"T'was the night before Christmas,..."

A Merry Christmas to all of you ahead of my time zone,....and now for the news!

Since it's only myself and my wife for Christmas this year we fully intend to relax, sleep in tomorrow morning, have a liesurely breakfast together, open the "I told you I didn't want anything else" presents, and make some calls to our children and our grand daughter. If it sounds boring, just wait until you get to our point in life. For at least twenty something years we had the kids at home and regardless of two years old or twenty they were the focus of the day and my wife felt obligated to do big spreads for dinner and all. As they got older it was off to Bobby's, or Mary's, or some other friends home to compare gifts and hang out. Sometimes thier friends dropped by our place as well,....soooo you can see why "quiet" is a good thing.
This is when we get to put our favorite CD's in the machine and kick back and relax. (Surprise it's not Bing Crosby and Patti Page, but be equally sure it's not Nirvana or Nine inch Nails!)
I sincerely hope eveyone gets what they want and enjoy what they get as we wind down the last seven days of this year. This has not been "just another year" for sure, but the looking forward to a "super" 2007 is really exciting!
I guess I'm starting on my sixth or seventh full "Life makeover" again, but after the previous five or six I'm doing just like the big rock stars of yester year, ....so stay tuned in '07 for the "all new", "digitally re-mastered", "not available in stores", "send now and don't miss out and we'll double your order",...."The Best of Mr. Guinness"!
I'm thinking I'll sort of divide up my life into "the early years", "Teen angel", "Popeye the Sailor", "Watch out world, here I come" and the "Is that all there is?" phases. Maybe mix 'em up a bit just so no one really falls asleep at the computer, spills Coke in the keyboard and gets electrocuted as thier head hits the spacebar."
That brings up another question, or maybe a challenge for you. If you could control 2007 and casue one thing to happen, what would it be?

But I still haven't found the answers to some of life's biggest questions, may be you could help, like;
1. What the hell makes a Starbucks Coffee worth that much? Shit Juan Valdez must be driving a Rolls Royce for the prices those clowns get for a cup of coffee. Or how about,
2. "The Global Village", hell it's so damn big now all we do is spend our time getting updated on the latest "Whacko" thing going on in "the Village", speaking of which,
3. Would somebody please explain to me why strapping a shit load of C4 or dynamite around you and deliberately going out looking for a crowd of your own countrymen to kill when you "pop" would ever be considered a "good thing" by any concievable God ever known or considered on this earth? And if you have the answer, then how about,
4. Why is it we don't execute politicians very time they lie? Sure would go a long way to making a better world for all of us, (and a lot less politicians!) ...then there is,
5. An automobile that requires six Phd's to fix, none of whom is a ''computer nerd" and you know damn well it's going to die again in a year, at another cost of a second mortgage! (Brief aside I used to be able to get a car going or even fix it, but since the computer age Shit, I don't even know where to look! Like yesterday, I was going out to do some last minute Christmas shopping, jumped in the old vehicle, slapped the key in and it did nothing, nada, zilch, bupkis! Now if that don't neutralize all my meditation, my "calming breathes" and the rest of civility, well I don't know what does. I call the insurance Company for the "free Road service" only to find that I need to have the extra five hundred bucks of insurance to get the "free" road service. Two days before Christmas, shit, ain't no body even going to talk to me! So I vow to think it through, I will my mind to think like a computer program, I run through each of the steps in a logical, progressive mode. I hear a noise from the rear tailgate of the vehicle, so I grab a screwdriver and take the entire thing apart, it could be an open circuit, or stuck servo, or something, well,... it wasn't so I put it all back together, tried it again, nothing. But this time after I turned the ignition off and took the key out about every six or eight seconds the temperature guage would make a noise and drop to "0", then bounce back up to it's reguular position. Three and a half hours later I am resigned to the fact that week 1, 2007 will have it's earnings donated to some Bubba for "fixing" my vehicle. But I was a little nervous I'd wear the battery down if I left it connected and the guage kept popping on and off like that, plus who knows what other shit might be sucking electricity, so I decided to disconnect the positive side of the battery by taking off the cable from it.
Popped the hood,(oops, bonnet for the other half of the world), reached down to see if I could get a wrench in there and "plop"the entire cable falls off. Fifteen minutes later I had determined there was a crack/leak in the battery, right where the screw clamped the positive cable on to it, and apparently the slow leak of the acid had been going on long enough to dissolve all the threads around the screw as well as on the fitting it screwed into and it was strictly a gravity thing that was keeping it in place. But I still have to wait to Tuesday to get it fixed. I tried finding another bolt just a bit bigger and then as the few grey cells left between my ears began to twitch I got a thought,...."Is that such a good idea, trying to bore a bigger bolt into a battery?" I decided I'd rather be "rocking around the Christmas tree", than another nominee for the Annual Darwin awards for electrocuting myself with a car battery and having the ensuing explosion and it's accompanying battery acid reduce me to a charred mass of protoplasm lying in the garage as the house burned down around me. (Not only that, but my wife would be so pissed at having to clean up my mess, literally, by herself, ...hell, I'd never hear the end of it!
Well off to the pub to grant my bar tenders Christmas wishes, and a big tip, for being a good bartender to me. (It's funny, this time of year most bartenders get struck with the "barheimer's" syndrome. Six beers later they come over and say "you only had one beer, right mate? (wink, wink)" Now is that to encourage a larger tip for Christmas, or were they so confused over the huge hooters on the blonde at the other end of the bar? Oh, well, it's Christmas right, and isn't it impolite to try and correct someone in front of others anyhow?
"Ah yeah, Peggy, I wasn't counting so you must be right. (wink, wink)"

A merry HoHo to everyone and stay tuned for tomorrows adventure of "Can the old man figure out how to install the Web cam, and if he does read the damn directions is that any guarantee he'll figure out how to make it go out over the internet, or will he spend the day just looking at his dopey puss on his moniter?
Stay tuned, I've still got six more days to commit my annual error in 2006!
:)

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