Life is busy right now. Several writing projects in the fire. Busy. Busy. Good busy. Got no time to blog anything on theme—or even sensical. I’m looking at the clock and I simply can’t bring myself to do one more thing on my list. Fried.
Met my son’s homeschooling program’s minimum requirement, so if I get hit by a stray meteorite tomorrow, he’ll still pass.
The To-Do list fills. Then I proceed to misplace it. Make a new one. Go shopping for essentials, and despite the list, forget the most important item. I hate that.
Our country house was built before the Information Age crept out to the boonies. Only two phone jacks. Jury-rigged a third one for my office. 
A few days ago, right in the middle of several freelancing projects, a mouse chewed through the supposedly vermin-proof phone line I’d run through the wall. Goodbye office phone. Hello to hours of snaking phone line behind an existing wall and through the subflooring of our house. Welcome to country living! (And don’t tell me about cats. Yes, all our neighbors have multiple cats. We’re all deathly allergic to the darned things.)
Pizza wisdom accumulated over years of observing and a summer spent in a pizzeria: Young guys aged 18-22 make the best pizzas. They make a pizza they would want to eat. Older guys—not quite as good, but still okay. They still have memories of great pizzas from history past consumed with high school and college buddies. Young, unmarried women are close to the old guys. They make a nice-looking pizza, albeit with fewer toppings. Older, married women, usually moms, make lousy pizzas—half the toppings the young guys put on and with clumps of toppings rather than nicely scattered. They’ve spent too much time cooking at home and they’ve lost the will to do it at the pizzeria. They think of customers as their children, with an attitude of “I don’t care what it looks like, you eat it!” But those young guys make great pies.
Christians who love the movies work their tails off to find “spiritual” content in their favorite films as a way to justify the film. Non-Christians never do this. Makes me wonder just how much spiritual content actually exists in a film. I can’t say that I’ve ever met anyone who came to Christ because of the spiritual content of a movie. Makes you wonder…
They don’t make them like they used to (too much info edition): I still have a few pairs of wearable underwear I had in college, but several pairs I bought just three years ago of the exact same brand and style are filled with holes. Can anyone in the garment industry explain this to me?
They don’t make them alike for the sexes, either: I have a couple suits I’ve worn for more than ten years and they still look great. Same for my best dress shoes, which are now almost fifteen years old. My wife, on the other hand, can invest in the best women’s business suits made and they’re worn out in three years. Same goes for her shoes. I have a pair of basketball shoes from twenty years ago I can still wear, but my wife’s sneakers are lucky to last two years.
And still more on women’s fashions: My pet theory for years has been that shoes and clothes for women are designed by men who hate women. And I’m sticking with that theory. Also, I really wish lowrider jeans would go away. Ladies, only 0.0001 percent of the female population looks even passable in lowriders. Burn yours. You’re not in that 0.0001 percent.
Not a single person running for President in 2008 is worthy of the title. Unfortunately, this has been true since Reagan left office in 1988. I’m tired of seeing little boys and girls attempting to fill a man’s shoes. I never thought I’d say this, but the new French president’s a better choice than anything fielded in this country right now.
Gas is going to $4. I won’t be surprised if we see that horrible apparition on gas station signs come Memorial Day weekend.
I like the fact that most of the creeks, rivers and streams I’ve hiked along lately all look cleaner than I remember from twenty years ago. Let’s keep up that good work!
We had to eat out and my son, of course, chose McDonalds. Is it me or does a Big Mac weigh about two grams anymore? As a trick, I used to be able to eat a 70s-80s era Big Mac in one bite. Nowadays, I doubt that would impress anyone.
A Wendy’s Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, long the fast food choice of cheap guys everywhere, now has a patty about 1 mm in thickness. For a while, they bumped them to $1.19 and that was okay because they still had two slices of bacon and a decently thick patty. Now they’re back to $0.99 and you get one slice of bacon and a patty you can see through. Sadly, the bun is the same size, so if you like the taste of bread with an added hint of beef, this is your sandwich.
Prices on groceries are holding firm on some canned and boxed items. But if you look closely, the cans and boxes continue to shrink in size. We love Barilla Plus pasta; I see it’s now being packaged at 14.5 ounces instead of 16. I don’t know about you, but when I see shenanigans like that, I wonder how stupid the manufacturer thinks I am. Boo! I don’t care what the canned/boxed good is, give me a full pound and none of this 15.1 ounces garbage. I’ll pay a few cents more. Just don’t insult me.
Despite the fact that nearly everything else bottled, canned, and boxed has gotten smaller, soft drinks have gotten larger. Tracks with the rise in diabetes, too.
Conspiracy of the week: The rise in prostate cancer in America tracks evenly with the rise of fluoridated water supplies.
Even though the temp dipped today, this has been a lovely May.
I’ve been driving and birding for coming up on thirty years and I can say that in that time, despite the fact that they seem possessed to swoop in front of cars, I’ve never seen a swallow become roadkill.
Weird thought: I’ve always wondered what percentage of the average church’s budget goes to landscaping.
I think it’s cool that old Legos I owned as a kid still work with my son’s set of Legos. (Hey, you take the little wins when you can. My old Lincoln Logs don’t work as well with the newer ones.)
Why am I still up?
Bed calls. Have a great weekend.