Last meals

I found a site which details the last meals requested by the condemned in Texas:
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/finalmeals.htm

Which prompted an email exchange between jen and I. (I'll spare the details here) But it did cause us to ponder what our last requests for gastronomic delights would be. I thought you might like to read them:


jen:

i'd have fettucini alfredo with grilled chicken,
pine nuts, and mushrooms; garden salad with balsamic
vinagrette dressing; fried scallops and clams
and ketchup; grilled salmon; potato skins with bacon
and sour cream; mozzarella cheese sticks; vanilla ice cream
with hershey's syrup; and faygo red pop.


Mine:

• Prime rib, medium rare, 20 oz., with mushrooms


• Greak Lakes trout, broiled in lemon butter


• Garlic and cheese mashed potatoes with butter


• Sweet corn on the cob


• Homemade pumpernickel and white bread


• Chocolate malt with extra malt


• Coke


• Raspberry cheesecake with a raspberry sauce


• Double scoop chocolate sundae with marshmallow topping

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Friday's musings

I got to see Greer on Tuesday, which was a great and wonderful thing since she's been in Togo since last June. She came here, as opposed to me going to Togo. It worked out better that way.

Heather and I met her for dinner at Chili's to catch up on what life is like in a poor west African nation. It turns out that we've got it pretty good here. No killing our own chickens for dinner, flush toilets, reliable electricity, no geckos or scorpions in bed, and flush toilets. (I know I mentioned them twice... but, man!! Flush toilets!!) Anyway, there was much good chatting and catching up and a huge amount of apologizing over not mailing her. I need to do better and I realize that but, as I said to Greer, my life is one long boring cycle. Wake up, convince myself to get out of bed, take a shower, go to work, fix computers, come home, watch TV, go to bed. The cycle continues in a regular Monday through Friday schedule. The weekends have a little more variants, in that I don't work but I do watch football. (And when you're a Lions fan, watching football is work.

Anyway, Heather -- who also has a blog here and I agreed that we would regularly send our blog entries to Greer. Regular readers of my blog (all two of you) will note that I mentioned I was sending her the link to this page for her to read. Turns out that there's a lot of Internet blocking in the world and this site apparently is so blocked. Or to could be because the Togolese don't like the word "Booger".

Hopefully Greer will have one more free evening to get together before she goes home (on the Friday after Thanksgiving) and we'll have a chance to chat a little more. I've missed her. She's a great person with an outstanding sense of humor. But she'll be back by next August, only to go back to Michigan Tech to finish her thesis work. But having her in the same state will be a Good Thing. I'm also more likely to drive to MTU than to go to Africa. They're getting flush toilets at MTU sooner. :)

See how in tune with the 80s you are...

I got a Final Score of: 53.65
It said I had a -30% penalty for being a yuppie. Which I'm not. So I did better than that score reflects.

Thoreau quote.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours." - Thoreau

I need to:

1) advance
2) be confident
3) have dreams
and
4) imagine having a life

Maybe that will help.

Car update

I found a car.... Go me!

1994 Crown Victoria, dark forest green is what they call it. I call it dark blue. But that's the life of a color-blind person.

Got a good price on it; they knocked $900 off the sticker because it's probably going to need transmission work at some point in the near future. But beyond that, it's a very nice car. It's at the transmission shop right now (Haas Transmission, in Dexter. Recommended, of course, by Steve Steeb) getting a transmission flush and fluid treatment. Once I get that taken care of, I'll get an alignment -- it steers just a tiny bit to the right -- and there's a star in the windshield that needs patching. Then I'll treat myself to an early Christmas present and have a decent stereo put in with a CD. Having the truck with it's CD has spoiled me a little.

Speaking of the truck, I still have it. Tomorrow I'll have had it for three weeks. I'm keeping it until they tell me to give it back. The car is paid for so the money I'll get for the Taurus isn't really an issue. Plus it won't be an inconvenience to be without a car while I'm getting mine worked on. The only drawback is the gas cost... That truck sucks it down like there's no freakin' tomorrow. I don't know how people can afford to drive them.

Speaking of which, the tranny shop called... it's fixed and the shudder is gone. (For now. :)

It's been a while

Much has happened, all of it seeming a blur at times... But we'll go over things one at a time.

Eagles Concert 10/14:
Like I said, it was awesome. Joe Walsh is a nut, but in a good way. There were a LOT of songs from the solo works of all of the group but I think Joe had more. Which is not a bad thing. His version of "Life's Been Good to Me" was cool.

The death of the Taurus 10/16:
I was working late, preparing for a presentation to a group of kids on the mythology of the constellations. Coming home on Ford Rd. around 11:45, I saw a guy coming at me flashing his lights. He was in an SUV so I was slightly below his hood which made the brights that much brighter. Anyway, I was trying to figure out why he was flashing his lights at me when I saw the deer in the middle of the road. There was at least one buck and one or two others, though I couldn't tell how many. I didn't have but a second to react. I managed to not hit the deer on the front which would have certainly killed him and possibly hurt me if he flipped into the car or caused the airbags to go off. I hit him on a glancing blow to the front fender of the car. His chest broke the mirror and his antlers shattered the window. I spun him around and his hind dented the rear door. I went into the ditch, where I must have hit something that broke the radiator on the bottom since that all leaked out and steamed everywhere. I thought for a minute the car was on fire. Not a good feeling!!

So I got to make my first insurance claim ever. 22 years of being a licensed driver. The good thing was that I got rental insurance a year or so ago, so I have a nice 2003 Dakota Quadcab coutesy of AAA. They haven't told me how much they're going to give me for it. I have 30 days of rental coverage on it, so they'll have to do something by Thursday the 13th of November. I'm not too impressed with their quality of service.

The search for a new car 10/17 - 11/??:
I've found many cars, mostly Tauruses (Taurii?), Crown Victorias, and Grand Marquis, all reasonably low mileage, for around $5000. This plays well into my plans for a fairly cheap car which will get me around for a few years at least while I get a house. Right now the front runner is a Crown Vic from Stu Evans Lincoln Mercury which is beautiful in all ways. But. It might need a new transmission. Which is not a Good Thing�. It's being checked by my mechanic and transmission guy today. They'll decide for me what the final answer is. Shopping for cars is fun when you DON'T need one.

Thanksgiving 11/27:
I have football to look forward to. Sis is making dinner for me and I'll go there and eat and watch TV and be lonely.

Bleah.