Last Bag of Randomness of 2015

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  • It delights me to no end when I tell the kids they can play with a big cardboard box I’m about to throw out and they spend hours playing in it.  Usually, they use markers to turn it into a spaceship.
  • WifeGeeding’s parents wanted to meet us for lunch at the restaurant in Neiman Marcus at Northpark Center, so we obliged, though I knew I was about to feel a bit out of my comfort zone. When I first saw them, I teased them that they looked like the Ewings, especially since WifeGeeding’s father was wearing a stetson and a sportcoat that had a twist of Western influence in it, though he was sporting it quite well. The opportunity to tease them about being the Ewings arose once more when the conversation of oil prices and their oil rigs and wells popped up.
  • It’s always interesting to look through the clearance racks at Neiman’s and check out the prices.  Even with a 25% discount, this one woman’s vest had a price tag of over $3,700.
  • The restaurant at Neiman’s, as part of a complimentary appetizer, includes a small cup of chicken broth to drink.  I had no idea that was a thing.
  • Since Northpark has a Tesla gallery I decided to check out the car and sit in the driver’s seat. There’s a lot to like about it, but I think it has some bad blind spots in the rear.
  • Random observation: Mothers tend to carry babies and toddlers using their left arm and shoulder and fathers tend to use their right arm and shoulder.
  • WifeGeeding’s father has this gift of approaching people he doesn’t know, engaging them in conversation, and making them laugh and feel as if they have known him for decades. I wish I could describe it better, but there’s such a charm to it mixed with kindness and gentleness and he’s never intrusive about it.
  • The differences between a sportcoat, blazer, and suit jacket
    • Sportcoats – Usually made of thicker, rougher fabric and hearken to a time when men wore jackets while doing “sporting” activities.
    • Blazers –  Once made only from wool, these traditionally are a step up in formality/dressiness when compared to sportcoats.
    • Suit Jackets – Almost always from wool with a few cotton and linen summer versions thrown in for good measure, suit jackets come with matching pants.
  • Is it a well … or a rig? A look at some of the common nomenclature of the oil field – Short definition, a rig drills the hole and the well pumps the oil. But the process is more complicated than that.
  • As if being arraigned wasn’t bad enough, Bill Cosby tripped on the curb on his way to the courthouse.
  • Trump had plethora of reporters and camera operators on his private jet yesterday and said, “Try not to scratch the woodwork if possible.” I live in a very different world than Mr. Trump. I live in a very different world than all the candidates.
  • An interesting quote from a survivor of one of the recent North Texas tornadoes – “We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds – the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We – we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.”
  • The inside of that truck makes you want to cry – Buzzfeed – It Took 9 Epic Hours To Get This Truck Out Of A Frozen Saskatchewan Lake
  • YouTube – 7-year-old Sets New Limbo Skating World Record – 28cm high, 7cm less than the required 35cm
  • This is one trippy cake – YouTube – Color changing cake icing technique
  • Gizmodo – Disney’s New Rolling Robot Climbs Walls Like a Gecko –  Atop the robot is a pair of steerable propellers that generate thrust, which pushes the vehicle against the wall. and keeps it from falling.
  • Vox – I read 164 books in 2015 and tracked them all in a spreadsheet. Here’s what I learned.
  • Lawn signs are only 98.3 percent useless.
  • Even Sarah McLachlan can’t watch her sad ASPCA ad
  • Today’s dose of ‘MURICA!
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Monday, December 28, 2015

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  • It’s an absolute delight to see Christmas through a child’s eyes.
  • DaughterGeeding can be just too precious sometimes, and I certainly don’t deserve her. Driving home after the Christmas Eve service we were teasing that the weather was really bad where he’s at and there was no way Santa could see through the snow while flying. This was just an attempt to get her to say that’s why Santa uses Rudolph as she’s been watching it quite a bit, but instead, she said, “Well, that’s okay.  As long as we are all together as a family, that’s all that matters.”
  • I’m surprised that the 24-hour Christmas music station continues to play Christmas music after Christmas.  Surely they take a huge ratings drop after Christmas.
  • On Christmas Eve, Santa, in a Lowe’s truck, dropped off a new washer and dryer and hauled off the washer and dryer my father bought in 1992.  I think he really got his money’s worth out of those things as they never malfunctioned until about a year ago.  That thing washed my clothes from high school, college, as a working adult, and my kids’ clothes, and the last thing from my childhood home in Mineral Wells that I continually used.  In a way, I felt like it was the last piece of my youth to let go.  Lowe’s offers free delivery but with a catch, you have to purchase all their accessories even if you don’t need them, like water and dryer vent hoses.  The installer saw my hoses were just fine and gave me his unopened package and told me to take it back and get a refund.  Just the water hoses was over thirty bucks, and yes, I did tip the installer.
  • I watching Working Girl for the first time and was quite surprised at all the actors I recognized – Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Melanie Griffith, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Nora Dunn, Oliver Platt, Kevin Spacey, Olympia Dukakis, David Duchovny, Ricki Lake.
  • I also watched and pleasantly enjoyed the 2015 movie Vacation with Ed Helms and Christina Applegate which is a sequel, remake, and reboot (per IMDB) of the franchise with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo.  Chris Hemsworth is also in the movie and plays a DFW weatherman that is married to Audry who lives in a Plano mansion.  He attempted a Texan accent but for me it sounded more like his Australian twang.  As much as I enjoyed and laughed at the movie, it did bring me down as I realized I’m very much like Russ and his father Clark.  We sacrifice higher paying jobs and other things to spend more time with our family, often don’t feel respected by them and others, get laughed at doing well-meaning stuff, get overlooked, fall on our face trying to fix things or make things right, feel our wives could have done better, people lack confidence in us, and others are reluctant to join us in things we want to do.
  • I watched Vacation by renting it on Google Play and casting it from my phone to the Chromecast on our television.  While it was playing, I picked up my phone to check something and noticed that my phone would show the actors and their character names as they appeared on the screen, continuously.  This is probably old news for everyone else and available on other devices, but I thought it was pretty darn cool.  If I wanted to know more about the actor, all I had to do was select him or her.
  • The coolest bit of trivia from the movie – During the opening credits there is a brief still of the late John Hughes and his family on vacation. John Hughes was the writer of the original Vacation (1983), European Vacation (1985), and Christmas Vacation (1989).
  • The dogs woke me up in the middle of the night to go outside and relieve themselves.  It was a full moon out and the weather was nice, so I thought I’d step outside as well and embrace the solitude.  I looked up at the roof of our backyard porch and saw what I thought was a black cat staring at me.  It didn’t fear me one bit, and for a while, I couldn’t shoo it away. It disappeared for a bit and reappeared at the other end of the porch roof, and then decided to climb up the roof of our two-story house and then climb the chimney. I promise this wasn’t a dream, but it was a surreal experience.  The next day I got an email from our HOA saying beware of a bobcat that was spotted in the neighborhood, so maybe what I thought was a black cat was a bobcat and me and the dogs got lucky.
  • Our area had a lot of bad storms recently, but my area didn’t get the brunt of it.  If you follow local meteorologist Pete Delkus on Twitter, he went after people that called him out for interrupting a spare bowl game for severe weather coverage.
  • Pictures of Pete Delkus baseball cards when he was attempting a career in the sport.
  • Until I read and saw the picture in this tweet from @WestWingReport, I thought JFK was the last acting president to ride through Dallas in an open top car, but it was Gerald Ford.  That lead me to do a little research and I found this DailyMail piece which stated the Ford campaign wanted to use it in a commercial, but it was a turn off for focus group since it was just 13-years after the death of JFK.  In particular, this line from the commercial bothered them, “When a limousine can parade openly through the streets of Dallas, there’s a change that’s come over America.”  You can see the unaired campaign video in the link provided above.
  • Dallas Observer – The Good, The Bad And, Of Course, The Ugly: Dallas’ 2015 Quotes Of The Year
  • The Guardian – Jesus statue’s promotion to army general vetoed by Guatemalan president
  • Florida news – Woman arrested for riding motorized cart through Walmart while eating chicken, drinking wine
  • It was cold yesterday, but I ran the AC a lot more than I wanted last week.
Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Sarah Palin spoofs Tina Fey

For real, and I found it a bit amusing.

Sarah Palin stars in Independent Journal’s new comedy about a small-town TV writer who moves to NYC in hopes of creating a hit variety show. Also starring Kevin Brown (Dot Com), Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain

Posted in Political, Pop Culture | 2 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, December 22, 2015

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  • We visited the Galleria yesterday and I noticed a life-size cardboard display of Darth Vader inside Cartier.  I’m sorry, but when I think of luxury jewelry stores, cardboard cutouts don’t come to mind.
  • So far my winter vacation has started off with a trip to the gastroenterologist and my dog waking me up early yesterday morning by throwing up on me.  Fun times, I tell ya, fun times.
  • Georgia State and a partner bought Turner Field and will turn it into a football stadium and student housing, apartments, and retail stores.  So that thing was first an Olympic stadium, then a baseball stadium, and will now be a football stadium – poor thing has identity issues.
  • BBC News – Kenyan Muslims shield Christians in Mandera bus attack
  • Imgur – “Simpsons guessed the future of movies in 2009.”
  • Watch The Trailer For The New Season Of ‘Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee’
    Barack Obama, Will Ferrell, Steve Martin and more will be riding around with a caffeinated Jerry Seinfeld starting December 30th.
  • Once again The New York Times outwits our local writers by publishing a great article about our area, and this is one they should have done a long time age.  They wrote a piece about what it’s like to watch a Cowboys game in Jerry Jones’ suite, here are some highlights:
    • The formal invitation – The package arrives by overnight mail for out-of-town guests — it is hand-delivered by team security personnel to those in the area — and contains a box holding an acrylic tray with the Cowboys star logo etched in the middle. Nestled inside the tray is a card requesting that the recipients join the Jones family “on the fifty” (as in yard line), along with tickets, a parking map and a parking pass. All visitors receive valet privileges, but only some are afforded the luxury of driving beneath AT&T Stadium, to the base of an elevator that lifts them directly into the suite.
    • Forty-eight seats are available (but there was 62 total for the game in the article), and Jerry’s wife and daughter decides who gets them.  Each preseason home game is a family reunion, one for Jerry’s family, and one for his wife.
    • They try to make you comfortable – like the menu — loaded with comfort foods like hot dogs and fried chicken and chicken fried steak — and the availability of household items, like safety pins and Tylenol. Spill on your shirt? Here’s some stain remover and a hair dryer. Feeling cold? We’ll fetch you a blanket.
    • But they also provide a personal touch and a unique souvenir – A photographer roams the suite to shoot pictures of guests with members of the Jones family, and again at halftime, when two cheerleaders come up to pose with anyone interested. When visitors open gift bags that are passed out to them in the fourth quarter, they will find that one of those photos has been framed. Everyone receives a hat — the style changes every season — and a book detailing the art and architecture at the stadium.
    • Jerry has his own private area, but Gene only allows him to enter her area at halftime.
    • Former President and local resident George W. Bush and his wife have standing invites.
Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, December 22, 2015