Thanksgiving Weight Gain?

Two great ways to control your weight over Thanksgiving:

1) Be pregnant and nauseous
2) Get a cold and lose all appetite the day after
3) Eat only giblets

Melynda picked option 1, I picked number 2. The cold wasn't severe (no need to send cards or flowers but e-mails notifying me that you've sent an anonymous e-card are encouraged) but it's given me an unusual dueling pain around the kidneys. Saturday night left me unable to sleep and my sleep-deprived brain conjured up the possibility that the pain was the result of pnemonia. A quick check of the Encyclopedia Britannica (I'm old school) found no trace of fever. Shoof! Sunday night I woke up at 2:15 wondering if perhaps it was a kidney stone. Fortunately I fell back asleep and didn't waste any time on it. We all know that back pains during a cold are the natural result of cold germs taunting our kidneys with miniature cocktail spears.

6850

Kids- Don't Read This

With all the media-worry concerning toxic toys via China this year a lot of parents are unsure of what to do... buy presents that may later be recalled or cause harm to their bubble children? What to do... what to do...

As for me, I'm not going to buy any toys. Instead I'm getting each child a large vial of curiosity-encouraging science-satisfying mercury. It's a gift they can play with for hours and never grow bored.

5937

Braindead

I picked up a book at the library that I've been wanting to read for a while, Psycho by Robert Bloch. While there I read the first few pages and thought it was a bit familiar but since I'd seen the movie and read a detailed book on the making of the movie I figured it was probably something along the lines of the introductory paragraphs of the novel being quoted in the "making of" book.

But I decided to check my dorky list that I keep of all the books I've read. Sure enough, I read Psycho a whopping twenty-one months ago. The last time I did this was, er, this past summer where I re-read a book I first read back in 1998. What's that Bible verse about looking at yourself in the mirror and instantly forgetting what you look like?

Mmmmmmm

For some reason this struck me as extremely funny and I sat at my desk stifling laughter until I blew a corpuscle.

Politics... BLECH!

"Fort Wayne already has the highest pay level for mayor in the state of Indiana."

Yes, even higher than Indianapolis. Even more than the Governor of our state, both of whom earn $95,000. But that won't stop the just-elected not-in-office-yet official-politician Tommy Henry from potentially getting an 8% raise of $10,000 when he takes office while other non-union city employees (council members who approve the raises) a 3% raise. It's interesting that in 2006 our current mayor asked for a raise from $104,504 to a whopping! Our lovely council, many of whom thankfully got voted out, didn't give him his hearts desire, just $15,496 of it. The position already paid more than Indy and the Governor!!!!

No, there's no corruption or collusion in the Summit City. Fortunately the recently elected members of city council are (so far) still too tied to the people who voted them in so it's unlikely that they will approve the raise.

Me Use Big Werds

Post-Voting Blues

It's a week after the elections and most of my top candidates lost. I seriously think I jinx candidates by supporting them. My only bright spot was that Crawford got voted out of the city county at large spot. The man voted worse than any liberal and called himself a Republican. The biggest issue was voting to rescind the rights of business owners in making decisions about their own businesses (a.k.a. the smoking ban). I thought the Constitution guaranteed such rights but I must have been mistaken.

As a consolation prize, please contemplate this picture from the past.

Election Day!

Today is Election Day and they expect low turnout in the Fort Wayne area. Not to toot my own horn but I'm an avid voter. I vote whenever I can. I vote early AND often. When they have primary elections and you read that only a few people voted, I was one of those few, walking into the desolate voting precinct, just me and six volunteers.

Then comes the regular election and suddenly there's throngs of people and I can to stand in line behind these schmoes who couldn't be bothered to fritter away their time to vote during the primaries. Now they're wasting MY time by stumbling through the voting process and oggling the donuts set out for volunteers.

To better serve our regular voters (that would be me) I hereby suggest that everyone who votes in the primaries be issued a FASTPASS ticket. Then, come regular election day, they can present the FASTPASS and move to the front of the line!

78 and Comfortable

I love music and I love keeping track of things in databases. By extension, I love lastfm.com (see every-changing grid at right) which keeps track of the music you listen to and gives you rankings and similar artist lists to aid you in finding more of what you like.

One "trick" you can do is to take your top 20 artists and click on each of their links. Each of these have a list of ten or so similar artists. Write down the top five similar artists for each of your top 20. Remove any duplicates. The number that results in your Eclectic Score. Oooooo! I ranked 78 out of 100 which is pretty durn high. If it weren't for all my prediliction for John Denver I'd probably be in the high 90s.

http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/eclectic.php

Too Little, Too Late

While we are both exquisitely happy with the shrimp percolating inside her we both wish the child had been conceived off-the-grid. Then we could be trendy and hip and yet still old fashioned.