Whole Lot of Randomness Going On

Things have been a bit loopey around here. Here are a few slices of randomness that struck a chord with me:

When Urban Meyer was with Florida, I couldn't stand him or his team. Now that he is wearing scarlet & gray, I support him and will cheer for his team. Go Bucks.

The Girl was putting together a LARGE floor puzzle of Winnie the Pooh & friends the other day. When she finished, she stood up to see it from above. When she did that, Sparky came over and stood on it. She put her hands on her hips and hollered "Parky, get outta my puzzle". Funny.

We started overtime yesterday (6AM-3PM) and got a $25 gift certificate from management for Christmas today. Usually this means pending lay-offs. I hope it isn't so.

The Boy told us the other day that when he gets cold, he can chatter his teeth. Not a big deal you say. He says he can chatter them to "The theme for Star Wars". Too funny.

I went to the dentist today (I really hate going to the dentist). I have a tooth that has been bothering me for a while. I prayed that he wouldn't have to pull it (he didn't have to, thank you LORD) He took x-rays, examined it and couldn't figure out why it was hurting. His helper explained that perhaps my tooth had developed a sensitivity. She asked if I used whitening toothpaste (which I do & have for some time). It seems that whitening toothpaste tends to make teeth sensitive. She gave me some new toothpaste to try and some sensitive toothpaste to rub in the area before bed. She feels that this should do the trick. I hope so because a trip to the dentist is traumatizing for me.

The Buckeyes beat Duke last night in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge tournament. Th folks at ESPN said it was the highest rated game ever broadcast during this tournament since it's inception. When you have #2 going against #3, people want to watch.

Flashback Friday # 164

The Big PB&J Sandwich

Greetings, one & all. Thanks for taking a few moments out of this busy day to read my ramblings. Today, the subject is something, that anyone who knows me personally can attest, that is near & dear to me. Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.

I have loved PB&J for as long as I can remember. Mom made the comment yesterday that she is amazed that I eat real food now. All I ever used to eat was PB&J sandwiches. No chili. No Spanish rice. No Sweet potato casserole, etc.

Every body can make a PB&J out of two slices of bread. Some only use one. I routinely used three. It was sort of a PB&J club sandwich of sorts. Once the two sliced sandwich is made, you put a coat of peanut butter on the top slice of bread, then jelly another slice. Viola, club sandwich. Dad even made a few of these for me.

You may think, what's the big deal about a sandwich with three slices of bread? That's not a big sandwich. Those triple deckers have nothing to do with the story today. The big PB&J sandwich had eight (count 'em eight) slices of bread. It was a feat of modern engineering.

It's hard enough to make the three slice sandwich since the peanut butter tends to make the jelly slice under it slide. Imagine doing it five more times. Just for fun, take a loaf of bread, and count how high that sandwich would be. Then try to imagine PB&J between each slice. Wowsa.

You may think, "Sure, you can build a monstrosity like that, but how could anyone eat it?" I was a teen-age boy at the time. There is a reason they have the reputation of being eating machines. Eat it I did, all by my self. Sure, it was messy, but it sure was good.

I haven't done anything like this since I've been married. When you're a kid, you don't ponder the grocery bill. Now that the grocery bill is mine, I have a totally different outlook.

Check

I received a text from my wife while at work. She had "The Boy" & "The Girl" (they had spent the night) all day. She stated that "The Boy" couldn't wait for me to come home because he wanted to play a game of chess with me.

I have several chess sets, including one with carved marble pieces. "The Boy" got a set of chess pieces from my mom a couple of weeks ago. He has played himself several times. He loves my marble set. It was set up when I got home.

It has been a loooong time since I played. It showed The second piece of mine that he took was my Queen. That in it's self is bad. The fact that he took it with a pawn, was even worse.

I must admit, he had me sweating for most of the game. For a 10 yr. old, he played a pretty good game. When he made a mistake near the end of the game, I got back into the game by removing his Queen from the board. I think this rattled him because it wasn't much later that he found himself in checkmate. I congratulated him on a game well played. I've got a feeling that it won't be long before he's going to beat me.

It Must Be Monday.

Mondays are not nice. I think Mondays think of ways to be mean to you. I found out just how true that was today (Which by the way is Monday). As I was leaving for work, I opened the door to my truck and discovered something bad. I had forgotten to roll up my window from Saturday.

I was hot & sweaty from shovelling mulch so I rolled my window down on the way home. I backed the truck in the driveway to make it easier to unload the mulch. With the truck backed in, the driver's window faced away from the house. Saturday night, it began to rain. It rained all day Sunday. My seat was soaked. Fortunately, I had an extra jacket in the truck that I could sit on to avoid looking like I peed my pants.

When I got to work, I sent a text to my wife to tell her what I had done. She asked if I wanted her to bring me some dry pants. I told her that I wasn't too bad. It was really nice of her to be willing to drive out to my work to bring me dry clothes, especially since she had just woke up 20 minutes before.

Flashback Friday # 163

Sheep

A warm welcome to those who have stumbled upon my ramblings.

Anyone who has read these posts for some time, knows that my paternal grandmother lived in Westerville, OH. She didn't live right in it, but on the outskirts. This meant that there were some things nearby that you wouldn't find in many cities. Sheep.

Her across the street neighbor, Mr. Belvedere, owned the property beside her. On the large section in front was a plot that he rented to grandma to put in a garden. I can remember watching her push a hand plow to break up the soil. As long as she was able, she always put in a large garden, and canned the harvest thereof.

On the large section of this land stood a small enclosure that housed a couple dozen sheep. Mr. Belvedre would shear the sheep and sell the wool. He always talked very low, whether it was to people or sheep. Those sheep knew his voice.

One day, I was outside dumping the table scraps into the compost pile. There were a few things that didn't want to come out of the pan, so I banged it on the nearby swing set. Suddenly the whole flock of sheep came running toward the shelter. I thought that was really bizarre.

The next day, I took a stick and hit the swing set a couple of times. The sheep came running. After a bit, they went back into the field. I banged on the swing set. The sheep came running. That was really cool.

I guess Mr. Belvedere saw what I had done and called Grandma. She told me not to tease the sheep. I couldn't figure out how I was teasing the sheep. I didn't ask about it, I just said OK.

Later that day, I was outside and I heard what sounded like someone banging a couple of pans together. I looked over toward the noise to see Mr. Belvedere walking to the sheep enclosure and all the sheep running toward him. When he banged the pans together, the sheep knew it was time to eat. That's why they ran to the enclosure when I banged on the swing set.

A few days later, Grandma's tiny, little dog, Jock, was into the sheep pasture eating sheep poop. I stood at the fence and hollered for him. Then I heard my name being called. Grandma wanted to know what I was doing at the fence. I told her that I was trying to keep Jock from eating sheep poop. She thought I was teasing the sheep again. She was planning to scold me for that.

One day, Ricky (one of the kids that helped to dig the cave), convinced me to sneak into the pasture and chase the sheep. It was great fun until Mr. Belvedere saw us and started hollering at us. We hightailed it to the back of the pasture and cut through the woods to the back of Ricky's house. I got in some big trouble for that and had to apologize to Mr. Belvedere and promise to leave his sheep alone.

Many years after Mr. Belvedere passed, his wife sold their house to the neighboring Catholic church/school. She had a house built where the sheepfold once stood. She lived there until she also passed.

Five FPs in a week

You may ask "What in the world is an FP?" It is when a funny picture that you submitted makes the "Front Page" of one of the Cheezburger sites. I hadn't had one in a while, so they caught me off guard. The first on hit on the 9th. It was on "Historic LOLs", a site in which you caption pictures of days gone by. This is the picture:


The next came on 12th on "I Has A Hotdog", a site in which you caption pictures of dogs. Here is that picture:


That picture, by the way, was the 50th FP that I have created.
The next FP came the following day on "Derp", which is a site that captions people & animals making strange faces. Here is that pic:


My 4th FP came yesterday on "I Can Has Cheezburger", a site that captions pictures of cats. I've had great response to this one:



This is where the post was going to stop until I checked my site to get the pictures and found out that this picture made FP tonight on ROFL RAZZI a site that lets you caption celebrity pictures. Something tells me that it's not going to be a big hit among "Twilight" fans. Here it is:



*************UPDATE**********

The morning after I published this post, a sixth FP of the week showed up on Historic LOLs. Six in one week. Wow. Here is the other FP pic:

Signs

I LOVE funny signs. I spotted a couple recently. The first one was created by my grandson, "The Boy". I found it when I came home from work Friday. He taped it to the bathroom door.


I spotted this one today a a large steakhouse chain which specializes in buffet dining. They hadn't taken down ALL the signs from breakfast. They missed this one. After I took the picture, someone realized they missed it and took it down.
I don't see anything in this picture that I would want to put butter & syrup on.

Flashback Friday # 162

The Happy Meal

Hello, I'm glad that you stopped back in for another helping of yesteryear. Pull up a chair and get comfortable.

When I was younger, McDonald's was an inexpensive place to take your kids to eat. I can remember when you could get a hamburger, regular fries, and a regular soft drink for less than a dollar (99 cents to be exact). In the early 70's they had a venerable plethora of characters who lived in McDonaldland. There was Mayor McCheese, Big Mac (the cop), Captain Crook (the pirate), The Professor (who invented gadgets to create the food items), Hamburgular, Grimace, and of course, Ronald McDonald himself.

In the mid 70's, due to a lawsuit by Sid & Marty Krofft (makers of H.R. Puffenstuff and other Saturday morning offerings) the majority of those characters went by the wayside. If you didn't have cartoon characters to interest kids, what else could you do?

In 1979 (my Freshman year) McDonald's introduced "The Happy Meal". It involved a hamburger or cheeseburger (chicken nuggets hadn't been invented yet), regular fries, a packet of McDonaldland cookies & a regular soft drink (when I worked for McDonald's we were told NEVER to call them "small" because McDonald's doesn't have a small anything). This was packaged in a colorful box with games and activities printed on it. It was a monster smash, dynamite hit. The Star Trek Movie that came out later that year was the first movie-themed Happy Meal.

Some people think McDonalds invented the idea of giving toys away in their children's meals. I remember being about 10 or so and getting a kid's meal at BBF (Borden Burger Foods). One of their kid's meals was called "Drum & Fife" and it consisted of a chicken drumstick, french fries, a soft drink and a toy. I remember getting a cowboy figure. I also remember getting something at Burger Chef, but I don't remember what it was.

What has been your favorite meal associated prize?

Now You See Them, Now You Don't

Yesterday, since I didn't go to work because of a worker's comp hearing, I was here when the sucker truck came by. It is amazing how fast your leaves disappear. Here is the before picture:

And here is the after picture:
All this was done in less 10 minutes. It took me that long to get the rakes, leaf blower, and extension cord out.

Flashback Friday # 161

CB Radios

Hello, It's nice to see you again (even if I really can't because you are looking at you computer screen and I am probably doing something else while you are reading this). Are you ready to look back at people you don't know and places that you've never been? Good. Let's get started.

One of the big fads of the late 70's-early 80's was CB radios. In reality it really wasn't a fad because it was actually useful, unlike pet rocks, mood rings and streaking. A CB radio was your "cell phone" when travelling. You could converse with those who just came from where you were going to check weather, traffic and the location of Highway Patrol vehicles.

Dad jumped into this with both feet. He had a CB in all of our vehicles. Dad's friend who had bought our pool table told Dad about a CB Radio club that he had joined. I need to mention that this friend was a truck driver. Dad had to join too. He also got Mom to sign up. Other than meeting and eating the main thing this club did was to man what was called a "coffee break". You've probably seen the trailers at freeway rest stops that offer coffee, lemonade and snacks to truck drivers. That's what a "coffee break" was. If a driver was getting tired, he could pull in and get a cup of coffee & some conversation.

I mentioned previously that CBs were the cell phones of their day. One of the big differences was you had to have a license to operate a CB. Each license came with call letters. Dad's call letters were KBE-3628. It's funny, I can remember this, but I have to ask my wife what her phone number is (it's speed dial #2 on my phone).

Everyone also had a "handle", or nickname to be known by. Dad's was "Short Stick" (I am not making this up). Mom's was "Brown Eyes". They even had CB club jackets with these names monogrammed on them.It was common for someone to have the same handle that you had. Generally, if someone asked if I was So & So from Whatever City I would come up with a new handle.Now I am known as Sir Nottaguy-Imadad. Back the I was PB Kid. PB Kid was the one I had longest. I've never met another Sir Nottaguy-Imadad.

My Cheezpeeps

I got some nice gift LOLs from my cheezpeeps over at the Cheezburger Network.