Have the Atlanta Bread Company and Panera Bread Company merged?
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I think it’s the font that they’re using, which appears to be the same font that Panera uses. And yet a quick Google search doesn’t turn up anything to indicate that the two companies have merged or anything like that.
We have a nest of baby bunny rabbits just outside our living room window. We’ve had rabbits living around the house as long as we’ve lived here, and I think they’ve built nests under our deck at various times, but this is the first nest we’ve seen out in plain sight. We could see two of the babies this morning, and Denise later counted two more, for a total of four. She has named them “Flopsy-Tail”, “Mopsy-Tail”, “Bopsy-Tail” and “Topsy-Tail”. Here is a picture of Flopsy-Tail (or is it Mopsy-Tail?) peeking out of the nest.
My wireless connection just dropped out, as it often does at night, and so I went up to the little AirPort applet on the menu bar to find my router’s SSID in the list and re-select it. I can of course see all of my neighbor’s routers’ broadcast SSIDs, like “Happy Gilmore” and “Robs Router”, as well as the ever-popular “default” and “linksys” (yes, they’re both wide open). But tonight, there’s a new one: “pay your taxes to madison“.
Buds appeared on our trees late last week and they’re getting ready to bloom. A lot of the trees in the neighborhood are already blooming, but ours have always been late bloomers.
Meanwhile, Oscar was watching me walk around the yard taking pictures and he was not happy about having to stay inside.
On Tuesday night, we took the hotel desk clerk’s advice and had dinner at Pub 199 in Mt. Arlington, NJ. Calling it a “pub” is misleading, or maybe “pub” just means something different up north, but it was a pretty big place. The walls of the dining room were covered with all sorts of (dead and stuffed) critters. Sorry for the crappy picture quality, but all I had with me was the camera in my phone.
The food was good and reasonably priced. (I had the deluxe cheeseburger with fries, which I believe cost $7.00). One important thing to note is that they don’t take credit cards — cash only.
They get you with a series of little lies, because they know that you’d never accept the cold, hard facts all at once. So instead of telling you that you’re not going to get home on time, the gate agent starts out telling you that your airplane has just now landed from Jamaica, and they need to let those passengers off the plane, and do the security checks, and get the crew on board, and defumigate all of the pot smoke, and whatever else it is that they do. You should be able to begin boarding after that. Estimated arrival time in Huntsville has been delayed from 9:30 p.m. to 9:55 p.m.
So I’ll get home 25 minutes later than planned, no big deal. Once you get on the plane, the pilot announces that due to all of the weather delays, there “fifteen or twenty” planes ahead of us in line, so it will be another 25 minutes or so that we’ll sit on the runway before we can actually take off. Didn’t you know that there were fifteen or twenty planes ahead of us before you made us all cram into the plane? But, OK, another 25 minutes. That’s not such a long time, is it?We finally take off, and the pilot announces that the flight time should be about 30 minutes. And technically, that may be true, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be getting in your car to drive home in 30 minutes, it means that, best case, the plane will be on the ground in about 30 minutes. And then you’ll sit on the runway for awhile, while the pilot drives around looking for an open gate. And then there’s baggage claim, where you wait for twenty or so minutes until the realization sets in that your suitcase just isn’t there, and so it’s off to stand in line and file a claim. Finally, you get on the road around 11:15 p.m.At least I didn’t need anything out of that suitcase. The man in front of me (who spoke with a comical Johnny Wishbone-like islands accent) was traveling to Huntsville from out of town and had nothing but the clothes on his back. I do hope that Delta eventually found his luggage.The other night our oldest niece, Julien, called to ask Denise what she thought were the ten most important historical events in her (Julien’s) lifetime. Julien was born in 1992 — how can she be almost fifteen years old? — so you’d think we’d be able to come up with ten significant world events for that period of time, but it was kinda difficult to do on the spot. Here’s what Denise came up with (in no particular order):
Yes, we now know that it was the Columbia that blew up, not Discovery. It’s hard to keep those names straight. And the list is pretty US-centric, and some of those events are clearly more historically significant than others. What do you think you would have added to the list? No fair looking up sources on the web — see what you can come up with off the top of your head.
Fun side note: Julien told us that her father’s Y2K preparations consisted of going to the grocery store and buying a can of beans and a can of carrots, and then coming home and filling up one of the bathtubs with water. He was angry because he felt like none of his other family members were taking the threat as seriously as he was.
How bad is it that the most exciting thing that’s happened in my life this week is the announcement of the iPhone?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m having a mid-life crisis. Is 36 (almost 37) years old too young to have a mid-life crisis? Is this as good as it gets, getting up and going to work and doing the same thing every day? When I think about the possibility that we’re never going to be matched for an adoption and that I’ll probably be childless for the rest of my life, I really worry about what happens next. Well, maybe “worry” isn’t the right word so much as “dread.” What is there to look forward to?I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions, because like most people I don’t ever stick to them. So I guess I feel like I’m being more honest about it up-front by just not making them in the first place. But one of the changes that I want to make this year has to do with this blog: I either want to start writing a lot more, or just get rid of it. It’s definitely kind of pointless as-is, with sporadic posts about whatever happens to be interesting to me at the time. I’ve noticed that I’m especially bad about starting what should be a series of posts and then losing steam shortly after completing the first one. It’s also been almost exclusively technical in nature, and while I don’t want for it to turn into a cat blog
I do intend to start writing more about what’s going on (or what isn’t) in real life.The other change that I’d like to make this year is that, like everyone, I’d like to get in better physical shape. I don’t mean lose weight so much as start exercising more and eating more healthy. But that’s probably not going to happen. I think I will settle for “not getting any worse.”Sorry for ending on a down note, but I’ve been sick for a couple of weeks now with a cough that won’t quite go away, and so that’s got me a little more discouraged than usual. Maybe I’ll have something more upbeat to tell after this weekend.
So this is weird.
Back in late November or early December of last year, Denise mentioned that she wished someone would invent a heated mouse. Sure enough, Googling for the phrase “heated mouse” turned up several blog articles referencing a company that claimed to produce just the item she was looking for. Never one to look an obvious Christmas gift idea in the mouth, I placed an order. I was a little troubled by the ordering process, which required me to make payment using PayPal, but I went along with it because other people seemed to having orders filled with no troubles.
I placed the order on December 10, and after a few days I sent in an e-mail inquiry to ask when the item would actually be shipped. I received a quick reply that assured me (in ALL CAPS, no less) that I’d get it on or before December 24. Great!
Well, Christmas came and went with no sign of the heated mouse. Subsequent e-mails and phone calls to the seller went unanswered. I finally filed a complaint with PayPal around January 10, but they were unable to do anything about it. (Thanks, PayPal!) I chalked it up to a $59.99 life lesson and moved on.
Hearing about someone else’s recent troubles with a sale through PayPal reminded me of my problem, so I once again Googled to see if anyone has reported problems similar to mine. I was surprised to find new comments on one of the blog articles I’d seen last year, in which other shafted customers were complaining about non-delivery of their heated mice. Most surprising, however, was a comment allegedly from the fellow who was actually selling the mouse:
Ladies and Gentleman. I am Rudy Hinojosa, creator of the heated mouse. I want to publicly express my apologies for not being able to process your orders in a timely fashion. My manufacturer deal did not go through. I’m being forced to make them once again by hand. This is so frustrating. I have about 60 back orders in queue. I have stopped new orders alltogether. I will be providing refunds for those who request it. My contact information is still the same. I’m working overtime to get these orders out.“Rudy” neglects to mention why he never replied to any of his customers’ e-mails or phone calls; I’m not optimistic that I’ll actually get a response if I try to contact him about a refund. But I suppose it won’t hurt to try. Stay tuned.
I love it when the collectibles dealers come to the mall. Today I picked up a 24×36 poster of the cover of Superman #233 as well as a Limited Collector’s Edition Batman vs. Ra’s Al Ghul, both drawn by Neal Adams.
