Petticoat Junction

Remember that old show with the hotel and the train in the town of Hooterville with Kate and lazy Uncle Joe as a few of the characters? I just saw a routine from the popular comedian, Ron White. Here is a short from Ron's routine I heard tonight:

Normally I stand up here and don't see much of the audience. Tonight is special as tonight we are making a DVD of the show, but normally I look out over the audience and see all dark or just a few people in the first few rows. One night I looked out and there was this woman sitting down front with one of those denim skirts, you know, the ones with the buttons up the front. Well this one wasn't buttoned..... I couldn't help but look, you know, with my attention deficit and all.... After a while, I had to say something and said, "Ma'am, Could you button up your skirt? I can see your slip." She snapped back, "It's a petticoat!" Well ma'am, I can see the junction. (long pause) And Uncle Joe looks like he could use a good shave, by the way...."

The audience was rolling with laughter. I having a hard time getting into many of the latest bunch of comedian's, but this guy is pretty good.

Well, the Flyers won tonight fair and square. They are looking a lot better than I thought they would against Montreal and they have good chance of advancing to the next round if they can keep this up. Time will tell.

What turns people off of sports?

Professional players; judgement calls. Tonight was a typical example. As a Flyer's fan for 36 years, I've seen this scenario more than anything else in any sport.

Flyers winning game in third period. Penalty called against Flyers (replay shows no penalty occurred). Other team ties the game. Other team wins in overtime, fa la la la la, la la la la. (put the "fa la la's" after the previous three other lines and you have a great song to sing at a game during the Christmas season...lol) Yes, hockey is faster than when I first began watching, with lots of speed, lots of teams, lots of action, high ticket prices, but one thing hasn't changed, the officiating. It's as disgusting as ever and I was once told by someone that it is why (she knows who she is) never liked sports. For me, hockey will be fun to watch no matter what, but it has gotten very old as far as the Flyers being in the same situation over and over as mentioned above. I can see once in a while, but a half a dozen times each season?????

The Flyers are a good team and if they lose this series with Montreal, they still showed how a team can come back after their worst season ever. I'd like to see Montreal go all the way this year. Would be nice to see one of those good old oroiginal teams get into the Stanley Cup finals again. Sorry Duck's.

The Flyers playoff series

Well, another nail biting finish. It's the 7th game, game tied, going into overtime. First goal wins the series. History has it that all Philly teams choke in these situations. We will see. I'm off to watch the finish. More in a few days. Have a lot to say, but just waiting for some witty thoughts to go with them. Come back soon. Who won the primary anyway....Better check that out, too. What is more important, a president every four years or a a Philly championship sometime this millennium? Don't hold your breath for any of how these turn out.

ElliotQuote of the weekend

I was bringing Elliot up to the house for the weekend and during the drive, was asked something interesting. Elliot asked me if I was aware and if I believed there was such a thing as world hunger. I told him that I'm aware of world hunger and how people in many parts of the world do not have enough to eat. He responded, "I have a solution to the problem". I said, "Yeah? What is it?" He began rambling in his usual unbroken continous style, "When I poop, I get hungry afterwards. If we can stop people from pooping, they won't get hungry. So to stop world hunger, we must first stop world pooping." At this point, I'm having trouble keeping my car on the road and trying not to laugh out loud. As soon as I regained my composure, I asked Elliot, "Is this something you heard from Larry the Cable Guy or on the Toon Network, or did you make that up on your own?" He said he made it up.

High Speed is back

I have my hight speed internet back. The Comcast guy showed up on Saturday and all is well. The problem was (for a change) not at the computer, but outside at the pole. He said the signal coming to the computer was dead and not a computer issue. Got a lot to do today, so catch ya'll later.

Morning surprise

You know you are going to have a bad day when:

You just got finished peeing, then when putting on some deodorant, the cap falls into the toilet. Happened to me yesterday. Sank to the bottom, of course. It's situations like that I can't deal with as soon as I'm out of bed and decided to wait until I got home from work to dig it out. It's times like these when you realize the morning pee is the foulest. They say things come in threes and luckily my day went pretty good. Nothing new to report and thanks for dropping in (get it?)...lol.

Can of SPAM

As a photographer who is very discriminating on how his equipment will meet my needs, I did an experiment after work. I noticed when I take pictures with my 75 to 300 MM zoom lens, the pictures are not as sharp as with the regular 18 to 70 MM lens. Thought I would put both lenses to the test and do a little comparing. I used a can of SPAM as my subject. It is a simple fact of life, that you can't expect something more than what limitations are given to you or whatever situation or person you are with. Gotta take what we get and can't expect to get blood from a stone, as the old expression goes. So true with photography and did this little experiment to learn the limitations of my equipment. I set up the can of SPAM on my outside yard table. Then took a few pictures at various distances, keeping the size of the subject the same in all the pictures. Mom and Nate, if you are reading this, will be sending you both an e mail in more detail. I've already determined that the "steady shot" feature of my camera is inconsistent. The camera was mounted on a tripod and it took four shots to get a sharp image (with my lens set at 300 MM and with my 2X teleconverter added) before I got one that showed little camera shake. Each of the other three, showed camera shake to various degrees.

A white balance test is in the future. Did an experiment like that before when using a "neutral gray card" and using backgrounds of different colors with construction paper back in my 35 MM film days. The results were cool and showed why people who took pictures of white horses in an all grren fiels of green and why the horse ended up looking pink. There is a very simple explanation as to why and plan to do this same experiment with digital and see if I come up with the same conclusion. I'm one who enjoys digging into the "hows and whys" of things and even though it can get a bit complicated at the time, what I learn makes things so much easier late when it counts the most.

I'm off to load in my pictures from today and see how things look.

Take care.

Latest Movie

I had the opportunity last night to watch (if you can believe this?), The Bridges of Madison County. If you know me, this is probably the last kind of movie you would think I would enjoy, but I really did. It was on AMC and took a look at it out of curiousity. I never was interested in the film, but was curious about it as it was once mentioned during a hilarious skit from the Red Green Show. On the show, one of the characters is a "bomb" expert (named Edgar). He was being interviewed on a segment during the show known as "As the Experts" Somehow along the way, the conversation of movies came up. Edgar began rambling about how movies are so fake. Harold ( those familiar with the show will know who I mean), commented how many good movies are out there, like The Bridges of Madison County. Edgar's eyes lit up and said he saw the movie, commenting how he was waiting for one of those bridges to blow up. Then added that the other's must have just as disappionted, as everyone left the theater in tears....lol.

Well, if any of you have never seen the movie, it is a good one.

My first introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog.

I thought I would start off tonight by asking a question. Do you have any idea of how many dishes you have? I find out how many I have when the cupboard is empty and the sink is overflowing. I'm on my second sink full tonight have a third on in the waitng. I have a system when I do the dishes at this level. I do all the plates and bowls first, dig them out one at a time and use the scubber on them and rinse them off (while the sink is still full of the other things), like pots and pans and all those plastic containers that have built up from lunches that I took to work. While the plates and bowls sit to dry in the dish drainer, the water had gotten cold from all the rinsing. I grab a towel dry them by hand and place them back in the cupboard so there is now room for more. By then the hot water heater has caught up and ready for more action. This is when you discover light at the end of the tunnel. Now that you can see the bottom of the sink, that is where you find old ziti pasta from when you drained them through a collander three nights earlierand have now swelled up and look like oversized rigatoni, yuck. If lucky enough, they are still white and won't look all fuzzy, with hairy things moving on them like they are some kind of lab experiment. Now it is time to wash those plastic containers, the ones I bring home evey night from my lunches I take to work. I hate those containers (from a washing standpoint) as the water is retained in the rims and seems to take days to evaporate. Same with the lids. Anyway, if ambitious, I'll get out a towel and take a half an hour to dry them off individually. Once past that point, along comes my favorite, the silverwear. Scrubbing each knife, fork and spoon is a nightmare. Sometimes I just stick them in a big bowl and if they look clean, just rinse them all at one time and put them in the dish drainer...lol. After that, the pots and pans are a piece of cake.

It is rare when I let things get to that point, but as a procrastinator, sometimes I let this get out of hand and have to spend a few hours to catch up and pay the price. Nothing better to do on a Friday night, when you have to to work on Saturday, like I have to tomorrow. Off to finish the last sinkload and having the feeing of accompishment after walking by the sink all week and ignoring it. Take care all of you who are reading this and now will not have to walk past the sink each night and feel guilty (until two weeks from now again...lol) Enjoy your weekends and will post something more very soon.