It's a Ruben! How Fucking Hard Can it Be?!?!?

 

OK, I know it has been awhile but I'm slight pissed off.  I have a weakness for Club Sandwiches, Chicago Style Hot Dogs, and Rubens.

I usually give a place three chances to keep my business.  There is a Butcher/Deli on the corner of Court and Muscatine that I drive by everyday.  One  day I see a sign "Today's Special - Rubens".  You Bastards!  I'm in. Not that day, but soon.  

I stop in a couple of week's later when I have money burning a hole in my pocket and a rubble in the belly.  I order one Ruben to go.  At home, I chow down.  The Ruben wasn't bad, not great, but not bad. That's one.  

Round two, I am told they are out of rye bread, but they can use white bread. (Well, it's not a Ruben is it. It's a pile of sadness.) The time is about 1:15 PM.  I can't imagine a Deli running out of sandwich bread that soon.  One Ball, One Strike.  

Round Three.  Couple of weeks later, 5:15 PM Friday, I have a dream of a Ruben and a couple of cold ones for a Friday Dinner Pinic.  Perfect!  Nope!  "We close the grill down and stop making sandwiches at Five." One Ball, Two Strike.  To be fair they are a butcher shop and the Deli thing is a side hustle, so I kind of get it.  However, it's like going to Mickey D's and finding out they are out of shake mix. 

Round Four.  OK the stars align for another try, They have Rye Bread, the grill is open, and there is plenty of meat behind the Counter. I order two Rubens.  Fuck my heart!  I get the last of the meat they have for the day.  Back at home, the first sandwich goes down the gullet.  It's ok, need some more Thousand Islands, and I want some fries.  The bread seems a little dry.  Ball! Second Ruben is a failure pile.  Each bite is a fatty mess.  Looks like I really got the dregs of the cuts.  Strike Three.  

I give you all the chances, and I guess you don't want my business.

Charlize Theron is an African American

Some time ago a fellow blogger asked me if I wanted to be called an African-American or a Black American.  If I recall correctly I said it depends on the context.  Academic papers, grants, and work I would use African-American.  In less formal seeing I might use Black American.

I take all of that back now.  I am both, but the terms are not interchangeable.

Charlize Theron is an African.  She was born and raised in Africa and has ancestors from African as well.  She was naturalized as an American citizen in 2007.  Hence she is an African-American.  That said, There is NO WAY IN HELL she would be called a Black American.  She is most definitely a White American.  (She is also yummy and delicious, but that another story for the pay-per-view blog)

Being a Black American is fundamentally different than being an African-American.  Being a Black American in the United States means you see this life through a different set of experience.

Holy Crap!

I just found a bunch of blog post drafts that I never finished or forgot to hit the "Publish" button.

So I have my work cut out for me.

Life By the Number (Special Edition!)

HR: 72 (up fro 62)
BP: 120/80 (Down from 130/95)
A1C: 6.7% (Up From 6.2%)
WT: 245 ( Down from 250) Yippie

If anyone still reads this blog, you know in the summer I get all my standard checkups.  Just like the my car: Oil Changed, Tires Rotated, Brake Done, and anything else I can think of.

All I have to say about the numbers above, "Dam you Donuts, Damn you to Hell".  Of Course it's my fault shoving donuts down my throat.  It's unfair I lose five pounds yet my blood sugar has gone up.  I guess this just means diabetes is slowly winning.  That just sucks.  I will have to cut back on all those really yummy foods, but after the state fair.  There is a funnel cake with my name on it! (Aside: There are a whole bunch of foods I will allow myself to have only once in a year:  KFC Chicken, a Funnel Cake, Banana Fritters, and I'm sure some other things will hit the banned list.)

So I get all my holes check, teeth, eyes, ears, nose, and throat.  This year is different however, I turned 50 which means I get the "Forbidden Hello".

Normally, You know I love posting pictures of myself: Eyes, Teeth, and whatever else.  Boy! do I have pictures for you!  However, the High Priestess says "NO!"   So you will just have to settle for Anthony Kiedis' gif from the Red Hot Chili Pepper Video "Can't Stop".

Long story - Short:  I Won't have to do this for another 10 years!

(This a unpublished entry from July 2015)

Yes, It the ending of the year.  No I haven't posted anything for a whole year.  Yeah, I'm an ass.  Deal with it.  I have 8000 things I can do and not enough time left to do them in.  I have a stack of books I want to read.   Books I actually bought with real money.  I got a shelf of video games I haven't finished nor played taking up space on scattered hard drives and video consoles.  I've got movies on DVD I haven't watched at all.  Some DVD are still in the shrink wrap plastic!  Time is the fire in which we all burn.  All this and what do I do with myself?  Playing my games on my smartphone and jerking off to Porn!  I suffer from the curse of the early 21st century:  So much productive things to do and too many stupid distractions that do nothing for the human race, soul, or spirit.  I am starting to think that is really the plan by some Dark Cabal.

I promised myself I'd blog more, write a book, finish my 3D printing project and fix my house.  I done zip because Netflix and Minecraft are to damn interesting.  Great huge black holes of time sucking.  What is weird I got 10 minutes to play Pocket Planes, Pokemon Go!, and Puzzle and Dragons, but I don't have an hour to string two sentences together.    I'm sure if I added all the time together I'd get at least a good solid two weeks out of that.

As for Blogging, my Pintrest is kicking.  Really!?!?  I spend five seconds tagging pictures of cute cats and big booty women, that's consider blogging?  Don't get me started about Twitter and Snapchat....

The New Barbies

Kudos for Mattel making diverse Barbies. Looks like they come in four types regular, tall, petite, and curvy. Also, there seem to three or four ethnic types: White, Asian, Black, and Hispanic.

My only beef, all the curvy dolls are dressed hideously. Why?!?! The doll looks great, but all the curvy one seems to be wearing day-glo moo-moos. All the outfits my grandmother would not be caught dead in.

All the other Barbie regardless of ethnicity are smartly dress, with outfit that make sense. So what's up Mattel?

The only thing I can think of is the product design team at Mattel figures if they make the curvy dolls hideous they won't have to make anymore of them.

Go tell Mattel to stick it and buy a curvy Barbie. I'm sure there is someone out there who will start making decent clothes for them.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I've been a bad person and spend my time not updating my blog.  I spend most of my off time playing video games and drinking margaritas.   Seriously, I teach then go home and spend three hours winding down by trying to kill other player's animated pixels.  Mostly, my time is spent with this beautiful big bitch with  a sword and her sisters in League of Legends.  I always play female characters, probably because I am a pervert.  I'm sure I have some deep issues and this is my way of coping.  Give my a female character with a large weapon and I'm happy.  When not in LoL (League of Legends), I am playing Smite as Neith,  another wonderful woman with a bow.  If not in those two places, I'm on Steam playing something else.

I realize I spend far too much time playing video games.  Time that could be spent: reading, blogging, writing, or doing housework.  If I just spent half the time just doing stuff around the house, my house would be a wonderful clean home.  I bet the High Priestess would be happier too.

So why do I do it?   Cleaning makes me sneeze.  Really, It does! Takes two days to recover after each time I clean.

My Prius is TOO Quiet

I once called a pervious car I owned a Deathmobile.  I have now changed my mind. Over the past 2 years I've killed more animals with my Prius than any other car I own.  All that death and still getting 55 mpg!.  The Problem is my Prius is TOO quiet.  Have you ever tried to sneak up on a squirrel or a chipmunk?  Have you ever tried the same trick in your car?  It happens to me all the time, not just parking either.  This is at speed doing 60 miles per hour down a country road! (aside: Unlike Al Gore III who seems to get 100 mph out of his Prius.  It's got to be the drugs.  I highest I've gotten my Prius is 90 mph.  That's when the High priestess tell me to slow the Fuck down! Actually she just tells me her side of the car is going to fast.)

I get road noise in the car:  the sound of the tires on the road, wind sounds, and internal engine noise. I do wish the prius had better sound insulation for those road noises.  However from the outside my car must be close to silent, or at least much quieter that the typical car.  The animals are not use that I guess.  I've had squirrels give me a look when I pull up, "OH, I didn't see you there!"  If am at speed it is: "HOLY CRAP! Where did that big blue monster come from!!!!"  SPLAT!!"

It's only a matter of time before I hit a couple of people.  I pulled into the bank the other day and old guy in a pickup said, "Hey Buddy! Are you gonna put a muffle on that thing it's so damn noisy?!?"  We both had a good laugh.  He commented he was sitting there waiting for his wife and just looked over and there I was.  I get the same comments from other people, parents and kids when picking up Technowitch from the local high school.

Looks like I'll be doing all my drive by shooting in my Black Prius with the tinted windows from now on.

Life By the Number

HR: 58
BP: 128/80
A1c: 6.2
Office Wt: 250
Home Wt: 247

You know all the crap you hear about wieght lose?  Take this pill! Use this system!  Eat this special food! Lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks!

All of that is horseshit!  You know the best way to lose weight diet and exercise.  Stop eating crap.  Get 8 hours of sleep.  Do Thrity minutes of vigorous exercise every day. ( Mastrubating to pornography doesn't count!)

All that stuff you mom told you about eating your veggies and not to drink some much soda pop really works.  Get over the fact you had a bad gym experience, when the class bully snapped your jock strap or pulled down your short exposing your raging hard on while you watched the girls in Coed swim class.  (Not that I dwell on that!  Although I am quite proud of the shocked looks I got. )

For those few readers I have left  paying attention,  my numbers are fan-fucking-tastic.  Six months ago I was at 6.8 for my A1c.   Try to think of your red blood cells as doughnut.  The A1c is a percentage of sugar covering the outside of the red blood cell, like the sugar on a doughnut.  Normal range is 4.8-5.9% , like a plain cake doughnut that a couple of sprinkles.  (Aside: If the red blood cell have too much sugar on their surface they can stick together just like real doughnuts.  Which lead to kidney damage, heart damage, blindness, loss of limbs, and death).  At 6.2% my donuts are lightly glazed. At 15.6% your doughnut have been through the Krispy Kreme Sugar Waterfall, dipped in chocolate, covered in rainbow sprinkles, then covered with doughnut crumbles.  Your blood has the consistency of pancake batter and it is only a matter of time before your heart explodes.

I have been working hard over the past two year to actually lose the weight.  A fat black guy walking through Wal-mart just seems a stereotypical at this point. (Aside: I get more looks from women theses day.  Evidently when you weigh 250 and everyone else is 350+  you look pretty damn sexy in some women's eyes)  I haven't weighed 250 since 1999.

How did I do this?  Little changes and small steps.  I can't gaurantee this will work for you but it worked for me so far.

1. A little willpower doesn't mean saying no to every piece of cake or twinkie.  It does mean not eating after 8 pm.  Realizing you don't need that bag of chips while you play video games.  Think before you eat.  Are you eating to cover something else?  Sometimes having an honest look at yourself is the hardest part.

2. Cut out all diet soda pop and artificial sweetener, anything with the claim of zero calories because sugar substitute are not your friend.   Artificial sweeteners trick the body into thinking it has sugar to burn.  When it can't find the energy your body craves more food.  All that fake sugar screws up your sense of taste as well.  Try cutting out all the fake sugar you have for two weeks then eat an apple, grapes or another piece of fruit.  (Really you should try this.  It shocked the hell out of me.)

3. Get some exercise everyday.  Start slow and let your body adjust.  When I started TKD I thought I was going to die, after six month it was wasn't that bad.  Sweat is your friend.  After my knee injury I had to start slow again and work up to what I do now:  35 minutes fast climb on a stepper, 1965 feet ascent.  (Aside: Since writing and editing I have upped to 40 minutes and now climb 2240 feet.)  I start with 15 minutes on the lowest difficulty and I thought I was going to die.  Every time my body got used to the work load I increased the time by 5 minutes or increase the stepper level.  It's about every two months or so.

4. Cut out the fast food.  Getting rid of the Burger, fries and pop can do wonders. Maybe having Fast Food once a month is a good goal to work toward.  Not all fast food is created equal.  A sub sandwich with unsweetened ice tea and no chips is better than double cheeseburger, large fries and a coke.  Packing a lunch will save you a bit of cash too.

5. Eating regularly breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Watch your portions You don't need as much food as you think you do.  The restaurants are lying to you.  No one needs a 16 oz steak.

6. Drink lots of water, Unsweetened iced tea, or plain coffee.  (Not any of that Iced Coffee with Whipped cream crap).  Maybe once a week I have a can (12oz - 355ml) of regular soda, but that is a rare special treat.  I think cutting out the diet and sugar drinks have helped me a great deal.  You would be surprise how many calories you down everyday in your drinks.

7. Weight yourself everyday and keep track of what is going on.  Your weight from day to day may change by 3 to 5 pounds.  There may seems to be no reason for it, but it happens.  I have stuffed myself and the next day I've been of the scale and it reads 2 pounds lighter.  Other days I barley had anything and gain 3 pounds.  This is normal.  As you body loses fat and gains muscle you may gain some weight.  If you are well hydrated one day and thirsty the next day, that can show up in your weight too.   Track your weight everyday, but look at the trend downward over the months.  

8. All of this will take time.  I can't help you if you want to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.  You didn't wake up 300 pounds one day.  You grew that way over time, it's going to take some time to lose the weight as well.  Be realistic.  Do not give up trying just because you can not  lose five pounds the that day.

9. You will slip.  Binge on a pizza.  Eat too much cake. You'll gain 5 pounds in a week on vacation that took you a good month and a half to lose.  Don't give up.  Get back on the horse.  rome was not built in a day and neither is a slimmer you.

Meditation on Exercise

Working on my stepper gives me time to think. Really stepping is golified hamster wheel, except your house is your cage.  I watch a lot of anime.  The television helps distract me. It keep me from realizing how boring it is running on the hamster wheel.   However every now and then a thought comes to me.  The same thing happens to me during swimming.  The mind turns in on itself and start to put random thoughts together in new and interesting patterns.

All exercise can be broken into three part: Future, Present, and Past

The Future

The first third of your workout,  whether or not the time is ten minutes or an hour.  Anything you do is just burning the random energy in your body at that moment. It's like adding a few minutes on to your life at some point 20 years into the future if you get there.  Is just enough exercise to justify that jelly doughnut, or three Girl Scout cookies with your morning coffee.  It the lie we tell ourselves that we are doing something good.  Cut through the boredom... Keep going...

The Present

The middle third is when you are truly doing something for yourself. The time spent here goes into heart, muscle, and lung.  The making of the future you that can really enjoy those extra minites you may have given yourself in the first third when you decide to exercise.  This the time you lose yourself and in a trance you continue on...

The Past

The last third is where the really work can begin.  This is the time where you work on the deep past, not last night, or a week ago.  It the time five years ago  that your body remembers the  three extra hot dog you wolfed down at that 4th of July cookout. or that time you had the pound of potatoe oles' and six tacos by yourself because you were "celebrating".  This last bit is always the hardest, because your bored, tired and maybe hurting.  Think of it as feeling the pain you inflected on your body during drinking that shamrock shake, that you really didn't need.

 After every session of stepping there has never been a time when I have felt worse for exercising.  I have always felt better.

Wisdom Passed Down

Last week was the High Priestess Birthday.  The birthday was one of the big ones that ends in ZERO.  Which leads me into my next thought and a piece of wisdom from my father that I have found true: 

"When gifting for a man, get him something indestructible.  When gifting for a woman, give her something ephemeral."

My Kids and Pornography

When I was a kid.  (Read horny younger teenage.)  I stumbled across one of my father's Playboys.  When I mean stumbled across, I mean after picking the lock to his office door, find the  secret panel behind the old tax records, underneath his loaded .45, next to the hip flask of Jack Daniels.  Really, what's a kid to do when there are pictures of naked women right out in the open like that.

I remember spending hours just staring at Miss July and her wonderful curvedness.  One picture could keep me occupy for days.  Sex seemed to be in my every waking thought.

When cable TV showed up I swore I would never leave the house.  Before HBO was on 24 hours a day and was in desperate need of content, HBO relied on filler material.  In between the movies, there was Aerobicise.  Arobicise was a filler show of 5 -20 minutes of circa 1982 women doing exercise on a rotating dias with dance porn music in the background.  I pretty damn sure no women were watching that  segment.  You can see a sample you tube video here: Aerobicise Black Thongs

My point?  I worked try hard as a kid to just see a hint of skin and sex.  These days a simple web search  turns up more sex, naked people and porn they you no what to do with.  To my kids this means NOTHING!

When I first became a father I panicked and start porn proofing the house: Porn filters on the routers, cut the cable, and hide the porn.  I even made web portal pages for my kids.  Each child had their own starting page with kids safe links.  I made sure the kids were always supervised on the computer.   By the time the oldest two were in high school, the had earned enough money to buy their own computers.

Once again I panic,  I had visions of all my kids locked in their rooms in a nonstop iron festival.   Turns out they could care less.  My main problem was ending their addiction to World of Warcraft.  My youngest spends her time on tumblr.   I've checking my tracking software and router traffic:  Nothing.  No Porn. Not even a blip.  I know my web kung fu is NOT that good.  I keep asking myself why?

Then the reason hit me.  Familiarity breeds contempt.

If you want to see women (or Men) with bananas in their butts, all you have to do is do a web search and HUNDREDS of webpages, photo, audio, drawings, and movies show up.  Maybe what has happen is all the questions my kids have ever  or things they wanted to see had have been answer and seen in one day.  The reason why the young don't hang out in smutland is because they have seen it all and have become jaded.  Porn does not  have any appeal because they can find it whenever they want.

Of Course, I could be wrong.  So just to be on the safe side I'll keep hiding my Jello Midgets Asses boxed set of 25 dvds.

Stuff My Kids Tell Me: McGangbang

When I work at McDonald's as a teenager there was a trick you could do on you grill orders.  A grill order is a special order on a hamburger or cheeseburger: Hold the Mustard, No Onions, Extra Pickles, etc.  The trick was to order a Big Mac with quarter pound patties instead of the normal 10 to 1 (10 patties to a pound of ground beef) hamburger patties.  There were two ways you could do it:  Order a double quarter pounder and have the "cooks" dress it like a Big Mac, or order the Big mac with the quarter pound meat.  Sometime the people at the cash register refused because they could not figure out how to punch the order in, and you would have a lot of explaining to do.  The old veterans at MickeyDs usually got what you meant.

Now with the dollar menu and the rising cost of the pre made combos, the creative cheap college student or hungry high schooler does something different: McGangBang (Sometimes called: the Bird Bomb, Mc Churger, or Mc Tasty)

A Mc GangBang is a McChicken inside a McDouble.  The purist will just order the two sandwiches and pull the McDouble apart at the patties.  Then place the McChicken in between the two halves. It's now a three decker sandwich.  I don't think you can order this put together, but you can order the two sandwich yourself.  Technowiz just pulls the chicken patty out and places it somewhere in the McDouble.  He says it's tasty.

If you want to have the triple bypass surgery you can go for the Land, Sea and Air sandwich.  Once again you need to ask a veteran at McDonald's.  As the name implies: A hamburger patty, A fillet-o-fish patty, and a chicken patty.  You can get this as an order without having to order three separate sandwiches and putting them together.

This is what passing for cooking and fine cuisine for my kids.  I think my heart is going to explode.

Digital Life at the Dentist

Time for the semiannual cleaning and picking at the local dentist.  This time the dental hygienist has something new up her sleeve.  An Xray sensor that plugs into the USB port of her computer.  Now all my X-rays and files are digital and the whole office is going paperless. Truly amazing times in which we live.  I still remember those little piece of film you had to hold in your mouth.  Yeah, I'm old.

Notice that little bump on the tooth in the lower left half of the image?  That little place is the bane of my existence.   A lump of plaque that builds up behind my teeth.  Normally there would be a third molar there, but I had my wisdom teeth take out long ago.  That spot is a pain in the ass to reach with a toothbrush and flossing is near impossible.  I try.  If I didn't that lump would be the size of Texas.  So this is the place the Dental Hygienist works on.

Normally, I'm pretty calm when getting my teeth worked on, but when the normal pick doesn't do the job my dental nazi brings out the big gun.  She uses an ultrasonic pick that lubricates itself with water.  It feels like a high speed drill and makes the same sound as a metal lathe.  That high pitch squeal of of crunching glass marble, fingernails on chalkboards and steel knife on an iron plate.  It hurts like hell: a hot needle dipped in heroin melted by a beatnik junkie on a friday night.  So, I'm off to my happy place.

My happy place is imagining my dental hygenist as a leather bound goddess from Helga's house of pain.  There are about four places she has to get to, so as she cleans my teeth she starts losing clothes and wearing more leather and lace.  The ultrasonic pick hits my back molar: POW!

She is wearing calf-high big black boots with 6 inch spiked heels.  Fishnet stockings go all the way up to her black garter belt, that peaks out from underneath the leather miniskirt that covers her ample round ass.  Her corset is black wet latex is two size too small so hear breasts heave with every breath she takes.  Her nipples just barely peak out of the corset…

"Ah Sir, are you ok?" My dental hygienist leans in front of the bright examination light.

("I'll Never Tell you the nuclear launch codes! You Nazi Bitch!"  I try really hard not to squeeze my dental hygienist ass with my closest free hand.) I nod

("We have ways of making you talk" She has a bad german accent and I'll be damn if  her breasts didn't  go up two cup sizes.)

"Just few more minutes and we will be done." She smiles at me.  I can taste blood in my mouth.  My gums bleed very easy.  The daily aspirin I take doesn't help, because the tiniest prick bleeds like crazy.

("Not talking, eh" She slaps me across the mouth and I taste blood.  She wheels in a cart piled high with whips, paddle, dildos, sex toys, a tub of Crisco, and a bucket of KY jelly.)

"Just one more place and we can finish up with polishing", she says.

("You will soon scream for me you American Yankee lapdog of the midwest!" She bend me over a wooden sawhorse and produce the biggest vibrating butt plug I've ever seen in my life!)

The Daydream shatters in a fit of laughter.  The dental hygienist quickly takes eight fingers, the ultrasonic pick and the suction hose out of mouth.  "ARE You Choking!"  She is frantic.  I'm laughing my ass off with tears rolling down my cheeks.  I can't keep a straight face for the rest of the appointment.

As I leave with my bag of dental goodies: Toothbrush, Dental floss, and a sample of toothpaste, I hear.

"Funny, most of the patient hate the ultrasonic pick."

Cooking with Bananas

I have one of those cravings that I have once every five years or so: Banana Fritter   My mom made these all the time.  I decided to give it a try.  The first recipe required mashed bananas.  The fritters came out awful.  They were like fried donut holes without even a hint of banana flavor.  They just had those strange brown and black line you have with anything that has bananas: Pancakes, muffins, bread, etc..

So I call my Mom and ask her for the recipes she used for banana fritters.  This is what she sent me:

Banana Fritters:

1 Cup Flour 

1 Teaspoon Baking Powder

1/2 Teaspoon salt

1 Whole Egg

1 Cup Milk

1/2 Cup Oil

1. Mix flour, salt, egg, milk and oil into large mixing bowl.  Whisk into a light batter.

2. Cut and quarter 3 - 5 bananas lengthwise to form pieces that are 2 to 3 inches (5 - 8 cm)  in length.

3. Coat the prepared bananas with flour before dipping into batter.

4. With tongs or fork, dip the banana pieces into batter and allow excess batter to drip off into bowl

5. Fry in oil (Canola)  at 375°F (185-190 C°) degrees until a golden brown. Drain on a paper towel.

6.  Sprinkle with powered sugar and serve warm.

Notes: This batter makes enough to coat a bunch of bananas (6 to 10).  Watch the oil carefully.  It's really easy to burn the fritters.  You can serve brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, or maple syrup with your fritters as well.

Welcome to the Christmas Food Induced Coma Dream

So it's after Christmas.  All the presents have been opened.  Christmas dinner is now just a memory and several stepper sessions into the future.  I have stuffed myself with every cookie, cake, pies, sweet, and baked good in the house.  Time for bed.

In dreamland I meet this Zaftig Redheaded Goddess.  We do everything I ever thought of doing with a woman and several other things that are illegal in 23 states. Just before I wake up she tells me she is a piano teacher.  Then I am siting at upright piano playing Chopin.

Only thing I figured out is my subconscious Id was having too much fun and my better nature needed to get him out of the gutter with some semblance of culture.

I'm such a fine peice of ass below the waist!

If am using a piece of exercise equipment and it breaks, does that mean I'm exercing enough to wear it out?

I mentioned for the past year I've been using a stepper to help control my diabetes.  It's working.  The exercise is doing wonders for my legs.  However, last fall I broke a cable in the machine, and couldn't use it for a couple of weeks.

My stepper is secondhand from a local sporting goods store. I've had it for over three or four years, but haven't really used it seriously until the last year.  The stepper has to be at least 10 years old and has seen better days.  You can't even find new steppers.  They have fallen out of fashion.  So I knew the day was coming.  Something would break and I would have to fix it or find something else to do for exercise.  Tonight the other cable broke.

It's always something.  I already have to talk myself into exercising each day.  I don't need any more obstacles or excuses to keep me back.  I was doing TKD at the university  until they changed the rules.  The new regulations added a degree of difficulty and extra expenses which made the MWF routine untenable.  Then it was swimming at the local rec center. Swimming was great but changes in my class schedule made it more difficult to stick with a routine.   Although, I do miss the ladies in the whirlpool afterwards.  (I'm quite the stud with the AARP group in the morning.)   So having a cable break in stepper is just one more thing.  F*CK!

Thank God for Sportsmith.  After searching for replacement parts online I found Sportsmith.  I should have order a second cable in the fall after the first break, but I was too cheap.  However, after paying ten dollars in shipping I should have added a second spare cable to my order.  This time I ordered three cables.   By God, I'm gonna ride this machine until it fall into dust!

When Did That Go Out Of Fashion?

So the High Priestess and I are doing some end of the year cleaning: Recycling old magazine, getting things together to donate, and going through the closets. 

The High Preistess is pulling out item she hasn't worn in years: sweaters, blouses, pants, dresses and skirts.  I love skirts and dresses on women, but then she tells me that current fashion is bare shaved legs without stockings or nylons.  WTF.  THP works in an office, when did stocking go out of fashion?!?  Even in winter?  This just seems to me another moving target of fashion that women can not hope to match.  Unless you are young and have the legs of a dancer, and happen only to be in the perfect skin population, please cover your gams up. 

Doesn't seem fair does it?  Women have been wearing stocking for centuries, and now they are no longer in fashion?  Maybe it's just an Iowa City thing  or it could be a self image thing.  I notice several women I've worked with get quite upset when the new crop of younger students show up each semester.  Really!?!  Why even bother comparing yourself to them?  Find what works for you and stick with it.  I have notice women are harder on themselves and each other than any sane man. 

At my current age, I'm just happy to be in any room with women wearing whatever:  stocking or no stocking, tanned, pale like cream or black as the darkest night, shaved or unshaved.  Just give me confident women any day of the week. That's sexy.  I'm sure most men would I agree when me.

Loss of a Starship gaining a TARDIS

It's Spring Break  2012 and I've off to retrieve Technotaz form Iowa State.  It's about 4 PM and I'm in Grinnel, IA.  Taco John is close so I go there. (Aside: In reality Taco John is about three miles or more from the I80 highway.  Seriously, your resteraunt should not be allow to have a blue high way information sign for an exit unless your place is right on the exit ramp, 500 yards tops!  None of this Exit 123 for Hardees, and when you take the off ramp another sign directs you to drive 5 miles to downtown Mule Knuckle for the only Hardee's in the county.)

I get my food and start to make my way to the highway.  The road out of Grinnel is a 4 lane street.  Two lanes coming into town and two lanes leaving town.  I'm the the right hand lane heading for a red traffic light.  I stop and I'm the first car in the lane.  Next to me in the left lane is a plain white deliviery truck.     the traffic light is a simple three color light with no turning lane lights.  The light turns green. The truck makes a left hand turn and I go forward.  A red SUV truns right in front of me!  Just like the white truck she turn from the opposing left hand lane.  WTF!  Just because the light is green does not give you the right of way unless the traffic is clear.  I slam on my brakes and the Red SUV's bumper plows right into the hood of my cars.   The collision takes the SUV through my grill, radiator, hybrid drive system and into the engine block.  Any faster and the SUV could have killed me! 

My Car is dead in the intersection with a pool of lime green coolant froming under the front end.  Just like a blood of blood froming under a murder victim in a cheesy cop TV  drama.   I am just pissed.  I just put a trailer hitch on my Honda so I could haul my bikes around to different trails in the Midwest.  I seems to have bad luck with trailer hitches and vehicle life.  Six month I put a trailer hitch on the Dodge minivan, my dad buys a RAV4 and trades their old Toyota minivan for our older minivan.  Our older minivan gets donated to charity and goodbye to the $200 it took to put the trailer hitch on the Dodge minivan.  Fine...Fine ...Fine  The Toyota Minivan has heated seats and a sunroof, so it's ok.  I still feel like i threw $200 away.    So in the summer of 2011 , I bite the bullet and fix some thing bugging me with my Honda Hybrid.

I replace the stereo, so car radio now has a USB jack for my ipod and I buy a new trailer hitch.  I'm now out about $700.   I'm staring at my dead Hybrid.   I know the car is dead becuase the cops asked me to try and start it.  The cops are giving my the stink eye as well.  I bet they are wondering if I'm going to freak out and start doing lines of coke of something.  The Red SUV is parked on a side street.  The SUV looks pristine from were I am telling my story to the cops.  Another set of law enforcemnet officers are talking to the other driver.  She is an 82 year old grandmother!  She's in tears cry her soul and telling the cops it's her fault.  Evidently she did not see me from her seat of the RED TANK she was driving.  The police call her family.

Her son and some assortment of young adult grandchildren show up.  They comfort and take her home.  SHE GETS TO LEAVE THE SCENE!  The cops are looking at me, with the same look you get from a four year old when offer him some candy, but instead give him and apple.  You can tell they want to charge someone, but the old lady (Bless Her Heart!) already admitted fault.  I'm free to go.

Long story short.  I spend my spring break filling out paperwork and looking for a new car. 

I settle on a blue box....

Now I just have to decide if I risk the cure and put a trailer hitch on my Prius for my bike carrier.