HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Remember when Halloween was fun? I think it still is for a lot of adults. It’s ok – but not the end all/be all it used to be. Of course, I’m speaking for myself only. Today is the day I always want to go to a grocery store and ask a clerk “where do you keep your apples? oh…..and razor blades?”, just to see if anyone stops me or even raises an eyebrow. I’m betting on neither.

Gone are the days being easily scared at ghosts and goblins. The movies are a different matter. I loved crap like Halloween (the original!). It was tense, yet had moments of comedy. I think the last scary movie I saw was when Jon and I went to Hellraiser. The fish hooks that came out the ‘the box’ and into the face, then went upward – well, I was done.

My threshold with the kids came about a decade ago. 16-18 yos would come to the door in no costume whatsoever and expect candy. Obviously there are a few things wrong with that entire scenario. Do you deny them and possibly suffer the consequences or do you just cave and give them their one roll of Smarties? I admit, I caved – but only for that year. …and all the other kids paid the price. While we lived in that neighborhood, we went out to dinner instead of handing out candy. Last year, with the new ‘hood, I tried again and no one showed, but had like $13 dollars in candy all for myself!

Growing up in the mid-west (why is it the mid-west? we are like 3-4 states west of the Atlantic Ocean! Nowhere near the west and barely even close to the mid) chances are you wore your down coat or parka over any costume you had as a child while tricking or treating. Well……tricking. You were more likely to find eggs and toilet paper in my pillow case than 3 musketeers or (ick) a popcorn ball!

I do love how adults get into the “holiday”. They can be so much more creative at the costumes – but it’s really not me. Last time I dressed up, well (and no offense Ade), I looked like my oldest sister – but with bigger boobs….albeit, ones made of birdseed. I blame Mitchell for talking me into it. All the sudden we were at K-Mart buying bras, then borrowing heels from some drag queen. I have size 11 feet and these things were still huge on me. It was (and I was) not pretty. Mitchell looked good – in a Linda Evans kind of way. Morty looked like Gilda Radner doing Patti Smith.

…and anyone thinking I’m scanning an posting any of those pics are SADLY mistaken.

BLOGHUNGRY

I tried a new recipie from Bloghungry. It tasted great – but mine didn’t come out looking quite as good as his did. I’ve never been one to follow directions for cooking all that well, but I did everything……except ensure that the cutlets/breasts where thinner. I didn’t pound ‘em. That made cooking time take a bit longer and the outer coating to darken more than they probably should have. Did I mention they tasted great?

I also think for the amount of chicken you use, you can cut the cheese and bread crumbs in half and still have plenty for coating the bird.

Did I mention it still tasted great?

Blobby’s Blog

It’s kind of working with the new url. The old hosting site/path only allowed for so much traffic – and the hits to the old url continued to increase – not that I’m complaining. Anyway – I hit a brick wall yesterday and visitors got a no-access message when trying to find the blog. Bandwidth was exceeded.

A lot of updates to paths/archieves/ftps blah blah blah. Man those instructions are not easy to follow. Denton had to help with most of it. I’m still missing my images from the old posts – which I just have to work on. They will be back – it’s just gonna take a little time. Hang with me.

I still want to change the template and all of that stuff – but this is going a lot more slowly than I anticipated.

Thanks for your patience.

STILL NOT READY TO MAKE NICE

…and thank g-d.

Though I don’t think it will help their album sales (only 2 million copies of Taking the Long Way sold – compared to 10 million each of their first two disks and 6 million of Home), I’m glad the Dixie Chicks haven’t shyed away from “the incident”.

In this day and age when political ads can and do say anything about anyone – true or not, it surprises me that NBC refuses to air an ad for the documentary Shut Up and Sing. Hell, the movie doesn’t even open outside of Los Angeles and New York until after the frickin’ election.

Since August, I’ve seen horrible (and untruthful) political ads run on many NBC affiliates, which clearly they have no issue taking the money for. “NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it ‘cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.’”

Well I find Bush disparaging to this nation. How can I get him to stop speaking on television??

You can view the ad here.

Trailers to the movies can be seen here.

I’VE VOTED

Since my experience with the electornic voting machines during the primary was soooo peachy (see May 2nd post), I have opted to cast my vote(s) for the general election via absentee ballot. Do I really think it will be tabulated with any more accuracy than faulty Diebold machines? Not entirely. Heck, Cuyahoga County isn’t even sure they will be able scan all submitted absentee ballots ON election day – even if they start at midnight! But condsidering the inconsistency in the machines and the lack of security in those machines, I figured absentee was the lesser of two evils.

I know the image that goes along with this post is support for the Democratic party…and I do. I am proud and unashamed to be a member of said party. Fudge – after the debacle over the last six years of the Bush administration, the last umpteen hundred years of a republican controlled congress and the last eight years of Bob Taft’s dofusness, there had better be a change!!

But I’m not a fool either. I don’t just (or always) vote a straight party ticket. If I were that uninformed and ignorant, well……I’d……I’d……um……be…republican!

So yesterday I got out my black pen and filled in the ovals like I was taking the SATs all over again. I completed my ballot and the U.S. Postal Service picked it up today. Let’s hope everyone else does their part!

FLU SHOT

I did the deed and got my flu shot. I always do though.

I am surprised how many people out there never get it and for all the wrong reasons. Oddly enough, “I don’t like shots” has never come up with anyone I know how has refused to get one. The biggest misconception is that “I got the flu right after getting the shot”.

One might get the flu right after the shot, but it’s not because of the shot. Any epidemiologist will tell you it takes up to six weeks to take effect (which is why you get it now – before the flu season of January-March hits!). But here is a good reason to get the injection: you prevent others from getting the flu!!

Yes, you heard me right. You probably have an equal chance of carrying the virus without getting sick, but without knowing it can pass it along to those you live and/or work with. This includes the young, elderly and immunosuppressed.

Take a look at hospital statistics during the flu season – occupancy rates are at their highest, average length of stay increases, which in turn clogs the emergency departments which forces them to go on diversion (i.e. close) due to overwhelming patient volume and basic gridlock of trying to get a patient bed that doesn’t exist. When looking at the mortality rates of the elderly during a hospital admission, they die of complications due to the flu…. COPD, asthma, etc. Let’s not even get into the healthcare costs.

So, I got mine….for me and for others. I have never had such a painless shot either..and I have had some ouchy flu shots before. This one I didn’t even know happened…honest. They gave me a piece of candy aftewards too – but I tossed it because it was sugar free. Why bother? I also got it for free. Look around – many places will give them for no or minimal cost.

Another word of advice? Take one ibuprofen and one tylenol afterward. That will really lessen any soreness that might accompany the shot down the road. A nurse told me that years ago and it works…at least for the first day.

Be a sport. Get a shot.

I’M IN LOVE

(not another Keith Obermann post)

I always thought there were some weirdly trained cats in any commercial selling food or litter. How these cats jump up and touch noses with their ‘owners’ just didn’t’ seem normal to me. Our cats have never done that. Hell, our cats won’t/don’t sit on laps and barely can stand to be held. Colour me surprised that the new kitten loves to jump up on us and walks right up the chest to go nose-to-nose. I love and have loved our other cats – but she is the most affectionate cat I think I’ve come across.

Sophie (oh, that is the name we decided on) is doing pretty well. She likes her space and seemingly loves us as much as we do her. As feared though, she became a little ill after bringing her home from the shelter. So many cats there had an upper respiratory infection. I don’t know she has that, but she developed some light sneezing Sunday evening – and a little more on Monday morning. I called the vet immediately.

The vet was great in getting us in right away. Driving through a heavy snow (yes! in late mid-October!!), we were embarrassed when they asked her name and we didn’t have one. As we sat in the waiting room, I also noticed one eye was runny. Damn – now I knew she was sick.

We sat back in the exam room waiting for the doctor and had time to kill, so we continued our on-going discussion on names. Names were narrowed down, but it became clear that due to pop culture, almost every one had icky connotations…and that boy names would have been easier to choose! So we decided on ‘Sophie’ as her name. It just seems to fit her. By the time the vet came in with her chart, she could fill in the first name slot.

Sophie was a good girl at the vet. Everyone loved her markings and she just behaved herself oh so well (except for that whole rectal thermometer thing). The poor wee thing only weighs 2.09 lbs.

IF she is indeed 4 mos old, she is extremely slight – though she doesn’t look undernurished. She had a temp of 103 – which is only 1-2 degrees above normal for a cat. Now she is on ointment for the eye for the next seven days and an antibiotic to prevent any other infections for the next 10 days (well, now it’s down to five and eight respectively). She’s taking the fussing over like a trooper.

She remains quarantined from Tovah until she is no longer infectious – probably another 3-5 days. They are aware of each other, though Tovah avoids the ‘forbidden room!’. I’m hoping she sneaks up there and sniffs when we’re not watching. Sophie is not fazed – but she just came from a room that had 40-50 cats.

We eagerly await acclimating her to the rest of the house and to become a full-fledged member of the family.

I HEART KEITH OBERMANN

I swear I’d leave Denton for him! If for no other reason than the commentary he did on Countdown last night. If you didn’t see it, please check out Obermann’s video commentary. It’s not on YouTube (yet) so you have to go to the MSNBC video site . The text version is there too – but you almost really need to hear Obermann’s delivery.

I swear a commentary like this is a lost art.

Shopping w/Blobby

Yet another installment in the drudgery that is everyday shopping. The camera-phone makes it a bit more fun – though I get looks whenever I take pics of products. Like I care what people think!

Imagine my surprise when in the store yesterday and came across Quisp. Has it been out at all since 1972? Has it been hiding behind the Fresca that Morty still purchases (which I still believe had been hidden in some bomb shelter!)? And where is Quake?

For any reader under, say, 40 – you might not know Quisp and Quake. The commercials were almost a Spy vs Spy kind of thing – if I remember correctly. The advertisers played the ‘characters’ off each other and of course us, the consumer, had to determine which one we liked more.

I was a Quisp man. Don’t get me wrong – it had nothing to do with the cereal. I think both were the exact same cereal, just in different shapes. But Quisp were like little bowls that milk would get into. They were probably meant to be half-moons or planets, but I was probably thinking of place-settings or something.

Honestly though, I’m not sure I’ve had, let alone seen, Quisp and or Quake since the early ’70s. It’s not that I haven’t been observant in the store. I think you all know I am. I just figured that the cereal got pulled to low sales or some kind of FDA recall. ….it was the ’70s!

But it’s back. And clearly whatever competition that Quisp and Quake had going on – well, Quisp was the winner.

Current image is not my own, as mine was lost in the URL conversion of 2006!

PLAYING POLITICS

Wow. I missed a blog entry yesterday. That has to be like the first time since June or July. I’m too lazy to actually go back and check. But in my defense, at least twice this month I’ve made dual entries on one day – so that should buy me something. …and we have the new girl to look after. No, still no name jumping out at us – and it’s very frustrating not being able to call her anything.

Anyhoo…there has to be a way to stop these frickin’ swift boater type ads. I’m sorry, but screw the first admendment in these instances. It’s one thing to blather on about lies a candidate has portrayed, but either downright lies or as close as one can get to being Pinnochio.

In Ohio, these ads are running saying that democratic senate candidate Sherrod Brown has not paid his taxes for almost 13 years. In reality – Brown had a lien on unpaid unemployment tax from 1992 for $1,776 (ironically enough, the ads don’t play up his unpatriotic behaviour on the amount!). The tax was paid within a four month period after being issued, but someone in the Ohio tax office never bothered to mark it as such. It was finally corrected in 2005. So, while being total fabrication in reality, the GOP and DeWine refuse to denounce the ad and the group refuses to pull it.

If New York, democratic candidate for congress, Frank Acruri is being demeaned by saying from a hotel room he called a phone sex line. In reality – Arcuri meant to call the Dept. of Criminal Justice Services which have the same last SEVEN numbers of the phone number. Meaning: he misdialed the first three. Telephone records show he called his intended number less than a minute after his initial misplaced call. Unless he’s a REAL premature ejaculator, it’s safe to say he didn’t really stay on his ’sex call’. The National Republican Congressional Committee refuses to pull the ad.

This shit kills me for the obivous reasons. But the other obvious ones which I have never seen ANYONE ever call out. Bush didn’t when Swift Boat veterans did it to Kerry, yet he has the nerve to stand in front of the press in the last few weeks and crap out some statement of ‘isn’t this convenient that the democrats are trying to politicize something like this..’ in regards to Mark Foley – but you could put substitute person or subject matter into the reason.

Bush had the nerve to use WTC images in his 2004 ads, but thinks it was horrible that Kerry used Cheney’s lezbo daughter for political talking points. Kerry shouldn’t politicize one persons gayness when it was a HUGE campaign issue, but Bush can capitalize on the deaths of 2,749 individuals?

This is DC we’re talking about. Everything is political. Everything. Should it be? I’d say ‘no’. But this is nothing new and yet have you ever seen a Tim Russert (or anyone else) not only call them on it or counter it w/something they might have done to someone else? Nah. The Steven Colberts, Jon Stewarts and Bill Mahers do – but I don’t know how seriously they are taken in the bigger scheme of things.

…but someone should. Shame them all. Make it stop!