melog-20101130.log.3

momma made a chicken casserole. so, no need to visit kfc or popeye's.

she also made a sweet potato pie. not as good as chess, but i'll take her sweet potato pie over "no pie" any day of the week.

we bought a pumpkin pie for thanksgiving. only one slice was ever eaten from that pie.

yuck.

i called a plumber this evening. see . . . i rented out my first house to someone after moving to my current dwelling. the temp is dropping in my region. so, the tenant will decided to turn on his heat-- except that the gas meter was removed from the house from being vacant for so long. so, i have to get a new gas utility permit issued in order to have the gas turned on.

neither i nor the tenant knew this was necessary until a few months ago. i tried to get the gas turned back on, but my first attempt was a fiasco:

first, you have to apply for a house inspection. never mind that the house already had a successful inspection in order to have the the electricity turned on. oh, and that costs about $40.00.

*bing*

next, you have to get a licensed plumber to do a gas test and check to see if your house is up to code. $350.00.

*badda-bing*


then, if you're an ignorant poor soul like myself, you'll miss half a day of work to wait around for a terse city inspector who will come to your rental property and fail your inspection because your plumber did less than half-ass work and gave you the shaft.

*CHA-CHING*


that's some expensive shit, especially since i can get shit for free if i ever needed some.

well, a former neighbor who lives near my rental property is a plumber. i had forgotten about that fellow. he helped me out in the past. i got back in contact with him and he told me that a good plumber would have met the inspector for me and would have checked for everything that was not up to code before applying for an inspection.

simply put, i'd been had.

and i finally figured it out after waisting so much money and time. i was very, very pissed about this event a few weeks ago. the plumber tried to contact me to "fix the problems" missed in the inspection. but, they were only going to charge me even more.

tomorrow, i'll meet my former neighbor. he'll do a walk though with me and show me everything that needs to be brought up to city code. then, we'll go to the hardware store. then, i'll pay him for his labor after the work is done.

then, he will meet the inspector for me (so i don't have to miss work-- as it should have been) and let me know if there was a pass or fail. if it fails, the problem is on him. if it passes, then we all walk away happy and my tenant gets heat.

then, the tenant will cuss when he gets his gas bill next month.

hope it all works out. i gotta check with my supervisor and see if he's ok with me taking tomorrow off at short notice. usually they have no problems with it. but, it's best to ask as soon as possible.

after i do that, i gotta get my kids cleaned up and in the bed.

when it's all quiet, i think i'll watch my star trek dvd, or maybe finish up watch carl sagan's cosmos series.

a bowl of cocoa covered ice cream might be in my future, too.

mmmmmmmmm . . . .

melog-20101130.log.2

wow. listening to music really helps the work day go by faster.

listen to "roll out" by ludacris a couple of times and you're ready to take on just about anything at work.

well, work is basically over. time for me to be leaving.

i had to use my lunch break to take the kids to my mom's. now i gotta go pick 'em up-- along with dinner. yeah, you guessed it, my wife works late tonight. i think either popeye or "the colonel" will be cooking us dinner tonight.

////////

uh-oh . . . i see an error in my melog below:

Nov 30 17:30:46 uruk smartd[9323]: Device: /dev/mybrother'sbrain, 2 Offline uncorrectable sectors

what does that error mean above? i'll expound upon it below . . .

my knuckle-headed brother wrote me a letter asking me to "invest" some of his money in a money making scheme. he wants me to purchase a money order (or several, if you can't purchase one that big) for a substantial amount of money and mail it to a stranger's residence that neither of us knows! This is supposed to be an "investment" towards some business venture.

what the hell?

worse, he even predicted in his letter that i would think to myself while reading it: what the hell?

i hate to treat him like a child over his own savings. but, i will feel guilty letting him piss away what little bit of savings he has left on bullshit.

he needs to clear his debt and make wise investments. that's my goal as his trustee. but he's starting to ask me to do these little things here and there that will totally bleed him dry if this becomes habit.

arrrrgggghhhh!!!!

it's like some switch went off in his brain and now he's turning into a replica of our dad.

shit . . . i hope that switch doesn't change from a 0 to a 1 inside of my brain! is this some hidden code just ticking away like a time bomb or something?? is 40 years old the activation date?!

looks like i've got a nasty emergency maintenance job that i'll have to do: talking some sense into my elder brother. this is wrong. this shit should be the other way around. he should be talking sense into me-- they way it used to be.

what gives? what the hell?

melog-20101130.log.1

i'm sleepy. stayed up too late eating ice cream.

eating ramen noodles and chocolate covered zingers for lunch doesn't help much in the way of staying awake, either.

ok, gotta shake it off and get back to work . . .

melog-20101130.log

well, that tornado didn't touch down in my monkey sphere, so i guess we're all ok for now. let's just hope that one doesn't swoop us away in our sleep. that happened to a subdivision once. it was a very sad event to learn about. many people died in their sleep.

maybe that's why i'm still awake.

still lots of rain. the lightning is getting very bright at times and the thunder explodes loudly.

then, the rain subsides and you only hear wind chimes.

i'm eating a midnight snack. i'm having a bowl of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with powdered cocoa. i talked to my wife for a good while before fixing the ice cream and doing the dishes. we talked about her history class. she talked about how her professor stated that voltaire's way of thinking was a distant cause of the rise of the nazi party.

hmmmm . . . .

we talked a good while about all that was implied by such a statement.

i think i'll post a more detailed opinion on my original blog, "my dirty little secret" later this week. this idea has been on my mind for months. but, i don't feel like hashing out my opinions about all that here and now.

after all, i should be asleep already.

but, it's hard to turn down good conversation with an especially cute woman donning a gorgeous, most fabulous $185 hairdo.

that's not sarcasm, by the way.

i didn't eat any of the left over pizza. turns out, my nephew came to the kitchen and ate the rest of it anyhow. so, i think he would have honestly been a bit disappointed.

i've been in the closet for a while now about distancing myself from the christian faith. but, it's been a bit hard to stay in the closet inside my own house with my nephew staying for an extended period.

his brother (my other nephew) seems quite agnostic about god. i find that very interesting.

i assumed the same for the nephew hanging out with us. but, on his first night here he said that he was hoping he'd get the job he was looking for. he was doubtful until he saw a commercial where an african-american barber was cutting a caucasian's hair. just after the commercial went off, his phone ran. the barber shop where he applied was informing him that he had the job.

he then said, "if i didn't believe in god before, i sure do believe in him now".

"that's interesting . . ." i replied. i cringed inside myself, hoping my son wouldn't say something critical. he's rather out spoken about his feelings sometimes. but this time, he was quiet.

so . . . i just left it at that. what can i say? i wasn't there.

my daughter asked me earlier today about who made the world. she wanted to know who or what was responsible for all of it's beauty.

i told her that i didn't know for sure.

then i asked her what she thought.

she said, "well, it wasn't god. mommy told me he wasn't real".

hmmmm . . . i wasn't expecting that answer.

i asked her, "well, that's what mommy thinks. what do you think?"

see, i want my children to think for themselves-- even if that means she ends up believing in god. that goes for my son, too.

i'm not going to blatantly talk her into believe in god, but i want to generate something in her where she thinks for herself. telling her flatly that god doesn't exist is too me just the same as telling a child flatly that jesus is lord.

i don't want to give my children atheism. i want to give them freethinking. then, their freethinking can guide them along the way.

well, enough journaling for now. better get some sleep.

my back hurts when i try to sleep at night. not as bad as before, but i toss and turn a bit.

and my back hurts in the chair at work. this wasn't always so. my chair used to be quite comfortable and seemed so ergonomic.

i'll take a goody powder. maybe that will help me sleep a bit better.

i'll save my whiskey for the weekend.

melog-20101129.log.2

weather is getting a bit unstable across our region. a tornado warning siren went off a while ago. odd, though . . . the weather seemed so serene at the time the siren began to howl.

maybe that was the quiet before the storm.

well, nothing serious has happened in my neighborhood since the alarm sounded. it rains, then stops. thunder peals softly, and the wind blows, then it becomes calm again.

but, the meteorologists are all going nuts. sometimes you think they enjoy bad weather-- as if that's where the action is.

but, there is damage in places across our state. just not where i live at the moment. it seems it all keeps going around my neck of the woods so far.

i discussed the situation of my brother with a mutual friend. he's about the only person who knows as much detail as i do about the his case. details that i've had to cobble together because i think my brother (out of shame) has kept me in the dark about the true, nitty-grittiness of his case. but, now he asks us if we can help him find new counsel.

i don't think we're equipped to do that. but maybe we can. hard to make a decision like that and help him out when we don't know ourselves what his true situation is.

anyhow . . .

we'll see what we can do.

*sigh*

well, my wife made it home. her professor let them leave a wee bit early because of the weather.

my nephew brought home two slices of left over little caesar's.

pizza! pizza!

little caesar's one toping isn't necessarily the best, but it's sure the most bang for you buck! five dollars can get you a large one topping. eight dollars can get you a triple meat pizza that tastes just as good as any other national pizza chain.

ooops, here's the siren again. guess i better hit the hallway.

although, it's still really quiet outside-- minus the siren and the howling dogs.

maybe this is the quite before the storm-- like last time.

melog-20101129.log.1

well, the person at the book store mislead me by telling me they had the book we were looking for. they only had copies available for "institutional" use.

the book isn't on line anywhere that i can tell. just a few samples on google books.

and, my son's friend doesn't have the same assignments. we went to see if maybe he brought the book home, but nope . . . that wasn't our luck.

we had corn dogs for dinner. you know, the ones they wouldn't eat yesterday.

you guessed it. my wife is in class tonight. so, i'm the cook.

my daughter is really, really clingy tonight. it was really sweet at first, but now, i want to just pick her up and set her down somewhere. i had to escape just for a moment.

my son is calling. i guess he's finally realized that the sample in google books just won't cut it.

nothing i can do. poor kid should have remember to bring home his book maybe next time he'll remember after missing some time from recess or something.

hey, he'll live. in the grand scheme of things, this will probably be a quiet insignificant moment in his life.

melog-20101129.log.0

my son left a book at school that he requires to complete his homework.

i wanted to avoid the rain, but looks like we've got to get out in it so that i can get him this book that he says desperately needs.

oh well . . .

i'm making him pay for it out of his savings, since he has a copy of it at school already.

i check the local libraries. no luck. so . . . heading to the book store. i called ahead. they have several copies.

i'll let him off the hook with the air mattress. but i told him that if he puts another hole in this new one i bought, he's paying me double before out of his allowance before i let him earn any more money again.

these are some pricey mistakes he's been making lately. hope he wises up a bit.