Recently in Just nothing, really Category

First, some sports:

Also, congratulations to the LSU Tigers, who once again staved off elimination with a 9th inning rally. Trailing 5-0, they scored a run in the 7th, a run in the 8th, and four runs in the bottom of the 9th to send Rice home and give themselves another shot at North Carolina. It's still uphill for the Tigers but, like their football counterparts, they keep plugging and good things keep happening. Oh yeah, one more thing:

Now, about this post's title: We’ve all seen this. Young men wear something they call shorts well below their waist. These shorts would be a good 6-8" below the knees if worn at the waist. Men my age wear them like that and they don’t look bad. Young men wear them so far below their waist, though, that they have to actually hold them up with their hand to be able to walk. Usually, a substantial portion of their boxer shorts underneath are exposed as well. I think it looks ridiculous but it should also be noted that no one would or should ever take fashion advice from me. If that’s the style, so be it. No complaints from me. However, I must confess that I do laugh when I see something like this in the morning paper (Not sure but free registration may be required). Seems two boys (16 & 14) got into a car chase with police, wrecked the vehicle they were driving and several others, and then got out and took off on foot. That article picks up the story thusly:

As the "two young men" bolted from the Trailblazer to make a run for it, said Salzer, one was delayed because "his pants fell down to his ankles and he had to pull them up before he ran."

78 days until football season ...

Quote of the Day

Surely at some point Tuesday afternoon, doubt and despair must have quietly crept into the LSU dugout.

It didn’t stick around, though.

Randy Rosetta, The Advocate

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "LSU rallied for six late runs, including the final four with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning, to claim a 6-5 win over the Rice baseball team in an elimination game at the College World Series Tuesday afternoon in Omaha, Neb. The Owls' 2008 season has come to an end with a final record of 47-15."

So the guy at the counter was waiting on his customer. He needs more information from the customer so said customer gets on his cell phone and calls someone to get it. Said customer’s wife or daughter picks up the phone.

Him: “Honey, can you read something to me off of the product registration?”

He motions to the guy at the counter to give him something to write with. The guy at the counter says to “just read it to me out loud”. The customer starts repeating what the wife or daughter is reading to him and then stops. The wife or daughter must put on her glasses to continue. The customer is a little perturbed at this development but says OK. He decides to put his cell phone on speaker and lay it on the counter so he doesn’t have to do all of that repeating again. He turns the volume all the way up so the guy at the counter can hear it and then ...

Her on the very loud cell phone speaker: “I can’t read this m*therf*cker”. Note: She didn’t use asterisks.

The customer turned red as a beet. The guy at the counter and the other nearby customers smiled and tried to contain their laughter but I’m quite sure it made their day.

Quote of the Day

Beheading someone is 'not that difficult'

CNN.com Headline - April 11, 2008

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "The family is invited over for a bonfire and yard work party. Rakes are handed out for raking rocks for the yard. Overgrown bushes and shrubs are trimmed back and the clipping added to the brush pile."

Talked about my old favorite mug Sunday. I'm drinking from that one as I type here this morning. I'd like to discuss the one that arrived at CrabAppleLane yesterday. :)

This one arrived yesterday courtesy of my cousin, Carol, and Snapfish. An unexpected and totally unnecessary gift. I was hoping to have it in time for her visit Sunday but it wasn't to be. She and Mom came up to CrabAppleLane Sunday afternoon. The mug came out much, much, much better than expected. It is now my favorite mug. Patsy and I really enjoyed the lovely visit and please come back any time. Thanks again, Carol. :)

Original photo - City Park - New Orleans, LA - November 23, 2007

Quote of the Day

Take me out to the black
Tell them I aint coming back

Joss Whedon & Sonny Rhodes, Firefly Theme

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "I challenge ALL readers to describe your favorite mug. But make sure it's your favorite, not the one you think is the coolest, but the one you actually use the most."

I picked up lunch yesterday and we ate in Bogue Falaya Park. This time, I brought the camera AND I loaded the battery. Because of the spectacular thunderstorm we had last night, the river was higher than usual. White sand from our vantage point indicates that it gets quite a bit higher on occasion. The park is quite nice, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and quite serene on weekdays. We'll probably be doing more of this.

Bogue Falaya - March 4, 2008

My friend, Andrea, is responsible for today's QOTD. She mentioned it the other day.

Quote of the Day

Little darlin'
It's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darlin'
It feels like years since it's been here

George Harrison (The Beatles) - Here Comes The Sun

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "If you did not stop reading this long winded post long ago, my point is that music did all of this, provided all of these wonderful memories and it just sucks that the kids as well as older people that missed out don’t have this kind of stuff anymore."

That sounds just like Lester Bangs. -Rob

It’s Friday and it’s February 29. The last time February 29 fell on a Friday was 1980. I’m sure it was just an ordinary work day for me much like today is.

Patsy and I had lunch in Bogue Falaya Park yesterday. We both work within a half- mile of it. It was the second such time we've done that since I started working in Covington and I brought my camera this time. Unfortunately, I forgot to load the battery. I used to bring my camera to work every day in New Orleans and putting the battery in the camera was part of my morning routine. It saddens me a little that I have become such a creature of routine but there it is. The new employer's workplace is a little smaller than my previous employer's and I haven't found a place I can store it where it will be out of the way and safe. We're moving to a brand new facility in a few months and I will start bringing it with me every day again when we do. I digress. Bogue Falaya is a gorgeous park still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Pictures next time. :)

Quote of the Day

No calendars used today are perfect; they are off by seconds, minutes, hours or days every year. To make a calendar more accurate, new leap year rules have to be introduced to the Gregorian calendar, complicating the calculation of the calendar even more. It will, however, need some modifications in a few thousand years. As for the tropical year, it is approximately 365.242199 days, but varies from year to year because of the influence of other planets.

Timeanddate.com

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "When the base campers pitched their tents with us, our team was given a tremendous boost and now as they slowly begin to move on to pastures new, visiting teams like ourselves, it is the banter and bacon at the House that will be missed the most."

The CrabAppleLane Saturday afternoon matinée yesterday was Michael Clayton. It was on DirecTV Pay-Per-View and included a Maltin Minute. I like everything Maltin says about George Clooney. The movies he makes between Batman and the Ocean movies are superb. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Out of Sight, and Syriana are excellent. Add Michael Clayton to that list. Excellent performances all around, particularly Tom Wilkinson, who plays a suddenly conscientious attorney. Wilkinson has one scene with Clooney where he goes from just outside of reality's grip right back into the moment with sharp lawyerly focus (See today's QOTD). It was an amazing delivery and he is absolutely convincing. Wilkinson and Clooney both play attorneys who consider themselves "janitors", because they essentially clean up their client's messes. There's another janitor of sorts in the film called Mr Verne. He "deals in absolutes". He is a truly frightening character that I hope doesn't exist in the real world. The only criticism I can level at Michael Clayton is that the ending tailed off from the rest of the film and was a little too "Hollywood" for my tastes. Still, I highly recommend it. The BOTD has a different take.

I offer two from the CrabAppleLane yard on this overcast, somewhat dreary Sunday:

CrabAppleLane Rest Stop - February 24, 2008

Sign of spring - February 24, 2008

Quote of the Day

Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you're a bag man not an attorney. If your intention was to have me committed you should have kept me in Wisconsin where the arrest report, the videotape, eyewitness reports of my inappropriate behavior would have had jurisdictional relevance. I have no criminal record in the state of New York, and the single determining criteria for involuntary commitment is danger. Is the defendant a danger to himself or to others. You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and God bless, but I'll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.

Arthur Edens, Michael Clayton

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "Boring and contrived does not a good thriller make and the ordeal is certainly not helped by a George Clooney who seems to have mistaken weary for depth."

Still adjusting to the new job closer to home. As I was driving home last night, I heard on the radio about how heavy the traffic was on my former route and that it was �just going to be slow going�. I felt some guilt, I suppose, because my friends were stuck in it. I felt some relief, I suppose, because I wasn�t. There was also a little joy that I was getting home at least two hours earlier last night.

I�m glad the war is over and I�m even more glad that Blu Ray won. They�re still a little too pricey (Both the players and the discs) for CrabAppleLane but maybe we can indulge ourselves sometime this year or next.

Still fighting through issues here at the CrabAppleLane Blog. Movable Type Support is trying to help me through it. A comment here returned an �internal server error� message Tuesday morning. I am sick of that message. It was happening on the other server with the older version of Movable Type and it�s happening sometimes with this new, fresh, clean installation and version on a new, more powerful server. The other blogs here are working fine. It�s just this one causing trouble. It must be something I said.

Quote of the Day

We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop.

Atsutoshi Nishida, Toshiba President and Chief Executive

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "One of the staff wrote this lovely little ditty for me...sung to the tune of ABBA's Dancing Queen."

Starting to get excited about the upcoming Super Bowl. I'm pulling for the Giants because of local boy Eli Manning, their hard-nosed defensive play, their NFC-ness, and because they're playing the Patriots. I think they have a chance. The pressure is on New England. If the Giants can keep it close like the Jags and Chargers did and like they, the Giants, did just a few weeks ago, I think it will be the Pats who will buckle.

The last week and a half have been an adjustment. I'll be back to normal, daily blogging when I've moved everything to the new server. That should happen over the next week or so. Thought I’d add a little fun for those few readers I have left. Shamelessly stolen from Dave. Try a few of them.

Quote of the Day

It went fine. We won.

Eli Manning, New York Giants QB

Blog of the day via The Nightfly is here.

Quote from said blog: "Then he shook his fist at me and returned to heaven to drink martinis and play bridge with my mother and her parents."

We have a new wood pellet stove coming today if the rain lets up at CrabAppleLane. Not sure why rain has any effect on installation but I'm told it does. Our current wood pellet stove was a victim of the CrabAppleLane Lightning Strike of 2007. The new stove is very similar to our current one but it has 13 years worth of updates and innovations. The newer model has a thermostat so that it comes on automatically. We’ll probably only do that while we’re present until we have some confidence in how it works. It has a larger fuel capacity and it is supposedly easier to clean. Those are big pluses. The two biggest reasons we’re anxious to get this done, though, are 1) it heats our living room perfectly and 2) cost. Wood pellets are much cheaper to burn than propane, particularly when you have to turn the heater on full blast to just barely knock the chill out of the air in the living room. Anyway, this is the model we chose (I think. It's been a month since we chose it). The brass plating of the older model has been replaced by gold plating on the newer one. It shouldn’t pit and discolor as easily. After looking at our last propane bill and draining most of the discretionary income we have for the next few months, it will be a welcome event.

About today's QOTD: It refers to the basketball game that Baylor and Texas A & M played last night that went to five overtimes.

Quote of the Day

I'm tired.

Curtis Jerrells, Baylor University

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "Are you good at inventing recipes? Are you looking for a place to take your date for Valentine's day? Do you want to enjoy a romantic dinner for two? Do you love using the Greek Gods creamy thick Greek yogurt in your cooking?"

My two fantasy playoff teams (Ragpickers and Erasers) find themselves in an unfamiliar position halfway through the Colts-Chargers game. They're in contention. Both teams benefited from Ryan Grant's huge day yesterday. Indy's loss will hurt both of those teams, though. Hopefully, it will hurt everyone else about the same. There will be a new Super Bowl Champion. I suppose I'm now rooting for the Chargers, Giants, and Packers. Not wild about the Pats or Cowboys.

A little joke I read today that my friend, Ken, might appreciate:
Perfect Pitch - When you throw an accordion into a dumpster and it lands on a banjo

Started tinkering with one of my Christmas presents yesterday. The first record I tried was Joe Walsh's Barnstorm from 1972 ... because it was already out. Mixed results. I think I'll need some headphones. On my computer speakers, it's hard to listen closely enough to hear through the pops whether the record skipped or not, especially on songs you haven't listened to in 30 years or so. I also determined that a little practice will be required to get good results. I can't tell you the last time I had to balance a tone arm and I'm still not sure I did it satisfactorily. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you might want to ask your parents. :)

I offer three images depicting the three stages of my 15-mile road trip today. The weather here at CrabAppleLane is simply magnificent. Was yesterday, too, but I squandered most of the day. Would surely like a do over.

On the way out - January 13, 2008 - In Whippoorwill Grove near CrabAppleLane

In between - January 13, 2008 - Lance Armstrong would not approve of my training regimen.

On the way in - January 13, 2008 - Off Highway 40 in Bush, LA - Near CrabAppleLane

Quote of the Day

Hey now
The wells run dry
Pages of your book on fire
Read the writing
On the wall

Joe Walsh, Turn To Stone

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "I myself celebrate Festivus. Not because I'm just a Seinfeld fan, but because I know every line... word for word... and I know every single possible thing there is to know about Seinfeld. I could answer any question about Seinfeld."