Below is an e-mail message I tried to send through the George Foreman web site relay my experience with one of their products. The message came back as undelierable. I'll try one of their other web sites, but found the irony of getting this back yumerous.

After only one or two games each, ESPN is talking about who will be the NBA Rookie of the year. You can't be serious!!! After one or two games??? Maybe this would be something to talk about at the All-Star break, but after one or two games. It must really be a slow news day as I can't think of a more inappropriate, untimely story. Over dramatizing of every possible story is really getting old. The news services do the same thing. Had I not been watching the NBA game, I wouldn't have noticed, but I couldn't help sounding off after hearing this would be their top story on Sport Center. ESPN, please.

Girls Night Out, Part Three

The car ride from Zippy’s to my place took barely five minutes. The roads were shiny and reflecting all the surrounding lights due to the light rain that had fallen while we were trying to rid the island of coffee.

The conversation on the way home was fast paced. We started to step on the ends of each other’s sentences. Thankfully, the subject matter was nothing of consequence, just high-speed jibber-jabbering.

We got lucky and found an available parking space right in front of my building. As we got out of the car, Carol was going on and on non-stop about something that she had seen at Wal-mart a couple of days ago. I was only half listening, although I love Wal-mart stories, I was more interested in what I was going to do with this woman once we got upstairs into my apartment.

I showed her in and we both took a seat on the couch and in unison sighed to relive some of the energy that had built up in each of us.

“I don’t really have much of anything to offer you except water. I don’t entertain very much.” I said as we both settled into my futon-turned-couch.

“I’m sure I don’t need anything right now. Maybe some water later.”, she replied hastily.

“I could use one thing”, she said after a moment.

“Okay?”, I answered.

“I need to pee. Some of that coffee wants out”, she said, as she stood up.

I grinned and nodded toward the bathroom as she almost trotted away.

Another deep breath release for me. I suppose I could pee when she’s done, then I can work on plan A some more. Plus, we’ll both have empty bladders, for whatever that might be worth.

“I like your place”, she said as I retuned from the bathroom.

“Thanks. It’s kinda crowded, but that’s because some of the furniture belongs to the apartment and some belongs to me.”, I replied.

“I saw lots of CD’s in that bookcase. Do you mind if I take a look?”, she asked politely.

“Go right ahead. If you see anything you really like, we can play it, or copy it, or whatever.”, I told her as she got up again.

“You have all guy paperbacks, too”, she commented while looking over the CD’s and books on the tall, teak bookshelf.

“I’m all guy”, I replied with a faux question mark in my voice.

She giggled. “I suppose you are.”

“My mom was a big Danielle Steel fan, but I never read any of her stuff. My mom even bought the hardbacks.

“My ex #2 buys the hardbacks of John Grisham’s books.” I tell her.

“I don’t read novels very much. It seems I’m always too busy.”, she confessed nonchalantly.

Ouch, a chink in the armor. I get queasy when I hear people say, “I’m too busy”. It’s become the mantra for today’s over-achieving workaholics. I’ll give her the first one for free, but if it turns into a trend, we may be in trouble.

She had fun looking through my CD collection and picked The Pretenders Greatest Hits CD to listen to. Had she picked almost any other CD, I could have drawn some kind of opinion about her, and her tastes, but The Pretenders, while 80’s and all, are way too “middle of the road” for me to get a read on Carol. I played the CD anyway. I happen to like it, too.

While I was putting the CD into my player, Carol’s cell phone went off. Her ringtone sounded like an old-school phone ringing. Either she’s very much a no nonsense kind of lady, or very technologically challenged. I’m guessing the former.

“I’m gonna be out for a while longer. Do you need anything?”, she said to the caller.

“What did you do tonight?”, she wanted to know.

She was friendly, but not overly friendly with the caller. Obviously someone she knew, but maybe someone she didn’t really want to be bothered by at the moment. The coffee’s making me think too much, I’m thinking.

“Okay, I’ll call you when I leave here.”, she said just before closing her flip-style phone.

“Everything okay?”, I ask her.

She nodded, then answered, “my daughter checking in.”

“As long as she’s okay”, I offered.

More nodding from Carol before she noticed the other bookcase in the room and said, “wow, more books.”

“Pretty much more of the same”, I told her truthfully. More guy stuff. I don’t read Mary Higgins, or Martha Stewart.

Since my vision went south, I don’t really read much at all. Mostly I just write my own stuff. It’s a fun way for me to self-entertain, plus it passes the time nicely.

I opted to not tell her about my stories for now. All my stories are totally clean and inoffensive, but I’m thinking I should save something for next time…if there is a next time.

If she’s not careful, she could end up beint the subject of one of of my “tales from The Crib”.

“You had a paper day-planner, too”, she said in amazement.

“Yeah. One of my all time favorite toys and one of my all time favorite tools. If I could see better, I would still be battling with myself over whether to use a paper day-planner or a computer.”, I replied honestly.

“I try to use the computer, but I need to know more about it”, she confessed.

“What do you want to know more about”, I wondered out loud.

“I have to use Outlook at work, and I think I could probably use it for personal stuff too, but I never have time to sit and dig into it while I’m at work, and I’m never in the mood when I get home”, she said in one long breath. Need to keep her away from the coffee next time.

“If you’re ever in the mood, I can show you whatever you want to know about Outlook”, I volunteered.

“Wow. Really? I’d like that,”, she said, sounding relieved.

“Maybe next weekend sometime?”, she suggested.

“Sure. Anytime.”, I confirmed.

She looked uncomfortable as she tried to adjust herself on my couch, so I said, “Sorry the futon cushion has seen better days. It’s come kinda hard.”

“It’s okay.” She replied, still looking uncomfortable.

“I’m not suggesting anything out of the way, but the bed is way more comfortable, if you’d care to sit or lay there.”, I told her and immediately feeling like I’d totally said the wrong thing.

She cocked her head to one side, looked over the back of the couch to the bed and said, “sure. Sounds good.”

My apartment is a one room studio, so the bed and couch are only about five feet apart with a small desk in between.

I got up from the couch first and offered her my hand as she arose from the couch.

She held onto my hand during the half a dozen steps we took from the couch to the bed.

She crawled in first, leaving the comforter in tact on top of the bed and leaving room for me to join her.

I sat down on the edge of the queen sized bed and asked, “better?”

“Yeah, nice.”, she said with a smile on her face.

After a few minutes of talking, I asked her, “is it okay if I lay down while we talk. My back is kinda tired.”

“Not at all. I was just thinking the same thing”, she answered with a little relaxation in her voice and her movements.

“I feel like a college kid again. I’m thinking, okay she’s in bed with me, now what.”, I told her sheepishly.

She laughed out loud as she answered, “I was waiting for you to try to reach out for me, or roll over on top of me, or something.”

Laughing too, I said, “not the worst idea you’ve had tonight, but I’m not thinking about doing either of those things.”

“I couldn’t make up my mind about what I’d do if you did”, she admitted.

“I’ll spare you the heavy decision making tonight. I’m just enjoying talking and getting to know you better.”, I told her as I gently patted her hand.

“I’m having fun too, and it’s nice to not have to worry, or think about that kind of stuff tonight.”, she said frankly.

“Next time we end up in bed together, we can flip for who jumps on whom first”, I suggest to lighten the moment.

“Deal”, she said with a very nice smile on her face.

The pace of the talking continued to slow for the next hour, or so as the coffee started to wear off.

Finally, she decided to pull the plug on the evening and said, “I really should be getting home”.

“I wasn’t gonna throw you out, but I’m getting a little sleepy myself.”, I told her as I started to slide off the bed.

We made sure we had each others e-mal and cell phone information, then we had a nice extended hug and friendly kiss on the lips before I walked her down to her car. She buckled herself in and drove off into the night, waving as she pulled away.

As I watched her disappear into the pitch black early morning, I was reminded of what Steve Kerr, General Manager of the Phoenix Suns said when he traded for Shaq near the end of the 2007-2008 NBA season. “I’m either going to end up being brilliant, or an idiot because of this”.

Unfortunately, Shaq didn’t have enough left in the tank to be much help for that season, and Phoenix was beaten into an early exit from the playoffs.

I’m hoping for at least a second round with Carol.

Just after returning to my apartment, my cell phone went off. It’s 1:30 in the morning. I check the display and see it’s Carol. so I answer.

“Hello”

“I just wanted to say thank you and let you know I got home okay, and my daughter’s fine”, she said, again all in one breath.

“I had fun too, and thanks for the call. I meant to ask you to do that, but got distracted”, I said laughing softly.

“Good night”, she said.

“G’night”

Most because of issues with tow of the more popular Web browsers for PC, I found it difficult to embrace the web based applications concept. Google’s new browser, Chrome has started to change my mind.

Chrome, which is still in Beta, is trim and robust. It’s easy to adjust to if you’ve been using Firefox or Internet Explorer (IE). It’s nothing like either one, but it does pretty much use the same keyboard shortcuts, and since I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts, this is very nice.

As you would expect, Chrome is tab based like the other two, but has no menu bar and only one line for the tool bar. Most of which contains the address window.

When you enter something into the browser’s address bar, you have the option of going to the address you type, or you can use the same window to enter search criteria. Slick, and I guess once you get used to it being that flexible, pretty handy.

What I like most is it’s quick. It loads pages quicker and performs searches quicker than “the other two”.

Also, it works well with Google Docs. Not much of a surprise, but you never know until you know. All of Google’s keyboard shortcuts work perfectly with Chrome. That was not always the case. Especially Firefox.

At this point, Chrome isn’t recognizing the scroll area on the touchpad of my laptop, but I’m guessing that will be corrected by the time V. 1 is released. Also, Chrome has a similar spell check while you type feature that Firefox has. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in Google Docs at the moment. Something else I would expect to be remedied.

I have made the folks working on Chrome aware of these two oddities. They make it very easy to report bugs, or submit wish list ideas. You don’t have to provide any personal information. You just fill in the subject and text of your bug report or wish list request. This is very quick and painless.

The other night I wanted to check the prices at my local Papa John’s pizza joint and they required that I give them my first and last name, complete street address, phone number and e-mail address. Just to check the menu.

I wrote them a very harsh message asking why I had to give such extensive personal information just to see how much a pizza might cost. They replied this is necessary to assure I get prices from the correct store. Like I don’t know where the hell I live. And do the Jones get different menus from the Smiths??? Why is my last name necessary to check prices on a menu.

Their reply was so ridiculous, I didn’t reply. Plus, I grilled myself a boneless, skinless chicken breast instead of ordering pizza.

Anyway, back to Chrome. Both the Mac and Linux versions are reported to be “coming soon”. After using it for the better part of a week, I’m happy with it, and I’m much happier using Google’s web based applications now that there’s an adequate browser to use them with.

I do like Chrome for general surfing, as well as just with Google Apps. I have a good feeling about Chrome so far. I have a knack for finding “oddities” in programs rather quickly and easily and except for the two I mentioned above, I haven’t found anything else.

More later.

Girls Night Out, Part Two

Carol’s car turned out to be a fairly normal looking car. At least to me. It was that sort of blue-grey looking sort of non color that I see all too often. I haven’t owned a car in over 15 years, and don’t pretend to keep abreast of what’s what these days. It was two door, so it looked borderline sporty, or something. Overall, it looked like a nice single mom’s car.

I’m just grateful to get away from “the gang” and to be able to spend a little quiet time with Carol. So for me, anything above a moped is a blessing. Sure, I love the girls, and I’m really glad I got to see them, but I’ve also had my fill for a while.

The seats are covered in a deep blue-ish fabric, but very comfortable. Her radio is tuned to the local adult soft rock station. All songs everyone knows, and for the most part songs that don’t get on anyone’s nerves. Right now, we’re hearing a woman, who sounds familiar singing a song that sounds familiar, but I’m unable to put a name to either. Modern radio is something else I don’t pretend to keep up with. I’m pretty much stuck in the 80’s when it comes to radio stuff.

As we pull away from the curb Carol’s maternal instincts kick in as she asks, “are you hungry, do want to stop someplace to eat?”

“I’m fine, but if you’re hungry, feel free to stop”, I reply trying to sound agreeable. It’s two people who have just met playing the “where do you want to go? Anywhere, where do you want to go” game.

“Do you think Zippy’s would be too crowded for just coffee, or something?”, she presses the issue.

Obviously, she wants to stay out longer and I take this a good thing, so I continue to be agreeable and answer, “let’s find out. Coffee sounds good right about now. Plus, it’s perfect ‘let’s talk some more’ stuff”.

She chuckles as she answers, “Yeah, and it’s easier than either of us having to decide whether or not I should come up to your apartment.”

“Truedat. I was going to ask, but I was afraid I’d be asking one thing too many, too soon.”, I confessed.

“Me too . I’m not ready to go home, but I’m also not sure I’m ready to come home, if you know what I mean.”, she answered honestly.

“Well put. Let’s see if we can just have some coffee and we’ll tackle the hard questions later.”, I reply as I smiled at the clever way she turned a phrase. I always appreciate that, but not enough people do it. She’s scoring brownie points, and probably doesn’t even know it.

“I know you were kind of anxious to get away from there, but I’m glad AC invited me, and I’m glad you were there. It was fun.” More honesty. More brownie points.

“Me too. I had fun with the girls and although I was very skeptical about meeting you, I’m really glad I did”. Trying to match her honesty.

Five minutes, or so later, we whip into the parking lot of Zippy’s, a local family restaurant with several locations around the islands. We easily find a place for her car. There’s no line out the back door, so it looks like we’re in luck. Often, this place can be packed late at night since it’s open 24/7. It’s early enough, we’ve probably beat the late night crowd.

We’re seated right away in a booth where it looks like we can continue talking and getting to know each other. She orders coffee and a slice of apple pie. I opt for coffee, solo.

“So, you’re sure your daughter is okay?”, I ask. I’m somewhat genuinely concerned, but more about her parenting skills than I am about her daughter. Looking under the hood, so to speak.

“She’s fine. I called her just before we left, while you were in the bathroom.”, she answered.

“Cool. I’m not sure I’d know whether or not to worry, or not worry about a sixteen year old home alone.”, I tell her.

“I know what you mean. She’s a good kid. I always worry, but I’m almost never concerned. For a sixteen year old, she makes pretty good decisions.” She says.

Excellent answer. With a mom who communicates this well, it’s no wonder the girl makes good decisions.

“Are all the kids on that year around school schedule these days?”, I ask in complete ignorance. I’m actually curious about what it’s like being a single parent, but I’m also trying to show her I’m interested in things other than how the fastener on her pants works.

“I think so. I don’t know about all the private schools, but I think pretty much everybody is on that schedule now.”, she answers before taking a sip of her water.

We continue talking about mundane daughter and family stuff, from which I garner lots of good insight into the woman. Very nice, indeed. Bright, articulate, without sounding stuffy. Hell, she’s even kinda cute. Okay, she’s beyond kinda cute. She’s very attractive. All of this, and I’m starting to wonder why she’s apparently available. I’m half way waiting for “Ms. Hyde” to rear her ugly head.

Our coffees and her pie are delivered. Her pie looks good and she confirms it’s just what she was in the mood for. Maybe I need to learn to bake. Then, she asks, “so, if you don’t mind my asking. What happened to you? Your health and all.”

“I don’t mind at all. Just understand it may take longer than one piece of pie to tell you.”, I chuckle back to her.

I took a long, deep breath and explained to her how I came to be the way I am. I took my time and made sure I didn’t leave out any of the gory details. It’s not a fun story to tell, nor I would imagine to listen to, but she was very attentive and even asked some very good questions along the way.

Half an hour or so later, I finished up with, “and that’s how I got here from there.”

A serious look full of concern had come over her lovely face. She was leaning forward, her elbow resting on the table with her arm extended up to support her chin.

“Sounds miserable. I don’t mean any offense, but it just sounds like quite an ordeal. Especially when it sounds like you went through the bulk of if by yourself.”, she said reflectively.

I nodded as I answered, “I had lots of good help when I needed it. Especially from AC, bless her heart, but you’re right; day in and day out it was mostly me waiting for something else to go wrong, or stop working.”

“How did you pass the time?”, she wanted to know.

“I typed a lot. Mostly diary stuff. Sometimes I’d type about learning software programs. I really dug into things like Outlook and Access and even Word. It killed a lot of time and kept my mind off the bad stuff.”

“Denial got me into trouble, but it has also helped me get through it. Even to this day. I’m a little too good at being able to ignore almost anything until I absolutely have to deal with it.” I told her in true-confessions style.

“I suppose it’s that, or let it drive you nets”, she replied trying to wrap her head around it all.

I laughed as I answered, “I’m already nuts. No need to go any further down that road, so I just kinda let everything run its own course. I mean, I do what I can, then I just let it go and try not to worry about it. It works most of the time.”

She related a couple of horror stories about bad health things in her family in a nice, but conciliatory sort of way. I guess she understands misery love company, or so they say. I don’t wish what has happened to me on anybody.

We’ve both had two refills on our coffee and her pie has been reduced to crumbs, and she eventually got every one of them. Not from gluttony, but just from absent mindedly keeping her hands busy.

She has beautiful hands. I’m not sure why, but I almost always notice. Sometimes I’ll notice a woman’s hands before I notice her overall figure.

Just for the record, I did notice Carol’s overall figure. Almost perfect. A grown woman’s figure, but trim, taught and firm in all the right places.

“Now, I’m going to be awake all night.” She giggled as she looked at her empty coffee cup.

Not sure what she meant, and not wanting to over react in my heightened caffeine induced state, I laughed softly when I answered, “I almost never drink real coffee. I’ll be bouncing off the walls until Tuesday.”

She chuckled as I continued, “what time is it, anyway?”

She checked her watch, then replied, “almost 11:00. Not bad.”

I nodded slowly as I contemplated my next move. We’ve have reached the crossroads of the evening. She’s obviously not in a hurry to get home, and I haven’t invited a woman back to The Crib in years…yes, years, so I’m not sure what I’d do with her if she said yes. I’m praying it’s like riding a bicycle, or swimming. Both ideas seem like really bad puns in light of the moment, but I can’t help the way my mind works.

I decide since we’ve both been way more honest with each other than we’ve needed to be so far, I’ll see if I can milk this cow one more time (Another bad pun. I’m on a roll, or something), so I just sort of blurt out, “I’m not very good at this, so I’m just gonna ask. Do you want to come up to my place for a little while, or have you had enough of me for one night?”

She laughed out loud as she answered, “I was afraid you’d had enough of me prying into your personal life. I’d love to talk some more, if you’re up for it.”

“I’m probably up for days, so sure, I’m in a perfect condition for more talking…and more talking…and more talking.”, I answered matching her laugh.

She gathers up her purse and snags the check off the table while she looks at me with a look that says, “don’t even thing about it”, while her mouth says firmly, but nicely, “I got this”.

I smiled with an open moth and big eyes while I held both hands up as if begging her not to shoot me and replied, “thanks, huh”.

We laugh, she paid the bill and I resisted the urge to sprint to the car, thanks to all the coffee.

2008-08-18 Online Shopping

I totally love shopping online. Partly due to my low vision and partly because I'm kinda lazy at heart.

     One of my favorite online shopping places is Amazon. I've been shopping there for years, but just found out something today I hadn't been aware of before. You can buy food there. Not just fancy gourmet stuff, but any kind stuff. Normal stuff. Mostly pantry types of stuff that ships efficiently.

     The prices seem to be pretty good. Certainly better than the local market where I do most of my shopping. Of course there's a catch. Most of the stuff is sold in larger quantities, or multi-packs similar to Sam's or Costco. For pantry kinds of stuff, that's not so much of a problem. Also, lots of the items qualify for Amazon's free shipping on orders over $25. Major bonus.

     I'll be stocking up on hamburger dill sliced pickles and Jalapeño nacho slices in the very near future. It also looks like a good place for mayo, mustard, spices and the like. I'll need to do some comparison shopping next time I go to my local market to be sure. I'll also need to see how long some of those things can be stored in one's cupboard.

    I only feed me, so I get a lot of mileage out of most things. I don't have a freezer, so don't bother suggesting that, unless you live on my street and wanna share your freezer. Then we could go in together on multi-packs of Dijon mustard. (: 

    Anyway, just another interesting (?) tidbit from the guy with way too much time on his hands.

2008-8-18  Checking Out iNetWord

Looks pretty good. The editing screen is nice and clean. The control buttons are a bit small, but that's okay, I guess. It works really well with the browser's zoom feature. It also works with Firefox's right click spell check suggestions and other options.

Unlike Google Docs, which saves everything to a folder where things go that haven't been asigned to a folder yet, iNetWord lets you choose the folder and file format when you save your document. Very nice. It's a bit annoying to have to move every single document in Google Docs to get it where you want it.

Also unlike Google Docs, you can create and modify styles in iNetWord. Very handy.

It allows you to publish your documents to your blog site. I'm gonna try that with this document and see how that works. Google allows this, but I'm not sure to what degree. I couldn't get it to work with my blog site. It may be possible, but I didn't know enough technical stuff about my blog site to completely fill in the dialog box. Hopefully, I'll have better luck here.

I haven't been able to make this work. It very well could be my fault. I'm still kinda ignorant about such things.

It'd be really hand to be able to publish directly from a web based word processor to my blog site. Right now, I compose in Word and then copy and paste to my blog. Not so much fun.

iNetWord seems to do all the normal formatting things everything else does. It appears to have a pretty robust tables feature. I rarely use table, so I haven't tried it out.

It has its own spell check, but I tend to rely on Firefox's spell check on th go feature.

You can add backgrounds to your documents similar to how you can in Word. Cute, but hardly necessary. I do it to make the all white screen a little easier to see.

All in all, I'd have to say I like it. Maybe better than Google docs. Since Google Docs is tied in with my e-mail, it is kinda convenient, but again not something that's necessary.

Thanks to all my ranting about Google Docs and Outlook, I’ve gotten behind on some of the other stuff I usually post here, so here’s a diabetic friendly recipe that I think anybody will find tasty.

Diabetic Friendly Spaghetti

1 to 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey

1 large onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 (6-ounce) cans tomato paste

1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can stewed tomatoes

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2-3 packets Splenda, or Equal

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 cup water

Brown the turkey in a large, heavy bottomed pot, then drain off the fat. Add the onion, green pepper, and garlic and saute until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste, tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, seasonings, and water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Let cool. The sauce will keep for several days covered and refrigerated.

Serve with spaghetti or your favorite pasta (diabetic can use 100% whole wheat, or 100% whole grain pasta)…or

Cook  and drain 1 ½ cups  whole wheat macaroni and add fold it into the sauce when it has finished simmering. Makes a good faux beef-a-roni.

The whole wheat macaroni makes it more friendly for those attempting to go low-carb. The whole wheat macaroni and Spenda or Equal make this diabetic friendly, as well.

Remember to test when you’re supposed to.