I should have just stayed in bed today.

First off, I didn’t get a good night’s sleep.  Was tossing and turning all night, and worse, was wide awake at 8am!  Tried to go back to bed but finally gave up at about 9am.

Got the coffee made without issue, and decided to have breakfast consisting of oatmeal with a cut-up banana.  Nuked the oatmeal and peeled the banana to start cutting.  That’s when it happened.

“It” being 60% of the banana breaking off and falling to the floor, with an audible “splotch”.  The five-second rule does not apply to wet, fleshy, peeled fruit, so I had to settle for 40% of a banana and a handful of blueberries.

Sigh.

So I’m wandering around Amazon.com (metaphorically) and I stumbled upon The Tao of Pooh.

The reason why I mention this is because Amazon has a neat feature which shows you what items other customers have purchased after viewing the item you are looking at.  On this particular item, 31% bought it.  But 55% bought something called Sex and the Perfect Lover: Tao, Tantra, and the Kama Sutra, which means that over half of the people that looked at a book about eastern philosophy, applied that philosophy to sex.

I just thought that was interesting.

I subscribe to CNN’s Breaking News e-mail alerts.  I figured that since I have a BlackBerry, I can get important news e-mailed to me so I can be aware of it without having to check the web site.  For a little while it was good in that the news that was considered “breaking” was actually news that might be considered important.

That has changed.  I think that whoever is pulling the trigger on what is breaking news has a very low threshold, or, they are paid by the number of breaking news items they send out.  Below are just three “Breaking News” items that CNN saw fit to send me recently:

• Don Knotts died.
• Ben Rothlisburger to be issued summons for failing to wear a helmet and have a proper motorcycle license.
• Dan Rather reaches agreement with CBS News to leave the network after 44 years.

You’re joking, right?

Update: I threw up a page that keeps track of the ridiculous ones.  They’ve gotten a lot better.

A large electronics chain sent me a letter today that detailed how their frequent-buyer program was going to change.  Along with this letter, they sent a $10 off coupon.  The following is the list of exceptions listed on the coupon:

Excludes Bose and KEF audio products; DIRECTV service; digital SLR cameras; Apple products; satellite radio service; Cinema Systems; Sony XBR, video game hardware, new release DVDs; pay-as-you go wireless phones, cellular phones and accessories; HP ink and paper; notebooks, desktop computers, monitors, projectors and high-definition camcorders; imagelab; special orders, clearance, demo and open-box items; Gift Cards; taxes; Magnolia Home Theater products: Bose, Sonos, Vienna Acoustics, SpeakerCraft, Tivoli Audio, MartinLogan, Installation Services, Magnolia Guaranteed Performance Agreetment, and special order merchandise.

That’s some exception list.  It took me longer to read the exceptions than it did to read the letter that it was attached to.

After going through their web site, about the only thing I could find that the coupon was allowed to be used for was batteries.

So I got this culinary laser digital thermometer “gun” and I’ve been spending a whole bunch of time getting the temp of various items in my apartment.

Continue reading…

Word of advise…If you are wearing button-fly pants, do not, under any circumstances, ignore even the slightest urge to go to the bathroom.  At the first sign of an impending #1 or #2, immediately head for the bathroom.  If you don’t, I can tell you that those buttons will become your worst enemy.

Trust me.

Sometimes, when I look at the logs of this site, I’m struck by how often it’s visited by someone after it was returned by a search engine based on a somewhat strange query.

I have included a few of the strange queries here and will add to it as appropriate. I may find the query strange if it is a) just a strange group of words to begin with, and b) odd that my site was returned as a result.

Continue reading…

My George Foreman Grill, which I reviewed, has broken.  I was washing it in the sink, and as I was moving it to the table to let it dry I dropped it (big surprise).  It landed in the open position, grill side down, and the hinge broke.  The top part did not come off because of the wires, but it’s not really usable.  I’m sure it would still heat up, but after cooking, I would have had to lay the top part down on the table while I got the food off it, and to tell you the truth, I don’t have that much room on the table.

Yesterday, I went to Macy’s at lunch and bought a new George Foreman Grill.  I got the smaller of the new generation one’s with the removable grilling surface.  I made a steak on it last night, and as usual, it was great.  I will update the review in a few days after I have used it, and cleaned it, a few times.