Category: random thoughts

friday is my day off which means that i stay home, wash clothes, watch another dvd of the third series of 24 (i only have two more discs left to watch before i’m completely caught up) and do some reading. i had accomplished the first three of these tasks and was about to start reading when i received an email from a friend concerning “emergent church” thought. so i wrote my thoughts down concerning his question, asked him what he thought, and then decided that i felt a little hungry (lunch for me today was a weird combination of peanut butter sandwiches and chips & salsa). i went to search through the kitchen for something snack-able only to realize that we are at the end of the grocery cycle and therefore all the good snack food is long sense history being consumed by the two little snack garbage disposals that live in my house. yet i was desperate and i went on a search of the cabinets hoping to find some small tidbit to satisfy my craving.

that’s when i found a bag of lowrey’s microwave pork rinds. i was a little worried because sticking chunks of dried pig skin into a microwave seems chancey to me. you just never no how it’s going to turn out when you do something like that. so i placed the bag (which looks like a bag of microwave popcorn) into the microwave and set the timer. after three minutes i opened the bag and decided to take the risk of eating the microwave pork rind.

my risk taking behavior was rewarded by the wonderful taste of warm pork rinds. oh boy, were they good. it’s really odd to think that fried pig skin could taste so good.

the bic atlantis pen is the greatest pen in the world. i love it for general writing and doodling but especially love it for writing in my moleskine journal (allot of other pens just don’t feel right on the thinner, finer moleskine paper).

here’s a flash diagram of how this wonderful writing instrument is put together.

i was in a convenience store the other day and saw “pecan patties” for sale on the counter. it reminded me that i really don’t like the word “patty” it’s just on of those words that make me squirm when i hear it and the thought of something edible being called a “patty” just makes it all the worse. some words are just not meant to actually be used.

it’s the day to send in your tax forms. therefore, i though i would post a little tax trivia.

• in 2005, americans will work 70 days to afford their federal taxes and 37 more days to afford state and local taxes. on average, everything earned by the typical american taxpayer from january 1st, through april 17th, went to the federal, local and state governments.
  everything you earn starting april 18 is yours.
  unless you get a raise…

• the gettysburg address is 269 words, the declaration of independence is 1,337 words, and the holy bible is only 773,000 words. however, the tax law has grown from 11,400 words in 1913, to over 7 million words today.
• there are at least 480 different tax forms, each with many pages of instructions. even the easiest form, the 1040e has 33 pages in instructions, and all in fine print.
• the irs sends out 8 billion pages of forms and instructions each year. laid end to end, they would stretch 28 times around the earth.
• nearly 300,000 trees are cut down yearly to produce the paper for all the irs forms and instructions. the total number of computers thrown out the window, or kicked with a frustrated foot is unknown.
• american taxpayers spend $200 billion and 5.4 billion hours working to comply with federal taxes each year, more than it takes to produce every car, truck, and van in the united states.
• the irs employs 114,000 people; that’s twice as many as the cia and five times more than the fbi.
• 60% of taxpayers must hire a professional to get through their own return.
• taxes eat up nearly 40% of the average family’s income; that’s more than for food, clothing and shelter combined.

i went to foxy’s fitness center this morning to play raquetball versus bill. when i walked into the center there was a sign on the door saying that they would be working on the “large men’s locker room” later today. i asked around and it turns out that foxy’s has two men’s locker rooms (a fact i didn’t know). one is named the “large men’s locker room” and the other is named the “small men’s locker room.”

that’s kind of rude to separate people based on their size. the real disturbing thing was that i wasn’t exactly sure which locker room i was supposed to go to.

now i have something to say but i’m simply too tired to say it (it’s 10:56 p.m. no matter what the blog post time says). i guess this is equivalent to having nothing to say.

i have nothing to say.

today was the day that pam tried out for jeopardy. she had to go to atlanta to do this and her mom, sister, and sister-in-law decided to join her for the journey. anyhow, she didn’t make it. out of seventy people there only four people made it to the next round of try outs. pam was not one of those.

since the boys & i were having a “guys only” weekend i thought it would be fun to go fishing. so we grabbed some bait and headed down to the lakes at l.s.u. just for the fun of it i decided to take montana, our basset hound, with us. this was probably not the smartest thing i have ever done. the lakes are filled with ducks, swans, and pelicans. apparently these birds and the mortal enemies of basset hounds because montana freaked out. any bird within barking distance (approximately three miles) was a threat and had to be scared away. my dad always told me as a kid that you had to be quiet when you went fishing because noise would scare the fish away. i’m really not very fluent in hound language and therefore i couldn’t figure out how to convey this information to montana. besides the boys and i kind of liked the fact that our usually quite lazy dog had now turned into a savage, duck hating beast. needless to say the fishing wasn’t that great.

the boys decided that montana had scared all the fish away and thus they thought it would be more fun to throw rocks. throwing rocks is a terrell boys past time. my guys can throw rocks for hours. today i only allowed them to throw for an hour and a half. they had a blast.

after duck chasing and rock throwing we decided to head home. we drove through l.s.u. and went by the commons area. that’s when we saw the indian guys playing cricket. since, neither i nor my boys had ever actually seen cricket being played we had to stop. we pulled over and watched these guys play cricket for an hour or so. cricket is a very confusing sport. i was able to figure out that one guy was trying to hit some pins with a ball and another guy was trying to hit the ball away and then run back and forth. other than those two tidbits i simply cheered when every one else was cheering. i’ve since read the rules of cricket and i am still not sure i understand any of the sport. even without knowing what was going on it was quite fascinating to see people actually playing cricket in southern louisiana. it was not something i was expecting to see.

sunday was windy. the above picture shows how devastating a windy day can be. 🙂