Brings back Italy memories. Those things are small… Jeff Roberts - Jan 1, 2008 Brings back Italy memories. Those things are small enough to perpendicular-park, rather than parallel (don’t try that with your church bus). I saw one here already - it crossed in front of us as we were entering Newtown from Stone last Sunday morning. (And without really pouring on the gas, I couldn’t catch up to get a closer look - what’s top speed on those things?) ...
Congrats to the NY Giants for sending the Dallas Cowboys to the sidelines for the NFC championship game. Both the home teams lost today. All-in-all, a tremendous afternoon of football, with two of the “Locks” going down–The Cowboys and the Colts. We get to see a January championship game in LAMBEAU FIELD, baby!! I can’t wait (won’t really matter, any of the AFC teams could kill any of the NFC teams, including Green Bay)… ...
So, I’m looking at my budget today, and I notice that I’m spending ~19% of my take-home pay on housing (yay–well within our means), but 27% on transportation, including: Van payment, gas for 3 cars, registration, repairs + upkeep, and insurance. :-) I’m thinking of moving to new york! * * * On the opposite tack, I came home last night to find that someone had left the passenger-side sliding door open on the van. For 2 hours. In a driving thunderstorm. ...
Harvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She’s Oba… Biru - Jan 4, 2008 Harvid, my mom still reads yr blog. She’s Obaming! The market will hit a “true” bottom when its sorrow & woe is on the front page of the NYTimes– not the business section, the front page. Then you & I will sweep in and buy Vanguard no-load index funds and sit on them until our noses bleed money. Mutual funds have too many fees! ...
Ah the joys of compiling a large native product from scratch. The time to get a cup of coffee, or blog. Some random musings: * The stock market is in the crapper, and will probably stay there. The economy is fundamentally flawed, the the recession has already started–no one’s owning up to that yet. I’m reading Alan Greenspan’s “Age of Turbulence”, and I don’t think we’ve seen this sort of market since the 1980’s, though this is sort of a hybrid–recession, but without fundamental strength in finance. Actually, it might be exactly like the early 1980’s, where the banking industry tried to kill itself lending money to Latin America. ...
Or…“How I learned to love my own child less than sleep for 10 minutes”. I’ve been off work since December 21st. During all that time, I got alot of sleep. I didn’t get enough, apparently. So last night, I went out into what passes for a blizzard in Kentucky to pick-up Joey from his dad’s. I returned to find Whitney had a story for me–Maria had clanged her head on the crib. Hard. In her soft spot. She’d called the Dr., but the Dr. said likely everything would be fine. ...
Well, a week later, here we are. I’ve gotten and gotten-over a nasty stomach bug, so I managed to miss most of Wednesday through Friday. In my absence, the Wii has replaced the iMac as the coolest thing in the household. Yes, it’s that good. Just to give you an idea, we had Stu and Cathy using it within 4 minutes of watching us play it. We’ve played it for at least 5 hours a day since we got it. ...
We returned from our 2 day roundtrip to balmy (!) Columbus, Ohio this evening, Joey running a 101.5 fever and Maria dozing contentedly. Pretty uneventful trip–ate too much, slept too much, saw Whitney’s Uncle Richard’s old…ahem…Ferrari. Yep, honest-to-goodness Ferrari GT, Brown….V-12 & everything. Not a good looking car, particularly, but DUDE! So, we’re opening presents tomorrow morning and doing stuff around the house, then going down to my Mom’s for Christmas Eve. We have to turn Joey over to his dad at 7am Christmas Day. ...
2 hours and 20 minutes of THAT?!!! This is a pretty-standard war/buddy flick. Some guys wanna go fly, they go through some training, meet an old salt who tells them they’re stupid, and get a rude awakening when they first meet the enemy. They ALL have backstories, and they’re all (poorly) developed. One resembles Porkins from Star Wars and dies similarly. There’s a love interest thrown-in and many long, conceited scenes flying about in a CGI wonderland resembling a decent WWI Video Game. ...
I am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope th… Susan - Dec 1, 2007 I am glad that Dottie is feeling better. I hope that she keeps up her spirit and her strength as she starts treatment. If you need anything just call.
E! Article New Line, meanwhile, was the woozy-feeling patient after its would-be franchise starter The Golden Compass (third place, $9 million) fell off a cliff, down 65 percent from a disappointing debut weekend. So far, the $180 million fantasy film is the unwanted fruitcake of the holiday season, having taken in just $41 million overall. (It has performed stronger overseas; so, perhaps any sequels could be made expressly for Slovakia, et al.) ...
Sweet finish, dude. Jeff Roberts - Dec 2, 2007 Sweet finish, dude.
Yes, it’s that good. Just finished watching the Odyssey-in-a-Microbus, Little Miss Sunshine. It’s the type of movie my wife hates, but which I love, where all the characters are shades of gray. They’re intensely real, and flawed, and they love and hate one another. Yet they’re bound together by bonds that bring them together when it counts–death, adversity, and the bald insanity of life. Steve Carell is a revelation as Frank Hoover, the frustrated homosexual academic who we meet in a hospital fresh off his failed suicide attempt. Out of work, without insurance, he’s kicked out of the pysch ward to the care of his overwrought sister, Sheryl. We meet her blended family next: Her husband Richard the self-help guru, the vow-of-silence goth teen Dwayne, the heroin-snorting profane Grandpa, and the little ingenue Olive. ...
Hey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Suns… BryanCombs - Dec 3, 2007 Hey, everyone you know won’t hate Little Miss Sunshine. I love it. It’s actually my favorite film from 2006. (Right ahead of The Departed and Borat) Dixie loves it too.
Happily, Mom didn’t have chemo on Friday. Her oncologist looked at the results of her PET scan and said the surgeon was full of it. She doesn’t have ASC, she has CCC, Cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile duct that is fairly rare (1-2 cases / 100,000 ppl), but which is curable through surgery. Mom had surgery, and there’s no evidence the cancer had spread through her lymphatic system. The short answer: Prognosis is much better than with ASC. Surgical resection allows for a cure, and follow-up radiation shows good results. Mom’s scheduled intensive, local radiation 5 days a week for the next 5 weeks, and an oral chemotherapy tablet after that. Her hair probably won’t fall out. ...
Praise God, what great news! Jeff Roberts - Dec 1, 2007 Praise God, what great news!
CompUSA to close all its stores Meh. I’ll just have to go to Louisville to lust after Macs, I guess.
Bummer…only went there rarely but I’ll have to f… Jeff Roberts - Dec 1, 2007 Bummer…only went there rarely but I’ll have to find a new source for the one or two things I used to get there. Pay to UPS a UPS? I don’t think so.
Yesterday was pretty tough–I was up at 4:30, at work by 6, and home by 2:45 to watch the kids (4 kids now–our two and two from Whitney’s BFF Sarah). While firehosing me with all the TODOs (change this, change that, sippy cup, etc.), Whitney mentioned, “Oh, and a guy from Kirby should be here from 3 to 5 to clean the carpets and shampoo the carpets for free.” ...
Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers as I’ve shared about Mom’s sickness. I’ve not posted more, out of deference to her, and simply because we didn’t know much. Mom had surgery on Halloween, but didn’t get any follow-up on pathology results until 2 weeks later, November 16th. That day, we went into the Transplant Clinic at UK Hospital (!) to get some results. I won’t go into it fully here, but it’s a rare hybrid of two cancers of the liver itself. They said to set-up an appointment with Oncologists as soon as she felt better. ...