Archive for July, 2006

Mechanical Problems

Published July 29, 2006 in Funnies. 1 Comment

These are supposedly comments by Qantas Airlines pilots made on “gripe sheets,” which the pilots use to alert mechanics to problems. The item circulating the internet also mentions that Qantas has an exceptional safety record, second only to Mark, a kid who went to high school with me and wore a helmet all the time.

The problems come from the pilots; the suggested solutions come from the mechanics.

Problem: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
Solution: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

Problem: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
Solution: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

Problem: Something loose in cockpit.
Solution: Something tightened in cockpit.

Problem: Dead bugs on windshield.
Solution: Live bugs on back-order.

Problem: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
Solution: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

Problem: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
Solution: Evidence removed.

Problem: DME volume unbelievably loud.
Solution: DME volume set to more believable level.

Problem: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
Solution: That’s what they’re for.

Problem: IFF inoperative.
Solution: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

Problem: Suspected crack in windshield.
Solution: Suspect you’re right.

Problem: Number 3 engine missing.
Solution: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

Problem: Aircraft handles funny.
Solution: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

Problem: Target radar hums.
Solution: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

Problem: Mouse in cockpit.
Solution: Cat installed.

Problem: Noise coming from under instrument panel sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
Solution: Took hammer away from midget

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Miscellaneous Meme

Published July 29, 2006 in Memes. 5 Comments

‘Acquired’ from Lisa:

What curse word do you use the most?
‘Fuck’ because it’s so fuckin’ versatile.

Do you own an iPod?
No and this continues to perplex me.

Who on your MySpace “Top 8″ do you talk to the most?
Hahahaha. MySpace sucks.

What time is your alarm clock set for?
During the school year: 4am. During summer vacation: I don’t even have a clock in my bedroom.

What color is your room?
Antique white wall with white trim.

Flip flops or sneakers?
Sneakers.

Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?
I’d definitely rather take the picture.

What was the last movie you watched?
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Arrrrrrrg!

Do any of your friends have children?
Almost all of them. Much to our collective dismay.

Has anyone ever called you lazy?
I call myself lazy ;-)

Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep faster?
No. I can fall asleep anytime, anyplace.

What CD is currently in your CD player?
I have a 3CD player. Currently, there is a mixed 80’s CD, a mixed Classical CD and a mixed Metallica CD.

Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk?
Neither. When the question involves beverages, the answer is always Coffee. Or Rum.

Has anyone told you a secret this week?
Yes. Unfortunately.

Have you ever given someone a hickey?
Yes.

Who was the last person to call you?
My boss.

Do you think people talk about you behind your back?
Lately? All the friggin time.

Did you watch cartoons as a child?
Yes. I loved cartoons as a kid.

How many siblings do you have?
Both of my parents were married before they had me, so I have several half brothers and sisters. I know all of my father’s children but only met one of my mother’s children. Sadly, I don’t even really know how many children she had.

Are you shy around the opposite sex?
LOL nope.

What movie do you know every line to?
Oh God…here’s where my geek really shines: All of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies. Armageddon. Pirates of the Caribbean. Toy Story 1 and 2. Monsters, Inc. Finding Nemo. Shrek 1 and 2. All of the Harry Potter movies. Spaceballs. ET the Extra-Terrestrial. The Lion King. Shall I go on?

Do you own any band t-shirts?
I used to have a ton but now I only have TheEx’s band’s t-shirt.

What is your favorite salad dressing?
Creamy italian or Peppercorn Ranch.

Do you read for fun?
Not as often as I’d like to lately but, yes, when I have the time.

Do you cry a lot?
Nope. I’ve probably cried more in the past month since Rob died than I have in the last 20 years put together.

Who was the last person to text message you?
My friend, E.

Do you have a desktop computer or a laptop?
Several desktops, one laptop.

Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoos?
I’ve been wanting a tattoo for ages but still can’t bring myself to do it.

What is the weather like?
Fucking raining. Again. The weather here has sucked this summer. It’s either been too hot and humid to do anything or it’s been raining.

Would you ever date someone covered in tattoos?
Completely covered? Doubtful.

Is sex before marriage wrong?
If sex before marriage is wrong, I don’t wanna be right :-P But that’s not to say that abstaining from sex until after marriage isn’t an admirable ideal.

When was the last time you slept on the floor?
Probably when I went camping last fall.

How many hours of sleep do you need to function?
6.

Are you in love or lust?
Hmmm. Interesting question. I’m not ‘in love’ in the traditional sense but I guess you could say I’m in love with life right now. My lust is reserved for Jack Bauer.

Are your days full and fast-paced?
It varies. My days are always full with taking care of kids, house, school and work. I work best under pressure but I learned a long time ago (the hard way) that it’s too easy to make it a habit.

Do you pay attention to calories on the back of packages?
No. I’m one of the lucky few who doesn’t need to watch her weight. I eat what I want, when I want it.

How old will you be turning on your next birthday?
37

Are you picky about spelling and grammar?
It depends. I don’t get my panties in a twist over spelling and grammar mistakes on anything except writing that I’m getting graded on or paid for. What REALLY gets on my tits are people that feel the need to prove their superiority by pointing out such mistakes online.

Have you ever been to Six Flags?
Yes.

Do you get along better with the same or opposite sex?
I probably get along better with men on the whole, but not because I dislike women. I just dislike many ‘womanly’ behaviors, such as whining, bitching, moaning and groaning ;-)

Do you like cottage cheese?
Good God, no. Blech.

Do you sleep on your side, tummy, or back?
Side.

Have you ever bid for something on eBay?
The amount of money I’ve spent on eBay is scary.

Do you enjoy giving hugs?
Yup. I’m a hugger.

What song did you last sing out loud?
Probably ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ by Guns n Roses. It was playing on one of the carnival rides.

What is your favorite TV show?
Lost, 24 and Grey’s Anatomy.

Which celebrity, dead or alive, would you want to have lunch with?
Neil Armstrong.

Last time you had butterflies in your stomach?
I had something rolling around in my stomach while riding The Zipper at the fair the other night, but they were bigger than butterflies.

What one thing do you wish you had?
I’m a single parent, so it’s a toss-up between more time or more money.

Favorite lyrics?
My favorite lyrics change as often as I change my underwear. Reconnecting with an old friend has brought a lot of long-forgotten memories to the surface and something that I heard recently that has a current special meaning to me is an old song by Skid Row:

I Remember You

Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
The wind would whisper and I’d think of you
And all the tears you cried, that called my name
And when you needed me I came through

I paint a picture of the days gone by
When love went blind and you would make me see
I’d stare a lifetime into your eyes
So that I knew you were there for me
Time after time you were there for me

Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I’d wanna hear you say - I remember you

We spent the summer with the top rolled down
Wished ever after would be like this
You said ‘I love you babe’, without a sound
I said I’d give my life for just one kiss
I’d live for your smile and die for your kiss

Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I’d wanna hear you say - I remember you

We’ve had our share of hard times
But that’s the price we paid
And through it all we kept the promise that we made
I swear you’ll never be lonely

Woke up to the sound of pouring rain
Washed away a dream of you
But nothing else could ever take you away
’cause you’ll always be my dream come true
Oh my darling, I love you

Remember yesterday - walking hand in hand
Love letters in the sand - I remember you
Through the sleepless nights and every endless day
I’d wanna hear you say - I remember you

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Mice Tales

Published July 28, 2006 in Pet Tales. 0 Comments

It’s been really quiet today for a change, so I took the opportunity to straighten out my snake food situation. The rest of this post contains graphic descriptions of rodent death, but no pictures. Don’t click if you have a terribly weak stomach.

Up until last month, I usually went to the pet store and bought a few months supply of male feeder mice, threw them all in a cage and picked the sacrificial lamb on a weekly basis. This was not an ideal situation by any means. Male mice STINK. To high friggin heaven. Their urine is much more pungent than female mice. After speaking to my new SnakeGuy, he suggested that I save myself some money and aggravation by breeding my own mice. SnakeGuy raises snakes and carnivorous lizards, as well as mice and rats.

I’ve recently tried doing pre-killed frozen mice, but this offended my very delicate sensibilities when I accidentally overcooked one while thawing it out. To thaw out a frozen mouse, one usually puts it under a heat lamp for a little while. We’ll forget the fact that these mice come frozen on a tray of 6 and that one has to ‘break apart’ the mouse ice-cubes and individually store them in the freezer and we’ll also forget the fact that they don’t break apart cleanly. Often times, you end up with one mouse and parts of another. That was bad enough. But overcooking a mouse usually means that when you pick it up with the tongs to dangle it in front of the snake, the skin of the mouse comes off. It also means that you’ll find me doing those “Oh my God, please don’t let me puke” breathing exercises.

Last month, my SnakeGuy brought me 9 female mice and two very studly male mice, along with a little known trick of the trade: plastic shoeboxes. We tossed all 11 mice together into a twenty gallon tank together and he left with the instructions that, once I saw the females getting fat, move them each to their own plastic shoebox to have their babies.

Yeah, okay. Sure. Sounds simple enough.

The 2 males have been in heaven…those little bastards will screw anything, including each other, if it’ll hold still long enough. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell who was gaining weight and who wasn’t. Yesterday morning before leaving for the fair, I noticed 4 babies in the big community tank. Whoops. Okay…no big deal. I figured they’d be okay til I got back. I took a look at all of the females and suddenly realized that at least one more was as big as a (mouse) house.

We didn’t get back til late last night and there was no way I was fudging around with rodents then, so I checked on the babies and went to bed.

This morning, I had my coffee and went out onto the porch to check things out. There were only 3 babies. Mind you, I’ve never raised/bred rodents before. I figured the missing baby died and they buried it somewhere. I sat there watching the mice while I figured out my plan of attack, when the big pregnant female took one of the babies from the nest, brought it to the other side of the cage and PROCEEDED TO EAT IT.

Oh. My. God. Ew! Ew! EWWWW!

I called my SnakeGuy and he informed me that mice will cannabilize their young if they’re stressed and crowded, so I HAD to get all the females set up in their own boxes PRONTO. Unfortunately, I had no idea which mouse had given birth to the babies yesterday, so my SnakeGuy had to come over and take a look for himself.

The whole time he was here, lifting mice up and looking at their ‘plumbing’, all I could think of was Captain Jack telling Will Turner, “You need to find yourself a girl, mate”. This guy knows more about mouse breeding than anyone has any business knowing. He told me that the mouse that was eating the baby would give birth before the day was out and the rest of the females will all have babies within the next week. He also left instructions on when to take the babies away and when to put the females and males back into the community tank for more mousey sex antics.

Sure enough, that female started having babies at around noon. She hasn’t eaten any yet, but I’m sure the bitch is still full from ‘breakfast’. I swear to God, if I see her eating any more babies, she’s going to be this week’s sacrificial lamb.

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It’s Fair Time

Published July 27, 2006 in Personal. 0 Comments

I complain a lot about living in the country. There really is no other place I’d rather be, but there are times when the lack of shopping plazas really just gets on my nerves. I’ve got to travel 45 minutes to go buy a package of underwear, and sometimes that really just pisses me off.

But then I take the kids out hiking or fishing and don’t see another person for hours and it restores the balance and I realize that I don’t care that I have to travel so far for basic necessities. That will change soon enough now that our town has a Super Wal-Mart in the works. I expect once the traffic problems come to our tiny little town, I’ll be looking to move further into the woods.

Today marks the beginning of fair time in the area where I live. Between now and late October, pretty much every weekend there is a fair/carnival/old home day within driving distance. We don’t go to all of them, but I take the kids to enough fairs that we will be able to get our fill of cotton candy, fried dough and carnival rides for the next year.

I’ll be dragging the boys’ lazy summertime asses out of bed soon and we’ll head out to our town’s fair for the day, before the weekend crowd hits. Let us hope that the ride operators are sober and that the grease is hot enough to kill whatever germs are lurking on the hands of the guy who makes the fried dough.

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Obit

Published July 26, 2006 in Memes. 0 Comments

QuizGalaxy!
‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

Gleefully stolen from Shadowscope.

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Forgiveness

Published July 26, 2006 in Personal. 1 Comment

It must truly suck to be a 9 year old trying to figure out the way the world works nowadays.

Monkeyboy has been struggling with summertime boredom this week. I’ve had some issues with work that have demanded my undivided attention during the daytime and, despite the fact that he is very lucky indeed to have a mama that works at home, he often doesn’t understand that I can’t attend to his every whim (of which there are many) at the drop of a hat.

This afternoon, while I was on the phone with a very fussy individual, Monkeyboy reached his boredom breaking point. One of the very strict rules I have in my home is NO BALL THROWING. Apparently, I should have expanded that rule to also include NO BASEBALL BAT SWINGING either, but I figured that this was an implied rule. Obviously, I was wrong.

One broken window later, Monkeyboy has realized that he will be in debt to me for a large portion of his childhood as he works to pay off the damage. I didn’t say a word…unfortunately both of my children know that silence from me is a BAD sign. A silent mama equals a mama that is TOO PISSED for words.

The afternoon had gone by with little to no speaking in the house. Finally, as I was making dinner, Monkeyboy tentatively peeked into the kitchen and asked if I was ever going to forgive him. I looked at him…the quivering lip…the big bottomless blue eyes…and melted into a big puddle of mommyness. I gave him a hug and sat him down on a stool so he could munch on some of the salad veggies, while I explained to him (for at least the 1000th time) that there are rules for a reason and usually those reasons are to prevent someone from getting hurt. I then told him that I still hadn’t heard an apology from him for breaking the window. He fell all over himself apologizing and then apologized for forgetting to apologize. He had been so concerned over what he had done wrong that he simply forgot.

I laughed and told him, “It’s a funny thing about forgiveness. Usually one needs to apologize and ASK for forgiveness before they actually RECEIVE it”.

“I never thought of it that way,” he said. “So, you mean I can do anything and, as long as I apologize, you’ll forgive me?”.

Hehehe. He almost got me, the little snot. “Within reason,” I said.

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Just Like a Woman

Published July 26, 2006 in Personal. 0 Comments

I finally relented and put my air conditioner in yesterday. Mind you, since my new apartment has huge rooms, I had to put the AC in my bedroom because it’s just a small unit. I was concerned that it might even be too small to effectively cool my bedroom, but I didn’t need to worry. I’ve got a polar freeze going on in my bedroom right now. It’s so friggin’ cold in there, that I can’t stand it for longer than 10 minutes at a time. I have to come out to the dining room and sit in front of the fan to defrost.

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A Missive of Mercy

Published July 25, 2006 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

From Maeve:

Starburst Candies is screwing with my little autistic world. They have “new tropical flavors”. They replaced two “old” flavors and put in two new ones. Can you guess which flavors they ditched? Yep, Pudd’ns favorites. That is the only candy he’ll eat and it’s only those two flavors. Those were the best motivators for speech and other things to get him to comply. I called the company and lodged a complaint. If they get enough complaints, they may bring back the “old” flavors.

Go forth and give Maeve and Pudd’n a hand.

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Be Very Scared

Published July 25, 2006 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

I’m hoping that the email I just received from my Astronomy professor from last term is a joke. A very bad, very silly joke. I’m more than a little worried that an actual astronomer could look at the picture below for longer than the 5 seconds it took me to realize that there’s something very wrong.

This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And, you also see the sun below the moon. An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated. You may want to save this and pass on to others.

North Pole?

This is NOT a picture taken of a sunset at the North Pole. How do I know? Because by Week 2 of that astronomy class, I had learned about ‘angular size’. The short explanation is that angular size is how astronomers measure the size of a celestial object, in this case the Sun and Moon. We know that if you were to place the two side by side, the Moon is much smaller than the Sun. But because the Moon is closer to Earth than the Sun, they both look to be about the same size.

This is a very basic concept in Astronomy and I’m more than a little worried about exactly what the atrocious amount of tuition I’m paying is being spent on.

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