Weekend Preview - November 30th

Weekend Preview
I don’t have to agonize over getting stuck on a jury tomorrow and possibly ruining most of next week.

I got called to report today. The court system has a one day – one trial policy, whichever comes first. There were no calls for a jury today so we were sent home at 2:00PM after a two hour lunch. That was nice; I came home for lunch.

Mostly, jury duty was sitting and waiting.

I was well prepared. Today’s sudoku was rated as Tough. That took some time to complete. I did manage to finish it and that is nice. Then, I started reading my latest book about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. I read about which was more than I thought I would be able to get in this morning.

All in all, today was not too bad.

Time Warner Cable
It’s Day Two without my cable service.

I was talking to my brother and the conversation drifted around to the fact that I don’t have any cable service for a while more. He thought that situation sucked; he couldn’t imagine being without television as part of his life.

I was talking to my friend Sharon this morning. I had time to kill while I waited for the jury service to get organized. She felt sorry for me.

I felt sorry for myself.

As luck would have it today, I got invited to participate in an online survey that evaluated Time Warner Cable. It compared TWC to Verizon.

Anyone care to guess what my marks were for TWC?

That’s right sports and cable television service fans. TWC got all adverse marks. I was disappointed with my answer selections. I had hoped the survey would include a response along the lines of “no way in hell” or “hell will freeze over first.”

I did see part of the daily Korean soap opera that I have been watching for the last few months. I left the television turned off until the program came on so I was able to see maybe 2/3 of the program with come clarity.

El Gringo
Valerie was back at El Gringo from her Thanksgiving weekend.

Her hand wasn’t broken after all. It turned out that she had a bad sprain. Nice. Valerie was much better last night and happier.

I had a Number 2 Combination with two beef soft tacos, rice, and beans. I have noticed that there is a difference in how the food comes out of the kitchen depending on who is cooking. Last night’s tacos were on the not so swell side when the last time I had beef tacos, they were very tasty.

Woman of the Moment
The big problem with the Speed Options model web site feature was the photos weren’t very organized. Some photos, like Oksana in a black bikini were scattered all over the site. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of renumbering thirty two images so now I have to hunt for them when I want to use them together. I think these photos be long together.






I hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll be back on Sunday with the Weekend Update. Of course, there will be a Weekend Bonus Feature for those who want to visit before Sunday.

Be well and stay happy.

Decisions, decisions

Decisions, decisions
I have to make a decision soon about my television service.

Currently, I have cable television from Time Warner Cable. I used to be with Adelphia before they went into bankruptcy and before that it was Century Cable.

The Time Warner service sucks.

In the nearly twenty years of cable service, I only had two service calls from Century and Adelphia. One was when I signed up for the cable service and they brought the decoder box out and installed. The second call was when I converted from an analogue cable signal to a digital cable signal. I think I did the conversion. Since Time Warner took over service, I had made five or six calls for service and have three service appointments to fix problems.

My cable service crapped out last night after I through up my blog posting for the day.

All I got get was visual static; I had ghost images, broken movement, unsynchronized sound when I could get any sound, black and green bars across my screen periodically, and completely or partially black screens. This was not what I had been expecting when the technician left after replacing my cable box.

I spent thirty five minutes on the phone on hold listening to really cheesy promises of how much Time Warner cares about me as a customer. I finally got a live body. She was profoundly apologetic.

Unfortunately, apologies do not fix a cable television problem.

She said the next available appointment was next Tuesday.

I was less than thrilled at the idea of going almost a complete week without television service. I actually amazed myself at how well controlled I was when she told me no service for a week.

I asked what sort of compensation she was going to give me.

She said that she would request a senior technician to come out since the first technician was apparently unable to solve the problem. She also said I would receive one month’s service fee credit on my next bill.

I went to bed early last night and slept well.

This morning when I woke up, I turned the television on and got the Message of Death screen on the television. The Message of Death screen is the notice that a channel will be available in a few moments.

It reminded of old Blue Screen of Death in the Microsoft DOS Operating System. You have to have been around personal computers for a long time to remember that. The closest thing to the Blue Screen today is a 404 Error Message.

Anyway, after thirty five minutes of MoD, I figured that I wasn’t going to doing any viewing today; only six more days until the service technician would be out to fix the problem.

Around lunch time, I turned the television on just to see what would happen.

I got a perfect picture. Everything was coming as it should. No ghosts. No broken images. No black and green bars or black screens. No frozen motion. No unsynchronized sound. It was great; unfortunately for me, there are no programs on television at that time of day that I have any interest in seeing.

I guess the real test will be tonight after I have my dinner at El Gringo. I wonder what will happen when I turn on the television.

Now, I need to decide what to do. Do I stay with Time Warner Cable or do I go with Direct TV and rely on a satellite for my television service?

I know that I can not even think about switching my phone service and my Internet service over to Time Warner. Their reliability is so doubtful that such a decision would clearly be foolhardy on my part.

The problem that I would have with Direct TV is that my unit faces west and is on the ground floor of the building. The satellite would require a cable run down the outside of the building. I know the homeowners association has rules about running cables and such on the building but I know there are others with the small dishes on the roof so it ought to be able to work.

I think the dish would be less expensive in the long run since I would be buying the decoder box. I could have the place wired for two rooms without a lot of cables running all over the house but that would seem like an unnecessary extravagance since I can only be in one place at a time.

The key factor would be if the disk service gave me all of the channels I wanted and the ones I watch regularly or not. No sense buying a service that doesn’t have what you want.

Decisions, decisions, someone has to make a decision soon.

Woman of the Moment
I learned some more about the Woman of the Moment from doing a simple Google search. I was surprised that there were only 4,400 web sites that came up under her name; that seemed on the low side to me.

Oksana Mazurovsky was born in the Ukraine 23 years ago, proving beyond a doubt that she is not Irish. She also reported in a personal biography on one web site, the only one I visited, that she served in the Israeli Army and knows how to handle an “M-16 gun.” She now lives in Seattle. I hope she likes rain.

Any Marine will tell you there is a big difference between a gun and a rifle.

But why quibble over semantics? Most civilians wouldn’t understand why there is such a distinction.




Be well and stay happy.

Waiting for the Cable Guy

Waiting for the Cable Guy
My cable box crapped out [failed] this morning.

I had to wait for the Cable Guy to show up. I figured out the decoder box failed based on the performance or lack thereof. I had lots of visual static and ghosts and no sound. When I told the Cable Guy what my problems were, he said I needed a new box, no charge.

That was nice.

I only had to wait for four hours because I wasn’t an appointment call. I considered that reasonable.

The Cable Guy put in a new box and everything worked just fine when he left.

Tonight, the old problems are back so the actual problem may have been somewhere else. Maybe the cables are bad. The cable tested fine and it had a strong signal. That would be ugly to replace.

I’ll see what happens later on tonight.

Jury Duty
I lucked out on jury duty and got a pass for Tuesday. I called in to see if I have to report tomorrow and I have a pass for Wednesday. This would normally be good but the week is running out and I run the risk of getting put on a jury at the end of the week and have my service carry over into next week.

The Princess
I got an email from the Princess today. She said she wanted to go with Doug and the Boy Friend and me to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers. I didn’t think she would want to do that since she is not much of a beef eater.

The Princess said she wanted to see why Doug and I get so excited about going there. We’ll take her there for sure.

Woman of the Moment
Our new Woman of the Moment is Oksana Mazurovsky. I’m going to go out on a thin limb and guess that Oksana is not Irish. She is tall at 66 inches / 167 centimeters and measures 34C – 23 – 34 or 86C – 58 – 86 centimeters.

All of the photos and measurements came from the July 2005 Speed Options model feature. I suppose there are lots more out there on the Internet if one wanted more images.





Be well and stay happy.

Rainy Monday

Rainy Monday
I know most of you wouldn’t consider what we call rain as being worthy of mention. For those of us who live on the edge of a desert, a little rain is a big deal. I think the total rainfall from the storm was maybe a quarter of an inch / half of a centimeter. The storm came in while I was sleeping and ended in the early morning hours.

We make a big deal about rain. The local television stations were on ‘storm alert’ which is a fancy term for saying we’ve pushed a bunch of junior reporters out into the cold and damp and wind in the pre-dawn hours. Then, they give us images of rain falling from the sky and clouds overhead.

Oh, the humanity of it all!

Anyway, I feel sorry for the poor reporters because they are usually the young attractive ones. They end up bundled up in parkas or is it a burka. Anyway, they aren’t as nice to look at then.

Woman of the Moment
This is the last of Joyce Lex photos. These photos came from the Speed Options model web site. I hope you enjoyed Joyce as the Woman of the Moment.




Jury Duty
Your humble scribe got lucky today and did not have to report to the courthouse. That’s one day down and four to go for me. I will dial in again tonight and see what will happen for tomorrow.

Vivian’s Man of the Moment

Actually, this posting should have gone up in the Weekend Update from yesterday. Vivian sent me the new man’s name but I didn’t get around to pulling up his photo until yesterday. The W-U was long enough so I decided to hold it over until Monday because Mondays are always light days for the blog.

Vivian picked Michael Schoeffling in a sentimental, nostalgic mood.


“I am going to have to revert to my favorite sweet 16 love, “Jake Ryan.” While I'm sure his real counterpart, Michael Schoeffling is a great guy, I prefer the imaginary Jake Ryan who in my mind, didn't grow up to have two kids and make custom furniture in Pennsylvania. I watched “Sixteen Candles’ again on Friday night and it only brought back memories of Where's My Jake Ryan?”

Sound reasoning Vivian.

Doug
I talked to Doug today and we agreed that we should take the Princess’s Boy Friend to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers when he is here in December for the holidays. The Boy Friend is from Atlanta and therefore has never had the true opportunity to enjoy a Tommy’s Mega Combo meal.

I sent an email off to the Princess about the Tommy’s lunch. I wonder what she will say?

Thanksgiving Turkey
I finished off the last of the Thanksgiving turkey today. I was surprised that it had lasted as long as it did. The turkey managed to stay moist and tender until today; maybe it could have lasted longer if I had cooked a larger turkey.

I will be ready for another turkey dinner on Christmas Day when the family comes over to my house.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - November 26th

Weekend Update
Mostly, I survived Thanksgiving but not without some exhaustion. I spent about twelve hours in the kitchen either preparing the food to cook, cooking, serving, and then cleaning up after the meal.

I suppose that you could ask why didn’t anyone help me?

I live alone so there was no one here to help me get ready or cook. I am a better cook than most of the women I have known so they wouldn’t necessarily be all that helpful for me. My kitchen is small so there isn’t much room to move around.

Anyway, the meal turned out just fine.


The dinner table.


The turkey that I cooked.


My dinner plate. I had no seconds.


A tired cook.

I ended up sleeping for about ten hours on Thursday night – Friday morning.

That was about what I had hoped would happen.

Friday, I had lunch with my friend Sharon. I almost didn’t have lunch with her.

She called me a little before 10:00AM on Friday and asked me if I was planning to have lunch with her. I said that I had asked someone, who would remain nameless, to provide me with a time and a location so I could show up for lunch.

Ooooh.

Sharon gave me the building address and suggested that I get there around 11:30.

Sharon’s office is 67 miles / 108 kilometers from my house. That is a long drive even on a good traffic day and Friday was a good traffic day. Traffic for the most part was somewhere else so I made very good time.

We ended up walking across the street to go to Islands Restaurant [Hawaiian themed hamburgers and tacos] for lunch. None of the tacos seemed interesting to me since I had just been to El Gringo on Wednesday and would be there on Sunday again.

I had a cheeseburger with bacon and bar-be-que sauce. It was a nice cheeseburger but nothing to get excited about after you’ve been to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers and Fatburger like Doug and I have.

On my drive back to the Beach, I thought about something that Doug had said on Thanksgiving. He said we, he and I, should take the Princess’ boy friend to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for a Mega Combo meal. It made a lot of sense since the Boy Friend, to our knowledge, has never been to Tommy’s.

I was out on Saturday running some errands. I had some stuff to buy and I didn’t want to go to the stores on Friday. I only had one stop at the local mall; I needed to go to my local Barnes and Noble Bookstore. I had to buy some books including one that I can take with me when I have jury duty next week.

I also bought a new Clive Cussler book, The Skeleton Coast. I started reading it yesterday and it looks pretty good so far. But, then, I have never read a poor Clive Cussler book.

The thing that really surprised me was the parking lot by the bookstore was less crowded on Thanksgiving Weekend Saturday than it is on a regular weekend day. I had no trouble finding a spot and I was able to get close to the store as well.

I had the radio on in the Pathfinder while I was buzzing around the South Bay. I was driving home from Lowe’s when the radio station played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” as I looked at my khaki shorts. It was an ironic episode for me

Visitors
Last week was another good week for visitors. We had visitors from Japan [12], Turkey, Hong Kong [3], Bolivia, Philippines, United Kingdom [2], Canada [10], Romania, Malaysia, Australia [2], Italy [2], Taiwan [3], China [2], Korea, and India [2].

I think last week was the largest for curious visitors. We had one curious visitor for 12.5 minutes, another for 19.5 minutes, one for 11 minutes, still another for 10.5 minutes, one for 25 minutes, another for 27.5 minutes, one more for 14.5 minutes, and one incredible curious visitor who stayed here for 29 minutes.

We also had some more lookers this past week. One looker managed to view 8 pages in three minutes. Another looker viewed 8 pages in two minutes. We had one visitor view 21 pages in 2.5 minutes; I guess that visitor was looking at the Woman of the Moment photos maybe.

I do appreciate all of the visitors to Balancing Checkbooks.

Woman of the Moment
We are down the end of the Joyce Lex time as our Woman of the Moment. I do have a new Woman of the Moment warming up in the bull pen so we will be ready to go in the next week with a smooth transition.

I think some of these photos came from the Internet and some came from the Speed Options model feature.



Army of One
I was watching the television over the weekend. I watched a lot of programs on a number of different channels so I don’t remember where I saw the Army of One ad.
It was a new ad or one that I hadn’t seen before. It was still working with the Army of One theme. The ad closed out with a montage of soldiers in their utilities. The ad only showed their names and, surprise surprise, one was named Reinhardt.

That got me to thinking if one of my nieces or nephews had joined the Army.

I know that Doug has not signed up for the Army and I don’t think my nephew had signed up either.

I thought that was cool.

Jury Duty
I am scheduled to be on call for jury duty this week.

While I am not a fan of jury duty, I do find it a necessary part of being a citizen in a nation that values personal liberty. At least, I don’t have to spend two weeks, sitting on hard wooden benches waiting to be called to serve on a jury panel. The old days were agony and a test of one’s patience; even Job would be sorely tried under this approach.

All I have to do is call a phone message system every night and see if my section has to report the following morning. If my section isn’t called in, I get to do whatever I want. If my section isn’t called in during the week, I am done with jury duty for a couple of years. If I get called in for the day and don’t end up on a panel, I am done for the week.

I expect to be called in on Monday so the court’s jury staff can tell us what we have to do and when we have to do that. The important thing to do on Monday is to arrive early and therefore snag a good seat for the day.

I think I have a solid book for the week. I picked up Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. The book is about Lincoln’s Cabinet and, at just over 750 pages and carrying a hefty 120 pages of footnotes in a semi-dwarf font, it is not a book that you can finish off in a couple of days.


I’m not sure which University of Utah Utes football team showed up at Rice Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Saturday.

Brigham Young won 33-31 on the very last play of the game and scored after time ran out. This ended the Utes season at seven wins and five losses and five wins and two losses in the Mountain West Conference. Our Utes are bowl eligible so the Princess and I will have to wait for a week or so to see where and when they will play next.

The game seemed close with Utah holding BYU scoreless in the second and third quarters. Utah had scored a touchdown with just a minute and nineteen seconds left in the game to go ahead 31-27.

I suppose you could say that half of the Utes played well and half played poorly. The defense allowed BYU to drive 75 yards in the final 79 seconds and score the winning touchdown.

Komyo Ga Tsuji
My samurai show must have had some action last week when I was at Morton’s with Doug and his friend.

Having read the history of the period, I knew how things would play out in the drama. I like the drama because it adds more depth and color to the dry story of the civil war conflict in Japan between the Tokugawa clan and the Toyotomi clan.

I find it interesting to see how the samurai is conflicted over duty and his need to preserve his clan. He seems to be lost in introspection and an inability to be decisive at a crucial point in history. He seems unable to read the flow of the nation.

His wife, on the other hand, is much smarted and insightful. She understands the political dynamics and foresaw the conflict several weeks ago. She has skillfully played the role of the subservient wife in order to avoid becoming a hostage inside of a castle that will be attacked by the Tokugawa forces.

Finally, the samurai made his decision to side with the Tokugawa clan in the civil war. It was inevitable that his wife helped him to make the proper decision. She pointed out how his decision must be for the benefit of his clan that he leads.

Next weekend ought to be interesting.

El Gringo
Today is Sunday and that means having dinner, as it were, with Whitney the Server at El Gringo.

I was lucky today because Whitney said that she barely returned from her Thanksgiving wither family in time for her work shift. It is nice to win once in a while. We didn’t have the usual opportunity to chat the way we have in the recent past. There were more people there today than I can remember being there before when I usually go on Sundays. This is possible since there are some readers of the blog who live in the same area as me and have followed my recommendations about El Gringo.

Today, I had the Number 2 Combination which was two chicken tacos, rice, and beans. I have had this meal before with either beef or grilled, blackened mahi mahi and always enjoyed it. I think I’ve liked it because the tacos are the soft style, are easier to hold, and come wrapped in paper.

The chicken tacos are served in a grilled shell. The hard taco shell splinters easily and is, therefore, messier to eat. I didn’t like the extra mess plus there seemed to be more lettuce than necessary. It was healthy and the next time I decide to have chicken tacos I will request them come as soft tacos so they will be less messy and easier for to eat.

El Gringo doesn’t offer any dessert and that is probably just as well for me. I would really look like Captain Ahab’s nemesis if I did. I will still have some dessert. I will have some left over apple pie tonight; I wonder how that will resolve itself in my stomach.


I hope you all had a wonderful weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Bonus Feature - KT So

Weekend Bonus Feature - KT So
It's time for the Weekend Bonus Feature. My reward to you for showing up over the weekend and keeping the blog traffic up. I suppose, of course, that you could just wait until Sunday and then catch the Weekend Bonus and Weekend Update with one visit.

This is a good time to be a KT So fan with three photos of her to view, all in bikinis.





Be well and stay happy.

Best of the Woman of the Moment

Best of the Woman of the Moment
Since I received no suggestions by the time I created this posting, I only reflects my choices which may not necessarily argree with yours. Life happens.

I hope you enjoyed your Thursday as much as I did.


Aiko Tanaka


Choo Mi-young


Cora Linn


Hankook Tire Girls


KT So


Lin Chi-ling


Mercedes Terrell


Salma Hayek


Sharon Tay


Sunisa Kim


Yuki Nakama

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview - November 22nd

Weekend Preview
It seems strange to be writing the Weekend Preview on a Wednesday night. It’s the middle of the week still. However, tomorrow is a holiday and Friday is a semi-holiday as well.

Tomorrow is our Thanksgiving Holiday. This is a uniquely American event. It dates from our country’s founding and grew out of a regional event. My ancestors, I don’t know how many greats go into their familial labels, participated in the first Thanksgiving.

I will celebrate getting up early and spend most of my day in the kitchen cooking and then cleaning up afterwards. Doug and his mother will be out for the dinner. I will try to take a photo or two of the turkey and the rest of the food.

On Friday, I may or I may not have lunch with my friend Sharon. I offered to take her to lunch and she said that was fine. Unfortunately, Sharon hasn’t told me where her new office is or what time I should show up for lunch. It’s difficult to plan a lunch without knowing these key elements.

I may or may not go to the theater on Saturday to see the play, “Sister Act.” I asked Doug if he wanted to use the tickets. Doug is supposed to let me know what his plans are tomorrow.

The rest of the weekend will be the dissertation.

Sunday, I will take a break and see if Whitney returned from her Thanksgiving trip

Vivian did give her choice for her Man of the Moment. I’ll fit that into the Weekend Update.

El Gringo
On the related subject of food, I went to El Gringo tonight for my dinner.


Valerie the server was not in a happy mood. She thinks she may have broken her hand while skateboarding. Her hand was heavily bandaged tonight. On the plus side, Valerie is a nursing student at California State University Los Angeles so she got to practice on herself.

Valerie took this photo of me just before I started to enjoy my dinner.


I had a Pollo Negro Salad only without the pollo [chicken] and I substituted grilled and blackened mahi mahi. Mahi mahi is a relative of the tuna and is generally found in Hawaiian waters. I also had the cook leave the corn out of the salad. I have never been a fan of corn off of the cob as a food of choice. This is a spicy dish and I have it with a spicy salad dressing. I ended up having two large glasses of iced tea tonight.


The salad is a bowl of lettuce topped with some sour cream, avocado slices, tomatos, two or three types of shredded cheese, and the grilled and blackened mahi mahi. You do get a good sized portion of the fish.

Woman of the Moment
We are beginning to wind up the Joyce Lex phase as the Woman of the Moment. I’ve picked out a new Woman of the Moment from the Speed Options web site. I like going there for photos of the women. The site usually has an ample supply that can last for two weeks or so.



Programming Note
Just a simple reminder that I won’t have a regular blog posting tomorrow. The next regular blog posting is Sunday’s Weekend Update.


Be well and stay happy.

Winter maybe

Winter maybe
It looks like we may actually have some Winter or what we in Southern California call Winter here soon. The local weather news reader who is a cross between Bozo the Clown and Curly from the Three Stooges said there was a chance of rain over the weekend.

I think the operative word here is “chance.”

I will be upset if it does rain when I am out driving in the Prelude that was washed over last weekend. Of course, I could take the Pathfinder because it is dirty and a little rain won’t make it look much worse now.

Woman of the Moment
These are some more Joyce Lex photos from the Speed Options web site. At least, I think that’s where I found them. I do like and enjoy short vinyl outfits.



Programming Note
I told you that I wouldn’t be posting a blog on Thursday since it is a holiday here in the United States. Instead of a text based blog posting, I’ll be putting up a Best of the Woman of the Moment. That should make things nice for everyone.

I am open to suggestions and nominations of who should and should not be included in the Best of the Woman of the Moment feature. Just because you submit a name doesn’t mean I will accept your suggestion.

It is my blog after all.

Short Blog Posting
Some days have nothing noteworthy happen on them. This results in a short blog posting. Sunday was a large posting so I am about out of things to say for now. Think of this posting as being a “lite” posting.


Be well and stay happy.

Did I Miss The Winter?

Did I Miss The Winter?
That’s an excellent question and one that begs a good answer.

It was something like 84F / 29C here at the beach today. That’s shorts and golf shirt weather. Hardly Winter by any measure. Just so you don’t get upset, it will cool off for the weekend and drop to a chilly 72F / 22C on Thanksgiving Day and maybe a bit cooler by the weekend.

I hope I can find my Winter jammies when it does get cold or really cool around here.

The Princess
I got an email from the Princess today.

She was very happy because her new job is going to make it possible so she can spend more time in Southern California over Christmas. She was even happier when she dropped her resignation letter off on her boss’ desk this morning. I suppose with this short of a notice that the good bye party may be a bit thin. No trouble, she has three more days in Southern California to celebrate.

I realized there was another benefit to having her boy friend come home with her. He’s big and strong and can help with the bags at the airport.

Perfectomundo.

Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman died last week at the age of 86.

Friedman was a giant in modern economic theory. He influenced a generation of central bank leaders like Paul Volker and politicians like Ronald Reagan and Lady Margaret Thatcher who called Friedman “an intellectual freedom fighter.”

He was the leading proponent of monetarism which holds that inflation can best be controlled by limiting the rate of the money supply. Unfortunately, many people have drifted away from his philosophy and embraced a targeting of interest rates to control inflation.

Personally, I believe that the control of the money supply provides a discipline to the economy of an individual or a nation. If the supply of money is limited, then the individual or nation must make hard choices like having our national government operate on a balanced budget and paying down the national debt. Cutting taxes and operating on deficit financing is a recipe for economic disaster.

What happens when foreign countries no longer want to hold dollars?

Short answer: it gets very bad for everyone.

Morton’s – Part II
This is basically a photo food section of our dinner.

I had an iceberg lettuce salad with tomatos,bacon, and a diced egg. Doug had his usual sliced tomato and red onion salad. They were both very good.




Doug went with the rib eye steak and a lobster tail. I exercised restraint and had a small filet with a baked potato.




We both had the Godiva hot fudge chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.


I had a glass of single malt Scot’s whisky because my doctor says it is good for me. I’ve never asked him why it is good for me; I just have my nightly drink and enjoy it.



Woman of the Moment
These photos of Joyce Lex came from Speed Options for the most part.





Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - November 19th

Weekend Update & Weekend Preview that was missing
I was going to make my usual Thursday Weekend Preview just like always until I ran into a horrible software loading event. It was the worst software loading in event in my life.

I purchased a copy of Norton Confidential to increase my laptop’s security. I run Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Firewall and keep those programs updated every year.

So far so good.

Norton Confidential won’t work with any Norton program prior to a 2005 version. That meant I had to get new version of Norton System Works. My nicely working and effective 2004 version of System Works prevented me from loading Confidential.

The GoBack program is 218 MB in size and is part of the System Works program. That is so large and takes so long to load that the only way I would ever consider loading it again was if I was starting over from scratch with a new laptop. For now, I’ll make do with the System Restore function that is built into my IBM laptop.

In the end, it took me just over five hours to load both of the new programs.

The new System Works installation crashed three times during loading. Actually, it didn’t crash, it just stopped and hung up or it self aborted. I ended up having to do a hard crash and reboot twice. Unplugging your laptop is not the best way to resolve a problem. But, it is incredibly effective at times.

It’s like my Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps Reserve once told me about leading young Marines. Sometimes sir, you just have to hit them between the eyes with a 2 x 4 to get their attention to so you can teach them.

That was when I had one of my epiphany moments and decided that I didn’t need to know any more.

It was around 9:00 PM when I was finished with the program loading. I was also finished as well. I crawled off to bed and had a great night’s sleep.

This is why there wasn’t a Weekend Preview. I know this is a crummy excuse but it is my explanation.

I was more frustrated than you were, believe me I was.

Woman of the Moment – Part I
Since I didn’t post on Thursday, I make things up to by a double Woman of the Moment today. The other section will be somewhere in here; you’ll just have to look for it.



Visitors
This was another interesting week for visitors. I think I’m going to add a new category of visitors. We have lookers who visit a lot of pages in a short time. For example, there was one visitor who managed to view an incredible 23 pages in just over two minutes. I think that visitor was looking at the photos, perhaps the Woman of the Moment.

We had visitors from Canada [7], Taiwan [3], Brazil, Malaysia [2], Australia [3], Singapore, Italy, Poland [2], Japan [9], Romania, Ireland, Mexico, Belgium, Korea [2], Hong Kong [2], Indonesia, and Turkey.

We also had some curious visitors. A curious visitor is one who stays for more than ten minutes in a single visit. There were three curious visitors; one for eleven minutes, one for fourteen minutes, and one for fifteen minutes.

One of my Internet acquaintances told me in a chat this weekend the she had visited the blog and learned so much about me. I thought that was fascinating.

I do appreciate everyone’s visits to the blog.

El Gringo – Part I
I went to El Gringo on Wednesday night because I didn’t want to have frozen food again. I also thought seeing Valerie the Server would be a good idea.

It was a great idea.

Valerie remembered me from the week before.

That was great; then we got into a discussion over what I had to eat. For the record, I had a Pollo Negro Salad because it is healthy for me. I think I had a Chicken Burrito the week before.

Valerie said I should have another Chicken Burrito.

I pointed out that El Gringo is not In n Out Hamburgers that only serves one basic food product with the only variation being the number of beef patties in the meal. I said that I came to El Gringo because I could have variety with my meals.

I thought saying that I came to El Gringo because of you Valerie would be a bit on the tacky side.

I wonder if Valerie will argue with me about my meal choice this coming Wednesday?

Next weekend will be interesting since it is Thanksgiving Weekend. Going to El Gringo on Wednesday is fine. I wonder about next Sunday because I may still have some turkey leftovers that I should eat up and not waste.

I guess you’ll have to tune in for next week’s Weekend Update and see what happens.

Vivian’s Man of the Moment
Vivian didn’t send me her nomination for this week’s Man of the Moment.

I decided to substitute in George Clooney who seemed like a good choice to me. People magazine thought he was a creditable sexy man. I had thought about asking the Princess for her suggestion but I wasn’t able to reach her.




The good University of Utah Utes football team showed up in Colorado Springs to play the Air Force Academy in a cold night game on Saturday. The temperature at kickoff was 36F – 2C and probably got colder by the time the game was over just after 8:30 PM.

It was not a typical Mountain West Conference game that usually features massive amounts of scoring and not much defensive play. The Utes won the game as time ran out on a 37 yard field goal. Air Force called two time outs before the kick to upset the Utes kicker. The final score was 17 – 14. These scores are a good quarter’s scores in some Conference games.

Air Force always plays at a size disadvantage. Their players must be able to fit in the cockpit of a military aircraft. That sort of precludes having a 300 pound / 136 kilogram player on the team; Utah has no size limitations and this can be a factor in a close game. All of the service academies have the same problem with player sizes. The need to be able to function well in combat is the overriding requirement.

Utah scored in the first quarter and then there was no more scoring until the fourth quarter of the game.

Utah’s Eric Weddle is an interesting player since he plays both offense and defense. This is unusual for schools like Utah who tend to have a player specialize so he can best develop his skills. Weddle was the leading rusher in the game for Utah and he was second leading tackler on defense for Utah.

That is very impressive.

Utah is now 7 – 4 for the year and 5 – 2 in the Conference. The Utes will play Brigham Young University in Salt Lake this Saturday.

If the Utes can beat BYU on Saturday, they should get a nice middle level post season bowl invitation. That would be the fourth consecutive post season bowl appearance for our Utes.

Woman of the Moment – Part II
These photos and the earlier ones came from the Speed Options photo feature of Joyce Lex.



Morton’s
Doug and his friend and I went to Morton’s last night.

It was a perfect meal.

We had our favorite server Amy. Doug and I have been asking for Amy to be our server for the last two years. I think it’s amazing that she can put up with us for that long. We do tend to be good customers; we don’t fuss a lot about having the food prepared a special way; we don’t make a big deal about the fact that we are enjoying ourselves; and we genuinely want to have fun with our meal.

We are also well behaved and don’t through food at anyone.

It was a good thing we went to Morton’s when we did because Amy is taking her annual trip to visit her relatives at the end of the year. We would have been upset if we missed seeing her before the Holidays.

I took a bunch of photos of our dinner, seventeen in all. There were some duplicates. I think I will save the meal photos until Monday when I know it will be a slow blog day.

I did send our friend Sharon an email with a bunch of the photos from the dinner.

That was not a nice thing for me to do since she probably had a so-so dinner at her boy friend’s charity event. Life happens and we all move on. I will take Sharon out for lunch on Friday so that sort of makes up for missing the dinner. Sharon will have to tell me where I should meet her because Riverside is a big area.

The Fog and Winter
Not the John Carpenter film.

It was really foggy at the beach yesterday so I guess it is Winter time now. We don’t have snow at the beach and rain is sometimes problematic. I live close to Los Angeles International Airport. Over 75 flights were delayed or cancelled yesterday because of the fog.

I was driving with my fog lights on in the Prelude. It was kind of nice driving.

When I came home from dinner at Morton’s, the visibility around my house was around a quarter mile / 400 meters. That’s a rough guess based on how far I could see street lamps ahead of the Prelude.

Of course, it might not be Winter just yet because I was buzzing around in shorts today. Maybe Winter will come for sure in December.

Doug
We talked about his Film Studies paper at dinner last night.

Doug said that he appreciated the rewrite I made that added some linear structure to the paper. He rewrote it yesterday so I guess I was helpful for him.

In the final analysis, his professor is the only one who needs to like the paper and its structure and content. Doug turned the paper in at class today so I guess we will know what sort of a grade he got on it in two weeks. I don’t think he will have class over the Thanksgiving Weekend.

The Princess
The Princess called me on Friday to tell me she has a new job at the Atlanta Speech School. The School is for hearing impaired children.

She was very happy to be free of her soon to be former employer.

The Princess had a question about what should be her last day at the old job.

This was a simple one for Dad to answer. I said that the decision boiled down to considering two complementary requirements; what is good for the Princess and what is good for the School. I said November 30th was a good day to leave the old job.

She was concerned that she hadn’t worked a full two weeks before she left.

I explained to her that the old job had done nothing to warrant her loyalty so why stay any longer than is convenient for her and the new job. I also pointed out that December 1st was an excellent day to start at the new job because it was the first of the month and that would make matters simple for payroll and everyone else at the School.

Then, there was what to do about the Thanksgiving Holiday?

I said holidays happen and you should enjoy them.

The Princess was much happier now and looking forward to her new job. I expect that I will learn more about the new job when she comes home at Christmas.

El Gringo – Part II
I went to El Gringo for my combination lunch and dinner today.

Whitney the server was there but she was tired so we didn’t talk all that much. I did learn that El Gringo will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. No trouble for me because I will be too tired from cooking all day to want to go out for a meal.

I can always go to Fatburger for a meal if I get hungry on Thursday.

Whitney wasn’t sure if she was going to be working next Sunday. I guess she will be going home for the long weekend and the drive back to Redondo Beach may be problematical depending on the other drivers out on the road who are all rushing home on Sunday. I’m not driving anywhere on Sunday except to El Gringo and maybe I’ll play server roulette and see if the server is one that I recognize.

I think I had a modestly healthy meal today.

I had two blackened grilled mahi mahi tacos with rice and beans. The fish as spicy but that was to be expected. I am looking forward to getting back to eating normal meals this coming week.

Programming Note
Since Thursday is a holiday here in the States and I will be cooking or serving or cleaning up in the kitchen from early in the morning until very late in the afternoon, I won’t be posting a blog on Thursday. I will try to put up a couple of Weekend Bonus Features for you instead.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you had a great weekend as well.

Be well and stay happy.