On Vacation

I've learned that I don't like to be on vacation longer than 3 to 4 days. After that, I get irritable and just want to go home.

Also, I'm very indoorsy. Sitting by the pool induces many of my phobias. Getting sunburned, being in a crowd, not to mention the vat of germs percolating in the center of it all. It's not that I mind getting wet. It's that I mind getting covered in various bacteria in which mass quantities of humanity have dipped.

Natural bodies of water are just as bad as community pools. I can't stop thinking about what might be lurking in each droplet.

And just in case you were wondering, I don't walk in dirt if there is a paved path to follow instead. I especially won't walk in dirt/rocks if I am not wearing the proper foot gear. It's kind of like camping...why bother if there is a more civilized alternative?

You Turkey!

One of the weirdest things about living in Sacramento is the plethora of wild turkeys running around the city. I've seen some walk right up to my office window. Checking out the cubes while looking for a mate, I guess.

My mom has seen turkeys wandering down the street in front of her house. Usually it's a female with a baby in tow. This evening, she saw a baby turkey hanging out on top of a parked car.

Since I work near Cal Expo where the homeless shelter is currently located thanks to Oprah Winfrey, I wonder if the lack of turkeys near my office has anything to do with that fact. I mean who can resist a free turkey dinner?

Writer's Block

It's not that I don't have an opinion on anything or observed random behavior. It's that I stare at this blank page and my mind decides to become like it.

I started reading the Twilight series and I think it's depressing me a little bit. I've banned romantic comedies from my TV because I think they have given me a warped sense of reality when it comes to relationships. Reading these tween romances might be having the same affect on me.

Of course, I won't stop reading them because I love to read and there's not much on TV.

There was something

I got a weird call in the middle of the night a few days ago. A possibly drunk or high chick called my home phone. I didn't answer it because no one really has that number so it's always someone mis-dialing. The screech of the phone woke me from a dead sleep. It only rang twice and barely caught the voicemail. The chick immediately called back, but didn't hang up quickly enough. This time she left a message, "Was that an old woman's voice or was it young? I want to know!" Maybe if you weren't thrashed and randomly calling your ex-boyfriend at 12:45 on a school night, you would have been able to hear better!

Why do I even care?

Someone in my neighborhood is a jackass. I don't know if it's just one person who regularly visits someone else on Thursdays or if it's multiple jackasses acting in the same idiotic manner.

I had suspected that the garbage collectors were the culprits of this weekly annoyance I am greeted to on Thursday evenings, but I saw one of them come by before I went to work and they put the can back almost exactly as they had picked it up.

Every Thursday is garbage day, so every morning, my cans are sitting in front of my house adjacent to my driveway in the street as per everyone else on the block. Today when I got home from work, the cans were smack dab in the middle of my driveway. I could barely wedge my car into the driveway.

Is it so much to ask Sacramentans to learn how to park their cars? There is a TON of parking in my neighborhood, why is my house so special? It must be everyone's obsession with shade. I have a large tree in my front yard that creates a huge shadow on the street. The problem with that reasoning is that this weird preoccupation with parking in front of my house occurs in the winter.

I have a good 15 - 20 foot curb line worth of parking in front of my house. I'm bad at guessing distances, but I know it's two cars worth at least. Why is it so difficult to park behind my damn garbage cans? I just hope whoever is moving the cans is suffering from some odd bacterial infection. Nothing dangerous, just something as annoying as I feel when I come home to my driveway being blocked!

Brownies

No, not that kind. Regular old-fashioned, homemade brownies. For some reason, I cannot eat brownies made from a mix. I can always tell. It's the only baked good that I can tell the difference. There is this gelatin texture/flavor to the mix brownies. It has a weird sort of foreign chewiness.

The kind my mom used to make when I was a kid (and still does) uses cocoa powder and not squares of bittersweet chocolate. Many fond memories were made while opening that can of cocoa powder. Of course, now the can we used to have to pry open with a spoon is a plastic container with a paper safety seal that doesn't pull off in one tear.

The brownies still taste yummy though. I can smell the warm chocolatey aroma even now.

What was that?

Over the past week, I've seen this commercial for some new sugar substitute. While I can barely recall the name of the product, I kept hearing that it was available at some store that sounded like "Rall-Lees".

Apparently, the voice over guy is not from California. I finally saw the logo for this store and it's actually Raley's. That's pronounced with a long "A", voice over guy.

Can someone please fix that? It's kind of annoying.

Pearls of Wisdom

• Never let someone take a picture of you that wouldn't want your Grandmother to see.
• Always use a coaster.
• Making commercials louder does not make me want to buy your product.
• It's better to have company on a Friday night.
  
• Wear a belt or don't complain when people stare at the asscrack you show them.
• Making eye contact is powerful. Use it wisely.
• Reading is fundamental.
  

What Not To Do

I was perusing the Craigslist ads for work when I came across this gem.

It's not so much the post itself, but the photo that was uploaded with it. Clearly, the guy took his agent's flyer and did an interesting job of covering up the name of the company (Cornish & Carey, I can tell just by the design) as well as inserting his contact info (which I can't read).

I enjoy the myriad of tape securing the contact info to the adjusted flyer.

Just in case you were wondering...

This is the trial I almost had to sit on as a jurist. I would have been a bad choice for the jury because I felt they were guilty and wouldn't be able to give them a fair trial.

This part we didn't hear about in the pre-trial questioning:

Halford and Hernandez had moved in as house guests of Danny Hughes, the former drummer in the Steve Miller Band and six-time California State Fair cookie baking champion, who was having trouble with a local street person.

The lawyers never asked, "Is anyone a fan of the Steve Miller Band or considered themselves a Space Cowboy?"