It’s funny how the girls are. Last year I bought one of them this mat that sits on the floor and includes a pen filled with water that you draw on the mat with. The year before that it was magna-doodle and the year before that was some type of rainbow thing. I can get them the weirdest as seen on TV gift and they love the darned things. Certainly makes it easy to shop for them anyway.
rmiles7721
Top 100 Banned Books
Christine Anne Piesyk has gotten hold of the list of the 100 top banned books in schools and libraries in America and there is some discussion going on at Clarksville Online. So what’s on the list? It’s not just the usual suspects like Catcher in the Rye, although that’s on there. Mark Twain, J.K. Rowling, RONALD DAHL, Judy Blume. All have books on the list. As a matter of fact Judy Blume has the distinction of having three on the list. Go check out the article and then come back, the list is in the extended entry here.
Which ones have you read? Are there any that you wouldn’t want your children to read? My parents always had the unwritten policy that if I could understand it I could read it, which is one of the reasons I have been reading since prior to turning four.
Darn. You know, here I am trying to write in Windows Live Writer and I don’t know how to make an extended entry. Guess I can put in the HTML and hope it works.
Concert Tickets
Viagogo is an online partner selling Konzert tickets to the hottest shows in Deutschland (Germany) such as Nine Inch Nails and Gwen Stefani. Neither band currently has a tour in Germany coming up but there are several really good bands playing currently or getting ready to such as the Kaiser Chiefs who are on tour in Germany starting at the end of October and on into November. It would be really nice to be able to get tickets and see the Kaiser Chiefs in Germany. They are playing in Bremen on November 12th at Pier 2.
In addition to concert tickets, theater tickets are also available for musicals, several comedy shows, the Cirque Du Soleil as well as the Opera. One of the things I regret not having done when we went to Disney a couple of years ago was not going to see the Cirque Du Soleil while we were there. They are doing three shows at the SAP Arena in Mannheim next week as well as three more later in the month at the Olympiahalle München in München.
Be aware that the site is in Deutsch so if you cannot read German you might want to go to the U.S. site at Viagogo.com
Technorati Tags: Concert Tickets
The Mist
Just got an email from Simon and Schuster about The Mist. The Stephen King movie based on his short story is due to be released in theaters next month. I am looking forward to going to see it as this is one of my favorites.
The email had some kind of contest going on where if I forward it to five of my friends I get entered into some kind of contest to get a $50 gift card for online downloads. I’m not particularly interested, at least this morning but if you are here is the link.
Technorati Tags: Stephen King , The Mist
Anniversary Furniture?
I think the wife and I have two different viewpoints about what we are going to do for our 20th anniversary next May. She wants to redo the entire bedroom. New furniture, paint, all that good stuff, and I want to spend the money on a trip to the Caribbean. Originally I was thinking Hawaii but just the thought of spending the greater part of the day in a flying coffin makes me want to hurl. Since I am the man in this household what I say goes…
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As I was saying, we are getting a new bedroom suite for our anniversary next May, and I have looked at around 100+ different web sites and types of furniture trying to decide what I want. Or at least what the wife wants that I can live with.
Home & Bedroom furniture online has all different types of stuff to look at for the bedroom including Hillsdale Furniture. What’s nice is that they have all sorts of discount bedroom furniture and for me, anything that’s on discount is worth looking at.
Regardless of the type of bed that we get I do know that I want a big old armoire for my stuff. I don’t have a ton of things that I really have to hang up aside from my work uniforms and it would be nice to have them all accessible right there together. As far as beds go I have been thinking about a nice big poster bed although Canopy beds are pretty cool as well.
Either way I will bow to she who must be obeyed and just go about my business as usual. It may be that we can do both, go on a nice vacation in the Caribbean AND get a new bedroom suite if I play my cards right and do what I am told…
Lovely Sleep
Man, I was sleeping good this morning. I didn’t want to get out of bed today, that’s for sure but I told the girls last night that they could wake me up if they wanted. They decided that they wanted to ride the bus to school and then back home today, which is fine by me except that one of them has chorus this afternoon, so they need to stay at the afterschool program.
The school won’t take transportation instructions over the phone any more, so I actually have to go in and speak to them and give them written instructions at some point before noon. That’s kind of a pain in the ass but it keeps the kids safer I suppose. The only problem I see with that is that sometimes in emergencies you CAN’T get there or fax them anything and that might cause a problem.
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I haven’t received any work calls yet this morning to ignore, which is a good thing. I finally received my last one around nine last night. This shit is getting ridiculous.
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Our baby sitter for the weekend of Helen has canceled so I don’t know what the heck we are going to do now. I do know that I have to work part of the weekend at least but I had at least planned on having the wife and a friend go and then I was just going to drive up there after work on Friday and Saturday afternoons.
I am still going to get up there for at least a while but I may have to cancel my reservations. I need to speak with my boss first and see how feasible it’s going to be for me to get the weekend off since one of the other district managers is on vacation. I am seriously pissed about the whole thing right now and it makes me want to tell them to go fuck themselves. Gotta work though so that’s not happening…
Quote of the day:
I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down. – Mitch Hedberg
Puerto Rico
I’m such a chicken about flying that I have been seriously considering going to Puerto Rico next summer rather than trying to get up the guts to try and fly to Hawaii. Either way I am going to try and book everything early. I’ve been doing some reading on Puerto Rico and figured I would share some of it here (of course.)
I have an acquaintance that I also used to work for that grew up in Puerto Rico and whenever he talks about the place it was mostly in glowing terms.
One of the really cool things I like about Puerto Rico is the fact that there are so many different types of terrain there. I enjoy going up into the mountains but I also love the beach. The wife and I have had discussions about retirement before and sometimes I want to live at the beach and other days it’s the mountains. Puerto Rico has both. Puerto Rico also has the only tropical rainforest in the United States National Forest System, El Yunque National Forest.
One of the other nice things is that the year round temperature is generally around 80 degrees and there really isn’t that much of a change between summer and winter. Of course between June and November you have to deal with Hurricane season but other than that the weather is perfect.
Unless things have changed recently, since Puerto Rico is a United States territory you don’t have to have a passport or visa to visit unlike the rest of the Caribbean, although it’s probably a good idea to call the State Department just to make sure. I’ve also found several different places on the Internet to get information about the Caribbean as well.
Some Days I Just Hate My Job
I have gotten several calls from one of my stores tonight. My “new” manager is apparently cutting costs and trying to save money by just not pulling food to the floor. You know, unimportant stuff like coffee and mayo. Fuck. She’s actually been with us over six months now and should know her job and when she took the store we discussed the amount of food that should be out there on a given day but apparently she has decided that she knows better and just leaves them without the stuff that they need to operate for a shift, much less for an entire day.
I wish my lazy guy was back ’cause I really don’t know how to handle this girl. Unlike most of our management team I am not particularly afraid of them investigating me for racial discrimination because I treat everyone the same way, but even this early into the deal I can see it headed that way because I am going to have to go in and be an asshole to get things done the right way. Not only that but I have been investigated several times and the entire legal team knows me as a result and knows that after a certain point I just quit walking on eggshells.
All I know is that if I get another call on my day off because they are out of something and she won’t answer the phone I’m just going to go ahead and go bust the locks off the storage area and she can deal with it later. It’s bad enough I am having to deal with this bullshit after midnight on my work days but calling me on my off day is a big no-no.
Health Department Stuff…
Apparently the health department is starting to crack down on some things with restaurants. December 1st a bunch of new regulations go into effect and we are having a huge meeting about in on Thursday. Some of the stuff really makes sense but some of it is really stupid and is severely going to slow down my production.
One of the good things is that they are going to be requiring at least one person on every shift in every restaurant to be Serve-Safe certified. Serve Safe is a nationally recognized food safety certification that deals with food safety issues. I am certified and think that more people with knowledge about food safety is a good thing.
Now Playing: Butthole Surfers – Double Live Bootleg – Disc 1 – Rocky
Man who had child-sex tape turns self in
Apparently the guy I wrote about last week has turned himself into authorities. Darren Tuck is the guy that gave police a tape depicting the rape of a 3-yearl-old girl, saying that he found it in the desert. The police said that he had the tape for at least five months before turning it in and if you remember from my last post about it someone else had let police know that he had the tape, it was not that he was some kind of good samaritan trying to help out. I am going to have to go out on a limb and say this guy is a damned pedophile and I hope he gets the full sentence for it, which could be life in prison.
According to his attorney Harry Kuehn who appeared on Nancy Grace last week, Tuck was “wracked by indecision” as to what to do with the tape when he realized what he had. I’ll be he was wracked by indecision. The dickhead was already being sought for a parole violation for failure to pay child support as it was. Parole means that he already did something bad and the fact that he was on the run from police and refusing to take care of his children already put him close to that bottom run in my eyes.
The police have also identified the suspect in the tape as well, as Chester Styles who was a distant friend of the little girl’s family. He is also on the run and according to CNN is a “survivalist type” and always carries a weapon.
Technorati: Darren Tuck,Chester Styles