-
Pet Peeves
Living with a bunch of house guests this past month had really exposed a bunch of pet peeves that I have.
- I hate when the toilet seat is left up.
- I hate when the toilet paper roll is put on wrong. (paper goes over, not under).
- I hate when lights and TV are left on when nobody is watching them or in that room.
- I hate when someone fills the dishwasher wrong and nothing comes clean.
- I hate when someone puts dishes away in the wrong places.
- I hate when knives are facing the wrong way and are in the wrong spot on in the knife block.
- I hate clutter and things that aren’t in their proper place.
It sounds like I am full of hate, but I’m really not. I just like everything in order and in it’s place. If it’s not it drives me crazy.
We are heading to Denver on Friday for my Sister college graduation. Everybody will still be here when we leave, but they should be moving back to the Wife’s Aunt’s house this coming weekend. I am looking forward to everything getting back to normal after our weekend in Denver, but still keeping my fingers crossed.
-
Numbers are Hard
Currently everybody is going crazy about the Swine Flu. Sure it’s scary because it’s new and we don’t know much about it, and it seems to be spreading, but really, it’s not much of a threat yet. Right now I think it’s mostly hype. News now days all seems to be about hype. It’s more about getting good ratings rather than getting the facts out there.
Less than 200 people worldwide have died from Swine Flu. Sure, death is never good, but that number is miniscule, 35,000 people die every year just in the US from the ordinary flu. Obviously the world wide numbers are even much greater.
It’s just like the terrorist scares. How much money has been spent to make us “supposedly” safer? Your own appendix, your car, and yes, the common flu are all much more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
People are just bad at understanding statistics. All the casinos, and people that play the lottery proves that. My Mom can go to Aruba on her timeshare, but she said she would never go there because they kidnap people down there. What? Sure there was a sad story of a kidnapping down there that was plastered all over the news for ratings, but I am willing to bet there are more kidnappings and even higher crime rates here in the US.
I am not a huge fan of flying, but I am not scared for my life. I realize I am much more likely to get killed on the drive to the airport, than I am in a plane crash. Flying is the quickest and safest way to travel. It also makes great ratings on the rare occasion that a plane goes down. It’s stupid to live your life in fear of things you can’t control.
-
Bad News
The roads are still flooded by my Wife’s Aunts house. It sounds like she is going to be living with us a few more weeks until the water goes down. This weekend we learned some bad news that is going to bring even more house guests for who knows how long.
My Wife’s, Grandpa’s Wife has esophageal cancer. It’s going to be pretty tough on my Wife’s Grandpa. His previous Wife died of cancer 20 years ago, and now he has to go through it all again. She probably isn’t going to last long though. It’s in her esophagus and as spread to her lymph nodes, lungs, and possible her liver. That would be tough for a young person to fight off, let alone an 80 year old.
They are from a small town in northern Minnesota, so they will be staying with us for a while as she is going to have treatment done at the Roger Maris Cancer Center here in Fargo. It will inconvenience us a bit, but it’s the least we could do to help the family out.
-
Sister-in-law Annoyances
My Sister-in-law drives me nuts. In a month the Wife and I and my Brother and his Wife are heading out to Denver. Our Half-Sister is graduating college, so we thought we would head out there and make a long weekend vacation out of it. Last time we were in Denver nine years ago we took a day and went down to Colorado Springs to see Pikes Peak. We took the Cog Railroad up it the top. It was am amazing view from the top, and a nice relaxing train ride up to the top.
We thought it would be cool to do it again, plus my Brother wants to go too.
Well, his wife is pregnant and is all worried that the higher elevation is going to be bad for the kid. WTF? I understand being careful, and not wanting to do anything that will harm the kid, but I really doubt spending two hours in a higher elevation than you are use to is going to do anything. It’s not like she is ready to pop either. I think she will be three months along when we are in Denver.
But whatever.
She is also super religious, doesn’t trust doctors, refuses to take any kind of medications, but takes tons of “natural” herbal supplement crap. I wouldn’t be surprised is she is one of those nut-jobs that doesn’t believe in vaccinations.
She is a nice person, don’t get me wrong, I get along with her just fine. She just has total opposite believes than I do. It’s a little annoying spending time with her. She has some quirks that I am not use to. She wont ride in elevators, has to sit in the front seat of cars, and always has to sit on the end if in a row of seats.
But whatever.
It should still be a fun vacation in a month.
-
2009 Flood
So you might have saw on the news that Fargo is flooding. Everybody around here is a little worried. The river is currently at 26.2 ft. Flood stage is 18. They are predicting it could reach 40. The record is 40.1 set back in 1897. Back in 1997 when Grand Forks got it bad, it got up to 39.6 here. I wasn’t living in Fargo at that time, so this is my first real major flood.
Our house is in the 500 year flood plain, but according to the maps, we should be safe at 41 and 42 ft. Our man problem would be if the lift stations can’t keep up and the sewer backs up into our basement. The closest lift station to our house is currently pumping water onto the street. That makes me a little worried. I drove around town trying to find plugs for our drains, and every place was sold out. I ran into a grocery store, and they were out of bottled water. Town is just nuts with everybody buying flood supplies and police cars escorting sand bag trucks. Schools are closed so the kids can go help fill sand bags. I would help, but I have to work tonight. I am hoping I can find some drain plugs at work tonight. I don’t know what the chances of our sewer back up is, but I would rather be safe than sorry.
The river is suppose to crest by Thursday or Friday. I will be glad when it starts going down. Fears of what happened to Grand Forks are not good. Floods are no fun.
-
Money Pet Peeves
One of my biggest pet peeves is people that don’t live within their means. I see it al the time on Twitter. People that can barely afford rent, and then they are spending $2000 on a MacBook Air. I just don’t get it. To me having a nice chunk of money in savings is important. It’s just nice knowing we would be fine for a while financially if something bad should happen.
I also hate when people spend money stupidly. Smoking is gross and bad for you, but mostly it’s expensive. I was talking with the wife the other day and we calculated that her parents probably spend $600-$800 on cigarettes a month. That is crazy. Her parents live in a run down trailer, they barely have a pot to piss in. Neither of them have good paying jobs, but they should be doing better than they are. They have no car or house payment, and no kids at home. I don’t know what kind of credit card debt they have, but I do know smoking and weekly trips to the casino can’t be helping.
Thankfully her parents are happy. They would drop everything in a second to help out one of their kids. They don’t care about material possessions. I often think I care too much about my material possessions. I often feel guilty that I am able to live in a nice house, have nice things, and more toys than any person really needs. I guess that’s the benefit of always being responsible, getting an education so I could get a good job, and not doing stupid things with my money.
-
Is It Spring Yet?
So we are in the middle of a pretty big blizzard. Damn near everything in town is closed. All non-essential employees were sent home from work. Sadly, I am an essential employee. I didn’t get to go home early. When it was time to go home, my little two-wheel-drive truck wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get a ride home. When I got home the snow was waist deep on our sidewalk, and drifts in our back yards are as high as the fence. I would takes some pictures, but is still pretty nasty out. Maybe tomorrow.
-
I See Naked People
So I always have this reoccurring dream. It’s about this website that has naked pictures of everybody on it. It’s kind of like Facebook, but everybody is naked. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. If I know you, chances are I found you on the site. There is just something sexy about seeing someone naked, even if they don’t look good naked.
Well, today I ran across the site that was in my dreams. Except of course the fact that it doesn’t have everybody on it. It has only 24 people on it, but still a cool site. I wouldn’t call it a porn site, but it has nudity, so it’s NSFW.
Oh, one more thing, what ever happen to pubic hair? Doesn’t anybody have it anymore?
-
Weekend With Crazy Family
We just got home from spending the weekend with my family. We went to the Water Park of America. It was pretty cool. They say it’s the largest indoor water park in the US. We had a great time in the water park, but I am a little sore now and have a black eye. Coming down one of the slides my face smacked into the back of the Wife’s head. That didn’t feel too good.
The worst part about the weekend was dealing with my family. I totally disagree with my Mom, Brother, and Sister-in-Law on most subjects is seems like. I just kept my mouth shut most of the time. They are so close minded it does no good to state my points. They are so against all prescription drugs. They think their only point is to make the drug companies money. I agree that drug companies push them to a point, but many people do actually need them for certain things. That have even bought into the whole antivaxxer movement. They believe all the non-sence that they cause autism. The funny thing is they all take a bunch of vitamins and herbal crap that pretty much only line the pockets of the salesmen.
They are also all Jesus freaks. They were talking about how good the movie Fireproof was. I normally couldn’t care less about what actors beliefs are, but I have a hard time with Kirk Cameron. I have seen some of his anti-evolution nonsense videos, so I refuse to watch anything he is in. It’s pretty save to say I wouldn’t like anything he ever does anyway.
For being Christians they are also so full of hate. They pretty much believe that anybody that isn’t American, white, straight, and not from California, are out to destroy our country. I had to bite my lip on many occasions for their idiotic comments.
Don’t even get me started on their love for Fox News. I sat through about 5 minutes of that crap and I had to leave the room. I’m sorry, I like my news to actually contain facts and you can keep your idiotic opinions to your self. I am smart enough to come up with my own thank you.
I love my family, but sometimes I think I am adopted.
-
Numb3rs
On Friday I mentioned I have a few lucky numbers. I don’t know why I have them. I don’t believe in luck or anything. I just like numbers. So here are my favorite numbers:
7- It’s a pretty popular lucky number. It’s my birthday. My birthday is 2-7-75. The two numbers that aren’t 7 add up to 7. It was also the number that the best QB for my favorite team, John Elway wore.
22- Growing up in elementary and middle school I played basketball. My best friend and I were huge Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fans. When it was time to hand out our jerseys he beat me to the 33 jersey, so I went with 22. 22 was then my basketball number whenever I could get it.
27- It’s also a take on my birthday 2-7. The great Steve Atwater wore it for the Broncos, and it was also the number worn by the late Darrent Williams.
34- One of my all time favorite football players was Walter Payton. He was great on and off the field. He wore 34. 34 was also worn by Tyrone Braxton. One of my favorite old time Bronco player that also went to college in Fargo.
42- Any geek has a special place for the number 42.
63- Is the number I wore in football from my sophomore year on. It was my second choice, but a good one. It is the card number of John Elway’s Rookie card, and also the last two digits of my social security number.
77- The number I wore my freshman year of football. Also the number of a Bronco great Karl Mecklenburg who went to college in Minnesota. It is also just two of my favorite numbers.
I also enjoy running across palindromic numbers, and numbers like 1024 and 1337 make me smile a bit too for obvious, or not so obvious reasons.