Upgrading Technology

I finally got around to upgrading my home technology. I hooked up the wireless router that's been sitting around the house for a year so I finally have the PS3 on-line. I also picked up a printer/scanner/copier/fax for $89. My old printer came "free" when I bought my computer. It runs out of ink after printing 4 or 5 pages and then I have to replace the color-only ink cartridge for $49, which can only be purchased from Dell. Bend over!

I've been meaning to upgrade things for a long time but kept putting it off. I used to be different. I'd always be the first one on the block when anything new came out. It was a little easier back then. New technological advances came slowly and a lot of old fogies didn't care about the newfangled gadgets being sold.

I had one of the first digital watches which was impractical but looked really cool. It must have weighed 7 or 8 pounds and it was huge. More like a wrist weight than a watch. There were no commercial liquid crystal displays so this one had a LED display and went through a battery every week. To save battery power the display was not always on. To see the time you had to push a big round metal button that was really hard to press and left a circle imprint in your finger for a few minutes.

Declaration of Malentine Day

Hear ye! Hear ye!

OK, so whether you girls want to admit it or not, Valentines Day is really just a day for the women. Guys pretend to be into it because if the don't they won't get any for a month, and if they do they'll get some that night. Not really much of a choice.

That being said, I think guys should have their own day. It's been suggested that Superbowl Sunday is just for the guys, but everyone knows that chicks like beer and football just as much as guys do, they just won't admit it.

This new day shall be known as Malentines Day and the symbol will be an upside down heart on an upside down golf tee (a spade for those of you with limited imagination). It shall symbolize how much men love golf, which for some reason they all do sooner or later.

Golf looks like a stupid game but I played a couple of times and it was fun. I just don't understand why everyone has to be quiet when someone tees off. Fifty thousand people can scream at the top of their lungs while a baseball player tries to hit a rock hard ball that's being thrown at him in excess of 90 mph and there's no problem. If you sneeze while a golfer is teeing off they slap you in the face with a pair of gloves and ban you from the country club. I don't get it. But I digress.

While Valentines Day has cupids, we shall have stupids. A cupid is a little chubby boy with wings who shoots an arrow into the heart to make someone fall in love. A stupid is an old, unshaven, fat man with wings who shoots an arrow into the heart of the girlfriend/wife to make her forget all the stupid stuff the guy has done in the last year.

Stop The Madness!

Disclaimer: While writing this post I was taking steroids that were prescribed for a nasty sinus infection I had at the time. The steroids made me a little, or according to my wife, more than a little edgy. I'm not usually an angry, violent, sarcastic (ok maybe sarcastic) butthead. Really!

I really hate all the politically correct speak that's going around these days. It's insane the way it's become so important to label everything so that no one gets offended. Don't get offended, just get over it. I don't know why but it really makes my blood boil. Maybe it's because it was originally used primarily for sales purposes to make the buyer feel empowered and feel good about themselves and now it's crept into everyday conversation and it's just a pile of BS.

Let's start with the wife. Everyone seems to enjoy her stories. She loves dogs, especially puppies. Every one she sees is the cutest, most precious dog she's ever laid her eyes on. When she spots someone with a furry little canine friend she has to approach them and pet the dog. Since that's what she wants to do, she should ask the owner if she can pet the dog. But no, she says "Oh, your dog is adorable, may I say hello?" Apparently she doesn't want to pet it before getting a formal introduction. "Hello, what's your name" asks the wife. "My name is Fida and I'm a Bulldog, Shih Tzu mix which makes me a Bullshih." Oh, perfect. Because that's what the wife is going to do with the owner for the next 30 minutes. Lucky me.

TOMAL Therapy

I did a search for branches of alternative medicine and a list as long as my arm came back. And I have a long arm. Most of them have a cure rate no better than a placebo, but there are a lot of people that are willing to pay for them. This has been going on since the 1800's when snake oil salesmen sold elixirs and potions that claimed to cure anything from toothaches to bunions.

Let's take chiropractic for example. It's not approved by the AMA. The training course to become a chiropractor takes like six or eight weeks and then you're awarded your "degree". The wife goes to a chiropractor. I don't know his real name but I call him Dr. Charlatan which really pisses her off for some reason. The last time I took her for an appointment I told the "doctor" that I've been performing chiropractic on my knuckles every day for years. He said that was enough experience to be his assistant and offered me a job!

Dating Tips for the Ladies

I have a few single female friends looking for a relationship and they're going about it in a completely nonsensical way. For them it's all flash and no cash. They were my inspiration for this post.

If you're a female on the wrong side of 30, you're probably over the casual dating thing and ready to move on and look for something more permanent. This requires a completely different approach. Cute and exciting are not the keys to a long term relationship. You need to think financial stability. If it helps, you can replace the term "financial stability" with "unlimited shopping". In this case, it means the same thing.

Anniversary

Well it's our 31st or 32nd anniversary this year. I suppose I could Google it to see which it is but I'm too lazy to bother. I used to remember by picturing the wedding matchbook in my head. Back in the day, each of the wedding place settings had a matchbook with the date embossed on the front. But after all these years the memory has blurred and faded just like my sanity.

We're past the crystal and silver anniversaries. I'm pretty sure this year is wood, so I'm going to give my wife some wood for our anniversary. Then again, I'm pretty sure it's the wood anniversary every year and I haven't been right yet. The next big anniversary is the 35th. The gift for that anniversary is Jade. After all these years I'm jaded enough for the both of us so I'm just going to give her myself, and some wood.

Restaruant Adventures: Chipotle

This tale begins with a trip to the Urgent Care medical facility. The wife and I arrived home from work about the same time a few weeks ago. She had ankle socks on and while her feet and ankles were of normal size, her legs above the sock line were blown up like a salami float in the Macy's Day Parade.

Off to the doctor who asked "Have you eaten anything unusual lately?". The wife paused and then said "Well, we did have Chipotle." As the doctor raised her head in interest, I added "Six days in a row!" At that point the doctor stopped her examination and looked at us like we were idiots. I shrugged my shoulders, threw my hands up and said "What?"

Beach Handbook

A handy dandy guide to beach etiquette.

Don't smoke. You can't smoke on the beach anymore. Why? Because a bunch of candy asses complained about second hand smoke. Today the beach was packed and there was an aroma of marijuana wafting through the air. Not one candy ass complained about that.

Don't bring glass. You can't have glass on the beach. Today, one of those little Beach Patrol girls in her little white uniform and bicycle helmet sneaked up behind me on her knees and stuck her face over my shoulder and told me I had to throw my Starbucks drink away because it was in a bottle. Scared the bejesus out of me. It was like something out of an old movie of the future showing silly stuff that would never really happen.

I'm Pregnant!!

Imagine? I can't. It would be the weirdest thing ever.

First you start by bleeding 4 or 5 days out of the month. That's got to be weird enough. Then, when you finally have a month that you stop bleeding, you would think the first thing that would come to mind would be "Whew, I'm glad that's over!" But no, the first thing that comes to mind is to run into the bathroom and pee on a stick to see if it changes color.

The stick peeing, however, is a lose / lose situation. If it doesn't change color, you're going to start bleeding again. If it does change color then you have a living creature growing inside you. The only thing I can relate this to is the movie Alien where an affected crew member has a creature growing inside him which eventually bursts out of his chest and starts screaming. Really all you have to do is take that sentence and replace the word chest with vagina and you have pregnant. How crazy would it be to have someone growing in you for nine months and then have that person crawl out of a hole in your body? It sounds like something out of a bad Monty Python skit.

Addicted to Love

-Celebrities cheating on their wives is nothing new but I love the excuse de jour which is "help me, I'm a sex addict!". That just cracks me up. They say it like there's a guy out there who isn't a sex addict. If a hot girl walks into a crowded room with a little side boob showing I can guarantee that every guy in the room will notice within 5 seconds. If there's a nipple slip you're likely to hear at least one guy lose it and just say it out loud. "Nipple!" For men it's like spotting a shooting star or a firefly. It's a rarity we just have to point out.

Tiger Woods, Jesse James and now David Boranz or Bornaz or whatever his name is, you know, the guy from Bones and Buffy. They've all been caught and they're all crying sex addiction. The beauty of this defense is that the more women you have sex with, the better it works! Two of these guys actually cheated with the same woman. I'm pretty sure that's like heroine addicts sharing needles.