It’s Friday and thus time for

Time once more for:

Mosquitoes – ‘nuf said.

People who dither. Nothing is worse that getting a call from someone who has to describe the lint on their pants and the color of their dental floss before they finally get to the point of the call. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, not a random walk in the woods.

Mushy phone calls. Some people seem not to realize that as the charge on their cell phone goes down, the voice quality gets worse and worse. In fact, there are some people who call that I know well and yet the sound quality makes it so I can’t understand a word they are saying, let alone recognize them.

Email forwarders. You know who I mean – the ones who insist on sending you all the old stale jokes and urban legends in existance. I find that once they have been reamed a new one by my response after the first time, the brighter ones tend not to do it again. See yesterdays post under chutzpah.

The Dog Days of August. Molly sheds long clumps of white hair at this time of year, depositing new tufts of fur within minutes of vacuuming. So the carpet looks like this:

(Sorry how hard it is to see the white Molly fur on the light carpet.)

It literally looks like I have a mad three year old barber wanna-be who attacked the dog all through the house.

Time once more for:

 

A sad fact of life is that we all have music we love and listen to that doesn’t conform to our normal tastes or likes. In fact, this music is often embarrassing to admit that we listen to, let alone like. Thus I present for your aural edification my escapes from my normal Iron Butterfly tainted taste buds.

Pussycat Dolls – Don’t Cha Busta Version – click here (video embedding disabled)

Ashlee Simpson – Boyfriend – click here (video embedding disabled)

The Veronicas – 4Ever

The Veronicas – When It All Falls Apart

Heart – What About Love

So what are your guilty musical pleasures? C’mon – I know you have some.

Time once more for:

 

• Running into a pair of Santa Clauses and having them ask me to join them. They are part of a local group of professional Santas who have started a charity called “Santas Of Sterling” to raise money for kids at Christmas. They said my beard was white enough, but I’d have to let it grow longer to be fully acceptable. In their expert opinion, my belly already jiggles appropriately. (The Santas serve as far away as New Hampshire during Holiday season. Our town might very well have the highest percentage of professional Santas of any town short of the North Pole. It is always interesting come November to hear where they are going to be serving [some are local only, some travel the U.S.]).

• Watching the young lady who was smaller than her dog exhibit perfect control of said dog. I’d guess she was no more than 7 or 8, but she had that Great Dane wrapped around her little finger. When she said sit, it sat. When she said heel, it heeled. And when it sat, she and the dog were eye to eye.

• Sharing the radio studio with some of the Fair/Rodeo Royalty as they came in to help publicize the County Fair that runs for the next week or two. Seems impossible to me that I was ever that young. {*grin*} I still have no good  answer to my question: Why are there so many barrel racers in the Queen and her court each year?

• Watching the price of gas continue to fall. A drop of 10 cents in the last week or so here. Everything goes better when gas stays well below the $2.50/gallon mark.

• The fact that it rained and has been refreshingly cool since Tuesday. If I didn’t know better, I could believe that September was here already. I figure it will either be hot and miserable or rainy and cold next week when I have to man the EMS authority booth at the fair. Nothing like sitting out in the cold rain for 5 hours to make everything hurt.

Time once more for:

 

• The mosquito who put the bite on my rear end while I slept. I am sure it made the nasty little blood sucker happy, but when I woke up in the morning, it itched like mad. Not to mention my pants rubbed that exact spot and made it itch all day, leaving me the choice of looking indecent while scratching or suffering mortal agony as it itched.

• The gentleman who so enjoyed talking to me in the park. I still have no clue who he was, but he was willing to discuss my golf game, the best time of day to walk, how his business was going, and other trivia. He knew me by name and I can’t escape the feeling I should have known who he was.

• The chickadee and wrens who waged war outside my bedroom window at 5am. I’m sure they enjoyed making all that racket a lot more than I enjoyed hearing it.

• The prowling pussy cat that drove Molly wild. She sat two inches from the screen of the sliding door and meowed relentlessly as Molly tried to get someone, anyone to open the screen. When I finally gave in and let Molly out, the pussy was forced to sprint to make it over the fence in time. Molly was very proud of herself for protecting me from that vicious pussy. I think she felt she earned her doggie treat after all that hoopla.

• The back-of-the-truck fish guy who came knocking on my door tonight. When I asked to see his sales tax license to verify if he was legitimate, he couldn’t leave fast enough. Heck, I even offered to call the tax license people and get him set up. I knew exactly what department of the city he needed to talk to. He seemed more interested in heading on down the road. I wonder how long it will take him to remember we had a similar conversation about 6 months ago, the last time he stopped by.