Weekend Update and Epiphany
Epiphany
I had one of those shaft of sunlight strikes the brain moments on Saturday morning as I drove to San Diego to pick up a box of cigars. More about the cigars later on.
I realized that I had been talking about how much Doug and I like shorty shorts but it came to me that many of you may not know what shorty shorts look like. Being the conscientious writer that I am, I decided to include a visual explanation of what shorty shorts are.
I also figured from the visual explanation that you would understand our fondness for the shorty shorts. The photos were taken at the 2006 Frankfurt Auto Show. The model is standing next to a Lancia, an Italian sports car that is rarely seen or sold in America.
This is an excellent example of extreme shorty shorts; but, you get the general idea.
Visitors, Foreign and Domestic
This past week was an excellent one for foreign visitors. Frankly, I do believe that some wandered into Balancing Checkbooks and discovered they were lost in the Blog Ether. We had two visitors from the United Kingdom and one each from the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and Lesotho.
Lesotho is a small tribal country in Southern Africa. It is so small that Site Meter.com does not have a national flag for display in tracking where visitors come from.
The overall visitor count is doing very well. When I checked on Saturday afternoon, there had been about 225 individual visits to the site so far this month.
One domestic visitor [United States or Canada] on Saturday logged in and read over twelve pages. I think it is safe to assume that visitor was not lost at all. He or she actually might have found the blog interesting in some manner.
Skeet on Mischa and Lunch
Doug and I had lunch on Saturday at the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster. One of the questions that I had for him was what was going to become of the Skeet on Mischa blog now that she has been killed off in The O.C. as the television season ended.
Doug said he was going to continue the blog since Mischa Barton will still be around and acting. He would always have something to write about with her. I was glad because I know there are a large number of the Skeet Shooters who also visit this blog.
Lunch was epic as usual. We both had the Mega Combos with chili cheese fries and a 44 ounce / 1.3 liters soft drink. You really need the drink with all of the spices in the chili and from the onions.
This was not necessarily the best meal in the world for someone who is taking a diuretic medication. But, the spicy foods are good for increasing metabolism and weight loss.
Armed Forces Day
Saturday was Armed Forces Day in the United States. It is not a major celebration or national holiday for us. We do honor our active duty, reserve duty. and retired service members.
The next city over from Redondo Beach has a big Armed Forces Day parade every year. I am told that it is one of the largest parades in the country. I marched in it once when I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. We were lucky that the horse units in the parade followed us so we did not have to watch where we marched along.
The parade always features military aircraft flyovers. This makes it difficult to study in the afternoon. The aircraft are flying low so the viewers along the parade route can see them. My house is only a half mile / one kilometer south of the parade route street so the noise tends to increase as the pilots increase the throttles to climb up from their low levels. Jet aircraft in general are noisy and military jets are the noisiest aircraft.
But, I don’t mind the noise because it is the sound of freedom.
Cuban Cigar Factory
I arrived at the Cuban Cigar Factory just as it was opening.
As the first customer, I was in and out in less than five minutes. It is not had to say to the helpful clerk that I needed a replacement box of cigars. She found quickly one in the spacious walk-in humidor and opened it just to make sure it was a full box. It was full. I was busy taking photos of the store.
The cigars are hand rolled on site and are not from Cuba. The men who do the rolling may be legal Cuban immigrants since the store is just around the corner from the local Immigration and Naturalization Service.
I have been going to the store for cigars for ten year or so and I have always been satisfied with the quality of the cigars. The Cuban Cigar Company will mail the cigars to you if you order by phone with a credit card. The phone number in the United States is [619] 238-2496 and the street address is 551 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, California 92101.
I have been smoking a Cuban Round Largo cigar with a natural tan wrapper. It is about
6 ½ inches long and about ¾ of inch in diameter or 16.5 centimeters long and just under 2 centimeters in diameter. I happen to like a long cigar because I like to enjoy myself when I light up and read on the balcony.
Buying in bulk, a box of 25 cigars, is a money saving venture. Individually, the cigars are $7.00 each and only $3.75 each when purchased in a box. I “saved” $77.00 today.
I know that I spent more on gasoline to drive to San Diego and back. I know that I could have picked up the phone and ordered a box and it would have arrived in three or four days. And, I also know that I probably could have found a less expensive cigar locally as well.
So, why do I do this?
I think the simple answer is because I can and I deserve a few minor pleasures in life every now and then.
I also wanted to get out of the house for a while. I spent all of last weekend inside writing. And, I normally smoke a cigar on the drive home. I didn’t do that today because I figured we would end up in my car when we went to Tommy’s. Doug does not care for cigar smoke; neither does his sister or mother.
One last point, I did not receive any compensation or gratuity for my cigar testimonial.
Cuban Cigar Company Cigar Smoking and Reading
I did smoke a cigar when I got home Saturday afternoon. It was the free one for returning the empty box.
It was warm and sunny out on the balcony. I was reading the last of the three paperback books that the Princess gave me for my birthday. It is light fiction so it reads fast. I think I finished about 80 or 90 pages in the hour and forty minutes I was out on the balcony.
I think I needed the cigar to counteract the impact of the Original Tommy’s Mega Chili Cheeseburger Combination on my mouth. Although, one might argue that by smoking a cigar, I made things worse and that my taste buds were now in a nuclear taste wasteland sort of state.
Nice Guy Chuck
I played Nice Guy Chuck today at the Cuban Cigar Company.
I recycle the empty wooden cigar boxes. I have no use for a cigar box once it is empty; the kids are well past the age of storing treasures and crayons or markers in cigar boxes. Maybe some day the grandchildren may need treasure storage boxes but that is a long time to come for me.
Oh yes, the Cuban Cigar Company gives you a free cigar for each box you bring back to them.
Being nice has its rewards doesn’t it?
Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when it took longer to download a program or program update then it did to install the program.
My ICQ number is only seven digits long.
More Nice Guy Chuck
Did I ever mention that I seem to be a magnet for foreign students who want to practice their English language skills with a native speaker? If I did not mention, now you know that I do this sort of thing.
Nice Guy Chuck across the globe as it were.
One of my Chinese students, actually former student and now successful woman after graduation, asked me to explain a question she found in a sentence. It took Ling [that’s her name] and me a day and a half to discover why she could not understand the question. It was written as a statement and then it was poorly worded for someone who was trying to learn or practice.
This was a very frustrating experience for both of us.
Ling went to bed happy knowing that the difficulty was not her fault. It is nice to be helpful to others.
This is an early blog posting for today. I feel like I had a great weekend. I hope you did as well.
Be welll and stay happy.
I had one of those shaft of sunlight strikes the brain moments on Saturday morning as I drove to San Diego to pick up a box of cigars. More about the cigars later on.
I realized that I had been talking about how much Doug and I like shorty shorts but it came to me that many of you may not know what shorty shorts look like. Being the conscientious writer that I am, I decided to include a visual explanation of what shorty shorts are.
I also figured from the visual explanation that you would understand our fondness for the shorty shorts. The photos were taken at the 2006 Frankfurt Auto Show. The model is standing next to a Lancia, an Italian sports car that is rarely seen or sold in America.
This is an excellent example of extreme shorty shorts; but, you get the general idea.
Visitors, Foreign and Domestic
This past week was an excellent one for foreign visitors. Frankly, I do believe that some wandered into Balancing Checkbooks and discovered they were lost in the Blog Ether. We had two visitors from the United Kingdom and one each from the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and Lesotho.
Lesotho is a small tribal country in Southern Africa. It is so small that Site Meter.com does not have a national flag for display in tracking where visitors come from.
The overall visitor count is doing very well. When I checked on Saturday afternoon, there had been about 225 individual visits to the site so far this month.
One domestic visitor [United States or Canada] on Saturday logged in and read over twelve pages. I think it is safe to assume that visitor was not lost at all. He or she actually might have found the blog interesting in some manner.
Skeet on Mischa and Lunch
Doug and I had lunch on Saturday at the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster. One of the questions that I had for him was what was going to become of the Skeet on Mischa blog now that she has been killed off in The O.C. as the television season ended.
Doug said he was going to continue the blog since Mischa Barton will still be around and acting. He would always have something to write about with her. I was glad because I know there are a large number of the Skeet Shooters who also visit this blog.
Lunch was epic as usual. We both had the Mega Combos with chili cheese fries and a 44 ounce / 1.3 liters soft drink. You really need the drink with all of the spices in the chili and from the onions.
This was not necessarily the best meal in the world for someone who is taking a diuretic medication. But, the spicy foods are good for increasing metabolism and weight loss.
Armed Forces Day
Saturday was Armed Forces Day in the United States. It is not a major celebration or national holiday for us. We do honor our active duty, reserve duty. and retired service members.
The next city over from Redondo Beach has a big Armed Forces Day parade every year. I am told that it is one of the largest parades in the country. I marched in it once when I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. We were lucky that the horse units in the parade followed us so we did not have to watch where we marched along.
The parade always features military aircraft flyovers. This makes it difficult to study in the afternoon. The aircraft are flying low so the viewers along the parade route can see them. My house is only a half mile / one kilometer south of the parade route street so the noise tends to increase as the pilots increase the throttles to climb up from their low levels. Jet aircraft in general are noisy and military jets are the noisiest aircraft.
But, I don’t mind the noise because it is the sound of freedom.
Cuban Cigar Factory
I arrived at the Cuban Cigar Factory just as it was opening.
As the first customer, I was in and out in less than five minutes. It is not had to say to the helpful clerk that I needed a replacement box of cigars. She found quickly one in the spacious walk-in humidor and opened it just to make sure it was a full box. It was full. I was busy taking photos of the store.
The cigars are hand rolled on site and are not from Cuba. The men who do the rolling may be legal Cuban immigrants since the store is just around the corner from the local Immigration and Naturalization Service.
I have been going to the store for cigars for ten year or so and I have always been satisfied with the quality of the cigars. The Cuban Cigar Company will mail the cigars to you if you order by phone with a credit card. The phone number in the United States is [619] 238-2496 and the street address is 551 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, California 92101.
I have been smoking a Cuban Round Largo cigar with a natural tan wrapper. It is about
6 ½ inches long and about ¾ of inch in diameter or 16.5 centimeters long and just under 2 centimeters in diameter. I happen to like a long cigar because I like to enjoy myself when I light up and read on the balcony.
Buying in bulk, a box of 25 cigars, is a money saving venture. Individually, the cigars are $7.00 each and only $3.75 each when purchased in a box. I “saved” $77.00 today.
I know that I spent more on gasoline to drive to San Diego and back. I know that I could have picked up the phone and ordered a box and it would have arrived in three or four days. And, I also know that I probably could have found a less expensive cigar locally as well.
So, why do I do this?
I think the simple answer is because I can and I deserve a few minor pleasures in life every now and then.
I also wanted to get out of the house for a while. I spent all of last weekend inside writing. And, I normally smoke a cigar on the drive home. I didn’t do that today because I figured we would end up in my car when we went to Tommy’s. Doug does not care for cigar smoke; neither does his sister or mother.
One last point, I did not receive any compensation or gratuity for my cigar testimonial.
Cuban Cigar Company Cigar Smoking and Reading
I did smoke a cigar when I got home Saturday afternoon. It was the free one for returning the empty box.
It was warm and sunny out on the balcony. I was reading the last of the three paperback books that the Princess gave me for my birthday. It is light fiction so it reads fast. I think I finished about 80 or 90 pages in the hour and forty minutes I was out on the balcony.
I think I needed the cigar to counteract the impact of the Original Tommy’s Mega Chili Cheeseburger Combination on my mouth. Although, one might argue that by smoking a cigar, I made things worse and that my taste buds were now in a nuclear taste wasteland sort of state.
Nice Guy Chuck
I played Nice Guy Chuck today at the Cuban Cigar Company.
I recycle the empty wooden cigar boxes. I have no use for a cigar box once it is empty; the kids are well past the age of storing treasures and crayons or markers in cigar boxes. Maybe some day the grandchildren may need treasure storage boxes but that is a long time to come for me.
Oh yes, the Cuban Cigar Company gives you a free cigar for each box you bring back to them.
Being nice has its rewards doesn’t it?
Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when it took longer to download a program or program update then it did to install the program.
My ICQ number is only seven digits long.
More Nice Guy Chuck
Did I ever mention that I seem to be a magnet for foreign students who want to practice their English language skills with a native speaker? If I did not mention, now you know that I do this sort of thing.
Nice Guy Chuck across the globe as it were.
One of my Chinese students, actually former student and now successful woman after graduation, asked me to explain a question she found in a sentence. It took Ling [that’s her name] and me a day and a half to discover why she could not understand the question. It was written as a statement and then it was poorly worded for someone who was trying to learn or practice.
This was a very frustrating experience for both of us.
Ling went to bed happy knowing that the difficulty was not her fault. It is nice to be helpful to others.
This is an early blog posting for today. I feel like I had a great weekend. I hope you did as well.
Be welll and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 2:39 PM
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