Expensive Is The New Cheap

I’m giddy, I can’t help it. I just bought $3.62 a gallon gas! I didn’t even need it. I had over a half a tank all ready but the siren call of $3.62 was more than I could stand. So I stood in line. Twice. Because I am an idiot.

I should point out that before I stood in live twice I had been to Sam's and now possessed a bag of frozen chicken riding shotgun - Which would not have been a problem had I stood in line only once or if I had spent .6 a gallon more at Sam's - Which I wouldn’t have done because I didn’t need gas that badly even though $3.68 is still cheap gas. Remember after Katrina when gas was $2.50 a gallon and we all thought Oh My God! What are we going to do?! It’s outrageous! and then gas got even more expensive because of a hurricane off Mexico and the state went as far as suspending travel by state employees because gas was just too expensive? I just checked my archives and I found an entry that said gas was $68 a barrel  and I commented that the Pirates down the street were charging the astronomical sum of $3.09 a gallon.

Today If I ran across $3.09 a gallon gas I would fill my bathtub with it.

Anyway. I left Sam's with my frozen chicken and went to go put gas in my car. I had to park in the street because the stations’ lot was full and the SUV in front of me was piloted by what at the time I saw as a very stupid person who would not move her car forward! I hated her then, but an hour later when I was still in my car, I could understand how she might have just been in line for a long time and maybe she wasn’t stupid, maybe she had died from asphyxiation. But she was not dead, just stupid, and she finally moved her car up and I was able to get out of traffic and into a line.

And I was happy. My chicken was frozen, the line was almost moving and I was having memories flashbacks of my far off childhood of waiting in line with my mother to get gas on alternate days and how that if only half the cars were able to put gas in their tanks this should have made the lines shorter because there should have been fewer people getting gas, but instead they were always long because everyone filled up their tanks even if they didn’t need to because it was Their Day and they were all but supposed to show up at the gas station or else. And sometimes you would be in line but the station would run out of gas and that would be hugely traumatic.

So I am in line and I am waiting. We’re all waiting. It’s the lines at Crate and Barrel the day after Christmas And the car up at the pump always seems to be unattended because the driver had to go inside to pay and go to the john and buy a coke and screw around and waste time then pay for their gas in pennies... and I took a look at the pumps and they were definitely pay-at-the-pump and yet every other car was left at the pump while it’s driver went inside to stand in line to pay inside. This was disheartening. So we all waited for the driver to wait to pay, which took forever and then we waited for them to fill the tank which also took forever because all the pumps were working simultaneously and this slows everything down.

And I am still in line, and I am having real doubts about my frozen chicken and I am trying to think of a safe place to stow it while I am in line and so I killed some time playing hide-the-chicken and the line creeps along and finally both cars ahead of me leave at the same time! Both cars are faced in the correct direction! They both pay at the pump! Huzzah!

I get to the pump

and my tank is on

the other side of the car.


I get out of line which takes a great deal of effort because there is a car parked in the way and so I am now effectively blocking a pump and the offending car is just sitting there and inside the station in the crowd, I see a figure very deliberately going about her business getting a paper and a soda and visiting with the counter help and being in no rush whatsoever and I want to kill her. She finally goes out to her car and then just sits there, very carefully putting her paper down and getting her drink arranged and making sure her seat belt is not creasing her scrub top and then she’s checking her lipstick in the rear view... taking her time, totally oblivious to all the other cars and to the fact she is essentially double parked as well as being a huge bitch.

She leaves. I get in yet another line. It takes three days. But still? $3.62 gas!

It's not okay if you are a Republican...

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens to be indicted on seven counts of making false statements to federal investigators


More from McClatchy news

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate and one of the chamber's most powerful members, was indicted Tuesday in Washington, a result of a year-long investigation into corruption in Alaska politics. The 7-count indictment comes nearly one year after federal agents raided Stevens' home in Girdwood, a resort town about 40 miles south of Anchorage. The Justice Department has scheduled a press conference for 1:20 p.m. to announce the indictment.

Shark Week


Live every week like its Shark Week! Words to live by.  It’s that time again. Time to sit in front of your TV and add to your mental catalogue of places sharks can kill you. I have learned that while sharks are salt water creatures they have been found some miles up the Mississippi river.

On Mythbusters I learned that it is a bad idea to take a flashlight with you under water. Sharks love flashlights and want to get to know them better. They also covered the myth that hot peppers act as a deterrent to sharks - Busted! hot peppers have no effect on sharks or fish in general, so you would not save yourself by using pepper-based mace on Jaws or your gold fish if it turned on you. Who knew?

Currently on Shark Week, they are telling us about a South African teenager whose leg was eaten by a great white shark.. He is rushed to the hospital, he dies several times, he is brought back - Lots of discussion about how chewed on his is. And we break for a commercial where the first lines are You are thinking about steak.

Perfect.

The kid survives but I had to turn the channels. I’ve learned the only place I’m safe from sharks is in my living room.  Sharks are smart and they are everywhere. They could be in your toilet, they could be in your sink, they could be in your bottled water! Not only are sharks smart, sharks are hungry most of the time and we are slow and stupid all of the time, and while we may not taste very good they do think we make good chew toys. It’s rather depressing to think that's where are on the food chain - Chew Toy. Now seals,  sharks think seals are nummy.

Speaking of seals, they aren’t very nice either but they don’t eat people, as far as we know... Wouldn’t that suck? To have to say that you lost your arm to a seal? I think I would lie, I would tell everyone I got chewed on by a shark. A big shark. A great white. In addition to Shark Week I am also watching Blue Planet, and the disk I just finished was concerned with the arctic and antarctic and all the cute little seal munchies that live there - And it’s not just killer seals, the polar bears are genuine land sharks. Did you know that a polar bear can take a beluga whale out of the water all by itself? A whale, even a smallish whale is a whale and a bear can take one down or , actually, lift on up and pull it out of the water bodily. That is just not a bear you want to cuddle up with - Granted as baby bears, they are very, very, very cute.

That may be one area the shark lobby needs to work on. A baby shark looks pretty much exactly like an adult shark, only smaller and a smaller shark is not a cuter shark, it’s just a smaller shark and no matter haw small a shark is it is never a “cute” shark. Seals are deadly predators but at least as babies they are cute. They are so cute. My question is, why hasn’t Disney created a happy, anthropomorphous seal movie? I would watch a happy seal movie. I’ve seen seals in the wild and they look like swimming dogs. Happy dogs. Dogs that could sing and dance! Okay, no feet, synchronized swimming seals that long to be in the Olympics! just add a Randy Newman song and you have a Happy Meal and seven Oscar(tm) nominations.

Is it because they eat penguins? Does Disney have some sort of agreement with the penguin lobby that they won’t glorify one of their chief predators? I’m sure penguins go after something, you can be sure as far as the penguin lobby tells us it’s not a cute something. Of course, maybe it is and the Penguin lobby is just incredibly good at hiding it and in reality it is someone or something that can’t or won’t go to the authorities...

Penguins eat Santa’s Elves!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House on Monday predicted a record deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year, a senior government official told CNN.

President Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001 but has since posted a budget deficit every year.

The Bush administration has spent heavily on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and faces a large budget shortfall in tax revenue because of Bush's tax cuts and a souring economy.

Full story at: CNN.com

The White House goes on to blame the soaring national debt on Clinton, because he was such a cheap bastard and was sooo mean for leaving them that huge surplus like some kind of hard ass...

My dog , the cat person

After this weekend I am henceforth going to demand that my vet rename the practice after one or both of my animals as I am now paying a good part of the staff salaries and all of the buildings utilities as well as a speed boat, two jet-skis, and  a kayak.

Saturday morning I was obligated to take The Kitty to the vet so that the vet could be certain that the thyroid pills that are clearly working like they are supposed to, are working like they are supposed to. The vet could have just asked me, and thus saved me an office visit and his staff the stress of trying to get a blood draw from The Kitty. The Kitty could care less, it is all the same to him; He hates being stuffed into his crate, he hates the waiting room and he hates the staff - He in general hates everything all the time and he is while he is doing his hating is irrelevant to him - but for the staff at the vets office, it is traumatic.

When we walked into the waiting room we were faced with a crate of the cutest little baby kitties evah. The kitties were locked in the crate, The Kitty was in his travel bag, four feet from the cutest baby kitties evah and he still managed to chase the kittens from one side of their (large) crate to the other and cause the kitties to become visibly upset. From inside his bag, four feet away where they couldn’t even see him, he was completely terrorizing them. In comparison, Sunday afternoon, Dogger and I were outside on the lawn sitting under the tree. I had one arm petting on Dogger and the other hand occupied petting one of the feral cats. The two animals were maybe two feet apart and they were both completely calm and at ease with each other and we had a nice time. It was one of those times where you wish someone would wander by with a camera. It would have been a nice shot.

Saturday, after extracting a technicians arm from The Kitty’s maw. I dropped him off at home and went to yet visit to another health professional. My camera is ill and I go on vacation in a month. A sick camera simply will not do. I’m would go on vacation if I had to escape from an ICU to do it, but to go on vacation with a camera with the sniffles would be unthinkable. The camera store quickly diagnosed the problem and told me while they couldn’t fix it, I could send it back to the maker, but the repair would run me $300. I asked the camera store if they would take pity on me and just give me one or if failing that if they had anything in my price range with a two year interest free payment plan? The guy went to go check his stock - Which took about three years, a bit surprising because the store was the size of a broom closet - a broom closet full to the rafters with very pricey, very fancy , very high-end professional grade photographic equipment that made my little point-and-shoot camera look like a kids toy. The staff got points for not treating me like a kid or my camera like a toy.

I went home and took out my frustration on my lawn. I had mowed it Friday night - The quickest way to ruin an otherwise lovely evening is to decided to take advantage of the loveliness by mowing your yard. Resist the urge. On Saturday, I edged, I wacked weeds, I leaf blew, I watered and finally, I took advantage of the nice day and sat outside on my deck for the rest of the afternoon with a book and my dog.

My camera is sick, but not dead yet. Here is a  picture of a bloom from my night bloomer

HAPPY     SUNDAY     !!!!!!!

HAPPY    SATURDAY      !!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Garden Update

There are two squash plants left. Out of twelve non-productive little bastards. The only reason the two are still in the ground is that one I would have to reach further than I want to to grab it and the other is a leetle to close to my very productive cucumber plant and I don’t want to accidentally yank  it out by mistake. I would like to know how it is that I ended up with only one cucumber plant? I planted six of them, so by this time I should be swimming in cucumbers instead of having mearly enough to soak my feet in. I think I shall blame their loss on the evol sun blocking soil nourishment sucking squash plants and their plans of garden domination. I think they kidnapped my innocent cucumber plants and then disguised them as fellow squash so when the great squash armageddon came, I would take the evil as well as the good. Yellow bastards.

But. If I had more cucumbers I couldn’t be as careful about finding them new homes. You have to be careful about just who you send you veggies home with! The new owners should share you philosophy on refrigerator vs. counter top storage and where they feelings on appropriate crisper drawer settings and where they stand on grilled vegetables... You can’t just send them home with anyone. It’s important to interview and if possible, conduct home visits. So far I have re-homed one of mine and there are two in the wings and two others in development.

The collards are out there collardering. I’m pretty sure when Broskey and Alpha Gal get back from vacation I'm going to yank the remaining plants out the ground, take the leaves and give them as a gift to them. I realized that I really don’t like greens, even greens that I myself grew with my own little hands and the fact that they are just taking up space that my other plants could use. Next year, no collards.

The tomatoes both big and little are doing well - Not as well as my mothers super productive plants, but well enough, as I don’t actually eat tomatoes myself. The larger variety is finally ripening up after weeks of nothing and has even started on a second generation after I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to have grandtomaotes from that plant. Regardless, in a few days I am going to have some grand tomatoes:

After three months of waiting, the peppers are coming in! I’m glad I resisted the urge to go squashageddon on them after they took so long to start producing. And even better, from my inspection of the plants, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a quite a few of them over the next couple of months and if the weather holds, maybe as long as three months - My reading has taught me that peppers are not very hardy. Doesn't matter! They are finally producing!

And, last and least of my little garden family, the eggplants are also finally starting to produce. I really do not have the patients for all this waiting around. Next year? No eggplants.

In the front yard, my moon flower vines are also starting to produce. The blooms are beautiful. Sadly, however, my camera is having issues and I’m not able to get a picture of them. To get an idea, find a handkerchief or other large, white piece of heavy cloth, perhaps a cloth napkin, and drape it over your hand - That’s what the blooms look like. Oh, not gardencentric, but I am writting this on July 24, 2008. I recived my first Christmas catalouge in the mail.

Anybody want a...

free Obama button?

Riding bikes with the Flintstones


I was planning to get an early start on this, so as to be able to sit in front of the TV all night like a normal person, so I eschewed my scheduled  HGTV watching and went straight for the computer where I called up Word and got ready to do my thing. I gave myself two rules though 1) No Dogger and 2) No garden.

So I went looking for handy non-Dogger non-Garden memes and that took a while and then I didn’t find any I would see me answering and I decided memes are lame and I don’t need someone else's  lame ideas to post a lame entry. I can do that without any outside help.

Well shite! What else is there to talk about? It’s not like I have a life or anything. I could talk about how I thought The Kitty was feeling neglected, but I’m pretty sure that resolved after I bought him new food and scored fresh dust for his box - If he’s still mad at me he hasn’t said anything about it and normally he’s really into sharing his feelings and being open about his hostility - He does not suffer in silence, and in fact this morning he lolled across my paper in a really cute n’ fuzzy way and he doesn’t come across with the cute n’ fuzzy unless he genuinely doesn’t hate me at the moment. Passive aggression isn’t his thing. He prefers his aggression straight up.

Even though I am not supposed to talk about Dogger - I can talk about her vet. Her really nice, very knowledgeable vet who lurves her and knows a lot about Addison’s. That vet left the practice and left Dogger and I high and dry - On a desert Island stocked with other very knowledgeable, nice vets from the same practice but they don’t lurve Dogger the same way and I question their Addison’s knowledge. It’s one thing to have studied it, I studied Shakespeare and I can quote it at you but that doesn’t make me a Shakespeare scholar, I know these women studied about Addison’s and the fact they can quote from a text book does not make me feel better. My old vet was an Addison's Scholar! She really new her stuff and that made a world of difference for both Dogger and myself. I just had one really quick conversation with one of the other vets in the practice and now I’m understanding more clearly why the folks on the Addison’s groups are so bitter about their vets.

Lets see. Trying to hold to my No Dog/No Garden theme, and having no idea what else to post about with those two rules in place, I went to Dix to ride the bike trail. It was nice, it would have been nicer to do it on foot and with Dogger but... I did enjoy myself, a little. In the past I remember there being a lot of bike traffic though there but I bet the real hard cases are at home watching The Tour instead. I have a bike question, if you use the hand breaks? Is the bike supposed to stop? Or are the hand breaks kind of like props? Because I tried to stop using the hand breaks and the bike and I kept barreling along and if I had wanted to keep barreling along I would not have used the hand breaks. I finally brought the bike to a stop by going all Fred Flintstone and manually stopping myself. Not cool.

Oh! I am one fake tooth closer to my goal of having a $6 Million Mouth. I went back to the dentist today and got another crown! Woo! And to reward myself for my oral awesomeness I went to the grocery on my way back home and bought some grated cheese and when I came home I made myself cheese sauce ( a little butter, a little flour and a little milk) and I had rice note to self, the new microwave is significantly more powerful than the old microwave, it would be a good idea to rethink the timing of the rice, it was dry and cheese for dinner. It was great, cheesy rice is one of my all time favorite comfort foods.

Tomorrow? Garden Update 6!

Sound and Fury

I came home from work and took Dogger outside, I’m starting to get afraid that she has forgotten why I take her outside. She goes outside but then she just kind of wanders around aimlessly while I prod her to do something, anything, usually in vain. She’s not looking for somewhere to pee, she’s looking for a good place to lay down - And I’m trying to be cool with this. I sit next to her and pet on her and make encouraging noises about nothing, and then I out of habit, go get her tie down to secure her . It’s kind of pointless at this stage of the game but it makes me feel better to think she could wander away .

While she's doing what I choose to see as basking, I water the plants or sit on the steps and read a catalogue and worry about her and she eventually decides she wants to go back inside for dinner. It’s depressing but its better than the alternative.

Last night, I’m sitting on the steps reading a magazine and Dogger is snuffing around and out of nowhere, it thunders, not at a distance, not somewhere else, directly over head. I shrieked like a scalded cat and Dogger found the wherewithal to dive under the azalea plant. I tore down the steps to rescue Dogger and  I noticed the workers next door staring at us. The workers next door didn’t scream or dive under the shrubs.

The really bad thing about the thunder experience is that the a couple of hours later when I tried to get her outside she refused and the time after that, while she agreed to go outside she would not stay. She needs to go to the loo! When you get a pet they never tell you that you will eventually be worrying about things like this. No its all Here’s your puppy! Go have the most fun evar!. There is so much that isn’t fun.

You know what else isn't fun? rideing my bike around the neighborhood by myself instead of walking with Dogger. I am the girl with the dog, I am the girl who walks that dog. It is my identity, it’s my role and now? I’m just some girl on a bike. Walking Dogger made me stand out - Granted, in this neighborhood, especially right after I moved here, the dog wasn’t the only thing that made me stand out, but the dog made me approachable; People who would have never spoken to me, ran up to pet the dog or offer advice on dog management. Having Dogger at my side was a great conduit for getting to know my neighbors or at least their kids, while making everyone comfortable. A dog is a great equalizer. I have yet to ride past a house and have a crowd of kids come out to coo at my bike. I want my dog back.

Everything

I’ll save you some time : So, how’s Dogger? Dogger is fine. I guess, it depends on who is around, if it’s just me she seems more or less the same, maybe a little more perky and alert but at the same time, I may just be getting used to it. Dogger is a consummate showman, she shows off for my family and then comes home and makes like Camille. Lets say Dogger is dancing as fast as she can.

She seems to want to go for now verboten long walks but she can’t go 50 feet to go pee in the yard without laying down - I don’t know which to blame that on, her pain or her pain meds. I suspect it is a combination of the two, but at the same time she is the most hard headed animal I have ever known. I think she’s smart enough to know that playing tug-of-war isn’t possible at present so she does the next best thing, she goes limp. I am reasonably sure if she could find a way to chain herself to a tree she would. I find all of this puzzling, she hates being outside, she does not bond with nature unless she can do so from the street and all of a sudden she finds happiness basking in the sun. She used to hate basking. Now, she’s a freaking snake.

Its confusing to me. I don’t know if this is just her hardheadedness or some kind of new symptom I need to be concerned about. Have I mentioned that everything she does now makes me concerned?

Phone Rings

I just lied to the Shriners! I told them I was bankrupt, morally yes, but financially, well, not exactly bankrupt, but I don’t have a penny to give to anyone I don’t all ready owe money to. It doesn’t help that pretty much everyone who can afford a phone bank has my number, a sob story and their hand out. Right now I have a bill from Breast Cancer on my entry way table. They called me and I told them it was a no-go and so they suggested they send me a pledge card and I could send it back when I could. I said sure because I am ever hopeful that I’m going to uncover a gold mine in my back yard or find buried treasure in the cat box. Right now if it doesn’t show up on my credit report, it isn’t getting paid.

I’m sure there is some sort of Karmic credit report and mine looks like crap. I use those freebie address stickers and I never send in a donation, if I pay cash at McDonald's I never put all my change into the Ronald McDonald House donation boxes, I feed my feral cats only the cheapest kibble I can find and I've been known to buy .99 sympathy cards for greiving co-workers.

No wonder my pets are chronically ill.

Speaking of ill pets. I tried to get Dogger to go outside again. I got her out there twice, no small task in it self, and she failed to perform both times. I don’t know if she didn’t need to, or if she couldn’t go because my neighbor was in his yard doing yard work - and then if she doesn’t go, is it the knee or the Addison's that is to blame? Is it because she has been spending too much time on her feet or too much time off them?

Good news! I tried a third time to get Dogger to do her thing and she did! My neighbor finally stopped fiddling with his plants and Dogger finally remembered the world is her toilet. I’ve read where dogs don’t like being watched when they do their thing but I’ve never known Dogger to demand such privacy, the animal will drop a dog bomb in the middle of traffic and suddenly she’s demanding a privacy screen? I don’t know who she thinks she’s kidding unless this a new symptom of something else I can’t afford to fix.

The knee doesn’t get stressed unless it accidentally gets used, but the Addison's gets stressed out over everything, including the knee. In an attempt to protect Dogger from stress I left the radio playing all day. I left it on because the city put signs in all our yards warning us to not park in the street because they are going to spend this week refacing the street. I came home from work today to a street with the same face it had when I left in the morning. I have my suspicions that they city didn’t put those signs out at all, it is instead a cunning plan to get the renters to get their most recent hulk out of the street and into their driveway where it belongs. This one has tags and a plate and all four tires inflated so I can’t call the city and have it towed like I did with the last one. They might have foiled me but somebody has their number.

Breath in, Breath out

They need to start putting warning labels on swim suits - This suit is not appropriate for ocean use or This suit is specifically designed for pool use, do not attempt to wear under ocean conditions or even something direct Suit May Ride Up in Waves. I tell you what, its a damn good everyone was so occupied with you know , not drowning because I was totally flashing the world. That King Neptune is really cheeky!

I would come up for air after being clobbered by a wave and look down and say Oh. Well. Now! and try to get my top back where it was supposed to be before the next wave came along and knocked me ass over tea kettle. I am really lucky I didn't end up with a painfully toasted ta-tas.

If you haven't been knocked ass over tea kettle by a wave lately you really should try it. It's a very liberating experience to just let go that way, to just turn yourself over to the waves. It's really very meditative, you can't think about anything else, you certainly can't do anything else while you are being pummeled by the waves. An enforced period of non-thought really greases the mental wheels., once you can think, you see things clearer, your minds eye sees 20/20 and whatever may have been clouding your "vision" has been washed away.

Of course my first thoughts were Oh my gawd! I got my suit wet! and Eek! The bad wave splashed me! and Whoops! that got my hair wet! and Sqeee! I got a mouth full of salt water! finally gave way to Show me what you got! which led me to Do me wavy! take me! and Is that all you've got? I'm still upright you lamo! The last guy almost drowned me! Work harder! until I was turning my nose down at swells that ten minutes before would have had me squealing and eeking in shock to find the biggest wave to push me harder under the water because it felt so damn good when I came up for air, Screw you wavy, you may be stronger, but I'm buoyant! I am invincible! I am strong! I can handle anything! Push me down and I get right back up! Hear that world? I get back up!

Sadly, my hair squishy was lost at sea.

Anyway, when I wasn't playing footsie with King Neptune, I was taking pictures