MERRY THANKSGIVING

I'd like to wish all of you my best for your holiday season, hoping that you will get to spend quality time full of love and filled with blessings with your families, or for others of you that you will at least get along with your family for ONE day, that you would not get on each others nerves coming away with a feeling of resentment and anger, that your thanksgiving dinner will not end up eaten by a wild pack of dogs, or be pulled to the ground by a toddler pulling on the table cloth. That your Uncle bob would not get crazy drunk this year, and decide to do a little Thanksgiving day streak. That little Billy would not break his arm playing thanksgiving day football, or smash his face against the bed post and have to go to the emergency room for a cast or stitches. That the turkey (or turducken) is thouroughtly cooked and that your family doesn't contract Salmonilla, or if they do, that you have four bathrooms to take the added load. But mostly just that you have a good time and that you make sure to count your many blessings

gobble gobble

ENGAGED

So, I got engaged a couple of weeks ago sorry that I have not posted about it here, but you know, I am kind of busy with other things, student teaching, work, planning a wedding and stuff like that.

From what I ahve heard it sounds like most guys just say, "honey, I don't care what the details are, just plan it and let's be done with it." but that's just not me, well sort of, but I at least want a hand in some things...mainly in saving money and getting good deals on the reception. It turns out that the only thing we are going to have to pay for is the food, we are getting the facility fee waived, and any other little fees waived too, which is nice, the only bump we ran into was the fact that they aren't allowed to have kegs on the premise which means that we are going to have to bottle the beer, oh well, oh, and the wedding is on April fools day too, but oh well.

So what is with this weather, it is mid november and it is still hot enough to wear shorts outside during the daytime...what gives?

SEPTEMBER

Greetings everyone, my apologies for not blogging for quite some time, but I have been pretty busy, and have had little time to do such things as keep up on my posting.

I recently started student teaching at one of the local high schools in the area, and it is a blast. Though I am still a little nervous in front of the classes, I am getting more used to being in charge and teaching.

I also have been working part time, as well as enduring two other classes that I have to take to obtain my credential, But school has always been fun, and even classes that don't seem relevant, or pertinent can still be valuable later on.

I have been having pretty bad indigestion as of late...it started when I ate an entire large pepperoni pizza, and from there out, whever I eat anything fried, spicy, or acidic, it just makes my esophagus and stomach not feel very good. Luckily I keep the Pepcid AC Chewables on hand to correct this.

Well, yes, that was all very lovely for you I guess, reading about my stomach problems and such...

Oh, I bought a car...It is a Dark blue Saturn s-1, and it gets really good gas milage, and it lowers my insurance $50 which is Absolutely Fabulous.

Ok, aure vois, thank you for stopping by

*bing* You are now free to move about the Internet

My truck in our shop on one of those rainy days.

MOM'S NEW CAR

I know you are probably expecting me to write about my mom's new car, but I'm not. You can go see what she wrote about her new car on her blog. I am writing about my truck, however I am writing about my truck because my mom is writing about her SUV, and I realized I never made any mention of my truck, probably because I owned it before I started blogging. Anyhow, I bought my truck last August for $14999.00 which was $500 under blue book, and just a little over factory invoice. It was a good deal so I got funded through my bank and bought it. A few months later I refinanced my house and used some of the equity to flat out but the truck. So it is completely mine, and only a year old...who would have thunk it?

From left to righ (also birth order)t: Logic (Tail being the object furthest left in the picture), Junior, August, and Friday

KITTENS

The kittens have opened their eyes
and begun exploring the living room
Miako (the eldest cat of the house)
hates them and hisses at them, but
the kittens don't flinch about it
and waddle straight for her anyways
which makes her scatter off in the
other direction. It is pretty funny.

GALACTIC BATTLEGROUNDS

So I have been playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds as of late. It is based on the Age of Empires II game engine, and for most of the people who actually read this, that won't mean much to you. Anyhow, I have been playing way too much, but its my prerogotive, so thats that.

I am headed to Livermore to go to N's family reunion this weekend. There should be lots of food, it should be fun.

Just about ready to start school, having registration/admission problems as is the norm, but hopefully it will all be squared away by the first day of school (Monday)

thats all for now, enjoy your day.

Black Monarchs Castle, one of the best presents I ever recieved as a kid, Thanks mom :)

LEGO MANIAC

The other day N came to me to ask me to help her buy four lego sets for her boss' son A from ebay. A had given her $280 to fund this buying. This combined a couple of my favorite things, EBAYING and LEGOS, so I took no time in siezing the opportunity and in no time was bidding on one of each of the sets. Then I saw it, the motherlode, 29 Lego sets, all castle and pirate, in one huge lot. Initially the lot was at $120, but after some calculations, I decided that this lot was worth $340 on the conservative low end. This lot included 3 out of the four sets that A wanted and a whole lot more, I figured I could buy it, give him the ones he wanted, then sell the rest and buy the final set and then keep whatever profit was made. I was willing to put $50 on top of A's money so that we would have a grand total of $330 to work with. Then I waited. With a minute and thirty seconds I put in my bid of $333.33 hit the verify button and immediately was out bid...I reacted quickly and put in a desperation bid of $350.00, but to no avail. I was out bid again and the auction was over, sold for $355 and no cents. But i was glad that I had not won, my desperation bidding could have gotten me in over my head. I emailed the winning bidder, who used the same last minute tactics that I had but bid higher, and asked him what his highest bid was. He emailed me back, suprisingly, and told me that he didn't really want to pay more than $350, but that he had bid $375 just to make sure. I don't feel so bad about losing it :)

Anyhow, I did find and win one of the large castles on German Ebay, and am currently trying to land the other three.

All this Legoing got me to unpack my own collection. I found a site that has a list of all the lego sets there are and also inventories each brick from each set. Counting only my complete sets, the site tells me, my collection is worth $180, but I have not entered all of my complete sets yet. The site also provides instructions for sets. I cycled through several of them finding various sets that I know that I have or finding sets that I didn't know I had. One of the spaceships I have is near complete, but is missing a wing and sveral 1x1x3 blue pieces. I built it excluding the missing parts...it is near complete, but looks like it flew through a meteor shower, or was in a severe firefight.

I also bought a couple lots of various bricks on ebay...AND I am going yardsailing this weekend to go see what I can find :) I want to start selling stuff on Ebay too. N laughs at me but understands, thanks honey, I love you.

BUT NOW I'M BACK

And I can really shake em down. Anyways, so I have been unable to access the internet for a week or so because my office changed from AOL DSL to SBC since AOL dropped their DSL service. It was inconvenient, but what can you do?

I am glad that I don't watch TV, I am hearing there are all kinds of new and crappy reality shows that I am glad I won't be subjected to. I have been watching a steady stream of Movies though, and some of them, namely THE LIFE AQUATIC & DOLEMITE, which both made me wish for the 2 hours of my life back.

The highlight has been the GUNDAM WING series that I have been watching, 5 episodes at a time. Last night I got to the point that I had seen on cartoon network when it was aired there, so from here out I haven't seen anything. I was glad to see that Quatre(who is my favorite character)was able to beat Hiro (who was supposed to be the best gundam pilot) in a 1 on 1 fight, but luckily Quatre came to his senses before he killed Hiro, thinks he killed Troa though (but troa is still alive floating about in space) anyhow thats all for now

The five Gundams

ZUMA

So I just spent the last couple hours playing Zuma, from Popcap Games and now it is 2:00 a.m. in the morning (as opposed to 2:00 a.m. in the afternoon). Apparently my mom has become somewhat of a Zuma Master, and I have become like a padawan. The object of zuma is to spit colored balls out of the mouth of a small stone frog idol as other balls are rolling in in order to blow up the rolling balls. Extra points can be earned by making combos or by shooting through a gap made by already exploded balls.

But now I am practicing my HTML, which I just learned today, and I am getting HUNGRY and tired. So I will leave you with that.

I think I will edit this post at another time, i dont know why that one link changed color?
ciao

LLAMA SONG LLYRICS

Here are the llyrics to the llama song, thanks mom.

I STOLE THIS FROM KRISTIN

CLICK BELOW

The Llama Song

EBAY SNIPER

I am an Ebay sniper. Like an invisble eagle, circling around a fisherman only to steal away the fish at the last moment. Like a ninja in a darkroom on the night of a new moon, who swipes the negatives before they can be developed. Or, like two white rabbits in a snow storm driving a white truck full of white butcher paper listening to The Great White on the radio, is my Ebay auction skill!

My technique is thus:
1. THE SEARCH - I peruse the listings, searching for items i may be interested in. Once I find something, I determine the going price for the item, and decide how much I will pay for it.

2. THE WAIT - Once I set my heart on a particular item I take a look at when the auction ends and make a note of it. Then I calculate what time I need to come back to steal the item away from the unlucky bidder (aka the adversary)

3. THE SNIPE - Generally I start paying close attention at about 10 minutes til the end of the auction. I refresh my screen once a minute until about the three minute mark. I then begin to listen for the ticks of the clock behind me and synchronize it with the seconds left on the auctiontimer. At the two minute mark I place my bid and go to the bid confirmation screen...the key to the bid is that it must be the absolute highest that I am willing to pay, that way, if I lose, I don't feel as bad about it. I count in my head w/ the help of the clock, until about 25 seconds left and confirm the bid. Then I go back to the Item description page and refresh the screen, and either see a few seconds remaining, or that I have won the auction.

Sniping actually has good aspects for the buyer. It prevents impulsive price wars. On one occasion I got into a bidding war with an adversary and ended up paying more than I would have just because I wanted to win...I guess I'm too competitive. The other thing sniping does is prevents a devious seller from running the proxy bid up to your max bid. It also gives other bidders a very little window to bid against you, which is why they should have bid their max to begin with. Sniping also provides a little bit of a rush and feeling of accomplishment when you manage to steal something away at the last minute. So I hope you have all learned a valuable lesson, and will use these methods as your own. Happy Sniping!!

Like a kitten with an XM-25, is my ebay auction skill!!

"THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET CARELESS"

I thought that i was going to be able to come up with something interesting to post about, but I am at a loss. Soo...Here is what I ahve been doing. On friday I watched..oh, thats right, On friday I was going to watch Silent Running, but it didnt come in time, so the viewing was postponed until saturday night. My mom came up, and brought N some shoes, some shoes from some lady my Grandma knew...My grandma is good about getting shoes. She landed me three decent pair that used to belong to this photographer guy, but he passed on, so I got his shoes...I am not sure if N got dead lady shoes or not, but I think the original owner is still alive. Anyhow, mum, also brought up some licorice, I ordered a pizza and we watched the film, it was good, except for the music by Joan Biaz, or whatever. The little drone things were cute, we thought it was funny how the main character treated them,

"That's what happens when you get careless" (Thanks hun)

is what he says when 01 and 02 find and are pining over the remnant of 03 leg trapped in the catwalk...however, his eugoogally (ZOOLANDER) for his crewmate was very good (acting), Definately worth watching, but I would recommend playing "Wonderful world" over the Biaz music, or something not so eco-hippy-folkish.
I mowed on saturday too...hosed down a wasp nest, and created two new sim familes for my neighbor hood. Sunday I played three services for PC and then went swimming and then went to N's friends E&R's church function for free hotdogs and fireworks show.
Monday was the fourth, I bought a tri-tip from the meat market and took it to V-town for a parbecue at T's house, with all the neices and nephews, We had a good time, saw fireworks, got home late.

Bruce Dern is Lowell Mason in SILENT RUNNING

KITTY ACUPUNCTURE

So last night I fell asleep on my couch and was awakened by my girlfriend who had begged me to help her with somem trash that had piled up on her back patio. I had declined and she had left to take care of it by herself, however was soo grossed out by some unexpected larvae, that she couldn't handle it, and since my phone was set on silent in the other room, I had not heard her call me ten times. So she decided to come by and see why I wasn't answering. So she walkED in to find me asleep, woke me up and started telling me her dilemma. About 30 seconds into her plea for help, my cat Miako decided she needed N's attention, ran up her leg and attatched herself to N's chest via claws (normally I catch her and she doesn't need her claws)

*Now, the trick was cute when she was a kitten. She would spring up my pants and shirt and I would grab her , hold her, and pet her. These days the trick still works, only her vertical leap is high enough for me to catch her on her initial jump. The problem is that she tries the trick when I am not paying attention, the other problem is that she tries the trick with my guests and friends who don't see it coming.

The day before she got N, she got me while I was ..err...taking care of business. She jumped up and latched onto me back. It hurt. I tried to shake her off, which made her dig in even further. It hurt worse. I managed to grab the scruff of her neck and chuck her into the hallway, a little too hard. Anyhow, i had all of her claws equally dispersed in my back, which hurts, dont get me wrong...but it looked like she was hanging onto the center of N's chest by a single claw. Imagine the weight of a small adult cat suspended from one place... that place being a hook driven through the first 4 layers of your epidermis.
...Yeah, I bet it still hurts. Sorry hun!