Which Atlantian Duke are you?

I don't know who he is either, but I think it's funny to see the SCA merge with quiz memes! I'd like to see this done for Trimaris, think I'll send that idea to The Quarter.

So I'm in the STV (Sinister Transport Vehicle), stopped at a red light (as I am prone to do on occasion), when some dork starts beeping his horn. And I ignore it, because I like to let my mind wander a bit (though I am always focused enough on the light, I hate it when people doze off and then we're stuck for another five minutes) but then I start looking around, because the beeping is so annoying. And I look over and there's this guy in a red SUV next to me, wanting me to roll down the window. I hate that. I try to ignore him but he keeps gesturing. Not wanting to be held legally responsible for some aging yuppie's anyurism, I lean over and open my window ('cause I don't have electronic window opening like he does) and he shouts, "Do you know where U.S. 19 is?"

ACK! Why do I always get asked for directions? I was working for a week in Omaha and I got asked for directions twice! Dude, buy a map! Stop at a gas station! Look it up on MapQuest! Don't hassle your fellow drivers!

So I told him, "I don't know!" and rolled my window up. Because that's the kind of person I am (and I wasn't sure where the road was, either).

Bring me an ice cream sandwich and the head of Art Modell on a silver platter!

Just arrived in the corporate e-mail box: an e-mail offering to "**Increase Beast Size By Two Cups Guarranteed**". I believe GreyDuck got a similar offer recently.

Which Kevin Smith Movie Are You? by jennablue!

I had to answer the question, "Which is your favorite Kevin Smith movie?", and I picked Dogma - I guess the quiz knows the inner me that even I don't know!

Engineering Guy: "We need you to scan in our ISO certificate!"

Me: "Okay, well, I think we have an image of that already scanned, it's in our Power Point presentation about the company."

Engineering Guy: "But that's blurry! We need a better copy!"

Me: "Okay, well, I can scan it, but if I scan it at a higher resolution, the file may be too big to e-mail."

Engineering Guy: "We're not going to e-mail it. We need to print it out and mail it."

Me: "Okay, well...maybe we could photocopy it on our color photocopier?"

Engineering Guy: "I'll see if that works."

Emperor Charles V 1500 - 1558

"To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse - German."

The other day I heard some frazzled mother exclaim to her rotten child, "That's 25 minutes of time out for you!"

Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't have any practical parenting skills. But I do know that if you don't immediately punish a dog for misbehaving, the punishment will have no effect. I'm guessing young kids are about on the same level. Of course, since hitting your kid in public is frowned upon, maybe keeping a running tally of time-out minutes may be all parents can do. Just make the kid help you bring in the groceries first before sentencing him to time-out.

Also, time-out dolls are just plain creepy. When spanking was the way to go, did they have spanking figurines? Eww, I bet there's a newsgroup for that. Ewww.

Give me the happy pills and no one gets hurt!

I thought the whole point of a surprise party was surprising the guest of honor at the party, but, what do I know? At least there will be access to beer, surprise or no.

UPDATE: Apparently there will indeed be surprise - good, I don't have to worry about making sarcastic remarks, which would displease Mum. "It isn't wise to upset Mother." Little Ricky, "Better Off Dead"

sigh This just in - we are looking at a minimum 25% increase in our insurance cost. My employer currently pays the lion's share of the cost of insurance, but things haven't been going too well lately, so...if they change nothing and pass the increase on to the employees, I'll have an extra $75 taken out per paycheck. That's just for me, I suppose it might be double that for my spouse, we don't know yet.

Props to my employer for actually taking the time to ask us what we would like to do! (Not that they are obligated to follow the majority rule.) We just got a survey with a few questions, they have a little committee who's spreading the word on this up-coming headache. One option is changing to Cigna Health Care, apparently they really want the business and if we switch to them, there will be only a very slight increase. Of course you know in a year or so they'll jack up the prices. One of the GLOMs (Gorgeous Ladies of Marketing) thinks that a year may be enough time for things to turn around for the company and then maybe they can absorb more of the cost. I think that's overly optimistic, I mean things may improve but the increase will likely be too much for them to bear.

With my "pre-existing condition", (nicer euphemism than "sugar problem"), insurance is a hassle to begin with, and this year has already brought some price increases in my pharmaceutical needs. I don't know what the answer is, government health care could turn into a giant mess, I mean look at our nice shiny new "Homeland Security" office. Why are the drugs and doctors' services so damn high in the first place?

Saturday my cousins hosted a surprise birthday party for their dad, my Uncle Roland. It was at the country club (please pronounce it with your jaws clenched, a la Thurston Howell III). In fact, it was so classy that I didn't feel comfortable ordering beer; they only had Heineken, which is much too sophisticated for my tastes.

My mom always worries about Jeff at these family events- we are, after all, a bunch of rampant extroverts. It's also confusing as most of us have names that start with 'K', so it's easy to get them mixed-up. I see Roland's daughters so seldom that it always takes me a couple of seconds to sort out who's who (in my defense, they look very similar).

I had to laugh, at my age I still wound up at the kids' table, with the kousins I sat with at the kids' table years ago, along with ever-popular Boy Kharlie, the six-year-old son of Karole. He got a cheeseburger AND got to play on his Game Boy, but was sociable enough to allow himself to be coaxed onto the dance floor by Kym. Khris got to geek out with Jeff. I was surprised to find I have a lot in common with Karlin, Kathy's high school-aged daughter. Karlin and I are both sarcastic, we both like sushi and calamari and shopping. (Her budget is a lot bigger than mine though.) It's nice to see the new generation sharing the same values that I do.

I finally figured out why I don't feel like I fit in with my kousins. It's not just that, unlike their totally Scottish/English/Irish make-up, I have an infusion of Teutonic genes, so they tend to be on the reed-like side; or that I'm weird, though both of those are true. They all grew up in the same town; I was the kousin who visited every summer from up north. Even now I'm the one who lives the farthest away. When my family did move back to my maternal hometown, they were for the most part grown-up. Mum would like for me to feel closer to my kousins; I would like to also, but I still feel a little awkward at family events.

Some observations:
My family is a bunch of shutterbugs
The women look like their mothers
It looks like I'm in for crow's feet, but at least that means we tend to smile a lot
My cousins and I all miss our little grandmother
This picture was the hit of the slide show:

And I have to tell you that I sat bolt upright in bed that night when I remembered that I was in ninth grade when Karlin's parents got married! That was a long time ago! Coincidentally, it was the second day I had contact lenses.

I got home early yesterday from my second Dreamweaver class. I can't wait to start playing with it at home, BTW. So I thought I'd watch Dr. Phil, I can always use some free advice from TV's latest pop psychologist. (Have there been any others besides him and Joyce Brothers?) Imagine my surprise when this particular episode turned out to be all about Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil on Letterman and Leno, Dr. Phil on Frasier, Dr. Phil on the cover of Dish TV Magazine, etc. At least he played clips of Letterman making fun of him.

Incidentally, you can buy "I Love Dr. Phil" t-shirts, latte mugs, key rings, and journals if you so desire. I think Dave was right when he called Dr. Phil a "dangerous quack", in light of the line of Phil-related products.

One of the fellows in the office here loves to forward those "humorous" e-mails that circle the globe faster than the soon to be out of business Concorde. Now, very rarely they will be funny, such as the one with the picture of a duct taped duck, addressed to the Dept. of Homeland Security with the text "I am writing to you for further instructions as to what the next step is for me to take in protecting my family from possible attacks by terrorists. I have my duck taped....now what?" Now that was kinda cute.

But the one entitled "Sayings from the 1500s" - now, right away I expected to be disappointed. The e-mail started:

"Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children-last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it -- hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".

They carried herbs because it was believed that the scent of the herbs would keep infectious diseases away. Yearly baths? In the 1500s? I'm dying to know when this belief started, probably at some Renaissance Fest and it just keeps getting repeated. There are plenty of extant recipes for making soap going back to Roman times. Hell, they washed their hunting dogs weekly, do you think they stayed stinky when their dogs were cleaner? Why the hell would people reuse bath water just because it's the 1500s? Do you think people were that lazy back then that they wouldn't go get fresh water?

What bugs me the most is that stupid, grossly inaccurate "isn't this funny" e-mails like this get passed around and people read it, think it's true and then go around the rest of their lives with giant misconceptions about what life was like in the 1500s without bothering to actually read a (well-researched) book. Even worse, people believe every e-mail, like the one about sodium laurel sulfate (the stuff they put in shampoo) being poisonous, or aspertame being a deadly killer. Pa-lease.

I used to try to fight this sort of thing, but do you really think it will make a difference if I send a reply to the sender saying, "I'm no professional historian, but these "facts" are bullshit"?

So we were driving down to the beach when this enormous Cadillac Escalade mutant pickup truck/SUV ridiculous looking and ridiculously expensive vehicle pulls into the lane next to us. We were laughing at it as we passed, and as we looked to see who had the money to drive that thing, LunchBox says, "Hey, that looks like Martin Gramatica!"

If that was indeed the place kicker for the Bucs, last night marks the first time I've seen a pro football player in person, except of course the time I got to see a preseason game last year (which was very cool and fun, I might add). Since they look similar, we may have seen one of Martin's brothers, perhaps the one who kicks for USF had borrowed big brother's truck.

We walked on the beach to celebrate Lisa's birthday. Yes, there are lots of people who live in Florida and hardly ever go to the beach. Lisa's new to blogging, so do be sure to visit and show her some love.