Saturday, December 31, 2005

Well, NOW I see what they are saying

So, Eddie and I have been watching the TV, and apparently there is a lot of rain up in Northern California. It hasn't been great down in LA (a little overcast), but no rain.

Well, NOW I see what they are talking about. I did not want to taunt the rain gods before, so I said nothing. This morning it started raining, and it has just gotten worse all day long. It is raining a lot!

Rose Parade is suppose to get the worst of it.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Christmas was nice and all, but...

Ashford thinks that Christmas was nice and all that, but he is ready for his chair to be put back.

Ashford has a little complex about his green chair, and where it goes in the house. It goes off to one-side of the front room, so that he can watch what is going on, but not be forced to participate. Well, that is where the tree goes as well.

He puts up with this for Christmas. But the presents are gone, the monorail has made it's last port of call, and Ashford would like his chair back.

Happy New Year.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Ouch


Trevor is not a happy snipped puppy.

He is back from the doctor and he is tired, stoned, upset tummy, hates the hat, and doesn't want anyone around him and he wants to play and he HATES THE HAT.

Trevor's Christmas Present


Christmas comes on the 23rd for our little Trevor. Here he is at 6:30 or so. Eddie is reading the paper and Scooter is taking pictures of the dog. What he is so coyly hiding (his twig and bits) will not be around for the hiding long.

Yes ladies and germs, our little Trevor is getting the big snip for his Christmas present. Eddie is being the Grinch.

Of course, it all makes sense. We will be able to be home with him for a week. But no matter how you slice it, no one likes having their nuts cut off.

And, to make matters worse, he can't eat before surgery. It is 6:30 and that is breakfast time in puppy land. We have picked up the empty bowls (because he is learning Hastings trick of knocking the bowl to remind us it is empty. More tongiht.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Haven't I Been Good!?!?!

Have not I been very good? I have not berated you with my thoughts on George ("I can do whatever I want, and you sad sorry bastards can't do a thing to me") Bush.

He illegally wiretaps. No, turns out he says it is not illegal because he only wiretaps International calls (albeit both the US and the foreign sides). No, wait. It turns out (read yesterday's New York Times) that he wiretaps US to US calls. But only when he thinks it MIGHT have to do with Terrorism. As the Attorney General said yesterday, all is fair when we are in a state of war.

Memo to Attorney General, we are not in a state of war. We have not declared War. The "War on Terror", like the "War on Drugs" or the "War on Poverty" (or the short lived "War on Islamic Extremists" - which was swiftly recalled by the white House PR team after a short out-of-town run on the Sunday news shows) is a phrase, not a real War. You might want to look that up - being, you know, Attorney General and all.

Does it pas the Bill Clinton test? If Bill did it, would Congress be raising a stink? (Let's see... They impeached him for getting a hummer, my guess is they would have drawn and quartered him for illegally wire-tapping people he thought MIGHT be engaged in something illegal.)

To bad there is no precedent to judge this by. Yep, too bad something like this has never happened before. All new. No one knows if it is illegal or not. That is, if by no precedent you mean that you will purposefully choose to be an idiotic partisan a-hole. You see, there is one little precedent. The second charge of impeachment against Richard Nixon was that he illegally wiretapped citizens.

But that was back when our elected representatives chose to represent us, not blindly follow the party hack leaders into the land of DeNile.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Holidaze

Oh the holidaze. Ho ho ho.

I am actually quite looking forward to Christmas this year. You know, without the ghost of Christmas wrongs done in previous years. My dad and grandma, Lord love them both, had a passion for remembering past wrongs at holiday time. Bringing them up, only to say "Oh, don't worry about that now.". Ah... Christmas traditions. I, of course, have that charming gene myself - and I try mightily to subdue it. Often successfully.

Of course, don't even get me started on the Turkey dinner or I will go off for a few hours on the 2003 dinner in which I spent 4 hours making a dinner that was consumed in less than 15 minutes.

And the Ed recalls (joyfully) the 4 hour drive to the desert dragging Zela and Lynn; when my first comment to him was, "Why didn't you go up the 57 like I told you too." Ah yes, the good times.

So, no funny stories of Christmas' past this year. I will just watch the Christmas movies (War of the Roses and Bad Santa) and celebrate the year in style with the bf, friends, and my pups. I will have a cup of Christmas cheer (on the rocks - hand raised to both my grandfathers who celebrated that way - of course they are both dead, but I sure that had nothing to do with it), gather my dogs and boyfriend in my arms, croak out ½ a stanza of a Christmas song and go to bed with visions of sugar plums nowhere near my head.

Ho ho ho.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

As the days go by

Well, we had a great Christmas party. A lot of people showed up. Between the street neighbors, Ed's work friends, my work friends, and general friends it was a fun mix of people. A lot of people brought re-gifts (you know nice things they had which they traded for someone else's nice things).

Gary and Laraunt brought the worst re-gift. They brought a ToFurkey. Yes, a boxed tofu - turkey dinner for the holidays. It was gross. It went from their hands to the fridge to the trash in short order. Other people, thankfully, brought nicer re-gifts.

Even street negihbors that don't get along generally got along very well. It was good.

FYI - the Christmas Palm was a hit!

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Ed and the Tooth

So Trevor is teething and Ed is .... well not obsessed but he can see obsessed from the grassy knoll.

Did you know how dog's get new teeth. Unlike us, they grow a new one, THEN the old one falls out. Ed did not know this, but we do know.

Eddie took pictures to prove it.

So this is Trevor minus the baby tooth.

So this is Trevor with the baby tooth.

The oddest thing. Eddie saved both of these teeth and wants Mickey to make a necklace with it. Really. I am telling you, he can see obsessed from here.

Between Zero and Scream

You know kids, somewhere are work there has got to be a speed between Zero and Scream.

One guy came in today so made at me he was literally shaking. Apparently someone told him one of my guys sent out fix dates. And they were going to be wrong.

Actually one of my guys sent out TARGET ship dates. Not dates, TARGET dates; based on our current information.

It made no difference, I had to send out a correction to clarify what target meant.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The South Shall Rise Again

So I have a new Deployment Manager working with the European teams. Right now our relationship with Europe isn't great. We have made some temporary fixes, and the want the permanent fixes.

In the phone call with my new (Jewish) Deployment Manager, this German female manager (clearly an ex-Dominatrix) said in her broken English, "I know we have the fast solution. I want to know when we will have the Final Solution."

A nice Jewish boy doesn't not enjoy the mean German lady using the words "Final Solution", even in reference to a software problem.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Week-end

Well, it was a fine week-end. Bradley came down from Toronto (and should be back soon - his movie is almost done). We hung out Saturday night with him and Lynn.

Eddie and I were busy with Christmas type things and just hanging around. It was very relaxing and nice. Costco wasn't so relaxing, but it was nice anyway.

I have an early morning call where people from Europe are getting together to bitch at us while I am still half asleep. So I am up drinking coffee at home, trying to rouse myself for a full morning of fun!

Whee

Friday, December 09, 2005

Kong Size Expectations

So.. NBC Universal invited all the West Coast Employees to see King Kong yesterday. It was shown at the Universal City Theaters (they closed them to the public). Eddie and I went, and meet Gavin, Mickey and Ruthie there.

How to evaluate the big monkey movie.

Well, I had heard it was GREAT. The New York paper said grown men were moved to tears. The UK papers loved it. As Ed said upon leaving the movie, they were not sitting next to me.

See, if I had heard it was horrible, I would have really liked it.

As it was, I had one of the best times at the movies I ever had. About half the movie was really funny and really great. The other half of the movie was really funny - for all the wrong reasons. I could not stop making jokes during the movie. Of source this is nothing new, I still love Bram Stroker's Dracula for the cheese-ball moments. But Eddie, Mickey and Gavin were also making comments.

The thing is, in between the laughingly bad moments, it is a really really good movie.

And, top to bottom, it is a fun time at the movies. Jack Black is great, Naomi Watts is great (although she seemed to me to be trying to act like "Nicole Kidman in King Kong") and I finally get why people like Adrian Brody.

Go see it, but don't expect a great movie. Then you will like it.

One last note, it's like 3 hours long! The Monkey doesn't even show up for an hour! Peter Jackson (the Director) uses his wife as the Editor. I don't know who can't say no to whom - but they should work on that.

One other last note. Great GCI, but Peter Jackson is a little too in love with what he can do on the computer. Peter, that way lies the dark side (and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow).

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Pathetic Blogging by e-mail

Well, I am sure this will look awful. But, since I cannot get to blogger, I must do it this way.

So, forgive an old man a small rant before the Nincompoopery.

Rant: In the olden days, when the sun was shining, the earth was new and Los Angeles wasn't full of New York rejects (who "miss the cold"), we have good department stores. We had Bullocks, Broadway, Robinsons, Buffums, May Company and others.

In fact, Bullocks was so upscale that their flagship store on Wilshire Blvd (a Green / Bronze Art Deco piece on history on the register of historic buildings) had it's own name: Bullocks Wilshire. Same as Sacs 5th Ave. (Originally only the Sacs store on 5th Ave was called Sacs 5th Ave).

Well Macys is evil. They came in and bought Bullocks and Broadway. Two great department stores that made money. Now, in the hands of Macys (which I always associate with San Francisco because that is where I had to deal with the horrible J.C. Penny's Junior), Bullocks and Broadway are gone. Now we have Macy's and their 365 day a year "Last Sale of the Hour" theme.

In Century City (different store, but suffice to say a very upscale outdoor mall in Beverly Hills), the Broadway and Bullocks were the anchor stores - so they changed to Macys and Bloomingdales (Macy's at twice the price, 3 times the attitude and half the selection). To combat the Borg of Retail, Robinsons and May Company merged into Robinsons May.

Robinsons May had a great Flagship store on the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica. Right next to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where the Golden Globes are every year (they share a parking lot).

Well, since this isn't Star Trek, the Borg have finally taken over Robinsons May. The Flagship store is a couple of blocks away from Century City, so the Borg is shutting it down. What will go up instead?

Two 12 story condos buildings, 4 townhouse complexes and 12 zillion people. At the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica. Currently 97,000 cars a day use that intersection. 97,000 cars a day is enough so that 1/2 the entire population of Madison Wisconsin could drive past that intersection every day. If you must drive through it, you stop blocks and blocks away and inch towards the intersection.

Two 12 story condo buildings and 4 townhouse complexes! At that corner, Wilshire goes from 8 lanes to 4 (in Beverley Hills, the street is narrower). At that corner Santa Monica goes from 6 lanes to 4 (again Bev Hills). So the added traffic will be quell nightmare.

Nin Com Poopery

Monday, December 05, 2005

Well - I've decided to only blog from home



You know, I have been thinking about this. It probably isn't the right thing to do to blog on company time. So I think I will mainly blog from home for a while.

(Yes, my company blocked my access from work to Blogger).

Our Christmas Tree is fabulous. Eddie bought me a light up Palm Tree. It is so cute. I have enclosed a "lite" picture and an unlite picture.

If you are in twon, we are having a party on December 16th. It is a simple block, work, friends party. Please come.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Mascot for December - Kenny

It's not because he is cute. There are any number of cuter boys in the adult sizes (I think he might be 5'3" in boots).

No, it's for 2 reasons.

1. When the news on the radio to work gets to be too much for me, I turn on Kenny and I smile. His music brings up great memories, thoughts and feelings.

Not 2. he has a great voice - but that is not why.

2. His Christmas album is funky. I mean Silent Night with a Steel Drum? It sounds stupid, but it works. It tip toes across many genres that should not work together (Hawaiian Traditional Carols, a couple of Hymnal Type Songs and a couple of nearly novelty songs) and yet... and yet he pulls it all together so it is a nice little album.



So that is it. Kenny is the Mascot.

And no, I don't want the 4 day cruise to the Bahamas where he has a private concert on an island. Unless someone wants to split the cost of a room? The Junior Suite has a private Balcony a queen size bed or 2 twins - and a pull out couch?