Finally a test I can agree with

and it has only taken me how long in doing these things?

 

 

Your IQ Is 125

Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Breakfast of non Champions

The advantage of having most Saturdays off, at least for me is that I can do whatever I want on said day at whatever leisurely pace I so choose. Today I thought I would get up early and take in a diner breakfast, which is about as close to the big breakfast fantasy of mine as I will get. I figured I would get up, get dressed and head to Pamela's Diner here in Oakland and sit down and eat and read my Willie Brown book.

The plan got off to what can best be described as an enjoyable start. I got dressed and since I realized I was cigarette poor, I would have to make a slight detour on my way to breakfast to pick up some smokes. Again not much of a problem the only question was where to get them, as I have multiple options on that front. I chose ye olde corner gas station, hoping that they would have a special of some sort, otherwise I would end up spending a little more for the cigs, about 50 cents, than if I got them elsewhere. The other potential advantage to going there is it is a path I don't walk as often, so I could keep a lookout for any change or soda points. I no more than got to the first street I was to cross and there was a empty 12 pack of Cherry Coke Zero (10 Coke Reward points) and a 24 pack of Pepsi (4 Pepsi Stuff points). I may be on to something with this new quest of mine, I hadn't realized how many people just throw that stuff away. I am finding more points these days than cash. Anyway, the gas station kicked into the early run on goodness, they had Camels at buy one get one free. Not my preferred brand, but it is not like smoking dirt either, that would be Winstons. We all have our lines that we wont cross, I will give up smoking before smoking another Winston cigarette. Buy one get one is cheaper than buying my preferred Marlboros and I am a cheap kind of guy, so I took the special and bounded down the street to breakfast.

I believe the phrase "Sorely disappointed" would come into play now. There was no real big breakfast type of special on the menu, no bottomless coffee that most places offer, instead you get one refill and worst of all they went all non smoking on me. What kind of diner is non smoking? I get if you are running a fast food joint or a high end establishment but a diner and cigarettes goes together like having sex with someone you barely know and the awkward moment of silence shortly thereafter. You just can't have one without the other. Instead I am paying slightly more than diner prices for 2 eggs, 3 sausage links and two pancakes and they don't even add toast with the breakfast. Now just what am I going to dip into my eggs I ask? How can you have a big breakfast (called The Morning After breakfast on the menu, though it is not much of a deal at 6.95) and not have toast be part of it? No toast, limited coffee, this is no morning after, this is a breakfast that I call a cab for because it most certainly is not spending the night. I should have went to Tom's Diner, a place I love, but didn't want to trek quite that far, but the food would have been far better and my coffee wouldn't have been cut off. Hell I might even been able to enjoy a cigarette after breakfast. That would have been awesome, a post meal coffee, a cigarette and my book. I might still be there if that were the case, instead I exited in relative short order and am here blogging instead.

 

Okay, enough with my stories of food, I failed to mention a few things the other day that are of merit. First, Ann Coulter says she will not only vote for Hillary Clinton, but will campaign for her if John McCain is the Republican nominee. I am going to go out on a limb here and speak for all Democrats when I say "Thanks, but no thanks". Your vitriolic diatribes against all things regarding the Democratic Party leaves me wanting to see you in a pine box rather than in a voting booth voting for anyone in my party. What were the titles of those books again? Hmmm, lets see, there was "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans", "Godless: The Church of Liberalism", "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter", "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right", "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism", "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton" and let's not forget the hatchet job you pulled on the widows of 9/11 victims. Yours is the type of support that we just don't need. You don't like your party's nominee, too bad, your party of everything that is right and holy picked him.

I am also an Asshat behind, again not that I forgot the award, only that I forgot to mention it in the blog. You may remember a while back I posed a hypothetical question to the reading audience, simply, if you could kill one person knowing that you would get away with it, the proverbial get out of jail free card, would you and if so who would it be? I believe my answer was a rather lame one, that it would be the first person to irk me, thereby I would waste a perfectly good killing (as I type this, today it would be Ann Coulter, tomorrow it could be the screaming kid on the bus) on whatever bothered me at the moment rather than some long drawn out thought process on who the world would be better off without. The reason I bring this up is one Ann Marie Linscott. She too had decided on who she would like to eliminate, though she never posted it on my blog page to my knowledge. It seems that she wanted to eliminate the wife of her lover. I get that, I don't agree with it, but I get it. The difference being I was dealing in the hypothetical whereas Ann Marie was dealing in reality. So real in fact that she went looking for someone to perform the task for her. The problem was that she went looking on Craigslist, posting an ad for someone to "eradicate a female living in Oroville, Caifornia" and later posting how much she would pay upon completion of the eradication ($5000). That will get you some replies, usually by the local authorities. Since this isn't a hypothetical, there is no get out of jail free card for Ann Marie, but she does get this week's Asshat award. Well done!!!

Okay, time to enjoy the rest of my Saturday, as I hope you do as well.

Fake First Fridays and False Foamys

Okay, it looks like an hour until the hockey game starts on Yahoo, so I have time to work on the blog I guess. Excuse me if I nosh in front of the computer while I type, but the radio station didn't feed me today, so I am making up for lost calories.
I have mentioned before that the radio station does a thing called First Friday. For the ill informed, basically what it is is on the first Friday of every month, provided there is no company wide event on the calendar, the radio station will do a lunch for everyone who works there. The menu varies, sometimes it will just be pizza and soda, other times they will go out and do crazy stuff like stuffed chicken breast and steamed veggies, just depending on who is organizing it and what kind of deal they can cut with whomever is supplying the food. One of the things about radio, we can trade airtime or offer it at a lower rate in exchange for goods and services. Anyway, last month the calendar got in the way, as we celebrated Orthodox Radio Christmas, meaning that First Friday was called off, but today is Friday and it is the 1st of the month, so let the feeding begin, or so I thought. I even put off some production work until today so that I could take advantage of said festivities. Well, the festivities were cancelled. An email was sent out saying that it would be pushed back to a quarterly event, more than likely just another cost cutting venture in the empire that is radio. I say that because a couple of weeks ago, I was doing my normal show prep, which means I visit a number of web sites and anything that we might be able to use on the show, I print out. It can turn into quite a decent stack of paper because I usually start with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, then go to the Philadelphia Inquirer, then it is off to the Washington Post, followed by Radar Online, Us Magazine and finishing with Fark. Occasionally I will sneak in a trip to the San Francisco Chronicle, or Christopher Hitchens page, or Opinion Journal, but those are only if I have time. I don't grab every single thing on those sites mind you, but if I think we will need it for the show, then I will grab it. Anyway, I am doing my show prep the other day and the business manager complained that I was using too much paper. Yes kids, we are so fucking cheap that paper is an issue. Needless to say, I now buy my own paper just so they can shut the hell up about it. So when an email gets sent out saying that we will be cutting the First Fridays from ten or so a year to 4, then call it what you will, I call it business as usual.
The cancelling of First Friday, while bad for my tummy, was really about the only bad thing that happened this week, save for the weather, which was awful. Starting with Monday, I stopped by the part time job and picked up my first check since vacation, let me tell you, having those two weeks off was good for the body, but bad for the wallet, going only with one job's paychecks for 4 weeks. So naturally I did what I sometimes do, I went to the bar and had a couple of beers. Even in my drinking I am cheap however, I go in the afternoon when the beer is cheaper and the crowd much, much smaller. The bar I hang out at has a few poker machines, called Cherry Masters. Basically they are like video slot machines, if I have some extra money I might throw some in, the standing rule being, don't bet the rent. Well, since I had just gotten paid, I figured what the hell, and I started playing one of the machines. I was losing money, not overly fast, but fast enough when the mojo just decided to take over. I ended up dropping $50 into the machine, but pulled out $90, which is a trade I will make most any day. To celebrate, I had another beer and was b.s.ing with the bartender talking about whatever it is was on TV. Usually if Danny is working (he was) rather than just sports fare, in the afternoons he will have on The History Channel, or Discovery or some other cool not usually seen in a bar programming. Anyway, he and I jabbered for a while then he started putting away the beer order, so while finishing off my beer, I opted to part with another $5 in another of the machines. Bing, that's $70 for me and I have officially turned the Cherry Master into my own personal ATM, but I figured I had better abscond with my winnings rather than spend them.
Tuesday was the first of two straight days of working both jobs. It wasn't too bad, the part time job was kinda slow so probably the hardest part was unloading the truck that came in. On the bright side, I did get to make myself some pierogis, first I deep fried them, then I fried some butter and onions and a pinch of garlic in a skillet then added the deep fried potato wonders and they were so yummy. I try not to flash too many cooking skills at work for fear that they will want me to cook rather than dishwash, and I have no desire to cook in a restaurant. Been there, done that. As a result I usually keep the creations rather simple, though I have been known to make chimichangas, even though they aren't on the menu, or the chicken broccoli ranch pizza (also not on the menu), but usually I will just stick with a burger or something that doesn't require all that much attentiveness while making. After work I stopped by Rite Aid in one of my late night shopping splurges and I bought a couple of things that were on sale and got a recharge card for my prepaid Visa. I am anal about buying stuff on the web, so I keep a prepaid card for such purposes. If anyone should steal either the card or the info from the internet they usually don't get all that much cash, I just keep enough on it to maintain my Pogo payments and if I want to buy one or two items, I will add the money as needed. Since I was still enjoying my Cherry Master winnings, I opted to put $50 on my card and when I got home I logged onto Ill Will Press and ordered a Foamy T-Shirt and then tried to sleep, though I only snagged about an hour or so before I was back up again and off to the radio station.
Wednesday I managed to make it through the radio shift and when I got home I decided a nap was in order before getting up in about three hours and once again running off to the part time job. I was just about asleep when someone came knocking on my door. I thought about answering it, I really did, but decided my bed was too comfy, so I stayed put. After a couple hours of sleep I get up and get dressed and just as I am heading out the door to go to work I see a note from UPS. Sorry we missed you, blah blah blah, we will be back tomorrow between 2pm-5pm. I walk to work wondering what UPS could have brought me that I missed. Then I remember the T-Shirt. But it couldn't get here that fast could it? I didn't put a rush order on it, so from the time I ordered until the guy showed up at my place was at most 13 hours or so. Hell, when I managed a pizza shop, I had drivers that were incompetent enough not to move that fast. Still, what else could it be? So I get to work and unlike Tuesday, Wednesday was an ass kicker. We usually do half off food from 9pm-12am, so evenings can be quite busy, but because Pitt was playing a basketball game at home, I didn't have a couple of hours to get geared up for business, when I walked through the door at 5:30pm, the place was already packed. I swear I washed every plate we have and some that may not exist multiple times through the course of the evening. Needless to say, when I got home, which wasn't until about 1:30 am I was just beat. Till I ate and checked my email it was after 2am and sure enough it was back up for work at 4am for Thursday at the radio station, with my mind flittering about a Foamy T shirt being within hours of being in my grasp.
I caught my first bus away fro the radio station after the show at 12:30pm and with my connecting bus, I was back in my neighborhood around 1:15, still plenty of time for the T shirt to arrive, so I stopped by the bar for a quick beer and I put another $10 in the Cherry Master. Bing, $40 to me, the mojo rocks baby!!!!
Anyway, since me and a certain T shirt had a pressing engagement, I wasn't in the bar long enough to waste my winnings, I came scurrying in the door and played some Pogo while I waited for my newest prized possession. Sure enough, there was a knock, knock, knock on my door and I bounded up with breathless anticipation of owning something Foamy, rather than just posting the cartoons in my blog from time to time. At the door, was the UPS guy and in his hand he had a rectangular box. An odd way to pack a T shirt I thought, but then, I have never mailed clothes so what the hell do I know anyway. The box was even kind of heavy, not unbearably so, but odd for a T shirt in a box. I say to myself as soon as I get this box open, I am going to get dressed and go out in my new shirt, knowing the shirt will confound the elderly people of Pittsburgh who haven't come to grasp yet with the internets and all they have to offer. I cut open the box and reach in and pull out.............a bottle of mouthwash. It was like an episode of Let's Make a Deal and I just got the shit prize.
There was a note with my newest possession that I can not wear. It was not Ill Will Press but rather My Survey sending me a bottle of a new mouthwash they are test marketing and in two weeks there will be a survey online for me to fill out about said product. Oh well, that is what I get for signing up with them, I am the proud owner of a 32 oz bottle of Alcohol Free Crest ProHealth Mouthwash w/ Whitening.
That being said, I still had to run out and do some shopping, I needed more paper for work (see above) as well as a few other items. While out I also grabbed some sliced turkey so I could make some turkey and muenster sandwiches when I got home. Plus the bus ride allowed for me to get into my book on Willie Brown. I like it, but I can see where he would be off putting to a lot of people.
That brings us to today and the lack of a First Friday. To drown my misery after I got home from work, I stopped for another cheap beer or three and again put money in the Cherry Master, $15 this time and out pops $60. You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me. That led to me ordering in this evening, actually I ordered enough for two days, getting a burger and fries and wings (which I will save for Sunday and then reheat) and a two liter Pepsi and since my order was over $15, I opted for the free item special and got bread sticks as well. I love breadsticks with garlic sauce. I would offer some, but I double dip in the garlic sauce and I saw the study this week in the New York Times about the germs that go with double dipping and you don't want any of my cooties.
Anyway, I did finish the Pogo badges for the week, the pinochle practice helped since I hadn't played in a while, Makeover Madness they could throw away and I would never miss it and for my personal I opted for World Class Solitaire (win 400 or more tokens in 10 games) plus I got the level 10 badge in Keno Pop, so it has been a 4 badge week so far.
Another 5 cents pulls the change meter up to $33.84. Thankfully January is over, because it was a bad month for the change meter, hopefully Feb. will be better. At least i managed to find some Coke caps to add to my rewards total. I wish I would have started this earlier, but I already have 90 points in a very short amount of time hunting for those things. The Pepsi stuff contest started today, I already have enough point saved up for like 3 MP3 downloads if I want them, I haven't decided if I will cash them in or save for the bigger prizes.
Well, I am getting sleepy, maybe I will hop back in here tomorrow if I get all of my errands done.