Sixty plus degrees. That’s all I have to say about yesterday. I’m just about over this stupid virus that’s been kicking my ass for the last two weeks. Combine that with the warm weather yesterday and guess what you get. The largest most contagious case of Spring Fever ever experienced. I guess the longer and more oppressive the winter the more intense is that first burst of Spring Fever. Man I’ve got it bad.
I spent a good part of the day yesterday just wandering around the yard in a T-shirt with no gloves, no hat, and no parka. As I slowly strolled between the remaining piles of snow I could see that blessed light at the end of the tunnel and no, it isn’t a train coming toward me it’s Summer.
I couldn’t stop myself from going with the feelings and actually started cleaning up the winter debris strewn about the yard. I picked up tree branches and pine cones of which there were thousands. I’ve never seen so many freaking pine cones in my life and they will certainly require an major investment of my time to pick them all up. That should tell you just how bad my Spring Fever really is that I’m actually looking forward to doing it. I find that a little disturbing to say the least.
I then decided to get my riding mower out of mothballs and ready for use this summer. I filled it with gas, checked the oil, and reconnected the battery. I was just standing there enjoying the warm air when I was overcome with love for that stupid tractor. I hate to admit this but I found some rags, soap, and car wax, and went a little crazy. That tractor got a hot bath and a good scrubbing, was dried off, and waxed to a high sheen. How sad is my life?
I need to pace myself a little better or I’m going to lose my mind. I actually found myself drawn to the seed packet display at Walmart a few days ago. They were silently calling to me to buy, buy, buy. I maintained what little control I had left and just “Said No” and walked away. Unfortunately my better-half is worse that I am when it comes to Spring garden purchasing. We both need some sort of twelve step program to help us through the next two months and to keep us from overspending like we do every blessed year.
I just received a giant package in the mail today and had to help the mail carrier bring the box into the house. It’s the new part I ordered a week ago for my sweetheart, the mower. Now she’ll be even prettier than usual as I cruise around the yard making the neighbors oh so jealous.
Eat your hearts out people, if freaking Spring Time.
I suppose I could try and pull some lame April Fool’s joke but I won’t. I already got suckered once today on Facebook. Some moron sent an post that Tom Brady had announced his retirement from the Patriots. A-hole me immediately clicked to the site to read the news and got the big flashing screen with APRIL FOOL on it. It still never feels good making an ass of yourself but you’d think by now I’d be considered a certified expert.
“Sap collections continue.’
We had a new baby arrive this week and on top of all that excitement I received a formal letter from my dentist to announce his retirement. Every thing seems to balance out no matter how stupid it is. Life just continues rolling along and dragging us along as well.
‘Even the court houses allow their trees to be tapped by the locals.’
The flu and virus epidemics running rampant through the family continues apace. All of the youngsters are over the worst of it but we adults are getting hammered hard. We’re all hoping to be on the mend for Easter but who really knows. Maybe grandson #1 will bring us another dose of something from that disease factory they call Day-Care. I know it’s necessary for the kids to build a strong and healthy immune system by catching all of these viruses but c’mon. My immune system has never been required to respond to so many different things in my life. If I survive all this nonsense I should have an immune system strong enough to make me bulletproof.
‘My favorite farm stop for spices, jellies, and home grown fruit.’
The sun is shining during the day but our nights remain below twenty degrees and I’m soooooooo tired of freezing my ass off. I need some warm temps, open windows, and fresh air. I took the grill out of mothballs yesterday and cooked our first burgers and sausages for 2015. They tasted great and were cooked perfectly. I was a little worried that the tassel hat, parka, and gloves might make cooking a bit difficult. What harm can a splash of hot grease do to my new gloves?
With the better-half working an evening shift I think I’ll be chilling a bottle of my pomegranate wine. Then over to Amazon Prime for a movie or two and some total relaxation.
I’m beginning to believe that my doctor is plotting against me. During my last visit he convinced me to take a new vaccine that would assist my immune system in fending off a fairly large number of viruses. He claimed that in conjunction with my previous Pneumonia vaccination and my flu shot I’d be protected from almost everything. That was two weeks ago.
First of all as I was receiving the shot the nurse told me there might be a little muscle pain in the area where the shot was placed. What she didn’t tell me was I’d be unable to move my arm and shoulder for a week without major pain. I let it go figuring any shot in the arm will have some pain involved and finally a week later the pain subsided and movement of my arm and shoulder returned to normal. I felt better about myself and went on about my life, smiling all the way.
Why can’t we hold these medical experts responsible when everything they say seems to be just so much BS and guesswork. Get a flu shot and then immediately get the freaking flu. Get a magic vaccination to prevent illnesses and immediately get an freaking illness. For the last week or so I watched my family members and even my better-half struggling with some weird virus that caused a tremendous amount of congestion in the chest and head and caused terrible headaches. I was sympathetic and did what I could to make things better but at the same time thanking some god or another for my magical vaccination. I walked through my germ ridden house with the confidence of a really healthy and well maintained individual. My trust in my doctor was as high as it’s ever been until two days ago.
I’m lying in bed this morning wondering what the hell happened. I woke up two days ago with a minor cough and a slight fever. Then my throat started the infamous burn which always leads to something awful. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara and I needed help prying my lips apart to drink a little water. I peeled enough crust from my eyelids to fill a coffee cup and did that disgusting task between trips to the facilities that Mother Nature demanded. So far the projectile vomiting has yet to show up and I pray it stays away forever.
Two days of very little sleep, a better-half who hacked, coughed, and snored like a 400 pound truck driver, a fever to keep me warm, and a total loss of taste. Even if I wanted to eat I wouldn’t be able to taste a thing. Coffee and tea tasted like hot water and eating just about any food was like chewing and swallowing cardboard.
I can already hear my doctor, "I guess this virus wasn’t one of the ones included in the miracle vaccine." I may just be forced to kick his ass. I figure if I’m forced to pay hundreds of dollars for these shots there should be some sort of guarantee based on performance. I can be sure of only one thing it seems, there will be any effing refunds from the medical community or the drug company who’s reaping all of the monetary rewards.
Thanks for nothing doc.
The waiting is finally over and we welcomed a new family member yesterday. A 10.4 pound little boy with mother and son doing fine. I think now my better-half and I can finally get our lives back to something close to normal again.
Between babysitting grandson #1, trips to care for their cats and dogs, and then visits to the hospital, we’re both exhausted. We managed a decent nights sleep last night and are feeling much better today as is the mother. Since the birth required a C-section our little mother won’t be released until sometime Monday and I see another visit to the hospital in our immediate future today. We’ll try to keep her company for a few hours and to spend more time with grandson #2.
The better-half as always is already preparing for her numerous shopping forays to insure the little guy has everything he may possibly need and then some. That should keep her busy for a few years. My only contribution to the little mother was the can of Guinness I managed to smuggle into the hospital. After nine months of no beer I had a feeling it was high on her list of priorities.
We should all have an interesting summer with the new addition to the family group and we’ll need all of our remaining energy to keep up with grandson #1 who’s growing like a weed. The sibling rivalry took no more than two minutes to arrive when he was taken to visit his new little brother. It’s going to get more interesting as time goes on and they’re in for many years of fun competition with each other.
I normally don’t have photographs of family members on this blog but in this case I’ll make an exception. He ‘s too young to tell me not to and I’m too old to care anyway. This one picture is worth a thousand words.
One of my first tasks today was to get in a vigorous workout to start the day. Most days I turn on the TV or a movie and crank up the treadmill to a quick speed with a steep incline. I’m averaging forty-two minutes a session and watching TV for that long has started getting really old. On a good day there’s precious little on the tube that can hold my interest for forty-two minutes.
Today I decided to plug into ITunes and spend my time listening to my newly updated Favorites List. I have quite the collection of music and it was a tough job picking out fifty songs from over seven thousand. It took some time but it was worth it. I ended up with forty-five songs that met my stringent qualifications. It had to be a song that no matter when I heard it I’d stop what I was doing to listen.
It took twelve songs to complete my workout and the time seemed to fly by. Listening to good music is like having your own time machine. As soon as I hear a song it takes me straight back to a specific point in time and a specific person as well. So here’s my list of today’s twelve workout songs:
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Love Letter - Clairy Browne & the Bangin’ Rackettes
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Up on Cripple Creek – The Band
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Kokomo – The Beach Boys
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Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club – Beatles
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Nights on Broadway – Bee Gees
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Uptown Girl – Billy Joel
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The Guitar Man – Bread
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Gypsy Woman – Brian Highland
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I’m Your Angel (Duet w/R. Kelly) – Celine Dion
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How ‘Bout Us – Champaign
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Down in Mexico – The Coasters
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Run Through the Jungle – Creedence Clearwater Revival
If those songs don’t get your heart started then you’d better call for help. Say what you want these so-called Oldies more than hold their own against today’s Hip Hop generation.
I spent some time today preparing for the arrival of the grandson who’ll be staying with us until after the birth of his soon to arrive new sibling. The doctors intend to induce labor today so we’re hopefully looking at an early morning arrival by the baby.
This waiting has been murder for both of us almost as much as for the mother and father. She’s two weeks late and it’s been making everyone absolutely crazy. Hurry up and wait until the baby decides to get here.
I just finished allowing the federal government and the IRS to peek into my business as they so love to do. The only people worse than them is Google. I figure in just a few years Google will take over the entire earth and make information slaves of us all. But that’s a topic for another day.
Each and every time I file a tax return I become moody, disrespectful, and rebellious and today is no different. I’m not motivated to do do much else so you will be inundated with a truckload of useless crap. I haven’t done this for some time so all complaints will be trash-canned.
Here goes nothing . . . .
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The first name of of TV detective Lieutenant Columbo was Phillip.
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The Flintstones lawyer who never lost a case was called Perry Masonry.
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Rita Hayworth’s real name was Margarita Cansino.
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Spencer Tracy said he would only take the part of the Penquin in the Batman TV series if he were allowed to kill Batman.
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Sylvester Stallone used to sweep the lion cages in New York’s Central Park Zoo to pay his way while trying to break into acting.
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Sean Connery once worked as a coffin polisher.
Are you captivated yet with this stream of meaningless nonsense. Don’t get up and walk away because I have a few more tidbits.
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After Harrison Ford’s brief 1966 appearance as a bell-boy in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round he was told, “Kid, you aint got it.”
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Johnny Mathis dubbed Miss Piggy’s singing voice in The Muppet Movie.
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Liquid Paper was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith of Monkee fame.
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Don McLean’s song “American Pie” is not named after the plane in which Buddy Holly died – the plane had no name, only a registration number: N3794N.
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Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl, wore a size 14A shoe.
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The Muppet Show was banned from TV in Saudi Arabia because one of it’s stars was Miss Piggy. Pigs are forbidden to Muslims.
And in keeping with the upcoming tax day . . .
Americans Use Sixteen Thousand Tons of Aspirin Each Year.
I spent a good part of my day yesterday trying to get a fourteen year old computer to once again work properly. I’ve been a computer gamer for a very long time and started when the games were just text-only. I finally settled in permanently with the X-Box because of my life long loyalty to Microsoft. Don’t sit there and shake your head, all those years were a great deal of fun and taught me a great deal about computers and software.
As the games became more sophisticated the older games fell by the wayside. Having spent my hard earned money for these games I refused to just discard them. I saved the floppy disk games, games on CD’s, console games, and any other that I sincerely enjoyed playing. All these years later most of them remain unplayable but alive and well in my files.
I’ve became interested in reviving some of these old games after receiving from my nephew an Atari 2400 Anniversary console that contained dozens of the ordinal Atari games such as Pong, Asteroids, and Centipede. My nephew is a computer nerd like me and after a telephone discussion a year ago he shipped me one of his older computers dating from the late nineties. It’s one of the few I’ve been able to find with a working floppy disk drive and I also wanted to use it to convert many of my older games on floppies to CD’s. It would give me a much better chance at playing them once again.
I love computers but they are extremely frustrating to work with. The computer companies in their attempts to protect their software have made them extremely difficult to copy and to reuse. It seems to me that most of their technological advances with game consoles and computer games are purposely made incompatible with previous generations. It forces consumers to constantly spend their hard earned money on upgrades of both software and hardware. My best recent example for that was X-Box One which will not play any of the hundreds of X-Box games made for previous X-Box versions. That sucks and has only convinced me never to buy one.
Yesterday was like giving CPR to someone who is on his last leg. During shipment cables for that old computer were knocked loose and it took a while to get them all replugged into their proper places. I finally was able to get it to reboot with Windows 2000 but that’s when the real fun began. Using parts from a number of my past computers I finally found a mouse that would work with the unit. The monitor worked fine and I thought I was home free. I still had no sound and no working keyboard and I don’t know why. The keyboard I have was from a newer model and there was no way it would ever work with this old machine.
One of my chores for this summer will now be to visit as many yard sales as possible to find a keyboard and mouse from that same era. It should be an easy find since almost every yard sale has computers and parts for sale. With any luck at all I should have this machine working this summer and I can pull out my old Doom and Quake games and relive those earlier days that I enjoyed so much.
I find myself extremely frustrated but having many years of computer experience it wasn’t unexpected. I’ll just walk away for a while, turn on my X-Box 360, and return to the world of Halo to kill a few thousand aliens. It always makes me fell better.
Nerds rule !
Well I guess the world can continue to rotate around the sun and all of you can continue living your exciting lives once again. I received a clean bill of health from my doctor during my recent checkup so everyone can relax again for another year just knowing I’ll still be around.
Have I ever mentioned just how much I hate doctors and hospitals? I’m positive you have no idea just how much. I spent a lot of my youth visiting uncounted hospitals throughout the Pittsburgh area while visiting my mother who was afflicted with every disease known to man during her life. I became almost phobic about it. I was terrified of entering hospitals and getting stuck with needles. For years every time I needed a blood test or a shot it usually caused me to become violently ill or to pass out completely. That phobia was finally dealt with when it became time for me to leave the Army. A blood test was required before I could be released from the service and I certainly wasn’t going to stick around any longer than necessary. I sat quietly while they took six tubes of blood and suffered no ill effects whatsoever. It’s amazing what proper motivation can do to help you get through the tough times.
I have no phobias now but I still hate hospitals and doctors. I’m good to go until sometime in August when my new doctor will put me through my paces once again. Blood tests, poking and prodding of body parts best left alone, and more of those miracle vaccines and shots that may or may not even work. Getting old requires more and more maintenance of the body and mind just to maintain the status quo. Regardless we eventually all lose that battle. More exercise, less alcohol, no smoking, healthy foods, and an endless supply of drugs, drugs, drugs.
When I turned fifty the medical community found out about me and the process began in earnest. I needed a shingles shot, a pneumonia shot, a tetanus booster which probably cost the insurance carriers at least $500.00. Increased visits, regular colonoscopies, and future eye surgery to fix those pesky cataract problems we all have to deal with at some point.
I’m one of millions of Boomers whose current responsibility is to stay alive as long as possible to help keep the health care community in business. What will happen to the system once we’ve all passed on. That will be the new healthcare crisis with lots of layoffs, hospital closures, and a serious overpopulation of doctors, nurses, and home care specialists. I guess we Baby Boomers could be called a massive health care asset until we all finally die.
I had a feeling when I woke up this morning that this day would be more than a little strange. It was another late night of reading for me and I was awakened at 6:00 am for no apparent reason. The better-half was gone off to work, the cat was missing in action, and the bed looked like twenty people had been in it. Blankets thrown around on the bed and on the floor with pillows everywhere. Don’t even ask! I’ve got a thing for pillows and I love having a lot of them on the bed. Not for decoration but to crawl into and curl up with.
I felt like I had hangover but I hadn’t had anything to drink for days. I had things to do but I couldn’t seem to get my ass off that bed and get moving. A coffee helped but not all that much. One of my main tasks for the day was to do a little food shopping because dinner was on me tonight and I wanted it to be just perfect. It took forever for me to get dressed but I managed, then I set the house alarm, jumped in my car, and pulled out of the driveway.
I live approximately five miles from the closest supermarket and it requires that I drive through a few neighborhoods and across two main roads to get there. Easy enough right? I drove for a mile and noticed something strange happening. I hadn’t seen a single car, person, animal, or another human being since leaving the house. The further I drove the more bizarre it became and I was starting to have flashbacks of the the movie “Legend” with Will Smith. Another mile and still nothing. I stopped at an intersection with a main road that normally requires me to wait for an opening in traffic before pulling out. I didn’t see a single vehicle in either direction. The only living things I saw as I made the turn onto that highway were two large black crows sitting in a tree nearby and they seemed to be watching me.
I’m not a believer in the occult or any of that nonsense but this entire drive really creeped me out. The first living person I finally saw was in the parking lot of the supermarket and it was a rather obese man eating a donut as he walked to his car. The entire drive felt like a really weird dream. I kept thinking to myself that all of a sudden I’d awaken and still be at home in my bed. But I wasn’t.
I finished my shopping and returned home and observed a normal amount of traffic and a few folks walking around. As I pulled into my driveway I looked up and there were two large black crows sitting in a tree right next to my house. I sure hope it was just a weird coincidence and that there aren’t any more strange occurrences today. I want my surprise meal for the better-half tonight to go as planned.
It’s the Twilight Zone all over again or at least it felt that way. If she arrives home from work tonight eating a big fat donut then I may have to rethink my somewhat shaky belief system.
More light snow through the night last night but we’re expecting warmer temperatures today. As we drove through the surrounding towns this morning it became fairly obvious that Spring has officially sprung. It seems as if every maple tree in Maine is in the process of being tapped for their sap. It’s one of the best indicators that Winter is on it’s way out finally. These first two photos are examples of the old time way of tapping.
‘Old School – Low Tech’
Many of the local farming families have been doing this since just after the Pilgrims landed and like doing it the tried and true way of their predecessors. Others have succumbed to the more modern ways and now use multiple plastic tubes from multiple trees that flow into a central container. Take a look.
‘New School – High Tech’
The results are the same but there’s something really comforting about seeing it done the old way. You can almost picture the pilgrims and their ancestors tapping trees in these same areas in the mid 1600’s. History is just too cool.
As we made our way home I snapped this final picture of what looks to be a very lonely horse. He’s just hanging around and watching the world go by. I think he’ll be just as happy as the rest of us to see Spring arrive.
everyuselessthing.com 