On Many Subjects

4:30am--Alarm goes off 4:30am--Toss the alarm across the room to shut it off 4:39am--Somewhere on the otherside of the room, the snooze alarm rings and I have to get out of bed to find it. Since I am up, I may as well stay up 4:44am--Make coffee 4:45am--Check my Outlook, Opera, Yahoo Messenger, GMail, Hotmail and Yahoo news headlines to find out what happened when I was sleeping 5:00am--guzzle a cup of coffe while I make my breakfast 5:10am--eat breakfast and work on my novel 5:45am--Shower, brush teeth, fix hair 6:00am--Clothes on, make-up on, cat fed and watered 6:15am--Out of the house. I start my car (hoping it will actually run) and drive drive drive, over the river, through the woods, down the road, up the road, through the tunnel, past the airport, see the Atlantic Ocean, watch the sunrise, avoid several accidents and finally get to work. 7:30am--Unlock the door, make the coffee, sit at my desk and begin working 12:00noon--Eat lunch at my desk as I continue working 3:30pm--Leave...

I actually spend little time watching TV and then I don't actually WATCH TV as much as listen to it. To see the TV I have to twist my neck to an almost Linda Blair angle over my right shoulder to see what the hub-bub is about on the screen. You see, most of my waking hours are spent at the computer, doing something or other of interest or something or other designed to be monetarily enhancing. So, Heroes starts a new season and they have introduced new characters who speak in their native tongue--namely Spanish. I am mono-linguistic, so I can't listen to the Spanish people and understand them, I have to stop what I am doing, rummage around for my glasses, twist my neck around to see the see the TV screen and then read the subtitles. It was bad enough with Hiro and his friend last season peaking Japanese, but now, I have to do this with another set of characters. And to make things worse, the dialogue is bad, so I am doubly irritated by this. Boy: I speak Spanish, my sister. Gir...

Have you ever had a secret? Something that you know that no one else does? Or something you thought no one else knew and maybe you mention it when you were too drunk to remember? Here are a few of my favorites. A friend of mine told me she likes to dance to the music when she's alone in an elevator. (Very Cool!) One of my daughter's friends told me she has her nipples pierced and everyone but her mother knows. (I am too chicken to ger mine pierced. I admire her spirit.) I used to know a guy who would go to the grocery store,open packages of cookies, take a few out and eat them while he was shopping. The opened box would stay on the shelf. (Oh, you're the one who does that!) A friend has a collection of over 80,000 pornography pictures on their computer. (Very Very Cool) I used to work with a woman who gives everyone the finger when someone walks by her office... behind her computer screen. She thinks no one has seen this. But, I have. ( I think I will start doing that myse...

Because of a suggestion by a dear reader and close observation of Evelyn's behavior, the alignment of the planets, the Theory of Relativity and the hole in the ozone layer, I have finally solved the Pill Dilemma. Evelyn is a slave to her stomach, as are most animals. We THINK they love us, but what they really love is food. Simply put. I am thoroughly convinced that she thinks that I am HUNTING every time I leave the apartment because when I get back, she automatically wants to be fed. She does her cute kitty routine (refer to Puss-in-Boots in the movie Shrek 2 to completely understand this.) She looks at me with her great big blue eyes. She gives me her sweet little meow as if she is saying, "Mommy, I know you are the best hunter in the world, so please share a meager bit of your good fortune with me because how can you resist such a cute face and you know I never ask for much from you and how can you resist such an utterly cute face with such big adorable eyes?" Yeah, r...

Everyone likes to feel as if they are the master of their domain and I did, until it was time to attempt another round of medication for THE CAT. Evelyn and I are matching wits and the big question is, which one of us will prevail. For round two, I ignored her. I pretended my precious baby didn't exist for several hours, hoping to disarm her with inattention. But, she was too wise for that maneuver. As soon as I picked her up, the game was afoot once again. Number One Daughter and I wrestled the villain to the kitchen floor and the my daughter SAT on her. That's right, she sat on the cat, effectively pinning her to the floor. (Now, I realize this sounds cruel, but Number One Daughter actually knelt on the floor with the cat between her knees and angled her feet so that the cat couldn't back out of the impromptu prison) Number One opened the cat's mouth and I stuck the pill as far down her throat as I could. Number One held her mouth closed for at least a minute. We didn...

Anybody who has a cat can sympathesize with my dilemma. Evelyn is by my definition, the smartest cat there is. She certainly proved that the day the vet announced that I had to give her a pill twice a week. The score so far: CAT 5, Humans 0. I have tried many techniques to get the pill into this clever girl. I tried the vet's method. "Just pull her head back by the scruff of the neck and when she opens her mouth, pop the pill in." Ok, maybe in your world, pal. I warn everybody who tries this. There will be consequences. Namely, the little wretch bit the pogees outta my finger and spit the pill into the next room. By the time I staunched the blood and found the pill, I couldn't find the cat because she was hiding behind the bottle(s)of Canadian Mist on the side board. It was just dumb luck that I spotted her when I went to take a large gulp of courage before tackling the problem again. Plan B. I bring in reinforcements (Number One Daughter) to hold the cat down, while ...

This is a whole lot like a statistics joke. You know the one. 60% of cars are stolen by left-handed people and 100% of all polar bears are left-handed, so if your car is stolen, there is an 47% chance it was stolen by a polar bear. Whyizzit? All of Beethoven's really good symphonies are the odd numbered ones and the really good Star Trek movies are even numbered?

Living in a metropolitan area as I do--I know it is metropolitan because I get stuck in rush hour traffic every day on my way to and from work. I am talking total gridlock because some buffoon's car breaks down and everyone in the State of Virginia has to drive by really slowly because most people here have never seen a broken down car before, thereby trapping the rest of us in suspended animation while we attempt to get to work on time. Hey, I actually did it once last week. There seems to be no difference in my leaving my house at 7:30 am or 8:15 am, I still am just as late to work. This somehow defies the laws of physics, I just haven't figured out how, yet. It has to do with the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel that always has someone broken down in it just as if they try to start their car in the morning, and upon finiing it running really ragged, coughing and sputtering, they decide to take it for a spin through the tunnel just one last time before it dies instead of taking it...

I heard a news report on the radio as I drove into work this morning about how iPod users are being mugged more and more often. Not only do the muggers take money from the person, they take the iPod as well. Evidently, the iPod is a new status symbol of wealth and/or prosperity and the average mugger takes that as a sign that the user would have more money than the average person. I realize it is incredibly easy to mug an iPod user as they obliviously stroll along the street. All one has to do is to stick their foot out and DOWN the iPod user goes. (Please understand, I am not trying to give any would-be muggers any ideas, here.) Once the iPod user is on the sidewalk, then the assailant can proceed with the theft. As a theft deterrent on a car, there is a sticker that says some on the order of "Protected by an Anti-Theft Device." That would be enough to discourage me, should I decide to start boosting cars for a living. So, why not have a warning label on the iPod to protect ...

I had to get a car because my #2 son wasn't going to let me borrow his car forever. That kind of behavior wears thin very quickly. At any rate, a friend of my son's had a car he was willing to sell, so I bought it. And it promptly quit working. Now, I admit that the car is older (a 1994) but after less than a week, I was stranded at the dry-cleaners. I called #2 to rescue me and he arrived, looking so official in his Air Force uniform and proceeded to get my car running so I could take it to the autoparts store. Then, we bought the alternator and he told me he would change it out for me. OK. Now, to fix this car, he had to acquire a number of tools he didn't own, so off the store where you buy that kind of thing for tool shopping. He loved it. He bought sockets, wrenches, a crow bar and a bendy-tool that makes your socket bend in odd directions to reach those hard to reach bolts. Two days, he shopped until he bought enough tools to make an Indy 500 Pit Crew happy. Then, he ...

My pretty kitty, Evelyn, is suddenly possessed to the point, I wouldn't be surprised if her head spun around backward and she launched pea-green gross stuff at me from her mouth. #2 refers to her as Evil-Lynne and he may be correct. I have long known she is one half Evil and one half Nutro Natural Choice Complete Care Adult Weight Management cat food (which, I might point out, hasn't controled her weight in the least because it is still out of hand.) She is Evil because she frequently buries her claws in my thigh when she thinks she is being totally neglected... a thing that happens often enough that I have permanent puncture wounds. She is Evil when she decides that tonight she will sleep in the bed with me, perches on the pillow next to my head and proceeds to groom/lick/wash and purr, all at four-freaking-am. I love cat purrs and Evelyn's purr is very loud. I think she must also be half lion. So that makes half Evil, half Cat Food and half lion. Well, if you take into co...

Most of you know that I have been a college student since I began posting here at Opera. I recently began a Master's program and just a few weeks ago, I changed the direction I was going, entirely. I am going to be a teacher, instructor, mentor, college professor. In my mind, most of those words are interchangeable. Mark Twain said, “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education”. The challenge for me is that I haven’t been an instructor before other than a short stint as a software trainer with my employer. The question in my mind is, can I be a good effective teacher, instructor, college professor or what ever role I eventually obtain as a result of this master’s program? When I was a child, I dreamed of being a teacher because those ladies and men who stood in front of the classroom and gave us their knowledge seemed larger than life. As I grew to adulthood, I heard from many people, “Those who can’t do, t...