Asparagus pee, Gooblek & Other Neat stuff

You can lead a horse to water, but you know, once he’s there, watching a horse drink water isn’t really all that exciting.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll always smell like fish.

It’s really important to stop and smell the roses. Otherwise, someone might come up to you at any time and ask you how the roses smell, and you’d just say, “Huh?”

If I ever meet a bear in the woods, I think I’ll just play dead. That way, if he starts to maul me, I probably won’t even feel it.

In the unlikely event that you experience a loss of cabin pressure, I sure hope I’m not sitting next to you.

A penny saved is a penny earned, but a penny earned is like a penny that you didn’t have before you earned it, and a penny saved really isn’t like that at all.

I want to thank J-Walk for reminding me to blog about Daylight Saving Time (without an ‘s’). As an adamant non-morning-person, it’s hard to get up an hour earlier for a few days, but I can’t imagine anything better than an extra hour of evening daylight. I mean, what the heck is the point of shorting me an hour in the winter when the morning is still cold, dark, and uninviting? If it were up to me, I’d adjust things weekly to maintain an 8:00 PM sunset and vary the work schedule accordingly.

For some reason, it really bugs me the way airlines want to charge me for beers and headphones, but ‘exact change is appreciated.’ Of course, as The Lady Janet pointed out to me when I brought it up last week on the plane, I could solve this problem very easily. Since I know I’m going to drink a beer, I just need to carry some small bills.

So sometimes I go buy something like a cup of coffee just to break a $20, but sometimes I forget, and it just seems kind of silly and arbitrary to me that they charge $5 for a can of MGD that cost about 20&#162 more retail than the soda pop they’re serving for free, when my family paid like $800 bucks to sit there, and then they add insult to injury by asking, ‘Don’t you have anything smaller?’ when I obviously don’t, like it’s somehow my fault that ATMs spit out yuppy bucks in $20 increments.

I’ve had the same gripe with my doctor’s office. If everyone who walks in has a $10 or a $15 copay, you ought to start the day with a big stack of fives, and on the flight where Delta charged $2 for a pair of headphones and $4 for a beer, they must know they’re playing Crazy Eights. How hard could it possibly be to figure out what cash drawer you need for a typical flight instead of getting on the blowhorn and asking if any passengers have change for a twenty? I mean, come on, I wouldn’t sell lemonade from a stand on the sidewalk without a few dollars in the till.

Of course, there’s another elegant solution that comes to mind. I could just hold out the $20 bill and say, ‘I’ll have 5 beers please.’

On the way into Santa Fe from the Albuquerque airport, I noticed a bunch of prairie dogs in the dirt of an on-ramp, and I raved about them, so my sister-in-law told us about a store called Jackalope that actually has an on-site prairie dog colony in a walled-in enclosure. We also had a few prairie dog holes in a dusty median between our hotel and the IHOP next door, but I only saw one very briefly, so it was really cool for Emily to be able to gawk at them at her leisure. (And me too!)

Click the little pic for a page with a couple of bigger pics.

Here’s a cool idea I just had: They should have a place on every prescription that describes what’s inside, especially if it’s a new prescription, like, ‘Small, round, blue pills, imprint “Watson 407,” or, ‘Pink powder. Mixed with water as directed, smells and tastes like cherry bubblegum.”

Sorry for the long no-blog. We’re on vacation and I’m blogging to you live from The Courtyard by Marriott in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This picture is where our journey began – the Sacramento airport has these really cool sculptures built up around the support posts near the baggage claim. I took this while we were waiting in line with, oh, maybe 200 people to get on the escalator to go upstairs to the security check.

We’re in Santa Fe for my father-in-law’s 75th birthday surprise. My sister-in-law lives here, so we set it up for F-in-L to come visit, then we all showed up, coming in from California and Connecticut. It’s been pretty hectic, with 7 people trying to decide where to go and what to do, but almost everyone else has gone back home now, and I’ve got a DSL connection in the room, and life is good.

The most impressive thing we’ve seen since we’ve been here is probably the Rio Grande Gorge and bridge. Here are pictures of the gorge, me and Emily out on the bridge, and The Lady Janet and Emily out on the bridge.

---

Awhile back, we bought a 2003 Civic Hybrid&#153. We thought it was important to try to get better milage, promote the new technology, and the icings on the cakes were a $2000 tax deduction and a flat $500 from some California energy commission, and we love it! So I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot more about the new Prius&#153, and I’m just wondering if anyone else feels a compelling need to squash one like a bug. I mean, that’s a silver cockroach, right? Sure, it gets a couple more miles to the gallon, but at 47 mpg, I’m not too concerned, and the Civic still looks like a car.

---

• More good health news: Picking your nose and eating it is good for you.
• Obligatory link to Noam Chomsky’s Blog.
• Dr. Seus (Theodor Geisel) did Political Cartoons (Via Olie Eichorn)
• Walmart has a computer for under $300 – think about this.
• This link to Aerogel is everywhere, but check it out. The new Stardust probe is going to collect particles from a comet in this substance that is 99.8% air but feels like stiff styrofoam. Once again, folks, isn’t it cool to live in the future?

I may blog a bit later if I get a second wind, but I think I’ve accidentally used up all my blog juice responding to a thoughtful comment that was posted to my Passion of the Christ entry. If you’re curious, just scroll down and read the comments and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Update: OK, I worked past 10:00, but it’s now about 2:15 AM, and I’ve got my second wind or my fifth beer or something. Turns out I’ve finally figured out what to do with at least one of the many many AOL disks that show up weekly. Click the little pic for a bigger pic.

---

Hey! I learned a new word today! Someone named Fred mentioned to me this afternoon that he’d received an e-mail full of ‘mondegreens’ and I said ‘huh?,’ in my best Tim-the-Toolguy ‘huh-wuh?’ and he gave me a very accurate description of how Sylvia Wright had heard the Scottish folksong that goes

Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

and thinking how wonderfully romantic was the tale of the Lady Mondegreen, she was surprised when she learned that it was actually ‘and laid him on the green,’ thus becoming the patron saint of mis-heard lyrics. Here’s a whole site full of Mondegreens.

This post is called Cats Never Learn. I’ve lived with my cat, The Duchess, since February of ’89, or about 15 years for those of you who may be math impaired. In all that time, you’d think she’d have figured out a few things that she’s experimented with on a daily basis – I mean, that’s over 5000 days, right? But here are some things she’s never figured out:

• Contary to your experience, you can’t actually make a door open by staring at it.
• Despite what you believe, the grass is not greener on the other side of the door.
• When you eat grass, you throw up.
• I’ve never fed you in the bathroom.
• Our house has approx. 1400 square feet of free floor space. You take up less than one square foot, as do my two feet… with better than a 1 in 1500 chance, why are you always underfoot?
• There’s nothing for you in the refrigerator, so I’ve closed it on your head something like 15,000 times with no positive feedback.
• Those speakers over there that I blew half my student loan on are not scratching posts!
• Litterboxes are not for losers who can’t mark their own territory.

---

Zug (?) had a prank this week where they pretended to be a 10-year old boy with a class assignment in Government, and they wrote to all of the US Senators and asked them what their favorite jokes were, and here are three of my favorites:

Q: What did the number zero say to the number eight?
A: Nice belt!

Q: Why did the pig have ink all over its face?
A: Because it got out of the pen!

Q: Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?
A: Because he didn’t have any guts.

One of the old jokes that I still love is:

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?
A: Because seven ate nine.

Then there’s the one I made up for Emily when she was about 2 1/2:

Q: What do you call someone who counts kitchens?
A: A kitchen counter.

---

Here’s another rare photoblog update. It’s all about Asparagus, trying to get healthy, flowers, and Emily.

We’ve got real Asparagus growing out in the garden, but it comes up like one stalk at a time, so we cut them off and save them in a glass of water in the refrigerator. They’re still fresher than store-bought, and they really make your pee stink.

I’ve been working out for the last couple of weeks, and at nearly 42 years old, working out for the first time in a couple-three years, waking up stiff doesn’t mean quite the same thing as it used to! So I’m showing you a recent breakfast – ‘Old Chris’ would have had two or three eggs and half a package of Jimmy Dean sausage, and no juice or melon.

The flowers are self-explanatory, and there’s a picture of the garden with the new batch of compost about to be dug in.

The Emily pics in this batch are pretty neat. When I was weeding to prep the garden for planting, I caught a little red snake with a grey belly (they tell me it’s a Red Racer), and Emily wasn’t scared to handle it at all… she thought it was ‘pretty cool, Dad.’

Asparagus from our garden in the fridge!	Asparagus in the Wild	Healthy Breakfast?
Freesias	Pond with Hyacinths	Perfect Reuben
Garden w/Compost	Snake Handler	Here He Is.

Oh, by the way, the Reuben sandwich is a nod to St. Patrick’s Day – I love Reubens, so I alway buy a big Corned Beef when they’re on sale. This week, they were $1.89 a pound.

The recipe is easy. Get a piece of Corned Beef. Boil it to death, maybe 3-5 hours over a low flame. Slice thin on Rye bread with sliced Swiss Cheese and drained Sour Kraut. Butter inside and out, add sauce below, and grill in a pan over medium heat until evenly brown.

My Secret Sauce Recipe:

• Miracle Whip Dressing
• Ketchup
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Squeeze of fresh Lemon Juice

Blend about 2/3 Miracle Whip to 1/3 Ketchup with a couple of teaspoons Worcestershire to a smooth orange-brown. Enjoy!

My 4&#189-year old daughter recently put several rubber bands around every doorknob in our house. I lived with this for a few weeks, but then I decided it was a bunch of crap and I asked for her permission to take them off (we try the democratic method first). She said, “OK,” so I took them all off. All of them but one, that is.

I couldn’t get that one off because it was too tight and too far down in the groove between the door and the doorknob.

So I told her I’d have to get a pair of needlenose pliers, and she didn’t know what those were, so I tried to draw her a picture.

She said my picture just looked like scissors, so I turned them into a mutant barricuda with big teeth chasing a small fish (uh-oh!). Then she went and got her set of plastic tools and pulled out a screwdriver and asked, “Is this a needlenose?” which actually kinda makes sense if you think about it.

Anyway, I still need to show the kid a pair of real needlenose, but I went ahead and adapted the drawing to include the screwdriver she brought me, so click the thumbnail and prepare to be reassured that I am not a cartoonist.

---

Here’s another good Emily story. I go in to help her brush her teeth last night, and she’s holding the new ‘killer whale’ toothbrush that the new dentist gave her the day before when she got her first two fillings, and she says, ‘My toothbrush is already wet, daddy.’

So I say, ‘Well, that’s interesting… how did it get wet? What happened?’

‘It accidentally fell in the toilet while I was pooping,’ she says, ‘but it’s OK, daddy, ’cause I washed it real, real good.’

‘Hmm. Well, I’m sorry kiddo, but we can’t use that toothbrush tonight,’ I said, and obviously, tears ensued, but we’ll work it out, I’m sure.

---

Sometimes when you’re reading the news, different articles just click when you read them in the right order. Like a few days ago, I read that Obesity is second only to tobbaco as a cause of death, and a few seconds later, I read this warning that McDonald’s Salad Has More Fat Than Cheeseburger.

Then I read that scientist studying sonoluminescence may actuallly be getting close to achieving Cold Fusion, and turned around to read an article about shrimp in the ocean who are already doing it?

---

Here are some more good guidelines for writers: Ten Mistakes Writers Make.

---

I just bought a 128 MB SansDisk MiniCruzer USB memory stick over at Staples for like $40 to move files around between machines, and it’s pretty cool, but now I find out I could have gotten a Swiss army knife with a USB mini-drive as one of the blades… Gentles and lady-men, we live in the future.

My yard seems to think it’s Spring, so I’m going to do a rare photo-blog and show you some flowers. One of my own original jokes that I like a lot and drag out this time of year is ‘April showers bring May flowers, and Mayflowers bring pilgrims.’

If you’re curious about the flowers comin’ up around this time in our yard, a virtual aquarium shadow play, or some cute kids, click on the thumbnails below for a bigger pic.

Before Pic of House	After Pic of House	Calendulas
Daffodils	Emily & a Friend	Shadow Play
Forget-me-Nots	Unplanted Garden	Almond Blossoms