Aches and Wasps

The last part of August was not kind to me. I have decided to blame the weather that all my parts that knew how to ache were aching for many days. For about 6 nights I didn't get any sleep without a pain pill and a sleeping pill. Then Jackson came to visit. I haven't taken either pill since Friday night and so I was able to participate in much of Jackson's nocturnal play time Saturday night. Very good therapy for any ailment. Sunday night, which started about 7:30 and much of the day Monday (in bed when I was in bed and on my chair when I was "up") I slept like a ...... Grandma.

Now, I'm well rested, joints all back to normal and ready and eager to enjoy the U.S. Open. However, I'm afraid that the "bad spell" has kept me from bringing my game up to speed to participate in the doubles. Sorry Mary, we'll have to take this year off.

I have acquired this huge ant hill about a foot from my front porch on the edge of the sidewalk. I just found out that it is a "digger wasp" nest. The good news is that they lay only one egg per nest so only one wasp will come out of it. The bad news is they are about 3" long and they fly. The other good news is that if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. They picked the right place because I will certainly not bother them. I called maintenance about it and the company that sprays for such things will be out one day next week and I am on their list.

Steph's wedding and Hold Em

Our whole party was a few minutes late. I am so sorry Steph. We didn't leave home early enough to account for traffic etc. I thought it would take less time than it did to get there. I still would have missed the Chapel if Gretchen hadn't turned left in to it off Telegraph Road. We (me and Kat) still missed the turn and had to go farther down to do the U turn thing. Poor Dana was strolling Telegraph Road looking for us and brought me my Grandmother's corsage and hustled us inside.

The chapel was tiny so there wasn't a very long walk down for the wedding party. Arn emerged first looking great. No turban bandage on his head or anything. Then cute girls in cute dresses blah, blah. Then it was Steph and Jeff. The first of many Kleenex moments for me. Steph looked gorgeous in her dress. She and Arn had matching hair dye and I actually liked it. (a very yellow blond) It looked good on both of them. After a few pictures at the end of the wedding the important people went to a park to take more pictures. I had a bad walking and standing day so we decided to go directly to the hall and wait there.

The hall was decorated beautifully. All those little details that Steph was obsessing about the last couple of months turned out great. The candy bars, the candles, the balloons, the beta fish, she even had little cards with bells on them for people to ring when they wanted the newlyweds to kiss. The toasting wine and little plastic glasses. The fish were a navy blue color and the fishbowls all had blue, white and black stones at the bottom and were placed on a blue placemat and surrounded by white-wrapped mints. I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the details but it was just great.

The food was some of the best I've ever had at a catered event. The DJ did a great job. All the usual, introducing the bridal party etc. garter throw and bouquet throw. They even got Kathy and Megan to go up and try to catch the bouquet and Kelly to go up to try to catch the garter. I'm not going to pretend to you that any of them tried very hard.

When we got home, Jackson was playing in the living room and played with us till his mean mom made him take his bath and go to bed. He knows how to deal with mean moms. Let me tell you, he was the baby from Elm street all night. He was delightful and playing between 1:30 and 4:30 and after a pick-me-up nap he was back up and ready to play at about 7. The delightful part is how he exacts his revenge. He knows you gotta love him.

Not knowing what else to do with him without waking up the whole household Erika and I took him over to Rita's house where Kathy had spent the night and Kat took over with him while Erika was able to catch a little pick-me-up of her own. Rita slept right through most of it.

So, the Hold Em, we played for about an hour. Me, Erika, Gretchen and Gordon. We each started with a roll of pennies and we started with a 4 cent blind. It was lots of fun and is totally doable. Gretchen knew more of the finer points than I did so now we really know what we're doing. Not quite ready for TV tho.

Now I'm all alone again till next Saturday when Mel gets here. Hopefully the weather will be a nice as they say its going to be and a big group will come down from west branch to swim and frolic. All are invited. If the pool becomes not an option weather-wise Gretchen has other ideas for entertaining the troops.

Texas Hold Em

After dominos today we were all talking about how much we liked watching the 2004 World Series of Poker. We talked about starting a Texas Hold Em game up at the clubhouse. Lynn and Nicki Walker said they had played it as a family. I want to do that next time we're together. That would be Sunday if the weather is too bad for the pool we could totally do that. Everybody has to start with the same amount of money and when your money is gone you're out. I have several rolls of pennies. We could start with a 6 cent blind and build it up every time someone goes out. Who's in?

Kleenex moment

When the Israeli sailing person got his gold medal and a whole group in the audience sang the Israeli National Anthem it was rivaled only by the moment when the Greek girl that won the 400m race got hers and the whole stadium sang the Greek National Anthem. Those were kleenex moments for me.

Australians and horses

Racing horses, OK. Jumping horses, OK. But dancing horses. That's not a sport that's a circus act. I couldn't believe I was watching a horse dance to George Gershwin tunes. It was just sad.

Then the triathalon. The Australian girl did a tremendous job. She was leading all the way then at the last 30 seconds she was passed by the Austrian girl who got the gold medal and the Australian had to settle for silver. But, gee, the gold medalist was Australian, she was just on the Austrian team because she couldn't get on the Australian team. What??

That's like when Miss Taiwan won the Miss Universe contest only it turns out that Miss Taiwan was born and raised in Las Angeles.

Citizens of the world unite.

Nothing exciting

The olympics are pretty lame tonight. Anything of interest was already shown this afternoon. So I have been going back and forth among the Little League World Series and other shows that I am already taping. I saw Adria ask Drew to promise to use the Veto if he won it. Was she not there when she heard him promise to Jase that he would not use it? Its really stupid to ask a promise from someone you know breaks them.

I'm also watching some WSOP. Since I go back and forth most of the time or I'm reading and only look up when they are actually playing a hand I never did hear an explanation for the Big Blind and the Small Blind. Every once in a while I hear them say "He's playing from the small blind so he may as well call."

I looks like next week they are really going to do the daddys on the mommie show. They are running two shows back to back next Tuesday. I'll have more comments after I watch my tapes.

Surrogate posting

I have talked with Steph and she keeps getting hit with one thing after another. She has given me permission to pass on the information I have gleaned from her. First of all Arn had an industrial accident today at the hospital where they both work. He hit his head on something hard (I think it was a fire extinguisher) in the performance of his janitorial duties. His injuries required 7 staples in his head. Notwithstanding the other obvious drawbacks of a head injury the best case scenario has him getting married with a head full of metal.

It also seems they have found a place to stay. I'm not sure of the stage its in, bidding, acceptance, closing? It is a 4 year old condo in Taylor in the 70/80K range with new appliances, furnace and other important stuff. I think Jeff has deemed it acceptable. (Jeff is our Dennis)

My own drab news is that I'm glad that Chili has a couple of gold medals but wish it could have been in another sport.

Guides for the TV

If TV Guide wanted to do something good for its readers at Olympics time it could have put in a couple of extra pages to give us a legend of the three letter abreviations of countries. I never did figure out PRK. I would also like a legend of those little picture indicators of events. Like the picnic table signs on highways.

Before I forget

Did any of you know that Josh was on the Regis show on Tuesday? I didn't think so. Rita averted me that he was going to be on and then called during the show to say it was going to be after the next commercial. Well, they didn't get him on until 9:56 and he only had time to berate the casting people because he fooled them so heartily; he being an aspiring actor and all. They wouldn't have cast him if they knew that he lived in LA, so he went back home to IL to the auditions. They asked about Holly but he didn't have time to answer. They are having him back on tomorrow morning if anyone cares. I kept forgetting to tell you.

Who would have thought that the g word would invoke a firewall?

Tapes

Got a late start watching my tapes because I played poker till the wee hours. Of my $20.00 start I got down to 0 and found out how they play the charity part. You are still dealt into every game and can bet when its your turn but you just don't have to put any money in. I don't know if there is a rule about no raising but even when I had a good hand I felt it was just wrong to raise when I wasn't putting anything at stake. I won the last two games of the night and recouped $11.15 on the evening. Still cheaper than bingo. No TEDs tho.

The Mommy's were supposed to be Daddy's this week but instead they are re-running the first pair of Mommys (Mommies?) Free's up a little of my time.

I'm glad A didn't have any takers in her little ally shopping trip. The person who survives elimination will not be beholden to her or her group.

I'm glad to see schmeerna out of the race. I would like to believe its not because of her size. They were pretty nasty pieces of work in any case. Watching them all eat the eggs I remembered who would have been my perfect racing partner. Wouldn't Bill have been awsome at that stuff. And he could have pushed my wheelchair, or carried me around in necessary. This game came along too late.

I got the Bravo channel in time to see Roddik win his match against Tommy Haas. Boy it was a cliffhanger though.

TV, uniforms and tenors

The cable people said they would be out between 8 am and noon to switch my service. They showed up at 11:56. Can't complain, but not happy.

Every day I tape Coronation Street at 3: PM and Jeopardy at 7:30 PM in the kitchen. Then on Saturday, I pull that tape and watch the week's worth of shows. On the last C. St. show, during the last 10 minutes they run this message line. They are taking a 2 week hiatus for the Olympics (OK) and then another 2 week hiatus for the World Cup Hockey Tournament (OK) and by the way this is their last broadcast in this time slot. After Hiatus they will be broadcasting at 7:30pm. (hello, can't they tell that I am taping Jeopardy at 7:30)? They stay awake nights trying to make my life miserable.

If the beach volleyball girls have to wear those sports bikinis, shouldn't the guys be wearing Speedo's? Nobody wants to get sand in their stuff, but equal opportunity and all that.

The 4 x 200 freestyle relay was a great race. Our best guy (Phelps) swam the first leg and their best guy (Thorpe) swam the anchor leg. Vandenhoogenboogen-fee-fi-foogen wasn't in this one.

Do we have a dictionary definition for repechage? (even the spell check didn't recognize it)

Lost Blog

I created a post called the three tenors and it never came up and I can't view it from my dashboard page but the title does show up on my edit page and it will come up so that I can edit it but when I hit publish when it was created it said web page not responding. Last time I got that message, I hit publish again the next time I had it up under the edit page and first thing I knew it showed up 3 times on the page (then I deleted two of them). So I'm not going to hit publish again and just wait it out to see if this one publishes before the three tenors one.

All of you who were able to follow this and know what I'm talking about, raise your hands.

The Three Tenors

CBC just ran the 200m mens freestyle for the gold. The three swimmers were in it. They sure enough came in 1 2 3 . For the sake of you who are going to watch it later I won't say which is which. I will say that we won the gold in the men's and women's 100m backstroke.

At the risk of hogging the blogging I am going to post at will. I used to think it wasn't fair of me to keep jumping in when some of you guys were so far behind.

Another card group has asked me to sit in tomorrow night. It seems I will be playing poker at Pat Pike's house. She asked me if I had plenty of change and mentioned that it was $20.00 buy in. I'm not sure if that means they play with chips or real coins. Oh well, I'll see tomorrow night.

More from Florida

Jeannette came over last night. She bought me a very attractive Pulsar watch as an appreciation gift. The only bad thing about it was it has a clasp and not an expansion bracelet. But it will be my "dress-up" watch, so y'all remind me when we get dressed for Stephi's wedding to wear my dress-up watch.

Anyways, she mention that her kids had called Marc to see how he fared during the storm. I knew he had moved from St. Petersburg and when I looked in my address book, his new address is in Port Charlotte. It turns out the storm came very close to his place but no damage.

I'm glad the storm veered south and didn't hit Longboat Key. If we had sustained damage at Four Winds I don't doubt there would have been an assessment on all the time share owners.

Big Brother Charlie

I like A as head of household and hope she and Natalie make it to the end. Other than them I am ambivalent. I like everybody who is still there. But I'm figuring the veto will be used and Karen is the next to go.

Elise called me to let me know that JoAnne (Daytona Beach) weathered Charlie with her biggest loss being a large awning. The trailor park across the street where Vonna and Tony used to live lost several roofs tho. Debbie and her family are living with JoAnne now and the reason they decided to wait out the storm at home rather than go to an authorized shelter was that the shelter wouldn't let them bring the pet rabbit.

I haven't heard any more about Monica. It looks like she might have been better off staying at home since Charlie veered south. She and Rita usually talk on Sundays so maybe we'll get some news today.

Kelly is coming over this afternoon for some help on his final speech. His topic is to convince that senior citizens should be subject to mandatory testing to renew driver's licenses.

Go Team

I am enjoying the olympic games very much. NBC is saving all the big ticket races to run in prime time but CBC is showing them when they happen. So even though I saw Phelps win his first gold medal at about 2:00 pm this afternoon I was still holding my breath when NBC showed it just now. I'm such a sucker. They said they are going to show the 400m freestyle after this next commercial and I can't wait to see if Thorpe wins it again.

I have been able to go back and forth with the Little League World Series game between Rhode Island and Connecticut too.

Remember when you started to feel old when the professional athletes were all younger than you? Well those Little League players are all younger than Adam.

That's my "feel good" message for today.

Bye bye Josh and Hot Water

I was so impressed with the young man that replaced my faucets etc. That is until I went to shower this morning. I usually turn on the hot water faucet in the sink to draw up the hot water so I don't have to lean into the tub to check when it gets hot. When its hot in the sink it is hot in the tub too. Well, it never got hot in the sink. (It did in the tub tho, whew)

So I called maintenance and let them know and said I wouldn't be home most of the afternoon and they should just come in. Sure enough when I got back from Dominos a little while ago I was locked out of my house. No senior moment for me. This has happened to me before and before I left for Dominos I remembered to bring a house key. Always thinking.

And ding-dong, Josh is gone. John won the last comic. pretty good night last night.

Bonnie and Charlie

In case any of you are wondering about your Aunt Monica who now lives directly on the west coast of Florida; she battened down her hatches and took herself and her new SUV over to Kim's place for the rest of the week.

Lots of flights from DTW have been delayed or cancelled. Spirit says there will be no flights to Ft. Meyers until Saturday and flights to Tampa have been delayed indefinitely.

No drops to drink

My water has been shut off since 10:30 this morning. That means this very nice young man has been working on my sinks since then. When I called in about my stuffy toilet I told them that the faucets in both bathrooms were hard to shut off. With my knobby arthritic right thumb I couldn't push the faucet hard enough to get the water to stop dripping.

So in comes this young man. First he determined that I needed new faucets and went out to get them. While he worked on the downstairs bathroom he asked me to empty the vanity upstairs because he was going to have to get under the sink.

Talk about a trip down memory lane. I used to clean my own toilet. I have really old stuff in their to prove it. The bottom of so many cleaning supply bottles. My shower massage. I never knew it was there. They must have put it in there when they installed the new tub and shower. I have about 3 things that need to go back in there when the guy is done and 2 of them are packages of toilet paper.

So anyways, he finished downstairs and went up. I went out to Kmart for a while and when I got back his truck was gone. I saw he had left his clipboard and some tools behind so figured he'd be back. He came back allright, with a new sink. I'm getting the royal treatment today.

Whew Drew

I am not good with suspense. I had to fast forward to the veto meeting. Just taking off my glasses was not cutting it. Megan you're lucky your mom made you wait till you got home to watch the tape because I would have been sitting in your lap biting my nails.

We are really slaves to what they are willing to show us. This new theme that Karen is crazy came out of the blue for me.

Yeaa for the moms in the race. Too bad for the brothers. Watching him walk I could feel his pain. Its a good thing we missed the audition because I don't have that kind of fortitude. Maybe next year.

The guy nobody likes got eliminated from King of the Jungle last night too.

Rude mommy went from "If I piss anybody off, oh well." right to "I feel so unwelcome." Duh

I haven't watched the second half of the comics yet but I'm sure they're funny.

OK Steph, times in

We've been cutting you some slack because with a new job and wedding plans we know you're busy but we need to know that you're ok. So I'll make it easy for you, just cut and paste this sentence into your blog.

Hi, I'm alive and well and busy as anything and I love you all like crazy. Love Stephi

We're easy to please.

Older yet and Pepsi

Another piece of old age is upon me. Two days in a row I have dropped a plate. The first time was a clean plate as I was removing it from the cupboard I dropped it and it bounced on the counter, into the sink and back on the counter on the other side of the sink. I don't know what kind of english I gave it but if I had to reproduce that shot for $100.00 I probably couldn't do it. The next one was in the living room. A plate that I had used for toast. Since I realize that I won't get vacuumed but once a month or less, I always hold my plate up to my chest while eating toast. Lots of crumbs. Then, as I stood up I dropped the plate. It bounced flat once, and just as I was thinking "How lucky am I, no crumbs spilled" it bounced up on its rim (twice) and rolled around the living room in that ever decreasing spiral thing before landing upside down. I can't actually see the crumbs on the floor but since the plate was clean, I know they are there.

The pepsi part: There is a grocery store opening on Venoy at Palmer and they have pepsi 5 for $10.00. The 24 oz 6 pack. I took advantage of this since I am going to have Gretchen & Gordon here this evening to get it out of my car.

As part of their promotional opening the store also gave me a free bag of groceries that included store brand crackers, cookies, cans of corn and green beans, mac & cheese and barbeque sauce. I thought that was a pretty nice gesture.

I am looking forward to a pepsi ad on my site.

Windsor and liars by omission

Me and Jeannette went on the bus to Casino Windsor today and a good time was had by all. They have put in some of the same new machines we saw at Little River. My canadian gambling purse has 8 extra 5 dollar bills in it now.

Back to the lying TV Guide, they published an Olympic programming guide and never mentioned Channel 9. Its like Canada is not going to cover any of the Olympics. The nighttime grid says olympic games under Channel 9 but since they don't list daytime programming anymore there's no way to see whan canada is going to cover during the days. What a gyp.

Agassi and Nikomis

Agassi won in Cincinnati and Nikomis is a very good hoh. Jeannette is feeling like getting out so we are going to Windsor this afternoon.

I think the elimination on BB is the best plan I ever saw and hope it all plays out correctly. If you travellers haven't watched your tapes yet you're going to love it.

the disappearance and lying liars

I posted a comment on Mel's blog last night and this morning sure enough there was a little garbage can next to it. I clicked on it. I got a screen that said (in essence) "Who the heck are you and why are you trying to mess with this comment?". I told them who I was and the next screen I got said (again in essence) "Why don't to post on your own darn blog?". It looked just like my own posting screen so I typed all this out and tried to post it. (this is the second time I've typed it) (first time on that last phrase) So when I clicked publish post the site went and hid and wouldn't respond.

As to the lying liars. If anyone out there has a TV Guide, brand name or generic that says that the Last Comic Standing results of voting show was going to be longer than the 1/2 hour that I taped, please raise your hand.

Little Garbage Cans

I have been noticing for some time that whenever I comment on someone's blog a little garbage can appears at the bottom of my comment. I wondered a little bit about that but not much. Today I noticed that on my blog's comments there was a little garbage can under everyone's comments. I wondered a little bit more than before. I wondered enough to click on one of them. I don't even remember which one. To my horror I got the message that the comment had been deleted. I don't know which one I deleted because I don't get immediate feedback. It always takes a few hours before I see my own posts or comments. Whoever it was, I am sincerely sorry.

No wait, I thought of a better explanation. I don't know why it disappeared. It was just gone.

Amish on Greyfield

I forgot to tell you that on the way home from Mt. Pleasant, the driver took 23 to 96 and then at the 275 junction he stayed straight on 5. That turned into Grand River at about 10 Mile. Who knew? Then he took Grand River all the way to Southfield. When we got to 7 Mile I thought I would be able to look down Greyfield to see that it was like now. Well, the Monument place is still there and that's the only clue I had to where Greyfield even was. The road is all torn up on the north bound side and you couldn't even tell there was a street there. But what a horrendous drive down Grand River. Even Vernor Highway has fared better than that.

The Amish part. Amish in the City is getting very interesting. The kids went to their first horse race, their first concert and their first church service that wasn't Amish. I'm talking about the Amish kids, I think most of the City kids had experienced all of that before.

I went to Greektown this morning to use that $10.00 coupon. Emptying my gambling purse was just a byproduct. I went to the casino, to the post office and got my haircut and was home by 9:10 and ready for a nap.

Tape O Rama

I wouldn't even sign on line today until after I had watched all my tapes. I put all my game comments on Adrienne's blog.

In other news Kelly came over here yesterday looking for help in writing his 4 minute speech for his speech class. I think the class is today. His topic was to convince people that the new Michigan tax increase on cigarettes is just wrong. I don't agree with him, but I can get behind anything. He had a sort of outline of his thoughts in about 10 sentences and we managed to turn that into a couple of pages. I had him read it all back to me and timed him. This gave me a chance to see which phrases he stumbled over and we went back and changed them more to his own words.

He was supposed to include quotes (he had one) and statistics. We tried to go online to state of mich.gov but all their information was about the last tax increase in 1999. I offered to make some up but he has that "I'd rather not get caught" streak. Not a bad thing to have.

I'm hoping that he will let me know how it all came out. btw his email address is KJSheedy@netzero.net.

Racing Amazingly

I just heard a TV ad that this Sunday, August 8th at 1:00 PM in front of Penny's at the Westland Mall there will be tryouts/auditions for the next Amazing Race. Who's in?

Important Witty Stuff

Home again. All the way home I thought about stuff to put in my blog. Important, witty stuff. But now I have caught up with everyone esle's blogs (yeaaa Adam) and my stuff doesn't seem very important any more.

The Money Part
First of all. I had 13 five dollar bills in my gambling purse. I had $66.00 in my wallet (not counting the back-up travellers check). Within the first hour of gambling I hit $100.00 on a nickle machine called "King of the Grill". (I love that game) I put that $100.00 in the wallet. So, play, play, play, win, lose, cash in, win, lose this is what goes on. 2nd day, I have only 3 five dollar bills in my gambling purse so I take some out of the wallet a couple of times to trade in for five dollar bills (I gamble in small increments) Play, play, play, lose, lose, lose. Have I ever mentioned how much I don't like Soaring Eagle. We were supposed to leave for home at 4:30. About 3:30 I was down to my last 2 fives and decided that was enough. I went to find a comfortable seat in the bar to wait out the time. On the way to the bar I noticed a ticket in my pocket for $15.00 and cashed it in. While sitting in the bar I took inventory of the money. I now had 5 five dollar bills in my gambling purse and a count in my wallet yielded $106.00. If you do the math you'll know that it can't be more even than that. That's the way, unh, hunh, unh hunh I like it.

Its 5 AM do you know where your children are?

The one I'm in charge of is upstairs still sleeping. About 3:30 she moved into Gretchen's room so I was able to get up without disturbing her. I don't know what kind of disturbance moved her into Gretchen's room, I don't think I slept all night. So it couldn't possibly have been any noise I was making.

What a great party we had. (Mighta been the whiskey). The karaoke went well. Erika did me proud of course. Even Gene Suchy got up and sang My Way. (Except he sang it Frank's way)

We stayed at Greektown about 3 hours. We left when it started to get really crowded at about 3 pm. So we got home in time to have something to eat and catch a little nap before the party.

I only have to drive up to Dearborn at 5:30. Then I should be able to sleep on the road the rest of the day.