Halloween Moon

Thanks, J for the pic. Thought it was funny enough to post.

There's Always One in the Crowd

Happy Birthday, Rufus!

Today is Rufus' birthday. He is now 6 years old. It is hard to believe that we have had him that long.

Here he is as a baby.... he still has that white spot on his upper lip, it is just harder to see with all the fur.


Here he is today...



And soaking up the sun in the kitchen on a sunny afternoon....

Friday Funny

I'm pretty sure this is what Ollie does when I'm not around. It has been a long time since this was on tv but it is still funny.

Proposition K

Almost like Special K... NOT!!

San Francisco wants to decriminalize prostitution if voters next month approve Proposition K, a measure that forbids local authorities from investigating, arresting or prosecuting anyone for selling sex.

The ballot question technically would not legalize prostitution, since state law still prohibits it, but the measure would eliminate the power of local law enforcement officials to go after prostitutes.

According to supporters of the measure they think that it will save up to 11 million dollars a year and free up police to go after other crimes.

Proposition K has been endorsed by the local Democratic Party. But the mayor, the district attorney, the police department and much of the business community oppose the idea. They contend that it would increase street prostitution, allow pimps the run of neighborhoods and hamper the fight against sex trafficking, which would remain illegal because it involves forcing people into the sex trade.

I don't know about you but I really would not like this. I think that it would make neighborhoods unsafe. On the other hand it could open up a new industry in the suburbs. Soccer mom turns tricks while kids are in school.

Doesn't it seem like California has some very strange things that they put up for voting??

hmmmm.... have to wait and see how this one plays out.

A Moral Victory

My former boss, who is now just a regular team mate of mine, came up with this 'plan' to reduce costs by eliminating pagers for the company. Now, this is fine as there are alot of them that are not being used but it is the way she was going about it that I had issues with.

She started out by picking random pagers (L and I have yet to figure out how she chose these devices) and sent them one page with her phone number in it. When they didn't call back by the end of the day she had their pagers cancelled. This 'plan' failed miserably when about 20 people came forward wanting to know why their pagers were turned off. She did not quite get the fact that most people, me included, will not return a call from a number that I do not recognize.

So for the past few weeks we have been meeting the the procurement department who is responsible for vendor relations and the contract side of the pager relationship.

I kept bringing up the fact that I did not think that it was right that since the IT dept requires that if you are on-call that support is required 24x7 and that they then tell you that you have to use your personal wireless device to be notified when there is an issue. I think that if you want me to be on-call after I leave my building that you had better provide me with a device to be notified with. No one listened to my concerns. Until a higher up mucky mucky was on last weeks call and thought that "hey, maybe we better check this out with HR, just in case".

Turns out that I was right. HA!! We cannot force people to use their personal devices to be contacted by off hours. If they choose to do so and submit the expense for reimbursement that is fine, but we cannot mandate this.

I'm not sure why my former now demoted boss never thinks that what I have to say matters (ok, so maybe it has something with going over her head and turning her in for taking kickbacks (weekend in Vegas) from a vendor), but I am damn good at my job and I know what I'm talking about.

Some day I will post examples of her 'math' skills. It is hilarious. She puts together these proposals with number so out of whack I'm positive that my parrot can put random numbers that make more sense.

Friday Funny

Interesting....

I found this very interesting....

NEW YORK—National Football League officials announced that Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones has committed a uniform weapons violation and will be fined $2,000 for keeping his nine-millimeter Beretta handgun in his game uniform's belt and not tucking the firearm into his uniform pants as rules stipulate during Monday night's game against the Philadelphia Eagles. "This fine sends a clear message that there is no leeway when it comes the NFL's new firearms policy—if players have a sidearm in their pants while on the field of play, said pistol must be tucked into the front, back, or sides of said pants," a statement from the commissioner's office read in part. "Once again, the rule is clear: Players can carry up to five guns onto the field at any one time, but only if they are properly carried in holsters underneath their jerseys, in the aforementioned portions of their pants, or in their sock." Goodell also cautioned Jones to be mindful of rule 14b of the on-field uniform code, which states that one may shoot an opposing quarterback once and only once as long as the throwing arm is not targeted.

Ok, it was funny.... you got to admit that. Hope you didn't really believe this as being true. I took it from the Onion.

Friday Funny

The hardest part about being a seeing eye dog.....

Rooms to Let... for Fifty Cents

I am now looking for a place to sleep.

Ever since hubby has moved back in with me, I am getting no sleep. Literally. He snores. BAD. Ask the guys who went to the Packer game with him a few weeks ago. They will tell you.

It is now to the point that somehow I end up sleeping on the couch. Not sure how that works... this is my house. I sleep on the couch. Not that is not a comfy couch but sleeping with two dogs on the couch is a bit cramped. Rufus still sleeps in the bed with hubby. I told him tonight that he should sleep on the couch or in his chair. He laughed at me and said then he wouldn't get any sleep. I'm to the point where I don't care. I need sleep!!!

I am now sick and am positive that alot of it has to do with only getting a couple hours of sleep a night. If I'm lucky. It was actually nice to come home from work early today and sleep in the bed uninterrupted for 5 hours.

Back to bed now... or should I say couch.

Fun Fart Facts

It seems that whenever we camp the group as a whole is a very gassy bunch. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with all the food we eat and cocktails we consume. Face it, even tho' we are getting older farts are still funny.

I am stealing this from the MSNBC.com website --> under their Body Odd blog. It is always a fun read.

Dr. Billy Goldberg: The past eight weeks of my life have revolved around gas. On Jan. 22, I welcomed my second child into the world, a beautiful baby girl. It didn’t take long to realize that she was gassy like her daddy. In the wee hours of the morning when she was wailing from overwhelming intestinal distress, I had a revelation. I came to realize that we can mark the different stages of our life by how we handle our flatulence.

My poor little newborn desperately needed to let one rip. This is how we begin our life, unable to get them out.

Then comes adolescence – a stage where we are thrilled to let them out. Oh, the hilarious joy of the public fart! But BEWARE if you are in Camden, Maine. The Camden-Rockport Middle School has issued a ban on intentional flatulence – gas-passing students are threatened with detention.

Next comes puberty and we enter the phase of frantically trying to hold them in. I can just imagine my sweet little girl all grown up on a dinner date, squirming to prevent that embarrassing unintentional release.

Life gradually becomes more and more complicated and we find ourselves increasingly awash in uncontrolled flatulence and odor. We begin to reach for the Beano and even find ourselves considering the purchase of Odor Control Nether Garments. One of the many indignities of the aging process is that loss of muscle tone occurs – even around the anal sphincter. Yes, that is why an older person has a harder time holding ‘em in.

Leyner has his own unique theories on everything and I am sure this is no exception.

Mark Leyner: I have never been inordinately intrigued or amused by farting. Of all the bodily effluvia and excretions, I’d probably rank intestinal gas pretty low on my list of favorites. I much prefer tears, spit, pus, ejaculate, rheum, colostrum, etc.

That said, this ban on “intentional flatulence” at the Camden-Rockport Middle School has all sorts of ramifications that do fascinate me. For instance, how does anyone prove “intentionality” when it comes to farting? Will the school district hire forensic gastroenterologists to analyze air samples or study surreptitiously obtained audio recordings of the boys’ flatulence to try and determine whether it was deliberate or accidental? Obviously, there are various illnesses and food allergies that can cause flatulence.

On the other hand, what if a person willfully, premeditatedly, and with malice aforethought, renders himself potently flatulent? What if a middle-school student loads up, before school, on a breakfast of beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and sauerkraut? Can he then claim that the farting was something that couldn't be helped, that it was “an accident.”

But there’s an even more profound philosophical and legal question to ponder. And that is: should farting constitute a mode of constitutionally protected free speech? If not, what necessarily privileges one orifice (the mouth) above another (the anus)?

Is there some overarching moral imperative that justifies society’s anathematization of the fart? By what usurpation of basic liberty can the state proscribe the natural expressiveness of the sphincter and the anus? In other words, can a fart be “art”?

In the end, the Camden-Rockport Middle School Fart Ban may very well be a First Amendment issue. I think that this could result in a landmark Supreme Court case. This could be the Roe v. Wade of flatus. But I urge all Americans to bear one thing in mind: justice may be blind, but it’s not anosmic.

Dr. Billy Goldberg: I don’t know what I can add to that.

Maybe we can just end with this list of fascinating fart facts:

• On average, a fart is composed of about 59 percent nitrogen, 21 percent hydrogen, 9 percent carbon dioxide, 7 percent methane and 4 percent oxygen. Less than 1 percent of their makeup is what makes farts stink.


• The temperature of a fart at time of creation is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.


• Farts have been clocked at a speed of 10 feet per second.


• A person produces about half a liter of farts a day.


• Women fart as much as men.


• The gas that makes your farts stink is hydrogen sulfide. The more sulfur rich your diet, the more your farts will stink. Some foods that cause really smelly farts include: beans, cabbage, cheese, soda and eggs.


• Most people pass gas about 14 times a day.

Baseball Oddities

In keeping with the spirit of the baseball season, here are some baseball contracts that were signed and some of the strange clauses that the player's had.

I took this from Mental Floss's website. Thanks for letting me borrow it. :)

1. Charlie Kerfeld, Houston Astros
   After a spectacular rookie season in 1986, the rotund reliever who always pitched in his lucky Jetsons t-shirt needed a new contract. Kerfeld asked for $110,037.37, matching his number 37 jersey, to pitch in 1987. On top of that, he received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O in the deal. The Astros would soon regret this delicious bonus, though; Kerfeld, who was famously caught eating ribs in the dugout that season, would battle weight and injury problems and get sent down to the minors.
2. Rollie Fingers, Oakland Athletics
   Former A’s owner Charlie Finley never thought of a gimmick he wouldn’t try, including a mechanical rabbit that delivered fresh balls to the umpire and hiring a 13-year-old MC Hammer as his “Executive V.P.” In 1972, Finley offered his players cash for growing a mustache by Father’s Day, thereby giving birth to reliever Fingers’ trademark handlebar ‘stache. The A’s went on to win the World Series that season, and Fingers’ contract for 1973 contained a $300 bonus for growing the mustache as well as $100 for the purchase of mustache wax. Rollie went on to a have a great career with the Brewers.
3. Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros
   Before Oswalt made a start in the 2005 National League Championship Series, Astros owner Drayton McLane promised to make the ace’s dreams come true if he won, specifically his life goal of bulldozer ownership. After Oswalt dominated the Cardinals to send Houston to its first-ever World Series, McLane came through with a Caterpillar D6N XL. Since Major League Baseball requires high-dollar gifts be disclosed, Oswalt signed an addendum to his contract, a “bulldozer clause,” authorizing the club to give him his new toy.
4. Troy Glaus, Arizona Diamondbacks
   Arizona inked the slugging third baseman signed for four years and $45 million in December 2004. As part of the deal, Glaus receives $250,000 annually for “personal business expenses,” namely the cost of his wife Ann’s equestrian training and equipment. Although Glaus bashed 37 homers for the Snakes in 2005, he also tied for the major-league lead in errors by a third baseman with 24, and despite Mrs. Glaus’ surely improving performance in the steeplechase, Glaus had to hoof it to Toronto when he was traded barely a year after signing.
5. Randy Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks
   When the Big Unit signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998, team owner Jerry Colangelo also threw in a pair of partial season tickets for the Phoenix Suns to lure in the lanky lefty. Seems like Johnson could have afforded his own tickets, but to be fair, when you’re making $52 million over four years, it’s hard to get scalpers to fall for “Can you take twenty for the pair? I swear it’s all I’ve got, dude.”
6. Carlos Beltran, New York Mets
   Beltran’s mammoth seven-year, $119 million deal from January 2005 showed that he had all of baseball’s five tools but lacked a conditioned ocular enhancer, a gadget that throws numbered, colored tennis balls over 150 mph to help players pick up the speed of a pitched ball. So he got a contract clause requiring the Mets lease the machine and retain an operator for it. However, Beltran only hit .266 in his first year with the club, so maybe a used copy of Tony Gwynn’s tome The Art of Hitting would have been more cost-effective.
7. Brad Lidge, Houston Astros
   When the Houston Astros (sound familiar?) re-signed Brad Lidge in January 2007, their former closer got an incentive clause promising $25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, given annually to the top hitter at each position. Lidge probably didn’t consider this easy money; as a relief pitcher, he had only been to the plate seven times in his five-season career and hadn’t seen an at-bat since 2004. Despite an erratic season on the mound, Lidge was the model of consistency at the plate in 2007, mostly because he never had an at-bat. Houston finished 13th in the National League in runs scored, though, so maybe letting Lidge take some hacks would have been worth a try.
8. A.J. Burnett, Toronto Blue Jays
   Lots of players have free-plane-ticket perks written into their contracts, but some feel that air travel really lacks that fun we’re-going-to-the-prom feeling that you can only get from a long limo ride. When flamethrower A.J. Burnett signed with Toronto as a free agent in December 2005, he required that his wife receive eight round-trip limo rides from his home in Maryland to Toronto each season. That’s around nine hours in a limo each way, which is enough time to move the little divider between you and the driver up and down roughly 3,500 times.

Some other interesting perks and bonuses:

1. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox – Dice-K’s deal with the Red Sox includes a plethora of strange or excessive clauses including housing allowances and a personal masseuse, but the oddest is that he’s contractually guaranteed the jersey number 18.
2. Kevin Brown, Los Angeles Dodgers – The seven-year, $105 million deal Brown signed after the 1998 season guaranteed twelve round trip private jet trips from L.A. to his hometown in Macon, Georgia for his family, sparing his children from cruel flight attendants’ taunts about their dad being overpaid.
3. Dave Roberts, San Francisco Giants – The deal Roberts signed last December gives him the right to buy four premium season tickets each year. He’s probably going to keep passing until management puts a decent team on the field, though.12. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners – Ichiro’s five-year contract extension from July 2007 contains some reasonable perks (interpreter, plane tickets to Japan), but also stipulates the club give him a Jeep or Mercedes SUV, filling the Japanese auto industry with a deep collective sense of shame.
4. Mark Teixeira, Atlanta Braves - Teixeira’s deal for 2006-2007 (originally negotiated when he was with Texas) had a clause paying him $100K for winning the AL MVP, a tough feat since he finished the contract while playing in the National League.
5. Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox – The three-time World Series champ’s new deal with the Red Sox for the 2008 season not only rewards Schilling for maintaining his weight, but also gives him $1M for appearing on any voter’s three-man Cy Young ballot. Take note, enterprising voters (“Sixty-forty split sound fair, Curt?”)

GO BREWERS!!!!

Parents and Kids

Today's rant is not about people I know but people I don't.

I really don't like kids. I do not have kids. This is by choice. People, your kids or grand kids are not the best thing since sliced bread. Get a life. Not everyone likes or wants kids.

Today at work, someone's wife brought in their kid for 'show and tell'. I have no issue with someone bringing in a kid and staying for 5 minutes or so and then leaving.

My issue is with the parents who think their kids shit don't stink. The guy in the cube behind me had his wife bring the kid in today to show her off. The kid did nothing but cry and fuss for over an hour. Yeah, that's right over an hour.

I really don't like kids. I do not have kids. This is by choice.

If I wanted to hear kids crying I would have had them.

I do not want to hear your kid crying and shit while I am trying to work...... for over an hour.

I finally went to our building AA and asked him to do something about it. He did. Wife and kid were gone within 5 minutes.

My life was then happy.

I am very sure that if I were to bring my dogs in and they were barking that it would take less than an hour for someone to ask me to make them leave the building. Why are kids any different??

The funny thing is is that the dad in this case is on the phone almost every day with either the school or court system because his kids from a previous marriage is a delinquent. The kid is already labeled a habitual truant. School has been in session a month. One freaking month!!!!Maybe you should spend less time with the crying kid and new wife and more with the kid who will end up in jail by year's end.

I also have issue with parent's who are constantly leaving work early to take the kids to an appointment. Make the appointment outside of work hours. I do when I have to schedule vet appointments for the boys. I do not think that it is fair that they don't have to take vacation or sick time to for their kids events when I have to take sick or vacation time to take the dog(s) to the vet.

Once again, I do not have kids. This is by choice. I should not be penalized for this.