks ago for a quick little break.  It was a lot of fun, we took a ba-zillion pictures and came back a week ago last Sunday.  Our flight was scheduled to leave SFO at 6:15 a.m.  Neither of us are really good morning people.  In fact, I would say that we are both really BAD morning people.  Jenny set her phone alarm for 3:35 a.m. and just to be safe, I also ordered a wake up call for the same time.  We got up right on time Sunday morning and both immediately got dressed.  We had scheduled a shuttle with the hotel to pick us up at 4:05 a.m.  So we had a whopping 30 minutes to get ready and get downstairs.

We got on the elevator to head downstairs at exactly 4:00 a.m.  We were staying on the top floor but our hotel only had 9 floors so I am fairly certain that it wasn't any later than 4:02 when we got off the elevator.  As we stepped off he elevator, we saw a van from the shuttle service sitting out in front of the hotel.  Jenny took off out the door to make sure he waited.  I said that I was going to go check out.  So, I walked over to the front desk and the guy was saying "that's not your van" as I walked up.  So, I thought Jenny would just come on back into the hotel and wait with me.  The guy at the front desk explained that the van that had just left was there to pick up someone else who was supposed to have been downstairs at 3:50 a.m. and they were just leaving.  He picked up the phone to call the service and make sure that ours was on the way.

So, I was listening to him talk on the phone to the shuttle service and there was a banging on the glass doors.  I turned around and Jenny was banging on the doors.  I thought - Why doesn't she just open the door and say whatever she is trying to tell me instead of standing out there and beating on those doors!!!!!  I threw both of my hands up in front of me as if to motion STOP!  and said, "JUST HOLD ON!!!!" and I was not very nice about it.  Then she said through the glass door, "I'M LOCKED OUT AND THERE ARE STREETWALKERS OUT HERE!"

So, I went over to the door and let her in then finished checking out.  The whole time I finished checking out, I was thinking that there were probably just people walking down the street and she assumed that they were streetwalkers and homeless people.  After that we sat down for a minute at which time she said again that there were streetwalkers and homeless people outside and then our shuttle arrived.  We went outside and got in.  I didn't notice anyone around as we got in.  But as we drove away, I cannot even begin to tell you what kind of FFF bust sized women in skin tight clothes and 5 inch heels were standing on and walking around the street corner!!!!!  Oh my God!  I have never seen such blatant prostitutes in any other city I have been to.

There were several other people on the shuttle and nobody made any comment on the hookers walking around.  But I am pretty sure that my mouth dropped open when we drove past them.  And then I think I grinned a little bit at the thought of Jenny standing out there with them.  But again, there were no comments.  After we got to the airport, went through security, got coffee and sat down I think one of us finally mentioned it.

Last night Jenny and I met to exchange flash drives so that we would each have the others photos of the trip and the topic of the streetwalkers came up.  I cannot tell you how hard we laughed at that!  Every time I remember the look on Jenny's face as she stood outside and yelled  "I'M LOCKED OUT AND THERE ARE STREETWALKERS OUT HERE!" I start laughing hysterically again.  It was priceless!  I feel bad because she was really sick and then to have that happen to her too sucks.  But that doesn't make it not funny.  

Day Seventy-Eight - An Old, New Hobby!

Back in the late 80's and early 90's my sister-in-law, Eileen and I decided to research our families history.  She worked on her family and helped me work on mine.  I think she decided to do it because she was marrying into our family and she and Robbie were getting ready to start a family of their own.  I decided to tag along.

We started out by digging up what little information was available at the SFA library.  Although SFA has a good library, it wasn't a genealogy library and that was what we needed.  For you kids, this was before Al Gore invented the Internet.  We started out by getting death records of people for whom we knew death dates and places.  To get this information, you had to write to the local county clerk sending a SASE (again for those of you who aren't that familiar with snail mail that stands for Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) and a check, usually for $10 or $15, sometimes more or less with the full name, date of death and any other information you might have and then wait.  Sometimes we waited a week before a death certificate came in the mail and sometimes it was 6 weeks.  But when a death certificate showed up, it was like Christmas morning at 225 E. Spradley!  Death certificates contained a real date of birth and location.  It was like gold.

Once we had that, the next job was to send off to the county clerk where they were born and get a birth certificate.  That gave us their parents names and their dates of birth!  If a death certificate in the mail was like Christmas morning then a birth certificate in the mail was like Christmas, birthday, Easter, Thanksgiving and the last day of school all rolled into one!  You could practically hear angles sing when we got a birth record.

And then we discovered the Clayton Library in Houston.  The Clayton is to genealogy what Bill Gates is to computers.  It is like Mecca if you are into finding out who and where you come from.  When we first started going there it was in an old house in the old museum district in Houston.  It is a great area.  You had to get there really early to be sure and get a parking place.  Eileen and I were young at the time and didn't have a lot of spending money.  What little money we had went to cover death, marriage and birth records of long dead relatives.  Well... that and beer at Cotton Eyed Joe's on Thursday nights.  But Eileen's beer budget dropped rather dramatically when she became pregnant.

When we would go to Houston to research we would both plan out what we wanted to look for during our visit.  Then we would get up bright and early on the morning we were going and drive down getting there right when the library opened.  We ate breakfast on the way, usually something we brought from home since all of our money was being saved for gas and vital records.  We always packed a small ice chest to carry.  It would contain Cokes, sandwiches, snacks and the all important Ding Dongs.  We never researched without a good supply of Ding Dongs waiting in the car.  At lunchtime, we would leave all of our stuff spread out on our work table and go out to the car for a picnic.  After our first visit or two, a new Clayton Library had been built at the same location to replace the old house that it was previously housed in.  When that place was built it was amazing!  Everything was state of the art.  No old time microfiche readers for us, no sir!  These were brand new microfiche readers!

What I learned over all that time was that my mom's family who had been in America for many generations was very easy to research.  There were all kinds of trails to follow.  You could always find a random Hamilton, Overstreet or Kendrick on an old census somewhere.  My dad's father's family might have been even easier to research than that since they had been in Houston for many generations.  There was more history than anyone really wants to know on the Meyers and Perrin's.  Eileen eventually found an old relative of ours that no one even knew existed who was a Perrin and lived in Mt. Pleasant.  Her name was Clemmie and Robbie, Eileen, Matthew and I went to visit her one day when Matt was a toddler.  She told us all about the research that she had done and what she knew of our family.  She gave us old photos of our great, great grandparents and then took us to the private cemetery where many of our ancestors were buried which was out in the woods somewhere near Mt. Pleasant.  Somewhere around here, I think I still have photos of little Matt crawling around near headstones as we talked with Clemmie.  Matt is now an adult and married.

What we never learned was anything about my dad's mother's family.  Grandma Meyers and her family all came over from Czechoslovakia before she was 10.  Beyond that we really never knew anything.  I wrote to the Czechoslovakian embassy at one point asking how I could get information and telling them what I knew. I received a response saying that since it was still under communist rule that the information I was requesting could not be disbursed by the government.  It would be necessary for me to find out where she was from in Czechoslovakia and send money, specifically $100 to start with, to a priest in that area to do the research for me.  They would be able to do the research through church records.  Well, at the time $100 may as well have been $10,000 because I didn't have either amount of money to spare.  So, I never went any further on her family.

Last weekend, I was at my parents house and my dad mentioned that one of his sisters is going to be in Prague next year and had asked him what, if anything, we had ever found out about Grandma's family.  She was hoping to make a visit to her hometown if she had time.  I told my parents that since it is no longer under communist rule, we might be able to dig some information up out of Czechoslovakia now and maybe this would warrant a trip to Houston and the beloved Clayton Library.  This really started getting me excited.  Yesterday I pulled my old genealogy stuff out and found a copy of the letter I had written to the embassy all those years ago containing the information we had about Grandma's parents.

So, I got on Ancestry.com and signed up for a 14 day free trial membership and found out that they did not all come to America at once.  My great grandfather actually came over a year earlier and started settling in Houston county.  Then my great grandmother and the kids came over the following year on a different boat.  My grandmother always insisted that she was NOT Bohemian.  She said that Bohemian's were gypsies and she was Czechoslovakian.  Well, it turns out that on the ships registry next to her name, her mother's name, and that of each of her siblings they were from Bohemia.  Last night I Googled maps and history of the area at the time and until WWI, all of that area was called Bohemia but there were almost constant struggles and at about the time they left the country Czechoslovakian had once again become the official language replacing the hated German language.  They had previously been ruled by the Austrian monarchy and were becoming an independent state.  So, it makes sense that her family would want to be called Czechoslovakian's since that was what the new republic was to be called.

Anyway, with all of this information and whatever else I can find in the next few days, I think that I will soon be ready to make a trip to Houston and the Clayton Library.  I am really looking forward to doing the research and I think my parents will enjoy going as well.  Eileen is currently in Jamaica and I doubt that she has time to make the trip with us since her summer is already so full.  But we won't go until I have had a chance to invite her.  You never know when a box of Ding Dong's might turn up in an ice chest.

Day Seventy-Seven - Squirrels and Neighbors and Squirrely Neighbors

There was a man and a little boy in the condo across from mine yesterday!  They put up a satellite dish.  I think that is a good sign.  The unit across from mine has been lived in for a total of about 11 months since I moved here 8 years ago.  I guess the person who owns it tried to sell it years ago, but couldn't get what they thought it was worth, probably due to the foundation issue.  So, for a long time that unit was on the waiting list to go on the rental market.  Our HOA only allows a certain number of units to be leased at a time.  So about 8 months ago, a small military family moved into it but only stayed for 6 months.  The entire time they lived there, the realtors key box remained on the door.

Last fall, after the foundation was fixed, they fixed the place up, taking carpet out and putting wood floors in. They replaced Formica with granite and put fake wood blinds up.  Even though the wood blinds are fake, they are still better than mine.  They put these cool shelves under the staircase and staged the house and it looked great.  Realtors brought a lot of people by and I was very hopeful that I would get permanent  neighbors.  But alas, the renting military family moved in for 6 months and then they left in April.

Now there has been a lot of activity over there for the last week or so.  The key box is still on the front door.  But last night the man and the little boy were over there for hours.  I noticed them because he was letting the little boy help him with the satellite on the roof and the little boy couldn't have been more than 7 years old.  It was scaring the bejeebers out of me.  After it started getting dark, there were lights on and they were both inside.  There is no furniture in there yet.  But I think a satellite dish is a good sign that they might be moving in.

I really hope someone moves in there.  I would like it best if it was someone like me to hang around with.  But even if it is a family with a 7 year old who is allowed to walk on 2 story roofs, it is better than no one at all.  The biggest reason I want someone to move in is that I want to go into the house and see what they have done to it since it is the same floor plan as mine.

In the amount of time I have lived here, I think more squirrels have lived in that house than humans.  For a while squirrels were getting in that house like it was where they belonged.  I kept looking above the door for an Alvin and the Chipmunks Inn sign.  The little cage on the chimney was bent back and the squirrels were going in through that.  I'm not sure how the squirrels bent that metal cage back.  Maybe the papa squirrel had   good pair of pliers or something.

The sad thing was that once they were in there for some reason they were unable to find their way back out. So, I would open my front door and see squirrels in the front windows clawing desperately at the window seals trying to get out.  So, I would call the HOA who would contact the owner and they would do whatever they had to do to get the squirrels out.  For a few weeks, several years ago, there was a white cat living in there.  I guess the owner put the cat in the house to try and keep the squirrels out.  It didn't work.  One day I looked over there and in one window was a pretty white cat and in the other window there were two squirrels with their heads together conspiring of ways to torment the cat.

I could always tell when there were more squirrels in the house because normally the blinds are down and closed, but when squirrels are in residence, the blinds get askew at first.  Then after a few days they are just twisted and tangled up in knots.  On one occasion they tore them completely out of the window.  I think that was a squirrel on a mission.  The worst was always when the condo owner would give up and just decide to do nothing about it.  Then, I would see the squirrels in there for several days becoming more and more desperate in the windows.  After a week or so, I would start seeing flies in the windows instead of squirrels and that was never a good sign.  I know that squirrels are just rodents with bushy tails.  But I still think they are cute and don't like to see them die.  So, I always got sad when I knew one had died in there.  I quit being concerned about the condo owner when years went by and they never fixed that cage around the chimney that could keep the squirrels out.  Seriously, if you are that careless, you deserve whatever havoc the squirrels create.

Last fall the lady who lives next door to the vacant condo left her windows open on a really nice day and went somewhere.  I was sitting in my living room and watching football, it was a Sunday.  I can see her front door and windows through my living room window.  I glanced up and saw a squirrel in one of her downstairs windows that faces my house.  Knowing that someone lives there, I got up and watched it for a few minutes, but I thought, maybe she was at home and was actively trying to get it out.  So, I didn't want to annoy her by going over and knocking on the door and saying, "hey, did you know there is a squirrel in your house?"  After about an hour of watching the squirrel move from window to window going downstairs and upstairs and seeing no human activity, I finally went over and knocked on the door....   Like the squirrel was going to answer it or something.

She is a flight attendant.  So, I started worrying that she could be out of town or something and that squirrel was going to create havoc while she was away.  I could see a hole in the screen of the upstairs window and thought the squirrel must have got in through that.  I tried her front door to see if I could get in and maybe shoo the little guy back out through the window that he came in through but the door was naturally locked.  After hours he finally went back to that window and squeezed back out through the hole in the screen.  So, then I started thinking that while it was great that the squirrel got out, she was going to come home and not know what in the hell had happened to her house!  So, I kept watching for her to return so that I could go over and tell her about the squirrel.  Finally, just before I went to bed I wrote her a note explaining that there had been a squirrel in the house and he had gone back out through the same window he entered, but that he had probably made a mess in the house.  I left the note on her garage door peg so that hopefully she would read it before walking into the house and being freaked out!

I talked to her a few days later and she said that if I hadn't left that note, she would have called the police when she got home because the house looked like it had been ransacked!  She said that he shredded pillows and curtains, turned plants over and had gone through bags of chips and stuff that were left out on the counter.  I was just glad that the squirrel got away.  She has since replaced the screen that he got in through. For the last several months, I haven't seen many squirrels around.  Maybe the vacant condo/squirrel death trap across from me has taken it's toll or perhaps the bobcat that is spotted around here periodically has a taste for squirrels.  I hear they taste like chicken.

Day Seventy-Six - The Most Important Factor in a Job Hunt

This is crazy!  I am writing on my blog before 7 a.m.!!!!  I don't really know what has gotten into me except that I have really started thinking a lot lately about the fact that I have to find a job and it stresses me out to think that I might have to go back to doing something that I hate.  Because this is all that I have thought about in the last several days, I am now dreaming about it.

The dream that woke me up this morning was one where I had gone to New York for an interview.  There were more than 20 people that had traveled to NYC for this interview and they were taking us all around together as a group like a reality show.  They took us to lunch and told us how expensive everything was right down to the Coke that we were drinking.  Then we all had to get on a subway and go to a couple of different apartments that I guess workers at this company lived in.  One of them was a 600 square foot studio and her monthly rent was more than the job we were interviewing for paid monthly.  The other one was a really nice 2 bedroom apartment that the person was moving out of because it was "too cramped" and she wouldn't even tell us how much it was a month.

As we were going around NYC, it was snowing and miserable.  And all I could think was that if I moved there, I would have to sell ET. :-(  (In case you don't already know, ET is what I call my car.)  When I got back home, my mom was at my house and wanted to know why I didn't want the job.  My response was "Do you mean besides the fact that it was snowing in June????"  That's what woke me up.  I have said for the last 6 months that I couldn't move anyplace north of Dallas.  The fact that me, my two cats and a roommate would all have to live in a 600 square foot apartment in order for me to be able to afford rent wasn't the problem in my mind.  The problem was that I was going to be cold.

I can't even express how much I hate cold weather.  I would do anything to be in a place where the temperature never drops below 50 degrees at night.  If all nights were 65 degrees and all days were 85 degrees, that would be heaven for me.  I've never understood the people who crave a changing of the seasons.  What is that all about?  I suppose orange leaves are pretty.  But I can see that in pictures.  I don't actually need to experience it.  I remember when I was a kid how great it was when it snowed.  But for me snow stopped being great when I was about 25.  Now, when it snows I just get angry.  Rain doesn't really bother me too much.  I think I could live in a place where it rains a lot... as long as it is warm when it rains.

Over the weekend, I was talking to my Dad who went fishing with my brother and cousin in Galveston last week.  He was talking about sitting at my aunt and uncle's house on the porch where the wind was blowing and looking out at the water.  He said they were complaining that the wind wouldn't stop at the same time he was thinking about how nice the wind was.  I'm looking at the 10 day weather forecast in Galveston.  In the next 10 days the temperature is expected to reach 90 twice.  On those two days, the forecasted high is exactly 90 degrees.  Beyond that it will be in the 80's everyday.  The nightly lows will be between 79 and 81 each night.  I could live like that.  I would like to live in a place where that is the type of weather you complain about.

Where I live, last week I had marble to ping pong ball sized hail at my house.  A few miles down the road it was baseball sized.  Every place I have gone in the last few days around here I have seen cars covered with tarps because they have holes in them from hail!  When the weather makes holes in your car, that is a problem.  The 10 day forecast for Dallas is highs of 95 to 100 everyday except today.  Even I have to admit that this is a little too hot. There is nothing healthy about 100 degrees.  As humans, we are sick when our body temperature is that high.  The air conditioner in my house sort of gives up when it gets that hot outside.  Don't get me wrong, it runs all day long.  It just never actually gets the house cool.

I went to San Diego once.  It was in April and when I left Dallas the daily highs for the previous week had been in the 70's and 80's.  When I got to San Diego, it was cold!  The temp was in the 50's.  That afternoon, it started raining and it was VERY COLD!  Everywhere I went for 4 days people would greet you by saying "the weather is NEVER like this here!"  Every time I heard that I thought, really????  because it seems to be "like this" right now......  But I was lead to believe that the temperature there is almost always perfect.  My point is, wouldn't it be nice to live in a place where when the temperature drops into the 50's and it rains people go nuts and greet complete strangers by saying "the weather is NEVER like this here!"?  I think that would be really nice.

The best thing about living in a place where the weather was always perfect would be that I could leave the doors and windows open all of the time which would mean that Jingle wouldn't walk around the house meowing all of the time.  Can you imagine how miserable life would be if I had to live in a place like North Dakota with Jingle cooped up in the house all winter?  I can't even describe to you how miserable life would be.  One of my favorite shows to watch on TV is House Hunters International.  Sometimes when they are shopping for a house in the Caribbean, the house will have pocket glass doors onto a deck, patio or balcony.  In a perfect world, I would live in a place with pocket glass doors.  That would be the ultimate luxury.

Have a great day, I think I am going to get on line and see if the city of George Town, Grand Cayman needs a meter reader or dog catcher.

Day Seventy-Four - My Trip Advisor Addiction

Hello, my name is Susan and I am addicted to Trip Advisor.  I think I have finally figured out that my addiction is indeed more TA than the actual traveling.  Am I weird?  I think, yes.  Here is how I know that I have a Trip Advisor addiction.  I have no trips planned.  I don't intend to plan any trips.  I have already written all of my reviews for my most recent trip and still I spend more time on Trip Advisor each day than I do watching TV.

Since I am not actively planning any trips, I have reduced myself to following local forums.  If I lived in a place like Honolulu, or Key West or even, sadly enough,  San Antonio, this wouldn't be so extraordinary.  But I live in Dallas.  Can I just give you a sampling of the current threads going on in the Dallas forum as of this morning?  Here goes.....

Dallas or Fort Worth? Group of 6 couples

Richardson: Hotel with central A/C?? Restaurant Suggestions for downtown Dallas Fun restaurants in dallas?! Cowboys in Oct. Hari Krishna Hotel close to west end Dallas for 3 days with kids Saturday Lunch before Jersey Boys! Is Dallas for me? Ball Game August 28th That first one is a question from a guy who is coming here in December for a Cowboys game and they are trying to figure out if it would be better to stay in Dallas or FW.  He says the ladies will want to shop and they all want to be able to walk around safely at night to bars and restaurants.  There are a couple of destination experts who both tell them to go to FW and stay in Sundance Square.  One person from Bedford answered, mind you this is a Dallas forum and talked about what to do in FW then said that they weren't familiar with Dallas.  Why in the hell would you be answering questions on a Dallas forum if you are unfamiliar with Dallas?  One of the destination experts suggests Grapevine Mills Mall for the shopping portion of the trip.  I wouldn't send my worst enemy to Grapevine Mills Mall and this crazy woman wants to send a group of Canadians who have never been to Texas there!  This same respondent thinks that other can't miss activities for these poor Canadians should be.... "Sid Richardson Museum of Western Art, Cowgirl's Museum, 6th Floor Museum or just walk about the Kennedy Assassination/Memorial area). Depending upon the weekend you're here Candlelight at Old City Park, Christmas lights in Fair Park, and the Pocket Sandwich Theater does a reasonably priced most excellent version of A Christmas Carol--Ebenezer Scrooge, 31st year."  I have never heard of the first two museums she mentions.  She told them to stay in FW and now she wants them to drive all the way to Dallas to see Christmas lights in the projects of Fair Park?  REALLY???!?!?! The guy asking about a Richardson hotel with central A/C is from Ventura, CA and has to be in Richardson for about a week each month.  He apparently can't sleep with any kind of A/C noise.  So, he is looking for a hotel that has A/C without a compressor in the room.  I think the response should be, "Dude!  It is Texas.  Try coming here next month.  Turn the "horribly loud window air conditioner" off for about 30 minutes and see how it feels.  Then turn it back on and the noise won't sound that bad."  But instead, the same idiot who told the Canadians to stay in FW and drive to Fairpark to look at Christmas lights told him to drive from hotel to hotel next time he is in town and see which ones have central A/C.  I'm sorry, but if that is my response, I think I just wouldn't answer at all. The guy looking for restaurant suggestions in Dallas is from Alabama.  The first response he got was from a stupid woman from Austin who copied and pasted 4 websites into her response with no other information.  The websites include Open Table and Yelp.  Really?  I am reasonably sure that he has heard of the internet before and doesn't need for you to give him this information.  He is asking if someone could recommend a place that is good not just a random list of what exists.  She also gave him a web address for a West End dining site which lead another respondent to warn him that if he goes to the West End to watch for panhandlers.  Maybe I should chime in and say if you go to Plano, you should also watch for panhandlers there too because I see them all the time at GB and Preston and GB and Coit! I think the saddest question is the one asking for Fun restaurants in Dallas.  It is from a guy who lives here and was having his 21st birthday last week specifically asking for a restaurant recommendation in North Dallas, Plano, Addison or Carrollton.  He posted his question on the 5th.  He was looking for a place to go to on the 8th.  He got one response last week apparently from a very old and boring woman who just happens to be a destination expert for Dallas and thought he should go to Blue Mesa at North Park!  First of all, he was obviously looking for a place north of LBJ so why would anybody suggest a place at North Park?  Second, Blue Mesa?????  For a 21st birthday?  Okay, granted the guy says that last year he spent his birthday at Joe's Crab Shack and apparently that was okay with him so maybe he is such a big loser that Blue Mesa would be all right.  But still, can't we do better than Blue Mesa at North Park?  At least suggest the one in Addison if you have to suggest Blue Mesa.  But that isn't even the worst part of all of this.  The worst part is that he got another response on Wednesday the 13th.  This response was five days after he said he would be celebrating his birthday.  This response recommended.... wait for it.... The Magic Time Machine.  I remember when I was 8 how I wanted to go there!  But I think the last time I thought it sounded like fun was when I was 15.  Those were his only two responses.  I hope he didn't commit suicide for his 21st birthday! I am saddened by all of the responses to questions about coming to Dallas that recommend another city to the person.  For the most part, it is people who are coming to the area for either a Cowboys game or a Rangers game.  Almost 100% of the time, they are told to stay in Fort Worth or Arlington by the Dallas destination expert.  I think we have Laura Miller to thank for that.  When you go to other cities forums on Trip Advisor the destination experts bend over backwards to keep the tourism dollars in the city that they represent.  The Dallas destination expert sends 95% of the people she communicates with to Tarrent County and the other 5% she gives bad advice to concerning Dallas eateries. Below is the most amazing response I have seen on a Dallas forum recently.  The question concerned a recent college graduate from Boston who was going on a road trip and looking for things to do in Dallas.  Here is what someone from here told them: "Dallas is big, crowded, and the people aren't so friendly as you see on Television. I live in the DFW area, and would suggest Ft. Worth over Dallas. There is way more to do and to see and you can get out and walk around without getting mugged. Sundance Square is awesome on a weekend night, as there are comedy clubs, outdoor live music, dance clubs, restaurants, a movie theatre, Bass Hall, lots and lots of action and very safe." For the love of God... whatever you do, don't go to Dallas!  You will be mugged and probably die.  (Insert eye roll here.)  I just don't understand why a person goes out of their way to get on a website and discourage tourism to their city during a bad economy.  Sure, if someone asks me whether or not they should spend their vacation in Dallas, I will probably tell them that there are better places to visit in Texas.  But to go on line and look for opportunities to discourage people from traveling here is insane!  I guess my question is, when Laura Miller left office, did she become the Dallas destination expert on Trip Advisor?  Is she the one telling everyone to go to Fort Worth, Arlington and Grapevine?  I mean, as the mayor of Dallas, it's what she did.  So, my guess is that Trip Advisor gave her the opportunity to continue in that endeavor as a private citizen. The reason that I am pretty sure that Laura Miller is the one suggesting that all of these people go to other Metroplex cities is that she is critical of their lack of mass transportation as she sends them there.  The basic response to any inquiry is, "You need to stay in Arlington, but there is no way to get around because they have no mass transportation system.  So, you will have to rent a car.... but with all the construction that will be awful!  Parking at Cowboy Stadium/Ballpark in Arlington is outrageously expensive so you can't drive to the game, but there is no other way to get there because, again, no mass transportation.  Why don't you just go to Austin?" You might be asking yourself, how can anyone sit and read this crap for hours on end?  It's an addiction.

Day Seventy-Three - Number 16 Not a Vampire Hunter!

Seriously?!!?!?!?  Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter?  This is out of control now.  I commented to a friend just the other day that there weren't really any movies that I was interested in going to see.  That was before I saw a trailer just moments ago for Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1611224/.  Now, I am not sure I will ever go to a movie again!  When did this happen to our society?  And what was I doing while it was happening to keep me from noticing the downfall of society?

The Best Picture nominees in the year I was born were Tom Jones, America, America, Cleopatra, How The West Was Won, and Lilies of the Field.  Now, I have to be honest, the only Tom Jones I have ever heard of sang "What's New Pussycat" and I have never heard of a movie called America, America.  But still I am fairly certain that there was not a single vampire hunting dead president featured in any of these movies.  My point is that back in 1963 screenwriters, movie producers and even the gigantic movie studios who were probably more about making money than anything else, actually created a real story that could exist without the AWESOME, RADICAL, OUT OF THIS WORLD 3D SPECIAL EFFECTS that now seem to alleviate the need for a script or indeed any redeeming value whatsoever.

Seriously!  Are there humans who will pay $10 per person to see this movie?  If so, how did they get so damaged?  More importantly, how did they get the $10?  Really!  I am unemployed and those people have jobs????  I don't know about you, but I don't want them to be my doctor, lawyer or child's teacher.  Although, I'm fairly certain that some of them are currently working in our government.

In 1964, My Fair Lady won Best Picture.  Who doesn't know a quote from that movie????  I can think of 5 right off the top of my head.....  "She's got it!",  "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain", "I'm a good girl, I am!", "Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait!" and "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"  What I'm saying is not only was I entertained the first time I saw it.  But I have been entertained thoroughly on each subsequent viewing over the last 45 years or so.

The Sound of Music won the Best Picture Oscar in 1965.  Do I really even need to say more.  It was a beautiful, wholesome movie that is still repeated every year on TV at Easter time, not because it is an Easter movie, but because it is a great movie to watch with your entire family.  Do you think 40 years from now, they will watch Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter on Easter weekend?  I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say no.  At least I hope not.  But I could be wrong.

The Best Picture in 1966 was A Man for All Seasons.  Quite frankly, I have never seen this movie.  But I just read the synopsis and I really want to now.  This is the premise according to Wikipedia:

Sir Thomas More was the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England who refused to sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and resigned rather than take an Oath of Supremacy declaring the King the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The King is Henry VIII of England and his wife is Catherine of Aragon, the first of Henry's eventual six wives.


This sounds very interesting to me.  I think I need to rent it.  What I find most remarkable about this movie is that no where in that synopsis is there any mention of dead presidents hunting blood sucking non beings.  And yet, the movie probably did very well at the box office.  The movie wasn't even made in 3D.... how could they possibly have kept anyone's attention for more than a few seconds?  Perhaps through a quality script, good direction, good acting?  Nah!!!!  That couldn't be it.  They must have drugged the popcorn in the movie theaters.  


In 1967 In the Heat of the Night was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Who doesn't remember Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs demanding "They call me MISTER Tibbs!"  Pure greatness.  Not a single vampire in the movie.


1968's Best Picture Oscar went to Oliver! a musical about orphans based on Dickens' Oliver Twist.  I remember going to see this movie at the old Main Theater in Nacogdoches one afternoon.  I was five.  I thought it was sad, but those kids sure could sing.  


1969's Oscar for Best Picture went to Midnight Cowboy not my favorite movie of all time, but still it had substance.  And who hasn't walked across a street at least once since then and yelled "I'm walkin' here!"


The point I am trying to make in my so drawn out way, is that there was a time when movies had meaning and...... wait for it..... a POINT!  They weren't based solely on shock value.  This is exactly why I am such a fan of Idiocracy.  Although it is actually a shock value movie it is a comment on what our society has become.  We don't care anymore about taking care of our world and each other.  It is all about our individual entertainment at any price including ultimately the downfall of our way of life.  In what kind of a world is the most popular thing that people are watching for days on end a video of pimple being popped???!?!?!?  How does that get to be bigger than a parent coming home from war and seeing his or her kids for the first time in months?  Or bigger than the funeral of a soldier who fought and died for a way of life that now consists of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.


I have had it with vampires, self centered teenagers and all that that entails.  The 16th President of the United States did not hunt vampires.  But I guarantee that 6 months from now there will be teenage girls who will believe that he did.  If this is the best that Hollywood can do, count me out.