Category: Observation

Congratulations, It’s A Poochon

I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the family.  Over the weekend, we picked up our Christmas present for my mother-in-law.  Why so long after December 25th?  No, we are not procrastinators – although year after year I have to convince my wife that the closer to Xmas you get, the better deals are, not to mention AFTER the big day.  You don’t believe me do you?  Okay, next year check out the prices of Chia Pets on December 1st and check it again on December 24th.  Most people like a Chia Pet for Xmas, but EVERYONE likes a Chia Pet for half price.  With those words of insight, I would like to introduce Benji.

Benji

Benji was bred in Clinton IA and is a Poochon which is basically a crossbreed of a Poodle and a Bischon Frise.  We are a poodle family (lost one, still have two) so I am really not that much into designer breeds, but this little guy was available and he sure is cute.  Linda thinks he looks a little like a panda, I on the other hand, think he looks like the Predator which is also cool.  At this point he is mostly fluffy fur, but much more alert than our poodles were when they were brought home for the first time.  He also doesn’t make a lot of noise which may be due to just getting acquainted to the strange surroundings – for my mother-in-law’s sake, let’s hope it is his normal disposition.

Benji

In order to keep him out of harm’s way and safe from the curiosity of our two spoiled dogs while we had supper, we put him in pop-up cage.  This was definitely not something he was used to and quite frankly not a big fan.

Benji sulking in his cage

At this point he did start making some noise including a all out raise to the moon howl.  Our white poodle does this exact same thing if we do not pick up the phone after 2 or 3 rings.  Don’t ask us why, but it is nice to have a secondary notification that someone is trying to contact us, especially since his howl carries a lot further than our ringer.  At this point, Benji decided to show off.  We looked over and noticed he was literally climbing the cage.  This I thought was amazing for such a small puppy.  I predict he becomes an explorer and plan to keep the dangerous stuff pretty high.  Here is a shot we took of his climbing skills – keep in mind he is only like 6 weeks old.

Benji climbing

As soon as we finished supper, we rescued him from his cage and let him loose.  My dogs were doing pretty well with him until he went for their food bowls.  They are used to being the only dogs and have very little visitors out here in the country so they did not appreciate that one bit and had a little altercation.  Benji was a little scared at that point, but they need to get this resolved between them real quick.  After a few minutes of “discussion” they settled back down and went their own ways.  Benji decided to start exploring and found a small table with a ledge full of magazines.  I am not sure if he wanted protection from our dogs or just likes being off the floor, but he ended up climbing up the magazines and making himself comfortable.

Benji climbing up the end table

Since he liked it there so much we decided to remove the magazines (they were slipping around) and make a little cozy bed out of it.  This immediately became his favorite place to be and ended up taking a snooze.

Benji sleeping

We gave him a toy skunk which surprisingly looked like a twin.  Just for reference, here is a pulled out image.

Benji sleeping

Might as well show off my kids while I am at it.  I don’t want them reading this blog and getting jealous.

Neither of them were very happy at the moment because they really did not want any part of the new guy.  Our two dog agility stars are Rizzi (Osiris) on the left at 10lbs and Kerby (Kerberos) on the right at 5lbs.  If Benji currently weighs more than 1.5lbs I would be shocked.  Oh, and yes, our dogs are named after gods of the dead, but Linda demanded they had cute sounding short names she wouldn’t be embarrassed to call out in the agility ring. Kerby was actually from the same breeder in IA.  There, that should make our boys happy.

Unfortunately, at this point Benji was pretty exhausted from his big homecoming.  He definitely just wanted to catch some Z’s and nothing was going to stop him from doing that.  Clearly he is comfortable around us and looks like he going to fit right in.

Benji looking cute

Benji looking cute

While we were visiting Linda’s Mom, we wanted to make sure the sweater she got for him fit.  Our dogs are not fond of their cold weather coats, but Benji seemed to have no problem with his.  It is still too early to tell if he actually likes it, but he definitely did not fight it.  He is quite the cutie.

Trying out the new sweater

Pet my belly

It finally came time to head home and leave Benji and his new mother to the bonding the process.  The potty training process is always the hard part, but Linda’s mother does not work so that should be easier to get him out on a regular basis.  He had not gone most of the day, but while he was in the cage we ended up putting a newspaper in the corner.  As soon as we did that, he ran over to it and relieved himself.  Apparently, he already had a little familiarization which will help tremendously.

Welcome to the family Benji!

Brian and Benji

We might just have to bring him home with us 8^)

Freezing in the Devil’s Playground

Predator enjoying some powder

Last weekend I had the opportunity to ride some powder at Devil’s Head Ski  Board Resort in Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, my wife was unable to go due to illness, but some of my friends were able to make the trek up there with me.  We actually headed up Thursday night in order to beat some of the weekend crowds on Friday.  A mere 4 hours from our house makes this a very bearable trip.

Slopes

Although it was pretty cold out, the real danger was the weaponry that was being deployed.

Back Country Warning

…. what?  I get the sense you are not buying this.  Fine, I’ll come clean, the previous pictures were not from Devil’s Head.  I didn’t take the camera with me so I went ahead and threw in some pics from our Colorado trips a few years back.  What gave it away, the fact that Devil’s Head is in the Midwest (think flat) or there would actually be a back country there?  Anyway, we had a great time.  The first day (Friday) temperature was not too bad during the day session (~24 deg), but the wind was cranking through in the 13-15 mph range making the exits off the lift rather blistering.  In fact, we could put our arms out and the wind would blow us uphill to the start of the adjacent runs.  The temperature started dropping pretty quick after noon and was darn cold for the night session.  Luckily we know to keep our board edges razor sharp in the Midwest in order to cut through the ice – nothing like transferring edges and noticing that yellow hue signifying solid ice (no, not THAT kind of yellow snow).  I had fallen pretty hard on a mogul run earlier in the day due to being all ice in between the mounds.  Everyone with me fell on that run as well, but only I ended up with the third knee – translated… a huge swollen welt on the left side of my left knee.  It didn’t seem to affect the motion I needed to board so I brushed it off.  This injury coupled with my shoulder that had a cortisone injection a few days before forced me to curtail my rail activities.  Linda cautioned me to take it easy this time because she couldn’t drive me home like she usually has to.  So very little of this:

Grinding the rail

A little more therapy on the shoulder and some ice on the knee should have me back on the rails next time we go.

My observations from the week follow the jump

Continue reading Freezing in the Devil’s Playground

Rockin’ with Angus in St. Louis

Hey, it’s my birthday today and as a special treat I am giving everyone a three day weekend!  No, I am not revealing my age.  I wanted to actually make this post a few days ago so it would be fresh in my mind, but I ended up getting bogged down in some other things I had to get done before the big holiday weekend.  Luckily the event left a pretty lasting impression on me.  So, the topic today is… My wife and I had the opportunity to see AC/DC in St. Louis MO last Tuesday.  They were in the midst of their latest tour to promote their new Black Ice album.

AC/DC Black Ice Tour

follow the link to read just how good of a time we had!

Continue reading Rockin’ with Angus in St. Louis

That’s the Rooster, she stole my two dollars

roosterThought I would just throw out a couple of quick observations over the last week or so.  My favorite so far has to be something overheard during the Jan 1st Outback Bowl featuring Iowa Hawkeyes vs. the S. Carolina Gamecocks.  Iowa is a heated rival in my household since my wife is from the state of Iowa and I went to the land of Chief Illiniwek (you can strong arm it out of our weak university governing boards, but you are not removing it from the hearts of those who attended there and understand the difference between a mascot and a revered symbol).  However, since the Illini didn’t pull out the juicer at the end of the year, we were stuck watching from the comfort of our living rooms where Hersey was cheering from the sidelines in Tampa.  It was basically playing in the background as I did some odd work around the house when the game must have hit a low point. This forced the announcers to look for something else to talk about.  Once again, I failed to set up my PVR on delay mode in order to review or capture things that catch my attention.  This happens all the time with headline news and I keep promising myself I’ll get that set up.

I am unable to remember exactly where in the game the discussion occurred, but the producer panned down to the field where I think Rob Stone was standing next to the Gamecocks’ mascot which happens to be a rooster named Sir Big Spur.  Rob proceeds to place a mirror in front of it where it responds in the expected manner by pecking at the opposing rooster.  This continues on for what seems like eternity… rooster pecking, pecking, pecking, pecking … against the mirror.  Rob proceeds to explain how this particular bird would continue this fight until the death.  More pecking, pecking, pecking and then either Sean McDonough or Chris Spielman (my money is on the latter since he has a history of similar statements) says something like “[how long are we going to have to see this rooster…. he or she what is it Rob?]”  Again, I wish I had it on PVR to be more accurate.  I will let you think about that for a minute before I spoil the fun.  Did you put two and two together yet?  Rob hesitated a little (probably trying to figure out the appropriate response) and issues “well, it is a rooster so it is a he otherwise it would be called a HEN”.  If I can track down the accurate quotes, I’ll update this post – so no, I didn’t mess up the title to this post.

Lastly for today, my wife was walking through Kohls right after Christmas and passed by a kid that was extremely excited about his Kohls gift certificate he received.  He was eager to spend it and was busy telling the people he was with that he had $38 to spend.  Linda thought that was an odd amount to get a gift certificate for (and the reason she mentioned it to me when she returned home).  I had to agree and spent some time trying to figure out a combination that makes logical sense.   One person giving $2 short of $40, two groups going in for $19 a piece, a group of 7 each giving $5 and 3 of them throwing in an extra $1, a group of 38 each giving $1.  It just seems odd, but I am sure I just missing something glaringly obvious.  Before I get the comment on $38 is a lot of money for a family etc. etc., that is not the point of the observation.  It is a very nice gift and the child was clearly excited about it.  The strange amount is the part that is throwing me off.  $2 more gives it an even amount and I doubt that amount is going to break anyone shopping at Kohls.  $3 less makes $35 and I am guessing that would be just as exciting to the kid.  The only thought at the moment is the kid new exactly what he wanted already and the parents included the tax etc, for that particular purchase.  But I would expect in that case, my wife would overhear comments about the specific item he was going to obtain as opposed to the dollar amount that was going to be spent.  It was an odd scenario and that is what we are all about here.

That is all for now and stay away from those female roosters.

Not A Creature Was Stirring, Not Even A Mouse

I must admit, today I was utterly surprised.  Every Christmas Eve, I head out to the shopping malls and popular stores.  No, I am not a procrastinator and usually have all my required gifts already purchased (maybe not wrapped yet, but that is whole different story).  No, the only reason I do this is for the sheer entertainment value from watching holiday shoppers.  The best time to observe people is always at times of stress and there is not too many other days that rate higher on the stress meter than the day before St. Nick breaks into our homes and showers the good with presents.  I can remember the numerous occasions of people attacking line-cutters, angry shoppers engaging store employees, customers wrestling for the last Furbie and the all too common denial of credit card.  For a people watcher this is good as gold and since I was not in any time constraints I could slink back into the crowd and take it all in.

So, off I went today anxious as to what I might observe.  First off, Best Buy.  I wanted to do a quick check to see if there were any last minute reductions on laptops and figured I would check if they happened to have a gift for Linda someone had mentioned a few days ago (again, just a bonus since her shopping has been done for awhile).  There was the usual traffic cop directing traffic through the ridiculous single entrance to Cub/Lowes/Best Buy stores, but he really was not doing that much.  I was not even stopped or delayed once all the way into the parking lot.  This was definitely an odd occurrence.  Once parked, in a semi-filled BB lot I headed into the store expecting to see people defending their finds.  Again, nothing.  Some people were milling about, but that was about it.  I checked out the gift idea and there it was sitting on the shelf and nobody even looking in that direction.  I decided to go ahead and grab it and would instead have fun watching all the people get extremely annoyed in the checkout line.  When I arrived up front, I noticed they had recently put the blue line guides on the carpet and had snaked it out into the store for optimal capacity.  For clarification purposes, I had NO PROBLEM noticing it because I could see it clearly the entire time as I was walking straight up to an empty cashier.  Only two other people were checking out in the 3 other open registers.  This was an absolute first.  I disappointingly paid for my items and walked out of the store in disbelief.

On my way out, my wife called and wanted me to get some driveway salt for her mother who was having difficulty locating it in the Quad Cities.  Excellent, another opportunity to see the mad dash for last chance gifts for Dads.  This soon became ominous when I ended up parking about 8 spots from the door and that included the protection buffer I keep to protect my doors from those who apparently have no appreciation for others.  I crossed over the door beam and walked into a nearly empty store.  I counted no more than 40 people as I walked through the various aisles.  I located in the salt, found some lithium grease for an upcoming blog topic and again walked directly up to the cashier and paid for my items.  This is totally unbelievable.  In fact, I was so amazed, I ended up calling my wife to relay my disappointment.  Luckily she mentioned the dogs probably needed a couple more items for their stockings (don’t laugh, they are treated better than most kids) so I headed down past Cub to the local PetSmart.  This looked more like it.  I had to park pretty far out into the lot (buffer still included) and had a significant walk to the door.  There were definitely more people there than at Lowes, but there was definitely a more low keyed if not joyous atmosphere as people discussed how cute a particular collar was or validated the squeaker actually worked on a particular stuffed animal.  I had my first chuckle of the day since I validated a previous observation I had been working on.  Based on my findings, almost all people will check a squeaker no less than 2 times before they are satisfied that it actually works.  This testing process rarely goes past 4 squeaks because I think people start feeling self-conscious at that point because about then people in view start to stare.

I continued looking around, but could not find a single instance of any stressed out people.  Even the dogs were being nice to each other.  I grabbed a few stocking stuffers and headed up to the cashiers.  There was finally a small line at the registers and by that I mean each of the open registers were checking out a customer.  Finally, I could experience a wait scenario which usually breeds grumpiness.  My chance had finally arrived… NOPE.  A lady walks around the corner and asks to check me out in the register a row over.  So reluctantly, I moved over to that counter and completed the transaction.  She was even very nice indicating that she had not had her fill of unruly pet owners for the day.

Drats!  A complete waste of time.  Where is everyone?  Are the holiday shopping activities really this bad?  Has the economy in Peoria finally caught up with the rest of the States (as of last month, our housing market was still going strong)?  Has the recent Caterpillar announcements on layoffs and pay freezes significantly dampened the holiday festivities?  I doubt everyone has done their shopping early this year for that would be in out of character for the previous 18 or so years I have been making the Christmas Eve run.  For now, my best guess is the bad economy has hit everyone hard.  I will be interested in seeing the final revenue statistics from the local merchants.

Oh well, best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Look at all the Deers and Gooses

Holiday Greetings everyone.  I am still getting back on my feet after experiencing the network issue which eventually degraded to an all out rebuild of my system(s).  I am still experiencing an annoying problem with my FTPs into GoDaddy.  I am not sure if it is a Satellite Internet problem or an incompatibility on the GoDaddy side.  Unfortunately, this is limiting my ability to upload images, but I hope to have this resolved soon.  In the meantime, I thought I would share some recent observations on the language front.

The other day, I was in Best Buy looking at some laptops they had on sale.  For some reason my hearing attention was instantly drawn to a lady employee assisting another couple out.  I honestly do not know what the actually conversation was about, but what struck me immediately was her comment “Oh, you wanted to check out the mouses as well”.  Before we go any further, I will quickly put a disclaimer that I am not the most English language versed individual out here and if you read many of my posts, I do make some grammar and spelling mistakes from time to time.  This is likely a result of choosing physics and computers over English in college.  I did have a number of electives in English Literature which I enjoyed tremendously, but in an elective and non-career situation only.  I actually asked my wife if she heard the same quote and she actually asked if I was referring to the mouses.

Unable to make a decision regarding the laptop, we headed for home only to turn around again to quickly purchase a gaming console HDMI cable at Target.  I finally found what I needed and was putting my my item on the checkout counter when I hear “Where he now”.  That officially makes two language errors in different stores within the same hour.   I can just imagine how this would go in the texting crazed world – “O U wantd 2 chck/o mouss” and “? he nw”.

On my way home I tried to understand if this was a global phenomenon or whether I was more sensitive to it that night.  It then occurred to me that there was probably a catalyst to all of this based on an observation that happened a couple of weeks ago.  I was coming back from reserving a Wii Fit and passing through the Alta residential area.  In one of the driveways, there was a large white pickup truck sitting in a driveway just off the road.  The back of the truck had giant white letters that spelled “You’re In America Speak English” (I was going too fast to verify the punctuation).  Interesting, here was an individual that was extremely sensitive to non-English conversations – so much in fact he needed to announce it to anyone he drove past.  I almost doubled back to get a picture, but decided it was too cold to be wasting time.  The part I found ironic was the very next day we were invited to a coworkers house for a late lunch/early dinner gathering.  These people live no more than 2 blocks from where the truck was sitting and are on assignment our European facility.  The guy I work with speaks fluent French, Portuguese and English (probably more as well) and his wife speaks French, Portuguese and a good amount of English.  They also had some friends over to share the event.  For the record, he was from Wisconsin and spoke Portuguese and was working on learning French for a new assignment overseas.  I believe his wife was from Brazil and spoke fluent Portuguese and English (also working on learning French).  We had an absolutely wonderful time and at various times we heard both French and Portuguese depending on who was communicating to who or if some clarification was needed regarding a translation or explanation of a particular experience.  What was astonishing was how well they had grasped a fairly difficult (strange rules yet by their experience basic on the verb/subject combination) language.  I would bet that they could give the truck owner a run for his money on any language skills competition and even knew to keep the tricky ‘s’ at the end of multiple deer.

In summary, I think I was more attentive to the spoken word having seen the truck visual and having recently experienced a multilingual dinner.  It is more likely that Americans need to spend a little bit more time listening in class and a little less time worrying about losing our national language.  If we cannot use it correctly, how can we expect others to willingly adopt it?  What was probably the most disappointing aspect was the fact my 3 years toiling away in Spanish class did not provide any help at dinner.

Ciao!

An Entertaining Night

Just back from the Trans Siberian Orchestra Concert in Peoria tonight.  This is somewhere around my 4th time seeing them and I can tell you they still put on a great show.  I think for the third year in a row we got the West coast version with Al Petrelli.  It appears he previously took a nasty fall off the stage and destroyed his knee.  He had a pretty big brace on it and was moving on it gingerly.  That did not stop him from shredding up the night alongside his wife on the keyboards.  I will not go much into the show since you really need to experience it yourself – especially you like your music fast, in your face and played to perfection.  I did appreciate the fact they changed it up since the last time we saw it.  They changed the dueling keyboards and moved up the “Strat” vs “Gibson” shred-off into the middle of the Christmas story.  A strange place for it, but it worked for me.

There were two interesting aspects of the night I did want to comment on.  First off, we could not locate our seats.  My wife had purchased them at the Civic Center Box Office so we new they were legit.  Unfortunately, the row numbering scheme confused us.  When we got to our section, we headed into the first level concourse and showed the tickets to the attendant there.  He directed us to the first rows in the level above us.  So we headed up there, passed the press box rows and checked out the first row number.  Turns out it was row 9.  We looked at the press boxes and noticed there were only two rows there which on best guess would make it rows 8 and 7.  Totally confused, we went back down and talked to another attendant and explained our situation.  He was confused as well and walked us up to the press boxes and told us to just sit in the second row (our guess row 8 ) and see what happens.  This NEVER works out for me so I went back down and talked to the first attendant and told him we were still confused.  I do not think he actually believed me, but he did walk up to the seats with me and I re-explained the situation.  This time he understood the situation and decided he needed to contact his supervisor.  So we walked back down and located her.  We ALL proceeded back up to the seats and had the exact same discussion resulting in the exact same confusion.  This time the lady told us to go ahead and sit there (I had Linda move down to row 7 which seemed more logical to me) and she would go to the box office and get it straightened out for us.  10 or 15 minutes later she came back and confirmed that we were now actually in the correct seats.  I still think we were in row 7, but the deduction we made is that the rows were wider to fit the tables in so they had to remove a row.  Anyway, we sat in the press box which ended up being a pretty cool place to watch the concert from.  The table actually cut down a bit of the stage view, but you could stretch out and see the rest if wanted to.

About 75% into the concert, we noticed a security guard talking to someone two rows below us (in the lower bowel).  He seemed to be getting upset because the person he was talking to wasn’t cooperating with him.  Eventually a guy about 55 or 60 in a brown sport coat stood up and followed the security guard.  It was just him and he really didn’t say anything as he weaved through the row.  We speculated that it might be smoking or possibly filming but his age threw me off for the latter.  A little later, my wife went out to the restroom.  On her return, she relayed the fact that same individual was out in the hall with multiple security guards and he apparently was holding a high end 35mm digital camera.  Turns out the security guards were forcing him to delete the pictures off of the memory card.  A smart person would have put spares in his coat pocket and periodically switched them out so he at least got some benefit for the effort.

That is it for tonight.  My ears are still ringing a little and my eyes took a beating with the strobes.

Shred On!

We Have Confirmation

I freed up a few minutes from work to make a quick post.  I hate going this long, but I am closing out some large projects which is taking me on some long days.  I thought I would comment on things I did not know Monday morning, but I do today.

  • I now know who my Lieutenant Governor is for my state.  For Illinois, this would be Pat Quinn
  • Our soon to be EX-Governor knows some naughty words
  • Our soon to be EX-Governor is married to someone that thinks she is worth 150K a year
  • Jesse Jackson’s kid is now also known as Senate Candidate 5
  • Attorney General Patrick Fitzgerald has an impressive trial record
  • Soon to be EX-Governor Rod Blowjobovich is living with visions of grandeur coupled with delusional thoughts
  • Illinois actually averages a governor being jailed once in every 10 years
  • Taking on the Chicago Tribune is not a winning situation
  • There are people out there willing to withhold funds to children focused charitable organization for personal campaign contributions
  • Soon to be EX-Governor has had his phone wiretapped since before the election
  • There are a tremendous amount of people who dislike the soon to be Illinois EX-Governor as much as I do
  • EX-Governor Jim Edgar is a complete idiot based on his comment that the problem with the Illinois politics is the voters – last I looked, I can only vote on the small list of candidates each party focuses on – and if you look at the past Illinois election and see who the Republican party put their hopes on you’ll understand why it is not OUR fault – at least we are rid of you and your ridiculous tea toting policies on alcohol at the State Fair.

Notice that I did not include the following in this list because they were already known

  • Political corruption runs deep with Illinois
  •  Rod Blowjobovich is as crooked as they come – I wonder if he would have been in this much trouble if he had actually moved to Springfield like he was supposed to!
  • Downstate voters have very little influence in high level elections
  • Did I mention Rod Blowjobovich is as crooked as they come?
  • Rod Blowjobovich looks like Deputy Dog

Oh well, back to reading this fascinating affidavit.  Hey Rod, don’t drop the soap and good luck on that planned presidential run.

A Thanksgiving Moment

Updated 11/29/08 (added Erector Sets)

First off, I would like to extend my best wishes for everyone on this Thanksgiving Day (for those US based readers out there).  May your travels be safe and uneventful.  I did notice where the flight reservations are way down this year.  I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that oil price per barrel is down yet some airlines are still trying to charge extra for baggage.  Last I recall, that was added to OFFSET the cost of jet fuel.  Funny how things go up instantly and tend to just drift down.

But today is about being thankful for things.  I decided that a recent discussion I had with a friend is a perfect topic for today.   So my thanks today goes to:  Not being killed by my childhood toys.  For some reason this topic came up one day and since my friend is roughly the same age, we were able to relate to the dangers we experienced as kids.  I say experienced because it really only comes into full perspective in retrospective or immediately after a significant injury.  I honestly think the danger is what made the toy so much fun.  I was looking through the Black Friday ads and was taking note of the new generation of toys out there.  My assessment is today’s kids must be extremely bored.  Everything has rounded edges, battery compartments attached by 10 or more screws, foam tipped and restricted power.  The liberals and soccer moms must be successful in their attempts to raise a pansy generation with unusually strong thumbs.  So here is a short list of the toys my friend and I decided were the most fun… translated, probably the most dangerous.

  • Jarts:  Sharpened steel tips with aerodynamic plastic wings to increase the accuracy and penetration depth.  These were at every single family outing I was ever at.  Kids of all ages whipping down to ground circles at the other end of the yard.  Which also happened to be where your teammates were standing making the whole event that much more entertaining.  Today they have stupid sand filled blunt ended enlarged badmiton shuttlecocks.  Total number of injuries experienced or witnessed in my childhood – ZERO
  • Water Pressure Rockets: These were just plain awesome. The task was to fill up a plastic rocket with water and then attach them to the end of a pump.  The attachment process was quite low tech with simply a piece of plastic that slid along the shaft and locked the end of the rocket onto a opening with a rubber seal.  This created an “L” shape with the long end having a plunger to pump air into the rocket creating as much pressure as you could muster.  I am sure it had some stupid line in the directions stating only x number of pumps.  Kudos to the toy engineers that could create a seal on the rocket capable of holding 10x pumps.  So now you basically have a pressurized rocket grenade.  The dangerous portion came with the fact you had to then pull back on the sliding piece of plastic to release the rocket.  However, a 10x load creates quite a lock so you had to really bear down and pull on the sleeve to release it.  For visuals, remember what you did the last time you had to open a stuck pickle jar.  My bet is you bent down a little bit and put the char at an angle to get the proper leverage.  Imagine now doing that with the water rocket.  How I never managed to blast one into my face is a miracle in itself.  Contrast that with the fact I absolutely loved that toy.  I think today’s version has a remote foot pedal pressurize and release system and I’m sure it is encased in a Nerf football.  Childhood injuries: only a pinched finger trying to pull that sleeve back.
  • Skateboards (with clay wheels): I have to needle my middle brother for this toy since he is the one who purchased it for me.  I am pretty sure he didn’t check with my parents beforehand and I am pretty sure he gave it to me when he was in college – I would have been 9 or so years younger.  I can’t remember a gift since then that surprised me more – not only was it the coolest gift I could have received at that time, but clearly he took a big risk with our parents.  For the most part it was pure joy as the wind whipped through my hair as I sailed down the hills balanced on a thin strip of wood.
    … follow the link for more
    Continue reading A Thanksgiving Moment

An Uncomfortable Wait

Yesterday I had the opportunity to read the packaging on numerous brands of condoms.  That’s right, I now know what the various sizes are (marketing genius made sure there were no extra small sizes, but an extra large to capture the bachelor party gag gift revenue), what the various textures are (ultra thin, extra sensitive, ribbed, something labeled twisted pleasure and a concerning offering that apparently pulsates – don’t ask me for details on that, I decided it was best not to know), quantity options, tip construction alternatives and a whole bevy of lube options including grape and strawberry flavor.

But it didn’t end there.  I further enhanced my worldly knowledge by reading all of the personal lubrication gels and a suprisingly large number of pregnancy tests. On the lube front, there was the standard KY options but the most interesting was the His and Hers option which looked like the dual tube packaging for strong epoxies.  Chuckling to myself, I thought that it might be an abstinence conctraceptive based on welding something shut.  I must have read 10 E.P.T boxes trying to figure out the differences.  Admittedly, I couldn’t figure it out beyond possibly the wait cycles or method of displaying the results.  I wondered if the talking greeting card technology had made its way into this market giving us a recorded message based on the results displayed on the stick.  In fact, think of the whole opportunity for Hallmark –

  • “Congratulations, you’re a winner”
  • “You’re gonna need some new clothes”
  • “Another bullet dodged”
  • “Your Mom’s heart attack has been avoided”
  • For him: “Hurray for new boobies”
  • For him: “Sorry, quality control has experienced a failure”

Okay, cutting myself off because that was waaaay to much fun.  I will take any submissions from my readers.  If this idea takes hold, I want it to be known I thought of it first and I want royalties.

Any chance the question popped into your head as to why I was relishing in this particular aisle?  Your assumptions are most likely wrong.   The reality of it is I was waiting to get my prescription filled at the Walmart out on Allen Rd. in Peoria.  I hit a prompt care to get relief from a sinus infection and decided to pop over to Walmart Pharmacy (they wave the co-pay winning the choice over the closer CV).  The benches they have for people to wait are located straight out and perpendicular to the pharmacy counter.  This also places it directly in line with the store shelves which had the contents I discussed above.  I get bored very easy so tend to take in everything I can find and product packaging is a ripe distraction.  So, sorry to burst the image bubble, but I was just sitting in the aisle reading the shelves from about 5 feet away.  Have I mentioned lately how must I love my new eyes?

What this does mean is a complete lack of privacy for individuals that want to actually purchase these products.  Imagine at least four people (men, women, children) sitting there staring at you while you make your selection.  And if that is not enough, you have all the people standing in line to pay for their prescriptions at the pharmacy desk.  Someone in the store layout either has a sense of humor, insensitive to a generally private matter or possibly this is a very common shop lifted item that they feel needs to have an extra layer of free security protection (sometimes I crack myself up).   I actually don’t have an answer for which option really applies in this case.  I am not sure I want to discourage the use of contraceptives since the local state portion of my daily paper seems to indicate the abstinence approach to reducing unwed pregnancies is not that effective.  But I have to vote against the layout guy not knowing what he was doing since he had a logical order to the shelves – condoms, lubes and then the EPTs seems like a pretty smart grouping.

Yes, an individual did come to the aisle to make a purchase.  He was probably in his late 30s or early 40s and was very interested in the top shelves that held the lubes and the EPTs.  In contrast to what my comfort level if it was me, he was pretty much oblivious to me watching him the entire 15 minutes he spent there.  I couldn’t tell exactly what product he was analyzing because his back was to me, but he was very thorough in his assessment.   He even opened the box and began reading the detailed instructions.  Eventually, he repackaged the box and proceed to make the purchase at the pharmacy counter.  I still couldn’t see what he had, but based on the shelf gap, I’m guessing lube.  Nothing like an informed consumer.

Hopefully I did not offend anyone with today’s post.  I blog it as I see it and I didn’t want to waste a solid 30 minuts of field work and some definite business opportunities await.  Hmmm, clarification, business opportunities in the EPT market, not to imply any reference to my previous post on the Vegas women.