We have lived in this house since 1999. As time passes I get a little tired of the same old look. Time for a change in the decor. Maybe new chandeliers or something along those lines.
LightingDirect has a lot of chandeliers in their catalog. A wide variety of fixtures are displayed online for the buyer to pick from. They even accept PayPal for their products.
Friday was the missus birthday. She had to work and I mean all day she was in meetings. At five she stopped working and we loaded all of my daughters bags (she is going to Appalacian Trail in Tennessee to hike) and drove to Todai. This is an excellent buffet that has sushi, tempura, udon to name a few of the dishes. I ate so much food (starved myself all day) that I though I would burst. There was some grilled fish that was divine. Wish I knew what kind it was. I saw that they have one of these in Kay El. Anybody over there tried it?
After dinner we dropped off the girl. She returns next Sunday. Miss her already.
Then I went back home. Had to finsh some things for 12 to Midnight as we met Saturday. Left home early Saturday morning with my son in tow. On the way we played Deadlands. Deadlands is an alternate west history in which magic has filled the west and zombies inhabit many a ghost town. A mysterious element called ghost rock has been discovered and it has made possible some fantastic scientific break throughs. Because of these events the Civil War came to an end with United States divided. So there are a lot of story possibilities.
My son created a character for Deadlands called Walter Obediah Wately. He is a huckster that grew up in Texas on the family farm located near the Brazos River in Fort Bend County. The story begins as he returns from a trip to Houston. As he gets closer to the farm he sees smoke in the air. He hears his mother and sister screaming from inside his burning home. Walter runs to the well to get some water to douse the flames. There he sees the corpse of his father laid out on the ground. A knife protruding from his back.
Walter is unable to save the women folk. On his father’s corpse he finds a blue velvet pouch with a crossed bones silhoutte stitched on it, and it contains ashes. Walter reports the murder to the county sheriff and when the sheriff sees the pouch he says voo doo is involved. Walter asks what the heck is voo doo? The sheriff does not know a whole lot, except that most voo doo takes place in Louisiana.
Recalling his father’s frequent trips to New Orleans, the younger Wately takes a train to the Big Easy. Once he arrives in the city he locates his elder cousin, Jebediah Wately. Jebediah takes Walter in. The pair resides over a saloon called Red Eyed Mary’s and that is where Walter learns how to play poker and other games of chance. More importantly his cousin teaches him how to perform feats of magic. This magic includes throwing cards that are as deadly as any bullet. In a desperate move he can pull off a 54 card pickup that can hurt a slew of folk. When he needs to be sneaky he can teleport from one shadow to the next. To complete his training Jebediah gave Walter a pouch that has his intials, WOW. From this pouch Walter can pull out a helpful trinket during a time of need.
One evening Walter is returning to the room. Before he opens the door, he finds it peculiar that the door is cracked open. This worries him and he reaches into his magic pouch and pulls out a pistol. As he pushed open the doors he sees his cousin laid out on the floor. A figure moves at him and Walter shoots him right between the eyes. Screams fill the air. Walter looks at his cousin and sees that he has been strangled by the claw marks at his throat. The figure he shot looks to have been dead quite some time. A zombie. He notices that a blue card with crossed bones covers his heart, held secure by a long thorn piercing his chest.
By this time the constable arrives and questions Walther. He wants to know why there is a recently shot corpse in the room with his dead cousin. By this time the magically produced pistol has vanished. Three hours pass as the law men try to find a pistol. The constable tells Walter he is not to leave New Orleans as he is the main suspect in this murders and for suspected grave robbery.
Red Eyed Mary tells Walther he is bad for business and can no longer reside upstairs. Walter has to move a few blocks before he can find another room in the French Quarter. He spends his days playing cards earning enough to keep a roof over his head and food in his belly. During this time he keeps noticing a man with a red bushy moustache and sideburns wearing a bowler. He inquires to the constable in regards to this fellow, but the law man does not know about him.
A couple of days later he learns that Red Eyed Mary is murdered. She is strangled in a fashion like his cousin, Jebediah. At this time Walter is questioned by the constable. Walter has been playing cards all day and the bartender confirms this. Walter tells the constable of his family’s murder and shows the voo doo bag. The constable does not like this at all and orders Walter to leave New Orleans.
Walter recalls Jebediah mentioned Wately’s living in Missouri. He buys passage on a Missisippi steamboat to Cape Giradeau, Missouri. While on the cruise he notices that red moustached man again. He learns the man goes by the name of Bill Duffy, but no more than that. Tired of being followed, Walter sneaks off of the boat and is successful in evading Duffy.
Walter takes the stagecoach to Springfield, Missouri. On the way a gang of outlaws tries to rob them. Using his card magic he kills three of the men, while a fouth flees. Once he gets to Springfield, he inquires about the Wately family and learns there is a family homestead to the southwest.
He makes it to the family home the next day. There he finds a whole mess of Whatley’s to include his grandmother. She tells him about his father. How her son loved a white voo doo witch, a queen amongst her own people. The two soon married and his new wife became pregnant. The woman died in child birth giving birth to Walter. Walter is shocked at this revelation as he thought his mother was the woman who had raised him. But the worst news is that Walter’s mother has a sister called Madame Blue and this woman blamed Walter and his father for killing her sister. She promised to kill Walter and his father.
Walter showed his grandmother the pouch he found on his dead father’s body. His grandmother said he could only stay the night. She would give him a good horse. But he needed to go west and lose himself. Grandma Whatley also took the time to show the young man how to use his blood to draw more arcane power for desperated times.
And then we came to Caldwell and our destination. So we stopped playing until later in the evening.
Hey Wennn! Did you see this commercial over there in jolly old England? Anyone else spot this over in the UK? Give it a peek if you have not seen it yet:
What do you think? I heard those old tunes and I just want to get my hands on this Police CD so badly. This compilation has been available for some time now. I really need to go to the store and pick this up. Whenever I hear these tunes it takes me back to the old days when I lived in West Germany. That’s right. When I first rocked to the music of the Police there were two Germanys in the world.
There has to be a tune on the Police CD that you like. We’re talking King of Pain, Synchronicity I, Message In A Bottle, Don’t Stand So Close To Me, and Roxanne to name just a few of these songs. Oh yeah. They have included a vintage the Police poster inside the new Police CD. I can hardly wait to get at look at that.
Okay. I got to know. Who beat me to the store and has the Police CD in their music collection already? If you don’t have this come on. Let’s get going to the store and buy this Police CD today. Why wouldn’t you want it?
Huei and Rinnah have tagged me. I have to write about my naughtiest moment in school. Stories should not be too short. Think I will lose all of my readers with this post. Especially my mom bloggers. Won’t want to risk me being a bad influence on their children. This tag also says I must tag others, there is no exclusion I’m not gonna tag you allowed. So be warned. *wags finger*
Really tough to pick one event over another. Being an angry teen opens you up to a vast world of mischief. And drinking and drugs was quite a facilitator for stupidity. But despite being a little jerk only two events landed me in the counselor’s office. One was not that bad. Just had to have my mom come into sign my smoking permit. Yep. Back in the dinosaur days we could smoke at school if our parents signed off on our smoking permit. I kept getting busted smoking, and my mom got tired of the calls so she came in to sign my permit.
In High School I had a friend, we’ll call him HD. HD and I lived one block from each other and we walked to school and back home together since second grade. We cruised together all the time and played a lot of sandlot football. At different times we knocked each other out playing football at St Anne’s field. We were rough boys, though funny enough HD did not do drugs or drink and I never did that around him. And probably had a lot better time with him and his older brother because of that.
HD and I were not a good combination inside a classroom. Once he was in American history class with me. Somehow this class had a lot of boys that we knew quite well. I mean to this day I meet HD and a couple of other boys from this class. We’re talkig thirty years ago here. American history is one of my favorite subjects and all of my friends knew that I would make high grades in this class. Every time there was a test these guys were cheating off of me. I could expect a poke in the back from HD so I would expose my paper for the others.
After a while I got tired of giving these guys a good grade. So I purposely bombed a test. Before the test day I informed the teacher what I planned and he thought it would serve them right. They were pissed at me. But today we just laugh about it when we meet.
But still this post is not about me tricking my lazy friends. It is about me being naughty. During senior year, HD and I found ourselves in a physical sciences class together. The teacher was Mr. V. This was not my first time to be in one of his classes. I did not like Mr. V at all. We used to see him at the grocery store protesting different things. Buying California grapes is the one protest that always comes to mind. I have no idea why he protested grapes, but he did. I though he was stupid, gay and a thousand more foul evil thoughts as only an ignorant teenage boy can do.
Some how he allowed HD and me to be lab partners and that proved to be a big mistake. We would disrupt the entire class. Telling loud jokes. Making fart noises. Threatening to make a bomb and blow up the entire lab. Honestly, I feared we would accidentally blow the place up. HD and I were not the best science students.
This was my senior year, in fact I had already signed my contract to join the army. One day during Mr. V’s class we had to report to the auditorium for some kind of shindig. Me and HD were sitting right by Mr. V on the front row. HD and I were yakking back and forth non stop. Mr. V told us to pipe down and it annoyed me. I told him when I came back from basic training that I was going to stick my M-16 where the sun don’t shine. Well my words were more direct and they scared the hell out of him.
Mr. V sent me to the office and my mother had to come to school. Yours truly found himself in hot water and deservedly so. Fortunately, I did not need the class to graduate, so they just dropped me out of the class and placed me in a study hall for the rest of the semester. But every time I would see Mr. V I would make a pull trigger sign and he would turn paler. He was whiter than white already. Today they would have kicked me out of school and turned me over to a shrink.
But that is the naughtiest thing I can recall from high school. Actually I was naughtier in Junior High School. I always broke car antennas on the walk home. Once I threw a kid’s drum in the mud because he would not fight me. And I must have fought every other boy on the drum line and in home room. I thought a good fight would make you better friends. What a stupid little jerk. No wonder my people skills are lacking.
Thank God for the army. Bless my drill sergeants wherever you may be now. Bless those boots that kicked my butt.
I have to tag somebody. It says I have no option in the rules. So I pick three people that I doubt will be very naughty if at all, but you can surprise me. In fact make my eyes go big and round-er. So naughty school girls I pick you:
So write about your naughtiest event. I shall be so scared if you are worst than me.
It might seem strange, me living in hotter than hot Texas most of my life, but hockey is my favorite sport. When my kids were skating years ago, I took up the sport. My friends thought I was a nut for picking up hockey at 40, but it was so much fun. I miss the rush of racing down the ice, fighting for the puck, and making the goalie look like a fool as the puck lands in the back of net.
I have not played in a while. So I content myself by following the National Hockey League (NHL). I’m a big Phoenix Coyote fan. I am real interested to see who they are coming to select in the nhl draft this year. At Hockey Feature’s web site I can see listings of all of the top prospects for the coming draft. There are team analysis provided on the site too. This gives me a great view of where my Coyotes are looking to improve.
Do you want NHL news? They have all kinds of articles available. These topics are not limited to the NHL either. You can read about every hockey league out there and college hockey too. They also have a radio show that informs the listeners regarding upcoming prospects. You want to give your own input on hockey. Then visit their forums where you can discuss the game with other hockey fans across the globe.
So what are you waiting for? Throw on your jersey, grab your hockey stick and a brewskie and let’s get ready for the nhl draft!
Bkworm and Leah have tagged me. They wants to know what I will do with one million dollars, American. Hmmm… Where shall I begin?
Can I have the one million after tax? Otherwise, the first 400,000 is going to Uncle Sugar as withholding tax. Gone before I can even hug those dollars. So I choose to have already sent another usurious sum to the feds and have a million left for my family. Rat B@st@rds.
If I have a million dollars I am going to quit working. The missus has to keep working. Sorry honey, but we need medical insurance. Then I shall invest the million. If I am lazy I can make 6% or $60,000 off an interest bearing instrument. If I want to spend a lot of time on investments I should be able to pull in 15% off the stock market. That is a bit risky. I am confident I can work around to pull in 10% a year with less risk.
So that means I can earn form $60,000 to $150,000 each year off the return from the invested million. The gahman is going to tax around 28% to 40% of the interest or capital gain depending on how I invest and what the tax laws are at the time. No matter what the return after taxes, it is more money than I am currently earning in my present job.
So I know some of you reading are thinking SA is just a jerk. He makes a million dollars, quits his job, and makes his missus work to keep medical insurance. But I know she would insist on this plan too. And SA will not be sitting on his arse counting the interest payments. No contraire’ my good readers. I shall write my fingers to the bone every day, trying to complete a story that someone is prepared to pay me for. And hopefully pay enough that I can pay for the medical insurance and the missus can relax in her easy chair and watch Korean soap operas all day.
Plus with these earnings I know I have the funds for a nice vacation in China and Southeast Asia too. See I can be frugal but still can have some fun. Despite the money.
You may have noticed I did not pay off my loans. My loan rates are quite low and as long as I can earn more than I payout, then I am not bothered. If my return cannot exceed 4% for some reason, then I will clean the family’s slate of all debt instruments.
Last December the missus and I had our 20th anniversary. Because we were traveling with her family I did not give her a satisfactory anniversary gift. I sure would like to do better for this year’s celebration.
And I think I found a super anniversary gift she won’t roll her eyes at or ask for the receipt so she can take it back. Putting a picture on canvas would be awesome. I have all of these digital photos. One of them should be perfect for this. Just have to decide whether we wanna go with her complete family photo, her with her parents, or us with the kids.
I think she would love this gift. Truth be told I would like this gift too.
July has been a month of highs. Going to Origins and meeting so many folks. Some important to my company. Throwing ideas out and having positive responses created a lot of energy. Just trying to grab a hold of things and get them sorted. What to do? Which is a priority?
And then the phone rang. This call came totally out of the blue. A voice from the past asking about a project once written, now lost with my belated hard drive. Crashed on the digital file, but still embedded in my mind. I wrote the original 122 pages in thirty days. Can I do it again? Of course I can. Will I? The voice from the past said to take my time. But my time is running short. There is no promise of tomorrow. No more waiting. Write or die! I must write. But what?
And then there is the firm. The firm has the greatest certainty of generating revenue. Writing for gaming provides a certain amount of satisfaction, but the chances of it feeding my family are less than slim. Writing for the voice from the past has the chance of leading to national and possibly international recognition, not to mention some righteous globs cash. Or it could just get me a nod and a nice job. The opportunity cost is high right now.
The thought of the firm is nice as it could take care of my family. But if I should suddenly find my writing to be a saleable commodity, the firm is something I need to divest myself of, and quickly, so I can focus on tossing words together.
What to do? Wheels spinning? Vampires biting? Armies marching? Lockers filling? Mailing lists compiled?
Has anyone tried the hoodia patch? This looks kind of interesting. When the South Beach Diet is not enough to help me shed some weight, maybe this can save the day. The website says it cranks up your energy as well as suppresses your hunger. Will more energy mean more blogging? Type faster. Read quicker.
I can receive the hoodia patch one week for free. Well there is $2.95 charge for shipping. But if it can help me become slimmer I’m willing to try.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was preordered back in May. Last Wednesday I received an email from Borders telling me that I could pick up my copy at the witching hour on Friday. I could come by at any time Friday to collect a wrist band. There would be a party starting at 9:30. Told my daughter and she told me she wanted to attend.
Friday arrived and my family planned the day. Oil change for the car. Tae Kwon Do testing for the boy. Piano lessons for the girl. Facials for my missus and #5 SIL, who brought my niece to town to celebrate her birthday. How to shuffle this all together and make the party at 9:30?
Well some how we did. I took the boy to his Tae Kwon Do test. He successfully tested for his senior second degree black belt. While he tested I plinked away in the back of the gym, working on the biz plan. Peeking up whenever they called his name.
Then we went and picked up the girl from the piano studio. The piano teacher has given my daughter an ultimatum. The girl has one week to decide if she wants to seriously pursue piano any further. The teacher recognizes my daughter is talented, but is tired of her lack of motivation. Honestly, I wanted her to stop last year. She is too old to spank and sit on the piano bench. Wasted talent. I keep trying to get her to focus on different music by trying to write a song or playing a different styly, but she does not seem interested. Oh well. Sell the piano and get some more space in the living room.
We left the studio and the time was nine. I thought we should grab a bite to eat. We went to Sonic, as the kids like their shakes. I had a chicken wrap and a root beer float. Yep I broke my diet, but it is Harry Potter’s eve after all.
We got to the Stafford Border’s and the store was already crowded. There were kids every where you looked. Many wearing cloaks clipped on by pins depicting house Griffindor (did you know this word is in the MS dictionary?). I had picked up a blue wrist band earlier in the day and I put it on when we first arrived. There were many kids from my children’s school along with their parents. One lady I recognized tried to call my name, but she could not remember mine (I could not remember hers either). The lady next to her, who I did not recognize, helped her by saying my name. Wonder who’s mom she is?
Saw the Committee Chair for the Boy Scout Troop and chatted with him a bit. He just returned from Philmont Scout Camp. I wanted to go there so bad as a boy and I hope my boy can go some day. After chatting with him I bought a coffee. The queue was so long I had to wait 15 minutes, which is much longer than I would normally have to wait. The store is that busy.
But what about the party? There were games. They had crossword puzzles and word search games. My kids played bingo for a chance to win raffle tickets. A treasure hunt occurred and who knows what else I might have missed. I found myself grabbing books and walking around with them in my hands. I read half of a Dungeons and Dragons module. Looked at several of the Marvel Comics Civil War trade books and I must have them someday. Browsed the business books and found one on consulting that I carried around a bit. But in the end I returned everything to the shelves. You do not know how hard that was for me.
My kids gave up on bingo and sat down in the comic and manga section. I showed my son Civil War and he read it. Some schoolmates came by and chatted with him. One boy I had not seen before teased him a bit. “Do your parents know your reading that stuff?”
My son said, “It’s just a comic book.”
The kid replied, “But do your parents know you looking at such things.”
Then one of the boys who knew me told the kid that I stood right there. The cheeky boy looked so embarrassed. In retrospect I wish I would have told the kid that this was required reading in my house. Oh well. I’m always witty an hour too late.
Then they had the costume contest. And there was some excellent costuming to be seen. One fellow wore a covered hood with his black cloaks, death seekers(?), a centaur, and all sorts of students. The crowd was so thick I had no chance to see who won and there was a prize for male and female participants. No clue what they received. The store had hundreds of people in it by this time.
Then they queued up people with silver wrist bands. The time is 11:30. At 11:45 they pulled raffle tickets. The first raffle ticket received the honor to buy the first book. What? Why not give them the first book at midnight. Then a second ticket was drawn and the winner received an artist’s autographed poster of the book’s cover.
Then they starting putting some more people in line. Forgot the color. All I knew is that I am blue and I wanted to know when I queue. Then midnight came and it felt like New Years as the people in the store counted down the seconds to midnight. No firecrackers or poppers, but a nice applause and cheers filled the air. Finally, people can spend there money. Not that they were not spending money already. Honestly, kids were buying all kinds of Harry Potter knick knacks to complete there costumes all night long.
Around 12:15 they called blue and I queued up in a line that did not move for the longest time. I established my place in line back in the music section of the store. You cannot get much further to the registers than that. I though I ordered the book really early. Not early enough I guess. There is some demand for this title. Actually, I am lucky. They had seven colors of wrist bands and I mine was in the third tier.
Finally, the line started to move and we trickled across the store towards the children section. Turning at the history books and then winding across the registers and back. At one o’clock they charged my credit card $24 for my copy and gave me a poster (unautographed) and necklace that holds a glow stick.
I went to the comics section and retrieved my kids. Then I read the last line of the book. I just had to satisfy my curiosity and did. Anyone else curious?
