O-Dark-Thirty

According to Frau's will, everything she had in our house when she died belongs to Darling. Among all the stuff was a lot of paperwork. We don't know what they are all about. Many of them are in German, and some are in Polish. Some are dated as late as the seventies and are probably legal papers when known family members died. That might be fun to research in the future. Some of these documents will make it into my next book, The Frau Chronicles: My Mother-in-Law Misadventures. For various reasons, some will not. Some don't add to the narrative of Young Hertha and many are simply confusing. Sadly, I won't include some of them in the book because of family issues. I won't say much about it, but I fear if I include documents mentioning some of Darling's brothers they will feel they have a claim on the book. I just don't want to venture into that territory. One very cute document I can't include is a note from Darling's oldest brother to his m...

Life is hard. You've noticed it, I'm sure. James Altucher, a favorite read of mine and a friend-yet-to-meet wrote about this in today's post on his web site .  If you don't read James, you should give him a try. He's absolutely honest; because of this many of his posts are controversial. I liked him so much I wrote an app to keep track of him , and it's still the only app I have that is on both Droid and iPhone. I haven't updated it in quite a while, but I've been busy finishing my book on the years we lived with Darling's mother. All the stories for my book are finished, but I'm working on Frau's past, her years growing up in Poland and Frau's escape from Nazi Germany with her husband (Darling's father). It's harder than I thought it would be, not least of which because the few documents she kept are either in German or Polish. I can handle the German ones (with help from Google translate). The Polish documents will not ...

We grew impatient and bought some plants from the local garden center (Joseph's - very nice place) for our garden plots. All look healthy and we have blossoms everywhere. The thing to remember about the plants from the garden center is that they are hybrids. We probably won't be able to take the seeds from the produce and use them for plants next year. Our seedlings The plants we are starting from seed in the house are  heirloom  plants, and we will be able to use their seeds for next year. Those plants are a little smaller, but they are springing up more every day! We will have so much squash and cucumbers I'm not sure what to do with it all. Yeah, I'm counting my squash before it's picked, but I remember the  squash boom the year Dad was in Viet Nam . This could be  epic !

I found this tale among my archived computer files. An unemployed man is desperate to support his family. His wife watches TV all day and his three teenage kids have dropped out of high school to hang around with the local toughs. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and passes the aptitude test. The human resources manager tells him, "You will be hired at a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. let me have your email address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day." Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the manager replies, "You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an email address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day." Stunned the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having...

Yeah, this isn't the Greek picture Once again I had a story in my archives that I needed to tell. That same story is told in other places, in exactly the same words, so I'll just post a link. The Story of the Donkey in the Well . My version finished with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current. One of the funny things about it is that it might be based on a true story - the photo in the linked article also appears in a Greek paper . I can't read the text, but the look on the donkey's face says a lot.

A friend of mine and I discussed taxes again the other day. She has a sister who thinks the government should help pay all her bills and pay all her medical and dental costs. The government should take care of her, since she has "no husband to take care of her" (her words, though she also admits she doesn't want a husband). I think I got the story right. Essentially, I hear much the same thing from many people today. But "the government" is "the people" and the money has to come from somewhere. "Well," most say, "let the rich pay. They have the money." That always makes me think of the  Beer and  Ten Men Story, which I had to dig up from my archived files on my computer. Here it is as I originally found it. I'd reference my source, but it is now repeated in a lot of places on the internet. Too bad. I wish I knew the original author ( and Snopes doesn't know ) - I'd want to shake his hand. Suppose that every day...

My second World of Warcraft character hit level 90 this weekend. My Drenai Death Knight, Darkwylf, hit level 90 a few weeks ago. He flies through Pandaria with impunity. He mines the ore, skins the dead beasts and searches for the Lost Treasures of Pandaria. My Worgen Druid, an herbalist, now flies the continent picking the various herbs and occasionally grabbing a Lost Treasure. In some cases he is the guy to send into the caves for the hidden treasures that occasionally appear because he can turn into a panther and go into stealth mode. My Death Knight has to beat the enemies to unmoving corpses. Yeah, it sounds as if I like my DK. I do. I do. I admit there is a lot of satisfaction in having my toon avatar drop into a group of little animated non-playing characters and finally walking away with them all deceased - and neither of us break into a sweat doing it. As opposed to real life… Darling and I spent Saturday putting four new garden beds in the back yard. I use the ve...

She looks so ... Brit Margaret Thatcher died at the age of 87 Monday. I haven't much to say about the death of Britain's "Iron Lady," as I didn't pay much attention to Mrs. Thatcher or politics back then. I did pay attention to Annette Funicello , though, and she died from complications with MS. My favorite article is an opinion piece on CNN . Most guys around my age adored Annette (and, obviously, were on a first name basis with her). Annette was seventy. Roger Ebert died on April 4 th at the age of seventy also. I used to watch "Siskel and Ebert" and they were an engaging team. Seldom did they discuss something without some sort of fireworks, and I appreciated the repartee. I didn't always agree with Ebert on what constituted a good movie, but I always had to concede his reasons for rating them as he did. We might be looking at the death of the 401(k) soon, too, according to some articles . Of course, the title of the article is a b...

The day after we had the ribs at Spring Creek BBQ we received another coupon in the mail. Last night we used it and had ribs again. How lovely. This time I was much, much smarter. I only ate half my ribs, so only felt half as stuffed as last week. I also have dinner for tonight! The ribs weren't quite as tasty as last week (how quickly familiarity breeds contempt) but they were still quite good. I think it is the best coupon in town. The mac and cheese wasn't quite as creamy as last week though. The coleslaw was a little better and Darling is right. The green beans are delicious. The rolls, of course, were wonderful, but I need to make a note to eat a bit later; I think they start bringing fresh rolls to the table at about five, not four. (Hey, I was hungry.)  And I still like the pickles. The service is incredible, too. Darling dropped her knife on the floor. I had barely picked it up when one of the staff brought her new utensils. One of the young ladies working t...

Another of those web things I captured years ago and saved on my computer. This one made me feel better on the days when I was feeling pretty idiotic. I finally decided to do some research and make sure they are real stories. Some I cannot find and others are proved false, but that's okay. They can be fake as long as they are funny. Enjoy. Measures of Dumbness If you ever felt stupid, read these and you'll feel much better.... I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter in to the Emergency room right away. I could ...