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?"

How sweet

My 2 year old nephew got me the best birthday present. Three little cans of Play-Doh. He picked it out himself when my sister told him my birthday was coming up. He wouldn't even play with it until I opened the gift. What a sweet little boy!

Once I opened the gift, all he wanted to do was play with the Play-Doh, with me assisting, of course. It's so therapeutic to knead that dough and shape it into whatever mold I can find. Smells good too...like a salty slice of childhood.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I'm glad I waited to get a iPhone. Now the question is do I want a 32GB or go cheap and get the $99 8GB?

History Lesson?

I was watching House Hunters International and this couple was looking for a vacation house in Nicaragua.

What?!?

Isn't that the country where the Sandanistas and the Contras were fighting? I remember some bad stuff coming out of that place. So what if it was like 20 years ago. I can't imagine that the country is much more stable now.

New Good Day Set

Good Day Sacramento unveiled their new set this week. I haven't really had a good chance to really look at it, but I do have a few thoughts about the new look:

• What the heck is that thing over the fake fireplace? It looks like a ship's wheel. Seriously, is it a clock? It's really distracting.
• I do enjoy the giant mock Tower bridge connecting the two sides of the studio.
• It looks better in HD than in regularD
  

Now that there is an open spot on the weekend anchor desk, can I give the potential candidates a work of advice? Cut back on the Go Girl. Some of your viewers can't handle that much enthusiasm that early in the morning. Wait until at least 9:30 am to "go to 11" with the energy. Take a look at your male counterparts and embrace that vibe.

Oh now what?

I was perusing the headlines of the Sacramento Business Journal when I read this story titled, Privacy study shows Google’s eyes are everywhere.

Basically, it says that many websites track what you do, not through cookies, but what I think is embedded software in their sites from a third party. It's one of their tricky little ways around their privacy agreements.

Of course I know nothing is really private on the Internet, but it skeeves me out that some big corporation is watching me on every site I visit. It's kind of like some hidden paparazzi.

Now I want to mess with the big brother who is watching me. What kind of ridiculous yet harmless websites can I visit to confuse the powers that be?

Yeah, I think we figured it out

I haven't watched the MTV Movie awards probably since its inception back in the 1990's, which means I didn't see whatever the hell happened to Eminem. I read about it on the Yahoo News... OK, I just read the headline, but of course I knew it was all a setup.

Here's a tip for today's TV audience, 99% of what you see on TV is set up, planned, staged or otherwise controlled. It's very rare that anything genuinely happens on TV and when it does, it's usually something really stupid a celebrity said or the antics of an out of control wild animal.

How do I know this? Because a TON of money is pumped into TV shows, therefore, those in power do what they can to protect their investment. It would be stupid for them not to control it.

Maybe that's why I no longer watch those game shows masquerading as reality shows...I don't like being told that my vote counts when it probably doesn't.

It really begs the question, why is this even news?

Wait a minute!

I was perusing the Mac products at Best Buy today when I saw a Norton Anti-virus for Mac. What the hell? I thought Mac's didn't have viruses. Now I'm all paranoid about my computer getting infected by something malicious. Did I fall for some slick marketing or are Macs really safer from vicious hackers and their idiotic tactics than PCs?

Why am I watching this?

Somehow I got reeled into the latest episode of Jon & Kate plus 8. Morbid curiosity pulled me in, I guess. That and not much else to choose from at the time...

Coming from a family where multiple births happen naturally, I have issues with people who use fertility drugs and then end up with a gaggle of children. You won't get any sympathy from me.

Regardless, this episode was about Kate's birthday and Jon was on a ski trip to Utah during it. If I was married and my husband was out of town on my birthday, he might as well just not come home. Any reason other than to visit a dying relative or the possibility of losing his job if he didn't go on the trip, is grounds for divorce.