As you probably don’t remember, both of
you have never squeezed oatmeal until birds joyfully used their clang
whistles to welcome home the Screaming Sauce Warmers. Oh my, those
were the days, right?? NO!! And additionally, I’m really glad
neither of you were tossing laundry baskets at passing water buffalo.
I mean, you know about that one time when Larry the Giant Goose
Tickler sneezed into his milkshake, right?? Yep, all the raccoons
cheered for days. After they smeared peanut butter on their
eyebrows, their happy faces looked very silly; but soon they were all
telling jokes in French during the Sweet And Sour Moon Dance.
Once I taught a turnip how to blow
bubbles with a rake!! Oh wait… maybe that was a dream. If you eat
too much cat hair during a nap, you often tend to dream strange
things. Very polite tapeworms keep sneaking into my stereo system;
which of course makes my vinyl records sound very squirmy. The
scissors found a way out of the sewer while they were traveling to
Snorktown; so none of us worried that they would miss any meals.
Besides, every time a notebook jingles its paper clips, a tape
dispenser sings very purple mustard sandwiches.
I’m starting to use crayons instead of
my cellphone. This works rather poorly but at least my ears have
nicely colored plywood manure samples. Half of my head has raisins,
the other half has little tiny beetle caves that glow loudly during
the Software Surprise Vertical Lip Licking Contest. All prizes are
sold to the loudest burper. Burps can be flavored for nicer color,
such as Yellow Strawberry Mist or perhaps Animal Cracker Fuzz Fog.
If they are ziffled with a musical tone, burps can relieve Belly
Kaboom; which is severe stomach pressure caused by too much gravy in
a very small jar. A little prevention, however, is a good way to
suggest that everyone leave the room before the onset of Intestinal
Volcano (it’s very bad for the noses).
I’m sorry to say I’m crying right now.
The laughter from building all this nonsense is making my ankles
longer to the point that water is leaking from my eyes. Seriously, I
guess maybe it’s good that my own nonsense makes me giggle very
bigly, but for some reason all this very silly text has caused my
toothbrush to start calling me Crab Neck. And I don’t believe Crabs
even know how to order pizza!!
So my dear Molecules, if you’ve read
this far, I hope you’ve enjoyed at least a smile or two that you can
slide out of your shoes and into a brand new Automatic Bread Roasting
Crinkle Toilet. The Moisture Monsters will certainly be pleased that
nobody remembers their “fling snail juice in the sock drawer”
tricks. We can only hope that none of this information is used to
remove stinky earphone grease from speaker cabinets.
If you live in Michigan, you’ve been
enjoying a remarkably mild winter this week month of the year time
day. I can offer a simple explanation for this constabulary
indigestion: I threw coat hangers at the sun all last week. Yep, I
threatened the sun within an inch of its life. Much yelling and
flinging, yelling and flinging. When you embark upon such an
ambitious goal, it’s very important to be loud and repetitious. As
you can see it paid off. Now we can all be happy that the sun will
listen to me when I shout.
My beautiful girlfriend, Zonikula, was
completely compressed at my perforation. I know this to be true
because she would often fling open the door and shout, “boy, you’re
really something, aren’t you??” during some of my
sun training routines. At this point I would look toward her and
smile, and she would then say a few more words while shaking her
head. Of course I took that to mean, “oh, the poor sun has no idea
what it’s up against with this hubby of mine.”
She is so proud of me.
Disfortunately, however, the weather
cribbled from Holy Moly Cold to What The Hoochie?? Warm. This of
course brought Very Big Rain and Very Fast Snow Melt, which of course
brought water into our basement and many other armpit caverns. Roads
have been washed away, buildings badly damaged, Too Much Warming Too
Darn Fast. I very much apologize to my friends and all those whom
I’ve never met for my meterological coat hanger amplification.
I will do some fancy dancing tomorrow
in an effort to make Nice Weekend Weather.
You see, it’s rather important to me
that we have nice weather this weekend because I plan to get off my
butt and rent a blanex. I have been putting it off way too long; I
need to recover the hammer sand that keeps purging my swamp honkles.
The window of opportunity is very gummy and full of decomposing
marble trays; so if I don’t get this done before the tingly science
filters arrive I’m sure I’ll be living in the boathouse.
I mean seriously, do you ever expect
the train to stop on time? Nobody sees that far. Please, just
resimplify twenty three percent of your milktoast warblers and bark
moonly at the wild. After all, there’s really no certainty that
Calvin the Edible Plastic Spoon Vendor will be able to click in the
parking lot for more than 12 milliseconds.
So my friends, you can obviously confer
that changing the weather is easier than pushing a large oak
toothpick into a deliciously prepared cast iron jelly donut. If you
ever have any doubts as to the antiquity of my animation, please
amplify your pencil sharpener with short, regular spritzes of vinegar
and moose dust.
If none of those calibrations deplete your catatonic sofa concerto, simply stuff your mouth full of corn bread and sing at least 3 verses of “The Rhyming Song.”
It’s that time again… my Beautiful
Girlfriend is away for the weekend. She and several of her friends
have embarked upon a Women’s Retreat; and of course boys are not
invited. That’s OK… I had chores to do. I took advantage of the
sunshine today and brought in some firewood to warm our bones. We do
have natural gas heat but we like the way wood feels much better.
And it’s pretty in our “fireplace” (it’s a furnace that looks
like a fireplace, with glass doors).
Anyway, there I was, earlier in the
week, scheming about what I was gonna do when my Baby left for the
weekend. There was a time when I was young and much more foolish
when I would seize such an opportunity for drinking too much herbal
stuff and smoking too much beer (or something like that…).
Thankfully, those days are long gone; but I still have a propensity
to spoil myself with goodies that I don’t normally eat too much
anymore.
One of the first treats that always
seems to pop into my noggin is pizza. I mean, hey, that stuff should
be classified as a controlled substance. It’s right up there with
fried chicken, potato chips, and butter pecan ice cream. I like all
that
stuff way too much.
Good thing I limit my intake, or I’d soon weigh 793 pounds. I’m no
skinny boy mind you, but I’m not a complete Harold Honk-A-Doodle
either. And yes, Harry Honk-A-Doodle is a name I just made up and
that would be on my shirt if I ate all the goodies in the universe
until my skin exploded.
But once in a while is OK, right? Well I can convince myself of
that. And yes, my Lovely Bride knows full well what I’m up to this
weekend. I toyed with ordering pizza tonight, but I like lots of
sauce. Seems like every time I ask for extra sauce, the opposite
occurs. And here in Michigan pizza is often cut into squares. Don’t
they know you’re supposed to cut it like PIE??!!?? Pizza… pie!!
Hello!!!
The more I mulled it over, the more I kept going back to the same
conclusion: if you want something done just right, sometimes you
gotta do it yourself. Got me a Boboli crust, poured almost the whole
jar of Classico pizza sauce out and spread it on the crust. Cooked
up some Italian sausage; laid some chunks in the sauce. Then on went
the cheese, and on top is onions, mushrooms, black olives, green
pepper and uncured pepperoni (no nasty chemicals). I actually read
the directions on the Boboli crust package: preheated the oven to
450 and popped it in for about 10 minutes. The final product was
magnificent!! Oh, and had to wash it down with a Coke from Mexico…
they use glass bottles and real cane sugar.
Am I naughty or what?? But wait, there’s more… I might
accidentally eat some ice cream later. And you guessed it, butter
pecan. Haagen Dazs no less. A little container. I had to do it you
see, it will nicely complement the last piece of carrot cake that’s
left over from my birthday.
My Beautiful Girlfriend will be home Sunday some time; so that
means I’ll need to chill out on the goodies beforehand. Why? Well
no special reason, I just don’t want to greet her while I’m spacing
out from a food coma. Probably would be a little weird… eyes like
little slits, walking badly, nodding off during conversation,
burping, mumbling unintelligibly… yeah I’ll need to avoid that
scene.
Good thing she’s only on retreat once a year!!
This week’s video has nothing to do with the story… but it’s a hoot.
So there I was, minding my own
business, enjoying life, the universe, and everything (42 for those
in the know) (nudge nudge, wink wink), and oh yeah by the way I’m
fixin’ to enjoy my 65th trip around the Sun; when suddenly
some radio guy says an astonishing FaceTalking thing: this summer
will ring in the 50th anniversary of Woodstock; and I
can’t believe it because, hey, I was 15 that year and I would really
liked to
have gone to that magnificent experience but there was no way in
H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks that was
gonna happen so I listened intently to every piece of music on the
radio that had anything to do with all the concert action and HOLY
MOLY this run-on sentence is OUT OF CONTROL!!
*Whew!!*
This
aging stuff is so crazy!! I consider myself very fortunate… my
health is good; and I can pretty much do everything I was able to do
when I was much younger. The only difference is that sometimes it
hurts or sometimes it takes longer. Apparently I don’t look to worn
out. I was setting up a computer for one of my very new coworkers;
and I mentioned that I had a “big birthday” coming up. She
asked, “oh, are you going to hit 50?” My immediate response was,
“we can be FRIENDS!!”
Not
sure if she was sucking up for some future special computer help or
what… OK probably not; but I took it as a nice compliment.
Saw
my doctor the other day, and we chatted about my upcoming retirement
next year. She urged me to make a plan, because “some people have
a difficulty with too much time on their hands.” Umm… no problem
for this kid!! I have a few million things I want to do, so
hopefully I’ll actually get to do maybe a tenth of what’s been
floating around in my mind for the past several years. I love to
grow food, and I also enjoy writing. I think I’d like to try my hand
at teaching food how to write. Perhaps we could use beet juice for
ink!! That would involve some “bloodletting” from some
“volunteer” beets. Now that I think of it, I’ve never heard
beets volunteer for anything. And thankfully, I’ve never heard beets
cry when they are bleeding.
I’m
often asked, would we be doing any travel? Well we sure hope so.
One of the big things on the agenda, though, is to clean up the mess
in the garage that’s the result of that giant Clutter Bomb exploding
in there. A Clutter Bomb simply has to
be what caused that mess. I mean, I walk around in the garage and I
fall to my knees and scream “where did all this crap come from??”
Then I get up and remember where the hammer is and oh yeah there’s
my drill and HOLY CARP I found that door hinge I buried in the back
of the shelf about 12 years ago!! So OK, the Clutter Bomb exploded
very gradually… over the course of the 37 years we’ve lived here.
There
are, of course, other parts of our little universe that have suffered
Clutter Bomb explosions. I’ll get to those too… just have to chip
away at it. I really do plan
to stop procrastinating. That will happen either tomorrow or perhaps
a couple weeks after that.
I
hope.
Maybe.
In the meantime, I can hardly wait to see what advances lie ahead for the travel scene…
Please enjoy the clam sandwiches currently available at the Old New Dehli Deli. You will find the sam clandwiches right next to the Belly Jellies, in the frinkle sauce department of a Kolibbik store near you.
You may qualify for a package of used cheese. Please do not write to the following address to see if you have entered your name in the North American Bilge Experience (NABE):
Log Turner Contest
24Cx Bugsnot Blvd.
Chiclet, MI 44404
Please call 1-800-555-1212 for the number. Ask for Phlegm.
Be advised that all nickels will be collected by a rodent during the coming drainy season. Do not worry about any plugged drains, for as we all know if a plain gets drugged there are more than enough socks to prevent the chafing. Hey!! What’s that gourd doing with the cat food now??
Now of course you can be happy to know that I have more paper for sale than ever before. Some of it is useful. If you want some, send $23.70 in dickels and nimes to my pet dirt clump over there in the hedgerow. Upon receiving the money, I will send you your 43 tons of compressed paper. Please make sure the car is not in the garage that day.
If any of this makes sense to you, make sure you contact your local Hamper Salesman by July 27, 2019 . There are also community resources on which you can rely, such as the Cribbled Office Of Pie Stashers (COOPS) and the Ceramic Octagon Plucking Society (COPS). Neither of these entities will run to your aid. Therefore, if you understand any of what has been written heretofore, you are basically toast.
Enjoy toast with all your might. Remember, the toast you crave may be on loan.
Happy Bortinkulars to you, and may the sand never fly into your cereal.
My eyes are lamps,
Kebbic G. Fefflewonk
A.K.A. Harvey Ticknoodle
P.S.: Thank you for changing the tire leggings last night. I’m not sure my car would have tolerated another month of “swish – swish KABOOM!!”
I cry, I weep, I gnash my teeth. Some
flame-headed goat poop sniffing slime licker (or maybe lickers) stole
from me.
There I was, minding my own business,
going to Walmart because the local Meijer removed 8 O’Clock coffee
(in the big bags) from their shelves. I really don’t like to go to
Walmart, because they have a history of treating their employees
rather badly. Not sure if that has changed over the years but the
whole premise is indelibly burned into my brain cells and so I would
rather not support them, thank you very much.
So… as I was saying … there I was
minding my own business, with my Beautiful Girlfriend, buying my
coffee at Walmart, and thinking, “yay!! We scored 4 big bags of 8
O’Clock coffee!! Enough for several weeks!! This is most marvelous
indeed!” We happily put the bags of coffee in the pantry and sang
songs of caffeinated joy. Well OK maybe not. But we were glad to
get our stash.
I used a debit card for the purchase,
which I do quite often. I rarely carry cash, you see. This is due
to a strange phenomenon called spontaneous wallet depletion. In
other words, in the “good old days” before debit cards, my cash
seemed to disappear pretty quickly. Not sure if using the debit card
changed that, but at least now I’m able to keep track of where the
money goes a bit more easily. I get online regularly and check to
make sure all is well.
However, this time I didn’t check for
several days; and my checking account shrank by an extra $317 over
the course of about a week. Very shortly after I used my debit card
at Walmart; someone somewhere somehow hacked something and started
using my debit card info at a Walmart in Elk Grove, Illinois; which
is a bit over 200 miles from here. Little nibbles… $35 here,
$35.36 there… carefully staying under $50 which I guess is a
threshold that starts to raise flags.
I was not very happy.
Dunno what it is about Walmart, but a
similar fraud thing happened to me with my credit card after making a
purchase at Walmart.com ! Very cool indeed, right?? I lost the use
of my card for a little over a week after reporting it stolen. At
least I had the debit card. Now I’ve lost the use of a debit card
for 7 to 10 days, but at least I have a credit card. Fortunately,
our credit union took care of all the fraud and even refilled my
checking account with the amount that was stolen. I’ve since learned
of an app called CardValet; which apparently can stop this. Once the
new debit card arrives, I’ll enter it into the app, and when I’m not
using it, I can use CardValet to turn the card off. I guess it works
with credit cards too.
Guess what? For the time being, I’m
carrying cash again. And no, I’m not paranoid about using electronic
payments; but you can bet I’ll be using the CardValet app regularly.
Oh and by the way, regarding the
cyberthieves: not only are they flame-headed goat poop sniffing
slime lickers, but they also pee themselves in public places but just
sit there with a silly grin. I’m sure they also enjoy eating other
people’s boogers; and I would also not be surprised if they smear dog
snot on their eyebrows.
Such a dinosaur I am; and very happy to be that way. I’m something of an oddball regarding technology. Although my job in computer support takes me on lots of journeys with new devices and gadgets; my love for simplicity keeps me grounded in an “antique” world. My job can get rather stressful at times; so in an effort to take care of myself I’ll often seize the opportunity to take some quiet time. Meditation if you will. I keep it simple, I just step away from all the gadgets and reflect on what I’m grateful for; and then ask The Great Committee In The Sky for guidance.
Then of course
there are other times when I’ll turn to technology for a diversion.
Maybe I’ll play a CD… or a record! That’s right
folks, I actually said I listen to records!!! And some youngsters
actually think records are way cool!! Oh God Oh God… So yes I’m
a dinosaur and I’m not afraid to admit it.
So there, nyaa
nyaa na boo boo!!
I’m one of
those weirdos who thinks paying for satellite or cable TV is a waste
of money. There’s lots of stuff still available for free… for
example, we actually use a TV antenna for most of our viewing
pleasure. I say most, because we do have access to the interwebs and
get TV stuff from our Roku. But no cable or dish. Nope.
I also love a
very archaic device called the radio. My TV antenna looks like a
giant fish skeleton on a pole, and not only does it work well for
television, it also does a great job of grabbing lots of FM stations.
Much of my FM listening revolves either around NPR or music. NPR is
great for staying informed, but when I hear all the reports about war
and suffering and cockamamie government shutdown stuff with climate
change mixed in for good measure, I get a really heavy heart. So
when I’d rather hide on the harsh realities of the world I seek out
some good old rock ‘n roll. Unfortunately most commercial radio
stations seem to have their music selections stuck on AC/DC, Bob
Seeger, and Lynard Skynard. WAY too much repetition. WAY too much
repetition. WAY too much… well you get the idea. That’s when I’ll
look for those oddball “community radio” stations.
On the other
hand, you have AM radio. Say what??? Anyone besides me remember AM
radio? May sound like a silly question, but with all this
“subscription addiction” (satellite radio, cable TV, etc.)
lots and lots of people are amazed to “discover” AM radio.
AM is short for “amplitude modulation,” which is the oldest
method of adding audio to a radio signal so it can be broadcast. The
technology dates back to 1906, which is why many radio hobbyists
refer to it as “ancient modulation.” For more info click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_broadcasting
AM radio was
pretty much all we had available for music when I was a kid. So for
me, it’s like an old friend; and I’m very thankful that it
doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. We live in an area
where Chicago stations come in all day long, and I still find myself
clinging to ancient stations with only 3 call letters. WGN (720 on
your AM dial) is one of my favorites… those kids seem to have a
great time being on the radio and they make me laugh. And now, West
Michigan has its very own Public Radio Oldies Station!! Say wha???
YES!! Commercial free oldies, 24/7!! And what’s even more awesome
is they stream it to the whole planet here:
http://www.wgvu.org/realoldies/
Now that it’s
winter outside, I leave for work when it’s dark. And of course,
it’s pretty much getting dark again when I get home. Something
magic happens to the AM radio band after the daylight goes bye bye:
SKIP. Skip is a very old radio term that describes
when radio waves are sent from the earth and into the sky, then
bounce back down again. If you could watch skip happening, it would
look somewhat similar to when a well tossed stone skips across water.
Skip is especially prevalent on the AM band between dusk and dawn.
Sure, the AM radio is plagued by noise and fading, but there are many
high powered stations that provide reliable listening over a very
wide geographical area.
In my
professional opinion, this boils down to just plain fun. So when I’m
driving around in the dark, especially during a long drive, I really
enjoy frolicking about on the AM radio band. For example: I
recently tuned to 540 AM on the way to work and was listening to the
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) out of Regina, Saskatchewan.
A mere 1000 miles away!! Never bothered to check down on that part
of the dial before.
Another time:
on our way down to Florida to celebrate my Father-In-Law’s 85th
birthday, it was getting late outside and we were really
ready to be done driving. Just a few miles from the Florida border,
we heard on one of the local FM stations that the Chicago Bears were
playing against the Philadelphia Eagles, and that they might actually
have a shot at the playoffs. Well normally we don’t really give a
golly gosh darn about football. But the Bears haven’t been in the
Superbowl for a loooonnnnggg time… so we thought we’d try to catch
the game. Tuned around FM… nothing. Then I tried one of my
presets: 780 on my AM dial, and lo and behold, WBBM was coming in
clear as a bell out of Chicago!! So we got to listen to the game,
live from Soldier Field. Cool, huh??
So my friends, I
invite you to give this very old medium a whirl. You just might
accidentally have some fun! There are lots of listings on the
internet for AM radio stations if you care to check out other areas
of the country and / or the world. If you find one you like, you
might also be able to stream it from the webbernet if the snap
crackle and pop starts to bug you. As far as broadcasters, I found
nice listing here: http://www.northpine.com/broadcast/50kwam.html
I leave you with
a very short list of stations that are pretty easy to pick up between
dusk and dawn, especially if you are here in the Midwest:
650
WSM Nashville, Tennessee (Check out the Grand Ole Opry on
Saturday Nights!)
700
WLW Cincinnati, Ohio
720
WGN Chicago, Illinois (Home of the Chicago Cubs! Lots of other
entertaining stuff too.)
740
CFZM
“Zoomer Radio” in Toronto, Canada (Wonderful music variety,
excellent sound quality.)
750
WSB Atlanta, Georgia
760
WJR Detroit, Michigan
770
WABC New York City (This was a big rock ‘n roll station when I
was a kid growing up on Long Island, NY. Mostly talk now… ah
well).
780
WBBM Chicago, Illinois (All news all the time.)(I use this
station for an “alarm clock” when I take a nap at lunch)
830
WCCO Minneapolis, Minnesota
840
WHAS Louisville, Kentucky
880
WCBS New York City (News Radio.)
890
WLS Chicago, Illinois
990
CBW Winnipeg, Manitoba (CBC Radio)
1020
KDKA Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (One of the oldest stations on the
dial.)
As the title of this story may or may
not indicate, our grandsons are visiting this weekend; and my duty of
making up a very silly story is being fulfilled with large buckets of
animal crackers lightly seasoned with crayon shavings and Captain
Kaboom Dust Flavored Saxophone Sauce, rolled into a run-on sentence
that of course invites all the truly masculine garbage cans to
disguise themselves as tiny triangular toaster tables that shimmer in
the darkness of our new Radio Ranch Wiggle Worms.
Yes.
Perhaps none of you have often been
asked, “what do you think the most delicious color of the alphabet
sounds like??” I never have been asked that either, so of course
my very first answer I never supplied was, “Snurch Lip Surprise!!”
After saying that out loud for the 347th time, nobody
will ever again ask me what time the Peanut M&Ms will be flying
in from Antarctica. After all, while Penguin Pete and Silvia Seal
drive their go carts to the laundromat, we all will be learning new
recipes for Shrimp On The Half Shell and maybe even Chopped Cat Food
Surprise.
Mmmm Chopped Half Shrimp Shell Cat
Surprise!! Remember the good old days when we stored that in the
basement for 23 weeks? Oh my, the smell was bigger than a bag of
toast that’s been sleeping in the sewer with all the other fizzy,
candy coated ice cream handle bar polishing brushes. I never
realized just how much shampoo would be wasted on such a gigantic
pile of paper when it explodes out of the sock drawer!! My socks
cried for days after powdered sawdust was added to the salad
dressing. I was finally able to receive their radio lunches in a
less than dignified way… all I had to do was tilt my head back and
watch the moths sharpen their antlers on the ceiling fan.
These days, life is much more gribbly,
and what I mean by that is we all have to put pudding in a friend’s
shoes before they leave on a long trip. This will allow them to
squint while they walk, and each step will be a squishy adventure.
Who would have ever discovered that lawn ornaments could learn to
play hockey with soup ladles? It just proves that we can always use
a nice refreshing cup of shoelace extract to help us make friends
with all those crazy grasshoppers that hang around at Walmart. Why
else would those happy railroad clowns hide their flashlights?
Everybody knows that green toilet paper makes the very best
substitute for parsley flakes when nobody’s looking. Yes, those
removable elbow shields you sold me came in very handy during my last
trial run in the “Slide Until You Stink Competition.”
In closing, I’d very much like to make
an important announcement.
I have a small complaint I’d like to
register at this time. It seems that just a couple weeks ago, I was
listening to The Who singing “My Generation” on the AM radio
thing; and now I’m a few years older and I think it’s been 50 years
or so (I Googled it…54 years!!) since that song was first released
and I can’t figure out where all the time went so quickly and how
could this happen to both me and my Beautiful Girlfriend when we were
just 17 years old when we first met and now we are saying things like
“Medicare” and “Social Security” and this causes me to write
run-on sentences because I mean really, how does this happen to
gentle people likeUS??
How??
One day at a time I guess.
So there we were, minding our own business, driving down to Florida
to celebrate Grampa Hilliard’s 85th birthday, and all of a
sudden an “economic summit” erupted. We took the opportunity to
discuss retirement finances; and because we were in a car that was
set to cruise at 70 mph (OK, maybe a smidge more), it was not really
a good idea for either of us to stand up and walk out of the room
when we came to a challenging part of the discussion. That would
just make ouch and bad road rolling. Even after 45 years of wedded
blisters, money discussions can cause very bad juju if not handled
delicately and with mutual respect. Thankfully, there was no weeping
or gnashing of teeth; and we came to the agreement that neither of us
need to sell our bodies on the streets in exchange for cans of tuna
fish and expired loaves of bread.
Hey kids, this is kinda scary stuff!! In a little over a year, I’ll
be retiring from a good paying job. I’ll go from “Highly Trained
Monkey What Knows Computer Stuff” to “Highly Motivated Penny
Pinching Garden Grower Person.” I’m very grateful I’ve acquired
the skills to keep a good job, and I’m also very grateful that I know
how to grow food, because I have a feeling we’re gonna want some. We
like to eat, you see.
When it comes right down to it, though, my Honey Pie and I are
blessed beyond belief. If things keep going the way they are now,
we’ll be able to retire with no debt; and we may even have a little
extra socked away for emergencies and maybe even some fun stuff. And
yes, I’ll be growing food, and selling it to anyone who comes to
visit us. I’ll be practicing my sales pitch… “Ummm hi!!
Thanks for coming over! Long time no see!! Did you know we now have
a ‘visiting tax?’ Yes!! You pay us money and we give you food items
from the garden. Whaddya mean you don’t like eggplant!!??!!”
Well OK maybe not.
As I mentioned before, we are blessed beyond belief. And the good
thing is, getting old doesn’t mean we can’t keep having fun. We were
fortunate enough to attend a Who concert last year, and those old
farts are still rockin’ out.
In our home, dinosaurs still roam. I’m
not afraid to admit it: we still use a landline. We like the
reliability, and the cool fact that it almost never drops a call.
And yes, we have an answering machine too. When I’m not looking for
a job (which is pretty much all the time), our answering machine
greeting is recreation for my inner child.
For example, if you call, you might
hear something like: “I HAVE PICKLES IN MY NOSTRILS FOR YOUUUUU!!”
This one, of course is sung loudly to the tune of “I have pickles
in my nostrils for you.”
Another might be a rather forceful
announcement like: “This machine is for singing!! Please begin
singing after the tone!!”
And I change the greeting regularly.
Anyway, those who know us will leave a
message. Those who don’t, well we don’t care! For many moons, we
used the answering machine to screen our calls. Seems like
telemarketing calls are becoming more and more numerous; and we just
don’t like being bothered. Rather than get annoyed at the poor
person who calls (they are just trying to earn a living), we just got
to a point where we quit answering until the answering machine kicks
in. If we recognize the caller, we quick pick up and say hi.
We finally got some caller ID
compatible phones a couple years ago. However, when I went to
activate this on our landline, the nice phone company person told me
there would be a charge for it. That was completely unacceptable…
I mean sheesh!! We pay enough for unlimited long distance and all
that. Mind you, I do technology stuff for a living; and I knew full
well that caller ID was already present in the landline
techno-universe. So, I passed.
Enter the 2016 elections. Holy MOLY we
got bombarded with calls!! Since I hadn’t thought much about caller
ID for a few years, I thought I’d call the phone company again and
see what was up. Lo and behold, there was no longer a fee for caller
ID!! So fiddle dee dee, we have caller ID!! And this pleases me!!
Those marketer kids are naughty… they
have software that will fake your area code so it looks like the call
is coming from somewhere nearby. And for some reason, the calls
always get dropped before the answering machine turns on!! That’s
just fine with us.
Every once in awhile though, I get to
feeling a bit playful. I’ll answer the call and be completely silly,
which of course drives the caller a bit nuts.
“Hello Sir, I’m calling to warn you that your Microsoft certificate is about to expire.”
“Oh
my!! What do I do??”
“Well sir, are you near your computer?? And is it turned on?“
“Yes,
yes I am!1” I tell them, but of course I’m not near and it isn’t
on.
“OK Sir, I want you to press the following keys so I may troubleshoot…”
I
don’t give them the chance to finish and I blurt out, “OH NO!! Do
you see my screen?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? I DON’T THINK I LIKE
THIS!!”
**CLICK**
Oh darn, they hung up.
Another
caller fell victim to my silliness recently…
“Hello sir, I’m doing a customer service survey and I’d like to ask you…”
I
interrupt: “Pizza??”
“No no sir, this is a customer service survey. I’m not trying to sell you any food or other…”
“Well
I’m pretty hungry, I’m hoping for some pizza!!”
“Sir!! Is there anyone in your home 18 or older I can speak to??”
“Oh
yes, my cat!! I’ll go get him for you!!”
**CLICK**
Oh darn, another hang up.
Anyway,
we really
like caller ID. Come to find out, there’s a telecommunications
expert who is providing a service to intercept telemarketers before
they even get to your phone!! And they record the call, which can be
very amusing.
