Author: billkammerer

My Comments On The 48th Super Bowl…

While I haven’t officially received any requests to summarize my Superbowl experience from last night, in anticipation of that request coming in from one or more of my dozen Facebook friends, I am going to go ahead and do so  by gathering my comments into one place.

I will also include some explanation, so you have a sense of what was happening to elicit my thoughts on the game.

Ready… Begin!

After the first 4 seconds of last night’s game, I thought to myself, “maybe if I’m not watching, it will get better,” so I put up the following status on Facebook and went into another room to read some more of my Clive Cussler novel. 

superboel1a

After what seemed like an inordinately few minutes, my curiosity got the better of me and I picked up my iPhone and asked Susan Bennett (more commonly known as Seri) to please tell me the current score.

Imagine my surprise when she responded that the score was 22 – 0 in favor of the Seahawks… 

It was at this point that I realized that I was missing out on an historic opportunity to engage in the art of Snark, and, as befits one of my personality, I decided to go watch the rest of the game. 

And report my findings via my cellular telephone.

Let’s pick up where Troy Aikman asks Joe Buck,  “What do the Denver Broncos have to do to get back into this game?”…

sb3

Then, the Bronco special teams made a “nice pickup” off a bad bounce on (yet another) Seattle kick off (something for which they are paid millions of dollars to do, by the way), and the Fox announcer declared in amazement “That was a nice pickup!”…

sb4

And then something happened that defies imagination… Somebody in a blue uniform got the ball, walked directly (and successively) into the arms of FOUR (maybe more) guys in orange uniforms and then walked out of them again and ended up running 4,000 yards for – wait for it – wait for it – wait for it – a touchdown. 

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By now, we were starting the 4th quarter, and I began what I will refer to as my countdown to final obliteration…

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And then – something completely expected occurred – Seattle got another touchdown. Ho hum… How did that happen?

I continued with my countdown…

sb7b

And then, lamentation began to creep into my soul…

sb7c

So, for the sake of my own sanity, I resumed my countdown. Again…

sb7d

At the 2 minute mark a bit of desperation began to slither its way in, but I pushed forward with my countdown…

sb7f

And with 6 seconds still left to go…

sb7h

It was over. Done with. Finished. The annihilation was complete. 

So, in my own inimitable way, I moved on to post game commentary…

Stage 1: Try to think of something else to celebrate. Well, in addition to it being my Mother-In-Law’s 100th birthday, it’s also Groundhog Day…

sb+1

Stage 2: That was pleasant, but I had to get back to the game. So I found this…

sb+2

It was sadistic. It was awful. It was mean.

I loved it.

But in the end,

1. I have to give the Seahawks their due…

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2. I have to be grateful for the blessings I have…

sb+4

And…

3. I have to do something for the Broncos…

sb+5

I figure it can’t hurt.

Are You Ready For Some Football? My Super Bowl Pick…

Friend: “So, Bill, who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?”

Me:  “You mean, ‘who do I want to win it’?”

Friend:  “Yes, who do you want to win the Super Bowl?”

Me:  “The 49ers.”

Friend:  “Uh… You do realize that they aren’t in the Super Bowl this year, don’t you?”

Me:  “Yes. But you didn’t ask me who was in it, you asked me who I wanted to win it. The fact that the 49ers aren’t playing doesn’t change the fact that I want them to win it.”

Friend:  “OK. Of the two teams who are actually playing, who do you want to win?”

Me:  “The Broncos.”

Friend: “Seriously? The Broncos? They are AFC! If you’re a 49er fan, you should be rooting for the NFC team – the Seahawks!”

Me:  “I’m also a Chargers fan, and they are AFC.”

Friend:  “But they aren’t playing, either.”

Me:  “That’s right. And if they were, they would be horribly massacred.”

Friend:  “So?”

Me:  “So that makes them the underdog, and I like rooting for the underdog – unless the 49ers are the overdog.”

Friend:  “But -“

Me:  “And since the Chargers aren’t in it to get massacred, and the 49ers aren’t in it to massacre them, I have to go for the next best thing and root for the surrogate underdog.”

Friend:  “But the Broncos are favored by two points – they  aren’t the underdog.”

Me:  “But they are AFC along with the Chargers.”

Friend:  “That makes no sense. It’s illogical.”

Me:  “It’s football. When did football fans become logical?”

 

Go Broncos!

The Domestic Me – Episode Two – Laundry: After Action Report #1

I refuse to acknowledge even the remotest possibility that a fitted sheet can be re-folded the way it was when you bought the thing. In fact, I don’t believe it was ever folded that way in the first place. I think they inject some sort of drug into the package that makes you think it’s folded.

There is a reason they call them “fitted”, and it’s not because they “fit” onto the mattress. It’s because folding them gives me fits.

When I was in the Navy, I learned how to fold my laundry correctly. I can fold socks, shirts, pants, underwear, towels and sheets. Yes, sheets.

The problem is that, in bootcamp, we didn’t have fitted sheets. We had two un-fitted sheets, and you had to be able to bounce a quarter off the bottom sheet in order to pass inspection. It is clear why they didn’t have fitted sheets – you couldn’t bounce an idea off a fitted sheet, especially after you have tried to fold it. 

You can do lots of things with a fitted sheet. You just can’t fold it neatly. I’ve decided to try to list a few of the things that you can do with a fitted sheet.

  1. The first, and obvious, thing you can do with it is make it the first thing you put on your bed.
  2. You can shoot it with a shot gun (skeet-sheet shooting). This will give you “holy sheet”.
  3. You can hide your cat in a fitted sheet (nobody will notice because a “folded” fitted sheet has no actual standard form, and any lump(s) – even moving ones – look natural. This will give you “cat sheet”. 
    • You can probably also do the same with your dog, horse, or cow, depending on the size of the fitted sheet. This will render “dog sheet”, “horse sheet” or “cow sheet”. And if you bring your fitted sheet out into the woods, you may get lucky and end up with “bear sheet”. 
    • But, most likely, you will end up with “bull sheet”.

You can do many things with a fitted sheet. You just can’t fold it.

But, not to worry about that because you can also use it as a sale on your boat. However, you will want at least three of them. This will make you “three sheets to the wind.”

Once you’ve reached that goal, you won’t care about folding it.

sheet1

Some Assembly Required – The Mechanical Me, Verse Three: A Picture says A Thousand Words…

Well, hello again friends and neighbors! Time for another journey into the mechanical world of me. This time, we’re going to explore the use of the following implements:

  1. Hammer
  2. Nail
  3. Screw Driver (Phillips Head)
  4. Screws
  5. Picture (Diploma) Frame
  6. Wall
  7. Albino Flea

As many of you know, I learned the difference between a hammer and a ladder in our last episode (The Gazebo Project). Well, now I’m going to put that knowledge to good use by helping the long suffering Judy (my beloved wife in whom I am well pleased) frame some of her various college degrees and professional certificates, so that she can properly display them in her new office…

Many of you know that Judy started a new job in October as the founding librarian and assistant professor of information sciences at a brand new university in central California. She is very excited to be a part of that project, and the faculty, staff and and administration are excited to have her there.

One of the things that Judy has noticed around the campus is that the Administrators, Deans and Professors all have their office walls covered with their various degrees, certificates, etc., and she has decided that it would be proper to display her degrees, certificates, etc. on the walls of her office, too. 

Fortunately, most of that stuff survived the fire, so she still has it to frame (or re-frame because most of the frames were lost to smoke and/or water damage, as the case may be). We went out yesterday and, after several months of going from place to place – at least it seemed like months yesterday – we found suitable frames into which she can place her diplomas, etc.. The one caveat is that the store didn’t quite have enough to cover the number of documents she has to hang, but she said that she would work around that.

And, at long last, this brings us to the point of this post: I got to use my mechanical talents once again…

And you get to be a part of that experience…

Prepare to be amazed…

No – really!

Let us begin…

While Judy and I settled on just the right frames for the project, they were lacking one item – Attached Hangers. Yes, the frames came equipped with wood, glass, backing and all of the things required to install the documents and put them on the wall with the exception that the hangers were were all in plastic zip lock bags, attached to the back panels of the frames. 

ziploc1

disclaimer:  Bag shown at 17 times actual size.

Normally, this would not be too much of an issue even for me, because all of the parts were, at least, present. However some of the parts were of unusually small size and that made assembly a bit more difficult for someone whose hands are populated with a quantity of ten big toes (specifically, me). 

One of the smaller items in the bag was the required screws. I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses, but those screws are really, really amazingly teeny-tiny-inky-dinky small, small. In order to give you some idea exactly how minute they are, I plucked a baby albino pigmy flea from one of Murphy’s eyelids, stuck it under a microscope alongside one of the screws and photographed them side by side. (I originally wanted to use its mother, but I couldn’t get all of her into the picture without panning out so far that the screw completely disappeared from view):

small screw2b

Well, as it turned out, I needed to drill some pilot holes into the back of the frames in order to begin to think about being able to drive the screws to attach the hangers to the frames that would hold the diplomas as they hung on the wall in Judy’s office. Again, normally, this wouldn’t be a problem…

Except that I don’t own a drill bit small enough to create a hole that would allow the screw to grab onto something solid (not air) and be held in place. However I am not without imagination, and I figured out a way to overcome this handicap. I just needed a really small nail and a hammer…

Fortunately (mostly), I have each of those requirements. I fetched them. I used them. And I successfully attached all of the needed hangers. And they are perfect. 

Except for one…

I seems that I was a bit over zealous in driving the pilot holes in this one, and I inadvertently drove a bit too far:

certpic3

Aparently, the holes are not supposed to go all the way through to the front of

the frame because it detracts from the intended focal point of the presentation.

Also fortunately, I am blessed with an extremely patient and forgiving wife.* And even more fortunately, those qualities lasted through today because she came up with a great idea for how we can still use the frame and give my ego a tremendous boost in the process:

certpic2b

I thought that was really sweet of her, and I was really feeling pretty good about the whole situation (other than the fact that she is now down three frames instead of two) – that is until I hung my “Certificate of Achievement” on my office wall…

And finally

wall2

I am wondering if Judy caught this before I hung it on the wall…

* We have been married 42 years, and when people ask how we have managed to stay together so long, Judy says “It’s easy… I have a really bad memory…”

Reading Habits – Chapter One – Gag Me With A Spoon…

Judy and I have, generally, the same taste in fiction. We both like Clive Cussler, David Baldacci, Preston and Child and Richard Castle.

Judy, however, also seems to have other literary tastes, previously unknown to me. To wit, “Chick books” (like chick flicks, only on paper), and she has just introduced me to Nicholas Sparks (author of such man-books as “The Notebook”, “At First Sight”, and now “Safe Haven”.). 

She is excited about this book and, in a doomed to fail effort to share her enthusiasm and recruit a new fan for the genre, she decided to read me a passage from “Safe Haven”.

Tragically, this is the quote with which she attempted to woo me…

“As day faded into night, she loved watching the sky turning from blue to gray to orange and yellow at the western rim of the world. At sunset, the water sparkled and sail boats heeled in the breeze. The needles on the pine trees seemed to shimmer. As soon as the sun dropped below the horizon, Ivan turned on the propane gas heaters and the coils began to glow like jack-o’-lanterns.”

But I’m a fair kind of guy, and I have decided to go against my usual writing habits and give it a shot on my own. Who knows – I could end up writing romance novels after I retire…

Anyway, here goes…

“Roses always made her cry, or rather, softly weep, tears of emotion turned to substance that emanated from the deep turquoise-blue pools that were, are and forever will be, her eyes; perfectly situated somewhere near the middle of the excruciatingly  nearly perfect rectangular orb that she referred to as her ‘face.'”

Hmmm… I’m thinking that’s not bad. I think I may be onto something here. I wonder what comes next…

“As each drop of the salty fluid fell toward the Earth, only to have its descent cruelly and prematurely halted as it struck her precisely cut slice of lemon meringue pie, it became progressively clearer to her that all of the roses in the world could not change the fact that she had ordered, not lemon meringue, but banana cream pie.” 

I LIKE IT!!!

Conversations With Judy – Episode 14: Romantic Words – Installment 2

Me: “You know, I would rather be right here, snuggling with you, than with all of the best smelling skunks in the whole world.”

Judy: “Nice…”

…

…

Me: “Well, a guy’s gotta start somewhere…”

The Domestic Me – The Institute For Teach Cook: Episode One-B – Culinary Art – Installment One

Hello, once again, Gentle Reader, and welcome to another episode of “The Domestic Me“.

I’ve recently noticed that Culinary Art and Gourmet Recipes have become vogue on Facebook. I have been impressed with the presentations and have found myself, on more than one occasion, salivating like Pavlov’s Dog.

I have also found myself wondering how mere human beings come up with such wonderfully incredible ways to entice, indulge and satisfy one’s appetite.

Well, I’m still wondering, but I have decided that the best way to figure it out is to try my own hand and inject my own cooking abilities into the fray!

So, without any further ado, I am proud and excited to introduce my first foray in the field of “Culinary Art”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Gourmets of all ages! I give you

Oeilet Petit Instant et Supplements de Vitamines

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Oeilet Petit Instant et Supplements de Vitamines – Step by step instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 730 degrees Fahrenheit. 
  2. Go to the refrigerator and pull out a gallon of milk (you can also substitute a quart of milk or a pint of milk, but you won’t have as much left after you dump 8 ounces of the stuff into – oh wait – that’s coming up later and I don’t want to spoil the surprise).
  3. Go to the pantry and open the door.
  4. Recover from the shock of having your cat leap out at you from the darkness within the pantry.
  5. Find one of the three (3) boxes of Oeilet Petit Instant stored there and remove one packet of the Oeilet Petit Instant powder.
  6. Go to cupboard and open the door.
  7. Grab an 8 ounce drinking cup (Surprise!).
  8. Go to the bathroom and open the Medicine Cabinet door.
  9. Pull out appropriate quantities of your favorite Supplements de Vitamines and deposit them into a paper cup for transport to the kitchen.
    • For the purposes of this recipe, I have chosen to include the following quantities of the following Supplements de Vitamines:
      • “B” = 3000 mg (3 gel caps)
      • “C” = 1 tablet
      • “E” = 1 gel cap
      • Glucosemine Chondroitin = 1 horse pill
      • Ginkgo Biloba = 2 capsules
      • Centrum Silver (non-chewable) = 1 tablet
      • Fish Oil (Definitely non-chewable) = 1 gel cap
      • Ginseng = 2 capsules
  10. Check the heat on the oven.
  11. Dump about 8 ounces of milk into the cup.
  12. Pour in the powder.
  13. Go find a clean spoon (in an emergency, a knife or fork will do, but it will take longer to mix. Or if you’re in a real bind you can try covering the top of the cup with one hand and shake vigorously for five minutes, but I don’t recommend it).
  14. Stir the mixture until well blended.
  15. Turn off the oven.
  16. Arrange the cup and Supplements de Vitamines in some attractive fashion and serve.

Enjoy!

Update:  There is no possible way one can begin to start to commence try to appreciate how good a glass of Oeilet Petit Instant can taste until you have been on Nutrisystems for two months. Seriously. 

Cow Facts Trilogy – Part Five (5): A Cow By Any Other Name (cont’d) Or What’s So Good About Smelling Like A Cow?

Click here to catch up on everything and have some idea what the heck is going on… 

…Yes, it’s true – cows stink. But let’s not panic over that…

It’s been a couple of years (0ne year and 364 days, to be exact – but who’s counting?) since I left you all hanging, wondering how I am going to explain the benefits of having cow “scents”.

Here’s how…

If you have been keeping up, you know that cows have their own distinktive aroma. There’s nothing else quite like it on the planet. True, there are things that are close, but not quite exact enough to be awarded a cigar. Cow odor is unique among all creatures great and small, and about the closest thing to it is the way a brand newly planted lawn smells on a hot day…

I have noticed that many people don’t actually like the way cows smell, and I find that just a bit mystifying. While it’s true that a herd of cows will probably never win any fragrance awards in the human realm, there are worse smelling things than a cow…

And this, my friends, brings me to the main points of this report…

  1. What could possibly smell worse than a cow?
  2. Why is it that cows smell the way they do?
  3. When did cows begin to smell that way?
  4. Where can one go to learn to appreciate the odor of a cow?
  5. How is it that cows smell so good?

Well, believe it or not, I have been pondering these questions over the past two years, searching for workable answers, and not coming up with even one.

Until last night…

That’s when I was “listening” to my lovely wife, Judy, read to me from her latest work on Translational Medicine…

She was reading from her notes on Translational Medicine, and I was listening – hanging on every word, in fact. But I am a very talented multi-thinker, and was able to simultaneously pay nearly undivided attention to her while continuing my uninterrupted search for the answer to why cows smell the way they do.

At one point during her presentation, I asked her the clarifying question, “But how do you incorporate systemic therapeutic approaches targeting multiple factors such as and did you know that cows have an incredible sense of smell, and, in fact, it’s believed that they can smell something up to six miles away? OH! LOOK! There’s the perfect place to hang my “burnt guitars” picture!”

I stopped.. I rewound.. I replayed what I had just said…

“SIX… MILES… AWAY…”

And that’s when it hit me… 

“Wait a minute… Cows smell really bad, yeah, but they also smell really well.“

At this point, Judy appeared to have completed her speech, so I became free to focus my complete attention on the questions at hand…

And here’s what I came up with… The reason cows smell the way they do is ……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Chickens.

 Yes, I said “chickens.”

Unless you have ever lived within ten miles down wind of a chicken ranch, you have no idea how refreshing it can be to smell a cow.  

And that’s where we will pick up when, again, we continue…

Moo.

__________________________________________________________

Click here to catch up on everything and have some idea what the heck is going on… 

Click here to go to the new part 6

Click here to go to Part 7

Some Assembly Required – The Mechanical Me, Verse Two: The Gazebo Project

Well, tool lovers, it’s time for another foray into the world of “putting stuff together with Bill!” This time, also staring Judy as my faithful marital partner and “let’s assemble something today” sidekick, and Troy, as the completely amiable Sears sales representative. 

You may remember my experience with the Black and Decker Workmate  Portable Workbench and Project Table from last year. This one promised to be infinitely more exciting, largely because it came in a much bigger box and had lots more parts than the last project.

This, you would think, would have occurred to me at the time of purchase. It’s a gazebo for crying out loud, and if one pays close attention, there are reasonably ‘easy to detect’ differences..

Portable Workbench instmanual1

Gazebo

gazebo 3

As you might glean from looking at the pictures, there is more to assembling a gazebo than a workmate 125. 

One really GREAT difference, though, is that the instructions were in English (as a primary language).

This all started two weeks ago when Judy and I walked into the Sears store in Oakhurst, CA. Not a large place, but it has all of the things that a guy like me needs to test his patience. And it’s staffed by an extremely friendly group of people who we have come to know well and like much over the last couple of years since the house burned down.

On this particular visit, we met Troy for the first time… I was in the market for some sort of electrical sander, and he showed me one on sale. I thought, “It’s on sale. Sold!”

But my shopping spree was just beginning…

On the way to the check out stand, we passed a fully assembled Bay Window Gazebo. This was a very bad thing for several reasons:

  • Judy and I had had a new patio poured several months ago, to cover up a patch of empty dirt (except for weeds) that used to be the floor of our bedroom before reconstruction.
  • We were trying to think of a way to make it usable as a patio by adding some sort of cover that isn’t going to cost $10,000..
  • The gazebo on display looked great.
  • The gazebo was on sale…

In the end, the last point was really the only one that mattered. We promptly ordered one from Troy…

The following Saturday, Judy and I went back in to pick up our new gazebo. While we were there, Judy happened to notice an outdoor furniture set located just adjacent to the check out stand. She had actually been looking online for one all week to go with the new gazebo, and had fallen in love with this specific set. Go figure.

She looked at me. I looked at her. I looked at Troy. Troy looked at me. Troy looked at Judy. Judy looked at Troy. We all looked at the sign stuck to the love seat portion of the grouping…

You know what that sign said? I’ll tell you what it said. It said…

“ON SALE

TODAY ONLY”

Judy smiled at me. I smiled at Judy. I smiled at Troy. Troy smiled at me. Troy smiled at Judy. Judy smiled at Troy.

And the rest is history…

At this point, we had become pretty good friends with Troy, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s always a good thing to make a friend. Bad (for Troy) because this is the point at which I got the idea of “documenting” the assembly of the gazebo, and I thought it would be a great idea to start with Troy briefly going over the process of assembly. Troy agreed and filming commenced…

It’s interesting (to me, anyway) to note that the instructions list only two tools required for assembly – a hammer and a ladder. A small pseudo-wrench-ish looking thingy is provided in the box.

To that list, I personally added two more tools – a second ladder and a socket wrench. The second ladder is only required if you do not have a very tall fellow (8′ tall) to hold up the “roof” during assembly, and the socket wrench is a replacement for the pseudo-wrench-ish looking thingy, which is (in my case) completely useless.

The hammer is for therapeutic use only (in case you elect not to use the second ladder and socket wrench).

And now for the good part of this whole post – I’ve decided to slap together some of the of the hours of video I decided to shoot showing the progress of the assembly. In fact, as you may be able to discern from Judy’s comments during filming, we probably could have knocked this out in about half the time, had I not been so excited about documenting the project.

I will have a few comments after the movie…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9hzCc1928

After movie comments (clarifications of cerebral flatulations)…

1 – On most good days, I really do know the difference between a hammer and a ladder. I think I was just overly expectant (overenthusiastic?) about the possibility of hitting something out of frustration.

2 – There never was a last step, so anywhere you hear me say the words “last” and “step” together in the same sentence, don’t believe it. In fact, if you hear the words “last”, “done”, “end”, “finish”, “wrap” or any derivative or those (or any other) words, or other indication that something has been completed in any part of this production, you can feel safe in disregarding that sentiment.

3 – When you subtract 8:30 AM from 11:00 AM, you come up with 2 hours and 30 minutes, not 1 hour and 30 minutes.

4 – When you subtract 8:30 AM from 12:15 PM, you come up with 3 hours and 45 minutes, not 3 hours and 15 minutes.

4 – The Bar-b-Cue actually took us 16 hours to complete. This, of course, renders my statement that it took us “between 3 and 4 times as long” to assemble the Weber as it took to build the gazebo a complete and utter falsehood. Probably a subconscious attempt on my part to make myself feel better about my abilities as a “thing assembler”. 

Finally (I hope), today we are going to go see Troy again. Judy ordered two ottomans (ottomen?) for the gazebo. Ottomans. Really. I think she wants to start an empire… And besides that…

They are on sale…

Opening Scenes In Books I Will Never Write – Chapter Two: “Mondays In Tazania”

Tazania… (Pronounced Tuh-zaaay-nee-uh)

It was a Monday…. It was raining, and that should have been the first indication that it was going to be a lousy day…. It’s always raining in Tazania… hot, tropical, steamy rain that makes your clothes stick to your skin like they were dunked in warm maple syrup before you put them on in the morning… and makes the scum on your exposed flesh build up so thick you could scrape it off with your finger nail the way you would scrape a layer of butter off a cube with a butter knife… every day of the week…. Except Mondays…

It always snows on Mondays…

Mondays can always be counted on to provide a cooling, comforting respite from the muggy conditions of the other six days of the week…. Oh, the snow wouldn’t last more than overnight, that’s for sure…. White, cool, powdery all day on Monday, only to have its pristine brightness metamorphose into a murky, lukewarm mess with the always timely arrival of Tuesday… and the rain… and the heat… and the ever-present mud that saturates and mixes with the pure, white, cold powder and turns it into a putrid, brown slush – precisely like what happened to my heart when she walked out on me… on that hot, steamy, rainy Monday… in Tazania…

…

(From Chapter 17 of my bio. But I thought it would be a good addition to the category…)