Questions from a Comedien

I once heard a comedien ask why, with all of the technological advances of the 21st century, can someone not invent something better than tennis balls for the elderly to put on the back feet of a walker. Of course I cracked up laughing, thinking that was so true!! Hilarious! Today, however, with the power out for many hours I thought about why indeed isn't there something better than tennis balls for walkers. Maybe I should invent something. Upon further thought I decided there may just be a real reason for not making something like that. The whole purpose of a walker is to steady a person who has trouble walking, right? The purpose of putting those tennis balls on a walker is to make it slide more easily, right? Now, if someone already has trouble walking do you really want to make their walker slide easily? I mean, there they are trying to pull themselves out of their recliner and ... whoops! The walker and the person go sliding across the floor because the back feet of the walker have no grip. To me, tennis balls on a walker may not be a great idea after all. I think it sounds like any company that would produce something like this may have a lawsuit on their hands. I did find a company that made a product to help walkers slide though. I guess it really just depends on the capabilities of the person using the walker.

Anyway if you just have tons of extra tennis balls and don't want to use them to help the elderly in their wish to slide here are some other interesting uses I've found on the internet:

• Store valuables. Make a two-inch slit along one seam of a Wilson Tennis Ball, then place valuables inside. If you hide the doctored tennis ball among your other sports equipment, remember not to use it.

• Fluff your down jacket in the dryer and reduce static cling. Throw in a handful of Wilson Tennis Balls to fluff the down while the jacket is tumbling in the dryer.

• Childproof the sharp corners of furniture. Cut old Wilson Tennis Balls in half or quarters and use Scotch Packaging Tape to tape the sections over sharp corners of coffee tables, end tables, cabinets, dining room tables, and other pieces of furniture that might be dangerous to a small child. Plus your house will really be high style with tennis balls on all your furniture corners.
  

• Make parking cars in your garage easier. Hang a Wilson Tennis Ball on a string from the garage ceiling so it will hit the windshield at the spot where you should stop your car.

• Prevent a chrome trailer hitch from getting scratched. Slit a Wilson Tennis Ball and put it over the trailer hitch as a protective cover. That would look awesome on a loaded Ford F250...the tennis ball would really bring out the rugged character of the truck.
  

• Give yourself a foot massage. Roll your foot over a Wilson Tennis Ball.

• Make a back massager. Put several Wilson Tennis Balls inside a sock and tie at the end. This is frequently used by the labor coach to massage the back of a woman in labor.

• Remove cobwebs from unreachable places. Wrap a Wilson Tennis Ball inside a dust cloth secured with a few rubber bands, then toss at the distant cobweb. I don't know why housekeepers all over the US aren't jumping on this one.
  

• Play "basket tennis." Remove the bottom from an empty coffee can, and nail the can above the garage door. Use a Wilson Tennis Ball to play basketball.

• Strengthen your grip. Squeeze a Wilson Tennis Ball in each hand.

• Prevent snoring. Sew a Wilson Tennis Ball inside a pocket on the back of your pajama top to prevent you from sleeping on your back. Prevent snoring - Produce Anger
  

• Prevent a deck chair from slipping through the cracks of a dock. Slit four Wilson Tennis Balls and fit them on the feet of the deck chair.

• Keep your car door open without wasting the battery. Wedge a Wilson Tennis Ball into the door jamb to depress the interior light switch.

My Gas Ring

Your Superhero Profile

Your Superhero Name is The Battle Savage Your Superpower is Psychic Your Weakness is Cowboys Your Weapon is Your Gas Ring Your Mode of Transportation is Hovercraft

What's your Superhero Name?

Capertons on the Move

Jefferson parish has these signs they put up during street repairs, or road extensions, whatever that say "Jefferson Parish on the Move." I think they should hand out bumper stickers that say that.

Kent and I, after being in town for 26 hours, have left again. I know there will not be a direct hit from Rita, but 6 inches of rain could break the levees again. Since it was already so close to the weekend, and it's just the two of us, we figured it's not that hard for us to just get out again. So, we're in Zachary. No levees, no big lakes, no river...we're inland.

I cleaned out the refridgerator yesterday. GUH-ROSS!!! I had to clean a lot of mold. It was so stinky! This time we took all of our refridgerated food with us. Plus we'd just gone grocery shopping yesterday and we didn't want to waste all of that food.

Anyway, Southeast Texans and Southwest Louisianians...I will say a prayer for you.

Stay Safe.

Heading Back Home

As you probably read on Kent's blog we are once again saying "goodbye" to Lafayette and heading back to "Met-tree," as we lovingly call it. I have slightly mixed emotions about going back. I'm ready to be back home, back to somewhat normal. We both love it there and are anxious to live there again. However, I'm not ready to be working in the same environment as usual. The "bosses" in my company are quite harsh. I don't like it.

As an added bonus, the environmental inspectors found ecoli in my office!! How awesome is that. Now, not only do I get to work around grouches, I also get to work around a deadly bacteria. It's really just amazing.

Actually, I'm very very very thankful for this job. They've let me continue working through the whole evacuation and everything and that's been good. It's really the perfect job for our current situation as far as compensation and benefits are concerned. It's just kind of a downer environment. I'll deal with it though. I should just spend less time complaining about it and more time being thankful that God gave me this job. It is what we need at this time.

We leave on Wednesday and will have a few houseguests when we get back. I am excited about that. I've enjoyed living with people in the past and now we'll get to experience it from the other side.

It's been fun hanging out in Lafayette. Thanks for the good times and I guess we'll see all you Lafayettians at Thanksgiving.

Quizzes

Your Brain's Pattern

Your mind is a multi dimensional wonderland, with many layers. You're the type that always has multiple streams of thought going. And you can keep these thoughts going at any time. You're very likely to be engaged in deep thought - and deep conversation.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

Mmm...about 50% me. Deep conversation - Rarely. Deep thought - always

How You Life Your Life

You seem to be straight forward, but you keep a lot inside. You tend to avoid confrontation and stay away from sticky situations. Your friends tend to be a as quirky as you are - which is saying a lot! Some of your past dreams have disappointed you, but you don't let it get you down.

How Do You Live Your Life?

Pretty accurate I think.

How Observant are you? B-

Your senses are pretty sharp (okay, most of the time) And it takes something big to distract you!

How Observant Are You?

I was actually hoping to be a little more observant than a B-

Perfect...A Cold

I have a Cold so I am Les Miserable. My voice tends to get a little deep when I have a cold so it's kind of cool to sing like a man. I called my mom yesterday and she answered the phone and I said, "Mommy?" She said, "What?" I said, "Is this my mommy?" She said, "I don't think so. This is ________ _________ . You might have the wrong number." I said, "YOU DON'T RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN CHILD'S VOICE!" Then she new the obnoxious shriek was me. I wasn't hurt, just thought it was funny.

We are in Lafayette now. It's cool because Kellie just happened to be here too! It's been fun to see her. We also saw Damon and Erica's new house yesterday. Very nice! I am excited for them. Onnie sat on my lap! We saw Beth and Korrie too. I finally got to meet Brian who comments on this blog sometimes. I've only known him through his blog. We've also gotten to see Drew and Kristy's house too. Also very nice! I am excited for them too. I had lunch with Kirstin yesterday, so that was super cool.

My car, that I've been putting off fixing for like 2 months, is finally fixed! YAY! It needed new CV joints. Aww Car...

Anyway, the pressure inside my head and nose is getting unbearable. I don't take cold medication because even if its non-drowsy it makes me have a medicine head. Plus, any thing with that Sudafedrine (I think that's how you spell it) sometimes makes me have heart palpitations. So, I stick to Cold Eeze losenges, Afrin, steamy showers and hot tea.

I miss my pup!

Coca is our baby! I haven't had her in about 5 days! I really miss her. I talked to her on the phone this morning and bought her a new dress on Thursday. Can't wait to see ya Cokes!

Dave Berry

I think Dave Berry is very funny. I was a fan of The Dave Berry Show based on the humor of Dave Berry. Unfortunately that show was cancelled (btw...the house in that show is the same house now used on Yes, Dear, as far as I can tell anyway) and I'm forced to read his column when I happen to catch it (we don't get the newspaper) or flip through his books at B&N. I read the following article in The Advocate yesterday although this particular article is several years old. I found it very humourous and enjoyed the comic relief. I hope you like it too:

We're just a few dinosaurs short of a full tank
BY DAVE BARRY
(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on April 16, 2000.)

If you've been to a gas station lately, you have no doubt been shocked by the prices: $1.67, $1.78, even $1.92. And that's just for Hostess Twinkies. Gas prices are even worse.

Americans are ticked off about this, and with good reason: Our rights are being violated! The First Amendment clearly states: 'In addition to freedom of speech, Americans shall always have low gasoline prices, so they can drive around in `sport utility' vehicles the size of minor planets.''

And don't let any so-called ''economists'' try to tell you that foreigners pay more for gas than we do. Foreigners use metric gasoline, which is sold in foreign units called ''kilometers,'' plus they are paying for it with foreign currencies such as the ''franc,'' the ''lira'' and the ''doubloon.'' So in fact there is no mathematical way to tell WHAT they are paying.

But here in the U.S., we are definitely getting messed over, and the question is: What are we going to do about it? Step one, of course, is to file a class-action lawsuit against the cigarette companies. They have nothing to do with gasoline, but juries really hate them, so we'd probably win several hundred billion dollars.

But that is a short-term answer. To truly solve this problem, we must understand how the oil business works. Like most Americans, you probably think that gasoline comes from the pump at the gas station. Ha ha! What an idiot. In fact, the gasoline comes from tanks located UNDER the gas station.

These tanks are connected to underground pipelines, which carry large oil tankers filled with oil from the Middle East.

But how did the oil get in the Middle East in the first place? To answer that question, we must go back millions of years, to an era that geologists call the Voracious Period, when giant dinosaurs roamed the Earth, eating everything that stood in their path, except for broccoli, which they hated.

And then, one fateful day (Oct. 8), a runaway asteroid, believed by scientists to be nearly twice the diameter of the late Orson Welles, slammed into the Earth and killed the dinosaurs, who by sheer bad luck all happened to be standing right where it landed. The massive impact turned the dinosaurs, via a process called photosynthesis, into oil; this oil was then gradually covered with a layer of sand, which in turn was gradually covered by a layer of people who hate each other, and thus the Middle East was formed.

For many years, the Middle East was content to supply the United States with as much oil as we wanted at fair constitutional prices. But then the
major oil-producing nations -- Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Texas -- got all snotty and formed an organization called OPEC, which stands for ''North Atlantic Treaty Organization.'' In the 1970s, OPEC decided to raise prices, and soon the United States was caught up in a serious crisis: The Disco Era.

It was horrible. You couldn't go to a bar or wedding reception without being ordered onto the dance floor to learn ``The Hustle.''

At the same time, we also had an oil crisis, which was caused by the fact that every motorist in the United States was determined to keep his or her automobile gas tank completely filled at all times. As soon as your gas gauge dropped from ''Full'' to ''Fifteen-sixteenths,'' you'd rush to a gas station and get in a huge line with hundreds of other motorists who also had nearly full tanks. Also a lot of people, including me, saved on heating oil by buying kerosene space heaters, which enabled us to transform a cold, dank room into a cold, dank room filled with kerosene fumes.

Buying gas and dancing ''The Hustle'' with people who smelled like kerosene: That was the '70s.

So anyway, the oil crisis finally ended, and over time we got rid of our Volkswagen Rabbits and replaced them with Chevrolet Suburbans boasting the same fuel economy as the Pentagon. Now, once again, we find ourselves facing rising gas prices, and the question is: This time, are we going to learn from the past? Are we finally going to get serious about energy conservation?

Of course not! We have the brains of mealworms! So we need to get more oil somehow. As far as I can figure, there's only one practical way to do this.

That's right: We need to clone more dinosaurs. We have the technology, as was shown in two blockbuster scientific movies, ''Jurassic Park'' and ''Jurassic Park Returns with Exactly the Same Plot.'' Once we have the dinosaurs, all we need is an asteroid. Or, if he is available, Michael Moore.

If this plan makes sense to you, double your medication dosage, then write to your congressperson. Do it now! That way you'll be busy when I siphon your tank.

Update on the update

So, now it looks like we are going to try to get into Jefferson Parish tomorrow. The line will probably be insane, but we'll see. I'm just glad we have something to go back to. This trip is just to gather items. We've been told to different things as far as returning for good...could be a week, could be a month. We just don't know yet.

Update

So maybe we won't be going in on Monday. It looks like they just don't have the resources for that yet.

13 out of 41 months of marriage we've lived with other people

Why should that stop now? About 32% of our married life has been spent living with either my parents, Kent's parents, or my grandparents. Now, we are staying with my parents again and soon we'll be headed to Lafayette. As of Tuesday, I'll be working out of our Lafayette office. I'm just so thankful that I'm still getting paid. A lot of people don't have an opportunity to temporarily transfer their job. We're especially blessed to not have to rent a hotel for that time. We have family.



About our house...I'm trying to stay positive. I talked to our landlord yesterday. He told us not to worry about rent this month since we couldn't live there anyway, which is great! That will help make up for the work Kent is missing. The landlord told me he heard from his friend that his house only had an inch of water in the garage. His house is raised like ours. He only lives about a mile closer to the city than us. So, that's good news. He also said that the school that's one street over from us had the roof torn off completely. So, that could mean our area may have had a lot of wind damage. We have a huge old oak tree and a great big pecan tree in our yard...so we'll just have to wait and see. Whatever happens I know we'll be okay and we'll make the best of it. God has not let us down yet and I'm sure he won't start now.

On a sadder note, I found out one of my co-workers had been trapped at his house for 4 days. He hadn't eaten anything. He finally got in touch with me yesterday and said he was on his way to the hospital to get some food. He said he thought he was going to die. The good news is that a team from our corporate office is on its way to Covington (this guy lives on the northshore-Slidell-and one of our buildings is attached to the hospital in Covington) right now with cash, gas and food for him and additional supplies and generators for the hospitals and others.