WTF??? Kid Rock was given a deputy badge in my home town. I don't get it.

I'm not all that concerned with Fay. It's just going to be a glancing blow if anything. I'll have to go to work Tuesday as if nothing were going on & the gas and food stuffs purchased tonight will be sitting there for the next time or the zombie apocalypse, whichever comes first. I'll report back tomorrow when we know more. If it's looking bad by lunch time, I'll be sure to fill up the car. (not being concerned doesn't mean one shouldn't be prepared!!!)

Oi Vey. It's just past 9:30 & I want nothing more than to go lay down in bed. I have to finish one thing up before I can.

Very cool link! http://aqua.livejournal.ru/

The Dark Knight = Awesome, Lost Boys: The Tribe = major suckage. Glad I didn't actually spend money on the latter.

We went to see The Dark Knight with some friends in Ybor. I really really really enjoyed it. I still haven't seen Batman Begins, I'm about to do that in a few minutes. I can't wait until the next one comes out.

I decided to do a Lost Boys marathon. I played the original followed by the sequel. Just for shits and giggles mostly. What is funny is that they probably didn't have to pay the "writers" very much since they recycled quite a bit of dialog from the original. I'm sure the only reason this was even made is because of the TV show "The Two Coreys" & the 20th anniversary of the original. I'll send it back to NetFlix and pretend it doesn't exist. I'd advise others not waste their time.

Also, I make a kick ass chicken Marsala. I really need to try more stuff like this; Greg even enjoyed it. I figured out how to kinda make J. Alexanders Steak Maui, so it's just a matter of finding stuff that I like & that Greg will eat then making it. I love cooking, I just wish that Greg's palat would accept more than it does. The one area I probably should go take a class on is fish. I've tried it a few times, and if I'm not frying it, I seem to mess it up.

Break over, time for Batman Begins! Toodles!

Heart rocks, & Nancy Wilson is my rock'n'roll hero. She is the definition of fierce!

F So, I figured I would make like the locals & listen to my ipod on the Metro. Only, I couldn't NOT jam to my tunes. Ah well, I tried.

Oh HAIL!! Tis falling outside. We have a hum-dinger of a storm right now. It's been a few days, so I guess we're due. I made videos of it, I'll load them later. The lights have flickered once already. Hope we don't have a repeat of last week!

f Testing text message posting. Let me know if it works!

Ah, Picasa. Thank you for allowing me to resize all my photographs at once in less than ten minutes. Otherwise, I would have had to sit here for hours using Photoshop and do each manually because I still don't know how to do macros... something I should probably learn at some point...

Also, Ripley made me giggle tonight. I took apart the cat's drinking fountain (they are SPOILED) because it was TIME to give it a good cleaning. After I was done I dried it and set it back in it's spot, but hadn't filled it yet as I still had to clean out the reservoir. Ripley walks up to it and sticks her paw in (this is how she drinks) then proceeds to STARE at it like she's waiting for the water to magically start pouring out of the fountain part. She even sat down in front of it and stared at it. I should note that when she's confused, she tilts her head to one side. She didn't stop staring until I started giggling. That's when she walked away with a slightly perturbed look on her face. Shortly after that I filled it with fresh filtered water and even added some ice cubes for her. She's gleefully tapped her foot into the water and licked it repeatedly for a few moments. Yeah, I know she drinks weird, what can I say... That's her in the icon by the way.

Thank God the fate of the free world does not rest upon my skills at Call of Duty 4. We'd be in a heap of trouble. There are just too many controls and I am not coordinated enough to do them all. Now, I'm damn good at the Lego series. I'd take on the fate of a five spot any day over that!! ;)

The more I learn about food, specifically world cooking, the more I realize that there is a HUGE Spanish influence on what my family makes. This makes sense since, while we're mostly French, my home town actually has a Spanish cultural origin.

I still don't know why my grandfather moved from the city to St. Bernard before it was called St. Bernard. Time to remind my brother about this, he was supposed to shoot me an e-mail explaining all of this.

Holey crikey. I've had this journal for SEVEN years now.

*blink*

Dude, where the hell did all that time GO???

OMG, BRILLIANT!!!

NIN - Closer featuring Star Trek footage



Just too flipping awesome.

That was fun (NOT!) No electricity for a lil over 5 hours. Luckily we have a generator and was able to connect the fridge so we've lost nothing. Can't say the same for any of my neighbors. The phone message said that a major line was down. Since there are the huge lines that go from the power plant to the rest of everywhere not far from the entrance to the subdivision, I suspect that was the problem. There was a huge storm here just before power went out. Rain was coming down sideways and in torrents. There was thunder and lightening. I heard what sounded like 3 separate transformers blowing.

Of course you won't hear about this on the news since this is the "South Shore" (Gibsonton to be exact) it doesn't matter according to the local news.

So, fifteen years ago today Greg and I went out together for the first time. We'd met a couple of months earlier when I took on a second job to build up some cash for my move from Louisiana to Texas for school, but didn't get together until this day.

What happened was that we both ended up at the local 4th of July fireworks display hoping to run into each other. At the end of the display I walked over to my sister's car to wait for her, but continued to scan the crowds looking for Greg. When I spotted him, I yelled his name until he heard me and came over. I gave him my number again for the 2nd or 3rd time and we both went to our separate homes. He called later and we talked for a few hours. Then he invited me out to some beignets at Cafe Du Monde. The rest is, as they say, history.

There's actually more to this story, but that is the gist of it. He still makes me laugh, so I think I'll keep him. :)

Yeah, think I need a day of no internet. I think tomorrow shall be that day & for shits and giggles, I'll pretend tomorrow starts now.

See you on the flip side.

An official announcement is expected early this week, but multiple sources have confirmed with TrekMovie that the decision to close The Experience has been made. Negotiations between CBS, Paramount, Cedar Fair (owners of the Experience) and the Las Vegas Hilton went on longer than originally expected.

There was hope that the new Star Trek movie coming in 2009 would help boost attendance, which has been in decline, but not all the parties could come to an agreement. Apparently the Hilton Hotel was the biggest holdout, convinced more money could be made using the space for other purposes.

Employees at The Experience are being informed today of the decision. A press release may be issued as early as Monday morning. The final date is likely to be in the first week of September, after the Labor Day weekend holiday.

What sucks is that I went there to see this when we were in Vegas and couldn't actually see it because it opened too late & we had a wedding to attend. Now I may never get to see it. Crap.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
( List )

Set your DVR/VCR's to record Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live will pay tribute to George Carlin this Saturday by airing their first show in 1975.

I'm SO there.

Where does one go to get cheap plane tickets these days?

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

My all time favorite comedian has died. George Carlin has died from heart failure. The man who made famous the "seven words you can never say on television" passed away at 5:55 p.m. Sunday at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica, his longtime publicist said. He was 71.

RIP dude.

NSFW

I seriously think it's time to put on a full investigation of ever single penny that the Army Corps of Engineers have spent. Everything they've built, and every plan they've made needs to be gone over with a fine toothed comb. This is ridiculous. Haven't people suffered enough?? The COE has failed on a massive scale MULTIPLE times now. In the real, non-government world, they would have been fired 3 years ago come August.

FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME AMERICA. "I SEEN THIS WHATEVER BLAH BLAH BLAH." IS NOT PROPER FUCKING ENGLISH AND ANNOYS THE EVER LIVING FUCK OUT OF ME.

Just like those fucks who say "supposably" instead of "supposedly." The word has a fucking D, not a B.

I know, I'm a hypocrite. I say "axe" instead of "ask." My "defense" is that it's because of an accent, not because I don't know that I'm doing it wrong. I just have a strong Yat accent and certain words just come out all bastardized. When I think about what I say, they come out completely correct. Yup, that's my story and I'm stickingto it.

Dude, my cats are so happy that they don't even feel the need to put all their paws on the bed when they sleep:

Today has not been a good day. Hopefully tomorrow is better.

Oh wow, I've been offered a check for 500K from Mr. Ban Ki-Moon. Seems the United Nations are trying to make up for all the Nigerian scamming by paying off those who've been scammed.

Obviously I know this is yet another scam, but the question is, should I e-mail them and fuck with them or just put it into the spam filter?

Oh my, Imako cosmetic teeth. http://www.imako.net. Just go.

Also, what is it with celebrities wearing belted mooomos during pregnancy of late? I saw pictures of Gwen Stephanie in some black dress with billowy sleeves and all I could think was MOOMOO! She had a belt between her boobs and belly, but it still reeked of MOOMOO! STOP WEARING MOOMOOS WITH BELTS AS MATERNITY CLOTHES!

Heh, red round tomatoes are flavorless, so their loss is no big deal except to farmers. You want good flavor, seek out ugly tomatoes. Bonus is that there's no pesky salmonella included! :D

"How about you climb down off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it." - Christopher Titus

Ingredients:
1 lb Ground beef (ground turkey or chicken could also be used)

1 packet of taco seasoning
1 16 oz jar of salsa (as spicy as you can handle! For less spice, use a can of diced tomatoes)
4 cups shredded cheese
10 corn tortillas
Sour cream

Directions:

Brown ground beef and drain, follow instructions on taco seasoning packet. Add salsa to meat mixture and mix until liquid thickens. Fit a row of tortillas into an 8x8 square baking pan (will require cutting). Place a layer of meat mixture on top of the tortillas followed by a layer of cheese. Continue in this pattern until you run out of meat sauce or reach the top of the pan with a cheese layer. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour. Allow to sit out for 15-20 minutes to set before cutting into squares.

Serve squares with a dollop of sour cream and a nice side salad or other veggies.

( Pictures with instructions under here )

Reading a community where some one asked a question about parental rights; specifically, about giving men the right to sign off paternal rights. Most people seem to be of the school that, no man should ever be "allowed" to choose to not have anything, financially or otherwise, to do with a child he fathered. Personally, I don't think that's right. If a woman can choose to abort, adopt out, or keep a child, why can't similar choices be made by a man? Most people in a relationship won't really run into this sort of thing, but say it's a child that's created out of a one night stand and a condom was used but failed in some way. Woman finds out she's pregnant and decides she's not going to terminate the pregnancy and keep the child upon birth. I think that the man should be given the option of whether he'll be a part of the child's life, including financially, at that same point. At least that's my opinion.

I think that the rules change completely if there is a relationship of any sort between the two. The reason is that, in a relationship, this should be discussed at some point. Preferably before the relationship gets sexual. That conversation is a sort of contractual obligation agreed upon by both parties should sex lead to a child. If the guy you are seeing doesn't agree with your feelings, you should probably stop seeing him, or sit back and decide if he's worth altering your ideals for.

While thinking about this, I can't help but think of an episode of Sex and the City. Miranda, the highly analytical attorney, has sex with her ex Steve because he's feeling bad about having lost a testicle to cancer. It was a one night stand. She ended up pregnant. At first she was going to get an abortion, but since she was already past 35 and had a "lazy" ovary, she thought that it might be her only chance to have a child. After making her decision she told Steve, but also let him know that he was not obligated to do anything at all emotionally or financially. She was telling him because she felt he had a right to know that he would have a child in the world and to give him the option (note that word) of being involved. I personally think that this is the absolute correct way to deal with such a situation. It's what I'd like to think I'd do in that situation. Granted, it was helpful that she was a partner in her law firm and not hurting for money, but money shouldn't be the only reason to tell a man he's going to be a father.

I guess it just kind of annoys me that women get the right to choose, but men are stuck with whatever decision we ultimately make. I think that if men were given the right to choose as well as the woman, there might be less unwanted pregnancies. Maybe people would start thinking about consequences of their actions instead of just going for what feels right at that moment. That or I'm just overly analytical myself. I am told that I live in my head way too much.

Dinner tonight, Mexican Lasagna. I'll take pics and post a recipe later if anyone is interested. It's good shit.

McCain better NOT fucking take away Bobby Jindal from Louisiana. Jindal has stated that he doesn't want the VP position, but McCain might make an offer he can't refuse.

*sigh*

Jindal is supposed to make Louisiana better so I can move home.

Are monkeys evolving or are we just under-estimating them? Another theory could be that we're de-evolving. Anyway, another monkey breakout (ok, orangutans are actually apes, but the patas were monkeys). The one thing common in both recent escapes is that the human designed enclosures were both easily breached by these monkeys. They outsmarted us. This kinda makes me happy, I LOVE monkeys...

Two orangutans are safely back in their cages after escaping from enclosures at two different zoos across the country.

At Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, part of a new exhibit is closed after a 10-year-old female orangutan escaped by climbing the exhibits windows. Caretakers had to coax it into a back area using apples, carrots and vanilla ice cream for about an hour.

Meanwhile, 3,000 visitors at the Los Angeles Zoo were forced to head for the exit when a 29-year-old orangutan named Bruno punched a hole through mesh that surrounds his habitat.

Authorities say he was free for about 20 minutes until a handler saw him in a holding area behind the cage. Keepers quickly approached the orangutan and sedated him.

Bruno never made it into the zoo's public area and zoo officials say "he was never aggressive."



Busch Gardens blames design flaw for orangutan escape

Busch Gardens is blaming a design flaw for a 10-year-old orangutan named Luna Bella's ability to get out of her enclosure Saturday night at the new Jun gala exhibit.

Officials with the Tampa theme park are creating plans to modify the building to seal off the escape route in the state-of-the-art habitat. That section of Jungala remained closed today and the parks' six orangutans remained secured in their backstage home.

In case you missed it, here's a brand new Journey song with the new guy (not official video, but good sound):

On my way up the walkway after doing some light shopping I heard this strange noise in our front yard. I looked over and spotted a bunny! This is one that Greg has spotted several times out and about, but this was the first time I had seen it. I ran inside to grab my camera so that I could snap a few pictures of it. I also took one of each of the cats. All below the cut.( Read more... )

I just posted this in response to a message in an Alton Brown community asking for additional mac'n'cheese recipes and figured maybe some one here would want it too. I've tried substituting other styles of macaroni and pasta for the stuff from New Orleans, but there is no substitution, though you can get by on elbow. The beauty of this recipe is the simplicity. You taste the pasta & the cheese. Some of my family members add butter, but I find that it really doesn't add flavor and makes it very greasy; not Good Eats. The egg and milk help make it richer without making it heavy. Give it ago and let me know what you think. I don't have measurements for the mild and salt because I've never measured them. You just kinda splash a bit of mild to help the eggs be fluffy.

New Orleans style baked mac'n'cheese requires the procurement of a specific pasta to get it just right, but it's totally worth the trouble because it's the BEST baked mac'n'cheese you will ever have.

1 pkg Luxury brand No. 7 Long Macaroni (Maccaroncelli)
4 cups grated cheese (I use cheddar jack or the pre-shredded Kraft Classic melt, but plain Cheddar is great too)
2 eggs
milk
salt

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender. Whisk the two eggs, milk, and a pinch of salt in a bowl large enough for the pasta & cheese. Drain macaroni well and add to egg mixture (if the macaroni is still hot, add a few strands at a time until the temp of the egg mixture is such that the hot macaroni won't start cooking it.) Once egg mixture seems to have coated the macaroni, mix in three cups of the cheese. Pour everything into a 9x11x4 baking dish sprayed with PAM. Put remaining cheese on top and place in a pre-heated 350 degree oven until cheese on top has touches of golden brown here and there. Take out and allow to cool for 20-30 minutes unless you really really want to burn the ever loving crap out of your mouth.

Pic of the mac that makes this perfection:

Also, in case anyone thinks the new singer for Journey can't handle the job, check him out performing WITH Journey in Chili. I'll be going to their concert in Tampa and I can't WAIT. I kinda want to get a lil Filipino flag to wave as he sings. Is that wrong of me?? July 30 - Tampa, FL - Ford Amphitheater with Heart and Cheap Trick. I CANNOT WAIT!!!!!

New Pic( Read more... )

Ok, forget twitter. I don't have the time or energy for this crap. And it is utter crap. Delete, delete, delete.

Um, somehow, I registered my phone with the wrong twitter account. How in the bloody hell does THAT happen??? It's updating some random account.

I went and got me one of them "Twitter" things. It doesn't work with my phone yet, but I think I figured out how to get it to post here every night.

Still don't understand Facebook, doubt I'll log into that one ever again.

Yeah, I have another stupid MySpace page because friends and relatives (RELATIVES!) bugged me about it. So, if you want to add me, shoot me a comment with your page and I'll add you since mine is set to private.

That is all.

If I don't reply to your posts on alt.gothic and de-friended you on LJ, what the FUCK makes you think I want to add you to my list of friends on Myspace??? I was trying to be nice about it, but you need to learn. Request denied...

Yeah, this would be yet another reason I want to get the hell out of here. This weirdo met me once almost 10 years ago and thinks we're friends. You creep me out, sorry, not friends.

Finally pulled out the photo printer so that I could print some photos. Imagine that. A friend of mine gave Greg and I an awesome photo album for our 10th anniversary. Now I'm trying to find old pictures of us to put in. She had included some, but there are a lot of empty pages. I don't think I'm supposed to fill the entire thing RIGHT NOW, but I'd like to have stuff from throughout our relationship. This will require digging up film photographs since we pre-date the digital era.

I other news, I discovered exactly how to use the "liquefy" thingie on Photoshop. Beware of what may come of this. Example #1:

It's been a very odd news day here in central Florida. First, a woman was awoken in the night by strange sounds coming from her kitchen. Upon investigation, she discovered an 8 foot alligator! It had pushed through a screen on her lanai and walked into an open sliding glass door! On the 911 call she was asked if she was sure it was an alligator and not a large iguana. I don't think one could confuse an iguana with an 8 foot alligator. Then, the best story IMO, 12 monkeys escaped from a wildlife refuge. They swam across a 60 foot moat and then jumped two 8 foot fences into a large ranch. They've been spotted, but the funny part is the news article on TBO.com. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

The monkeys arrived on Thursday. They escaped on Saturday. - Some one should give these guys some tools, see if they have higher learning skills.

Every single one of them.

Males, females, young and old. Together. - this just strikes me as funny. These two lines were separated as you see them for emphasis.

On Monday morning, someone spotted monkeys matching the description of the escapees about a mile from the preserve... - Um, so there are a lot of different monkeys running around Polk county?? Was the writer afraid of offending other innocent monkeys that aren't the escapee's???

They are unarmed and not considered dangerous and carry no diseases. - Ok, how would they be armed?? I think they took some one who normally writes about crimes to write up this story (and I have now found a couple of inaccuracies and a typo)

This story made everyone in the office crack up. I hope they find them all alive and well, though the bad news is that they've broken up into three separate groups now.

Um, my internets aren't working properly. My mail client thinks I'm inputting an incorrect user and/or password. It worked fine just a couple of hours ago and I haven't changed anything about the automated login. So, I decided to try out the web page and THAT tells me I have a wrong user name and/or password. WTF??? ALSO, sent a test message from my g-mail account to my account and it claims that the account doesn't exist!

Ok, called and there are widespread problems with e-mail. Joy. I wish we just had the server here in the house, it's not like we do a grand volume of e-mail. I used to love having the server right here at home. *sigh* Doesn't explain why certain web pages just aren't loading properly while some are perfectly fine.

Holy shit. I did NOT know that one of McCain's sons has served in Iraq as a Marine. McCain isn't using his son to gain support. He and his wife refused to be interviewed for the article and had even asked that it not be written. Wow. I really like McCain as a person, he's some one who doesn't seem to play the game the way everyone else does when it comes to politics, but some of his policies are just not what I want to see. But I do have a little bit more respect for him as a person because he actually HAD a son in the military serving in Iraq specifically while talking about not sending troops home right away.

I think one of the reasons I really feel disconnected from my own generation is because I don't have the same cultural references as others in my age group. It was as if I grew up in a time warp. Having older parents and older siblings can do that sometimes I guess. While others were going to the movies seeing the latest stuff, I was home watching old movies. When it came to TV, it was pretty much the same. Even musically speaking. I have a love of old country music (pre-1970's) and big band stuff. That came directly from my parents. I also feel disconnected from older generations because of my tech prowess for some one of my age. In certain circles of my on-line friendships I know I'm not nearly as tech savvy as some, but I'm well above average among the masses.

I also have a love/hate thing with jewelry. I love looking at it and owning it, but hate to wear it. It irritates me when I'm wearing it. I constantly fidget anything I have on when I'm wearing it except for the studs in my ears. This is the reason I don't have an engagement or a wedding ring; I hate wearing rings the most! I told Greg to not waste his cash, though I do feel bad about it, he'd love for me to actually have these things, I just can't stand wearing rings more than anything! Even tiny bands just annoy me and make the skin between my fingers feel a lil raw and like the part under the ring isn't getting air. I don't think it's a reaction to the metals because there's no redness or visible irritation, but more because I sit there and fondle them when their on. I keep hearing that you get used to it, but I find that rather difficult to believe. How do you get used to something making your skin feel like it's being suffocated??

Lastly, I'm not understanding why people are having so many problems with Vista. Yeah, there are things I didn't like about it such as the pop-ups asking if I really wanted to do something every time I clicked things and the layout is a lil different. But I changed the settings and everything is fine. No more annoying pop-ups and it I have it on classic for the start up menu so that looks like Win2K, not even XP. The only software issue has been the fact that I can't load FrontPage, but I've worked around that. I've had this since August and I'm just not running into any problems. Hardware all works fine, software all works fine; what is everyone's beef exactly? Is there something I'm just missing? Or is it that I know enough about computers (Windows specifically) to figure out how to make it do what I want? I kept my old XP computer in case there were things that I needed to do on it that I couldn't on this one, but that one hasn't even been turned on in over a month, and I hadn't used it for a few months before that (kept it running even though it wasn't in use, after turning it off for a trip, I just haven't turned it back on.)

I know, evil Microsoft, blah blah blah. No more evil than Apple, IMO. Actually, after my experiences so far with Apple, I doubt another piece of equipment manufactured by them will be owned by anyone in this house. Love/hate with the iPod situation. Love having my most treasured music with me all the time, hate the fact that the stupid thing randomly locks up and has already lost a lot of battery life. Next portable music device will be something by Creative or a Zune. Greg has a Zune and has yet to have ANY of the problems we've had with the multiple iPods that have passed through this house. Each with it's own promise to be better than the last. Maybe they need to spend more time fixing the problems that exist before trying to make something sleeker and sexier? Plus, being that I'm kinda tech support at work now, and I have one co-worker who has Mac at home, and she has the MOST trouble doing simple tasks on her computer because it's "so different" leaves me with the impression that it just does too much for you. I like having control of my system and being able to tell it what I want it to do. I know that people are going to say that Linux would probably be more of what I'm looking for, but the fact is that I use this PC for a mix of things and the majority of the things wouldn't work on Linux and I really don't want a dual boot system.

So anyway, random thoughts.

Woah, sonic boom from the shuttle just caused me, Greg, and our cat Fred to jump out of our skin. That was the first time I've heard that in all the years we've lived here. I just thought it was some one trying to break into the back door; Greg thought it was someone hitting the house (didn't mention with what or how) Poor Fred had it worst, he was outside when it happened. I noticed that his hair was raised and his eyes were practically bugging out as he hightailed it inside. He won't be wanting to go out back for a few days because of this...

How exciting for a Wed. night!! :D