Who hit me?!?!?

 Well, I made it through the surgery in one piece. It feels alternately like I been punched in the nose(I've been punched in the nose a few times in my life. Once in the fourth grade by Fred Webberson III. It was a toss-up which of us was the skinniest, geekiest kid on the playground and, for some reason, decided we needed to have a go at each other one day at recess. We pranced around a few times and >poke!< he landed one on my nose which started to bleed profusely! I was always terribly susceptible to nose bleeds as a kid... That ended the main event at Conestoga Elementary that fateful afternoon!)and a baaaad sinus headache. I'm trying to keep ahead of the hurt with doses of Percoset and ibuprofen in between. That plus the continuing drip, drip, drip is all the aftereffects thus far. I'm still wearing the nose-sling, handy little device. Attractive too.
   I think my physiognomy has, in fact, changed... if only a teeny bit... but it's hard to tell yet with the slight swelling and the gauze on the sling. Hopefully when the packing is removed tomorrow- eeeew! Looking forward to that, not! -it won't start bleeding again and the sling will come off so I can get a good look.
    All in all, it wasn't a bad exzperience at all. Dang, 'z' and 'x' keep sticking together. Somebody spilled something on the keyboard, methinks. Anyway, one of the IV nurses knows/knew my Mom and Dad. Went to school together, small world. Plus she knew my Aunt Betty who was also a nurse at York Hospital for 40 some years.  Boy, the anaesthesia(sp.?)worked faaaaaast! They'd barely put the oxygen mask on and there was a little stick of the IV going in and some tingling in my head and neck and zzzzzzzz....  I was Little Nemo off to Slumberland.
     Next thing I knew I was dimly aware of the nurses in the recovery area with a straight-as-a-stick septum and pared down turbinates bilaterally. Cool, huh? A coupla hours hanging around, dozing intermittently, a short wheelchair ride to the car and it was home to lounge in bed for the rest of the day being waited on hand and foot. Nice!

Countdown

Well, tomorrow is the big day! I'm going under the knife! Well, not really a knife. As I understand it a device much like a tuning fork is inserted in the nasal cavity and forcefully repositions the septum, that cartilaginous wall that divides one side from the other. Ouch! Glad I'll be asleep for it because I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to pain. Boy, I remember getting my wisdom teeth out, all that cracking and grinding and pulling, eeee-yuck!

So it'll be a blackout day, maybe two, if the pain meds prove too stupefying to allow for my usual daily dose of computer fun. But according to all reports, people who've actually had this done, it's worth the minor inconveniences of the surgical procedure, makes a major, major difference in the ability to draw breath. And we all know how important that is!

In other news, the Grasshopper at Mom's mowing job threw an axle last week about 20 minutes before the boy and I finished the job. This after having new belts put on the mower drive the week before. Have yet to hear if that's been fixed or replaced to get the job done again this week. Hopefully my nose job won't interfere with that project.

It was a nice day hereabouts, sunny, breezy. Had a smidge of a sprinkling of short duration, enough to produce a rainbow. Nice enough this evening yet that I set up my folding chair under the tree in the front yard and played a little guitar for a pair of cowbirds and the robins while watching the sunset. Aaaahhh.... nice.

 

 

 

Classic Plastick additions

For the uninitiated, my online life began with the presentation to an unsuspecting publick a humble basement enterprise designed to augment my favorite toy superhero with accessories of my own creation, to wit, rubber gloves which the original creators, no doubt under immensely time-sensitive industry deadlines, left out of the ensembles for several outfits for the Captain Action doll by Ideal circa 1966.

With a steady schedule of trial-and-error, inspiration and pointers from other customizers and plenty of grit and determination, I've been able to supply a few hundred fellow toy geeks the world over with neat little rubber goods to enhance their collections over the past half dozen or so years. Here's the Classic Plastick website http://hometown.aol.com/classicplastick/index.html

And here's the newest addition, the Yahoo! Album where I've stashed a batch of the pics I've used over the years to illustrate the website and keep the audience up-to-speed on what I'm working on at present. There's plenty more to come so keep an eye out!!! http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/clasplas/album?.dir=/6f2b

More Family pix

Added a slew of fun family photos so be sure to follow the link in the last entry and see for yourself! This is a real boon for me since I've been so lax about getting my digital pix off of the computer. At least they'll be saved in some fashion in case of system failure. I have to invest in a CDW drive one of these days, I've got a coupla hundred pictures on the computer and if they get lost by some mishap... Well, it would be a serious drag, no doubt...

Family Album

Just wanna try and link a photo from my new family album here... test 1, test 2...

Yahahaaa, it works! Album link coming soon! And here ya go!

 http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/clasplas/album?.dir=c28c

I grabbed a few framed pictures from Mom's collection and will be scanning those and more in the future as well as adding shots our own digital collection. I gotta admit, I got terribly lazy about printing photos when we had the digital camera. It was too easy just to fire up the computer and run a slideshow or wire the camera to a TV and run it that way.

Which was a very cool feature. Very reminiscent of one of our primary amusements as youngsters: the family slide show. Dad would set up the screen and the projector for company, usually family or people we called family even though they weren't exactly related. Like the Gordons, 'Uncle' Tim and 'Aunt' Judy. And roll out a seemingly endless stack of slide carousels with shots of deer he'd shot and fish he'd caught, cars, landscapes, rainbows, snow drifts. I remember a batch of photos from a fishing trip with Dad, my grandfather and Uncle John. Who really was my uncle! We walked along a railroad track to get to this fishing spot and I remember being terrified walking over a trestle, expecting to slip between the ties and plunge to the river below! Yikes!

We've done the slide shows once or twice since Dad's been gone and it was great fun but, of course, pretty tearful in spots too.

Another Friday

Ahhh, another week has passed by and it's a rainy, dreary day. Of course, I spent the largest part of the day indoors and so it didn't really have an impact until this afternoon. Rain, rain go away. I think the wekend is s'posed to be more agreeable though. Yay! I've got the day to spend all on my own tomorrow, wife and kids are enrolled in a hunter safety course that runs all day long. I may check in with Jeff Hostetter about my Charvel, he's had it for months repairing the body from it's long-ago misadventure. I'm afraid of the ticket but it's worth it, my poor busted baby! Spent a few years under the bed disassembled and gathering dust. I'll be excited to get it back in playing order and make some whale noises turned up to eleven, wheee!!!

 I gotta deliver my Mom's dog, London, home tonight. We've been dog-sitting since Mom's operation, what a treat. Don't get me wrong. I love dogs but this cramped little abode ain't exactly accomodatin' for a full-size German Shepherd. The beast wags his tail and three articles of furniture, four knick-knacks and assorted small, framed family pictures are clubbed hither and yon like so many motes in the eye of a hurricane! And his favorite spot to curl up and survey the territory is right at the landing of the stairs so he's a big furry obstacle to reaching a bed or bathroom almost any time day or night. To make matters worse, he's treated like a child at home and so has little understanding of the demarcation between what is 'good' and 'bad' dog behavior. He's accustomed to claiming a choice spot on sofas and beds and generally ruling the roost without regard to the strange, agitated gurgling noises his human hosts makes from time to time. I call him my hairy brother and, believe me, he could not agree more.

Which he proved quite thoroughly a few nights ago. Dinner's leftover half pan of baked ziti(coincident with that last post, eh?)was left on the stove top after the people of the house fed and went on to their evening's activities. Some time later I was situated in the next room and heard what I believed to be the dog lapping at the water bowl. You know how sometimes a sound in the background takes a while to register in your conciousness? Thus, I thought to myself 'Boy, he's a thirsty dog.', when it finally came to the fore... Strangely enough, when I looked around the corner at the water bowl there was no dog. A few steps to the kitchen revealed the creature standing up to the stove top with both forepaws cradling the baking pan and his hairy dog jaws clacking hungrily over the cruelly masticated remains of the night's repast. What a bloody looking mess of red sauce and chewed sausage and pasta bits, eeee-aaauughhh!

Suffice to say, I screamed bloody murder and chased him away with the utmost expedience and some choice superlatives, something about 'get down, you @*#%** hairy monster!' and 'death to all dogs who stand and eat thinking they are humans!'. Or something, I don't remember. Of course, like a Far Side cartoon, he heard only 'Blah blah blah blah, hairy monster!'. He's still skulking under my withering, watchful gaze a few days later. Hopefully he's cured of helping himself to people food for the foreseeable future.

I love dogs, really. Dogs that know their place. And the difference between Alpo and what people eat.

Shazzang!

Okay, so the SNL Smigel Shazzang! cartoon is definitely not to everyone's taste. In fact, it is over-the-top, there's no doubt. It's like the violent cartoons your mother worried about filtered through some psycho-sadist's daydream of an animated hero. I found it amusing simply because it carries the wisecracking-hero-taunts-sure-to-lose-villain theme of the original cartoon to the nth degree... and then pushes the whole megilla over the cliff.

Anyway, if you missed it, here's a link to a guy what posted his own reaction, complete with feedback from readers and a mov. file of the cartoon: http://www.bakedziti.net

SNL note

    One of the things I was thinking about adding with the last entry:

Did you by some chance watch Saturday Night Live this past weekend? Will Farrell hosted, I stayed up to see Queens of The Stone Age, who, by the way, were excellent. Every time I've seen their pics, maybe twice, they look like sorta goth, sorta urban, real hipster types. Turns out the one guy who doesn't look like that plays lead guitar and sings for them. He looks like a college jock, almost like a young Robt. Mitchum. Which is neither here nor there, they sounded great live, I have to check out their CD or CDs, plural, whichever.
    I'm really writing about the Robt. Smigel cartoon they showed. Usually those things are hit-and-miss, like that Gay Duo superhero thing, which I don't care much for as it perpetuates the homosexual superhero stereotype.
   This time out it was Shazzang! Sound familiar? Right, it was exactly like the 60s Hanna-Barbera genie cartoon Shazzan!, I mean exactly with the two kids and their stupid flying camel using the ring to call the genie when they get into trouble with the slant-eyed villain. Of course, Shazzang has no trouble dispensing with the baddie... then he proceeds to dismember him, gouge out his eyes, pound him to a pulp repeatedly, squat on him, dice him like a carrot... and it just went on and on like that for about five minutes! I thought I'd pee the bed, no lie!!!! It was like an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon from The Simpsons... Hil-freakin'-larious....  I don't know if you can see that stuff online but it'd be worth looking for. I don't remember when I laughed so hard.
    Speaking of, tonight's the big midnight showing of Revenge of The Sith everywhere. Remember when Triumph interviewed that guy dressed as Darth Vader? "Which button do you use to call your Mother to come pick you up?!?" Now, that was funny....
    I wonder if there'd be a riot if I showed up at a theater in my faux Star Trek shirt- really just a fleece pullover, chartreuse with a black collar, it really does remind one of a TOS uniform shirt -with my toy phaser and started stunning all the Star Wars geeks?!? Phsssstt! Phsssttt!

Up-to-date update

Can you tell that when I make an entry I sometimes drop a CD in just so I can fill out the field that asks 'Music I'm Listening to:'? Yeah, goofy, eh? Now, if there was a way to embed a clip, that'd be cool. But Saxon, if you don't know, are a cool heavy metal band from what is known among diehard fans as the 'New Wave of British Heavy Metal'. Don't ask me who was the first wave, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, I guess. Saxon are pretty simplistic but they've got some interesting songs beyond the usual 'bang your head here' anthems. Of course, they also do some if those in their own peculiar fashion. My favorite: Dallas 1 PM, though I've never been a conspiracy theorist regarding the Kennedy assassination, it's a great rock song with three guitar riffs playing at once through the verse, a nice, soft middle section including narration from a news report of 'that fateful day' and a great, soaring, squealing, dive-bombing guitar solo.

There's also a box for 'Mood'. Like, what guy is gonna fill that out?!? 'Mood: Contemplative and somewhat melancholic...'  Yeah, I guess I might if I'm feeling particularly... what's the word... revelatory, perhaps... Oh, wait, it's a selection box. Quite a varied group of responses, here's one 'Chillin'. Yeah, does anybody over 20 say, "I'm just chillin'..."

Yesterday's doctor visits were a regular snafu. Turns out I misread the calendar so I was a week early. Usually I'm a week late so it worked out. The ENT took me anyway, good thing because otherwise I'd have had to schedule another vacation day next week. So the septuplasty/bilateral turbinectomy is the 31st, wahoo!, not next week as originally announced. They put little plastic doodads in there afterwards, fitted with magnets to keep things in place as it heals. Now, I wanna know who came up with this procedure anyway? I mean, like, who actually figures out how to go about this and what to do afterward so it all works out? I wonder about stuff like that sometimes. Somebody had to do it first- and probably screw it up a few times! -so that now it's a commonplace sort of thing...

Here's a couple links for the uninitiated to this forum. In addition to undertaking this journalistic exercise I also keep an online gallery of memorabilia from the TV western Bonanza. What do you mean you don't remember Bonanza?!? http://hometown.aol.com/classicplastick/bonanza1.html

I've also built a site to showcase my efforts as an itinerant toymaker. I sculpt character heads and cast them in plastic to retrofit 1/6th scale action figures, y'know, like the old G.I. Joe dolls. And there are a few doll-size accessories to outfit same here: http://hometown.aol.com/classicplastick/index.html

Finally, here's that Yahoo! album again. I'm anxious to start using my drawing skills in some fashion again; cartooning, protraiture, whatever. So I started a little 'sketchbook', as it were, to give prospective customers something to look at: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/clasplas/album?.dir=58e7&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

I know there was something else I wanted to mention on here but I can't think of what it was right now.

Dr. Doctor

Now here's some mundane news: I'm off work today and headed to the doctor, doctors actually. First, the ENT, Dr. Brian Flowers, who looks alot like Tyrone Power who played Zorro in the 30s, for a consultation on my upcoming operation. Yes, I'm finally getting that nose job. No, not that kind of nose job. It's a realignment of the septum which, apparently, was de-aligned at some point. Most likely when I fell from a rope swing as a boy smack onto my face, don't ask me why I couldn't break my fall, I don't remember. It's given me a real fit for a few years at least, can't breathe properly, can't smell. I've talked to several people who had this fixed and they all rave about what a difference it's made for them so I'm all for it. They go in and more or less break the septum, bone or cartilaginous formation, I'm sure he explained it but I don't recall all the specifics, and line it up nice and straight. And then scrape around some other fibrous lining whoziwhatsis on either side as well. Next Tuesday is the actual procedure which I expected to be a two- maybe three day recovery. He says no, it's more like a week! So I'll be off Tuesday through the weekend. Hopefully it won't be so painfully debilitating that I can't draw or sculpt or make something outta all the time sittin' around the house.

2nd, Dr. Ellis, the podiatrist, will followup on a corn removal. See, I told you it was mundane! A small thing but, like the nose problem, it was becoming a real quality of life issue. I couldn't walk right for the sting from my poor, inflamed little piggy.

And then I get to mow grass again this week. Besides my own, I mean. Remember I mentioned Mom's mowing job, the holdover from when Dad and I did lawn mowing? She swears she does it in two hours but it took my boy and I two and a half last week with him pushing around the shrubbery and embankments and me tooling around on the homeowner's Grasshopper. I kept thinking it was like Forrest Gump, mowing for fun(but without the millions from accidental investments and the shrimpin' business. Or the bullet wound in the buttocks, sir.). Which it was, fun, that is, and very relaxing except for the noise of the thing. Still, you can ride around and around, thinking deep thoughts and looking at the sky and the grass and the trees and occassionally a rabbit or a bird flitting by. It's a nice property with a nice scenic view of south York, a shopping center across thevalley and I-83. Trucks and cars whizzing by on their way somewhere important, each and every one. Maybe the foot doctor.

 

Mean Streak Rocks!... er, Rocked!

One day this week I was working in one of the workshops(strangely enough)at work and the radio played a lovely old-school Rod Stewart ditty, 'D'Ya Think I'm Sexy?'. Boy, do I remember that era. My mum hated that stuff, decried it as all sorts of awful degradation of youth and so on, but it wasn't so long ago she was gushing over Sir Rod on one of those entertainment shows. Now, that was weird. What does it mean when your Mom starts ogling pop people you actually recognize? I used to have a greatest hits record- yes, an actual record -with a pink sort of cover. It had all his great stuff from the 70s,a coupla tearjerkers I used to think highly of especially, but I loaned it out to the drummer in my first garage band and never saw it again.

After a few lineup changes and no-name groupings(The one exception being Deep Sixx- Motley Crue was hot at the time. I made T-shirts for us using bleach and a squirt bottle to write the name on black shirts!),we four metall maniacs called ourselves Mean Streak. I know, an awfully contrived name for a metal band but it was the 80s, after all. I pressed for Monkey Grip(after a wrench I saw in a tool catalog)which apparently was 15 years ahead of it's time and therefore not well received by the rest of the band. 'Not metal enough' was the general opinion. The drummer, Denny, the same one who ended up with the Rod Stewart album, was a real nice guy. And talented, man, he was great. And he had great ears so he could sing too. We did 'Balls To The Wall' by Accept, a real grinder of an anthem, and one part called for backing vocals of an especially raspy sort. I thought 'Great! I can do that!'. We tried it once or twice, with everybody gleefully adding their 'Balls to the wall!' in the background... Until Denny stopped everything and said 'Uhh, let's try it again.. without Wes on the vocals...' Ow! I couldn't even grunt in tune.

At least I wasn't the one who misspelled the name of the band on his drum head... Mean Steak.... Hah!

One of our workplace mechanics, Jay Johnson, a gregarious big ol' biker sort of dude, got me talking guitars one day. Turns out he has bought a couple mostly for collectible value, a 70s Tele Special and a 70-something Les Paul, not sure what version. Anyway, I talked a little about my garage band heyday and how the lead guitarist/singer, Frank Kennell, was so incredibly talented. Turns out Frank had auditioned for Jay's brother's band not long before he and I hooked up and formed our little group. Small world. But Frank was one shredding guitarist, no doubt. He loved Zeppelin but we did heavier stuff. He pulled off guitar parts by Angus Young, Ted Nugent, you name 'em, he could play it. We did a song by a Japanese band called Loudness whose guitarist, Akira Takasaki, was like an oriental Eddie Van Halen. And Frank worked out the solo and it was just blisteringly amazing, very cool.

Stan Yarborough rounded out the band. He played bass because I was marginally better on guitar at the time but mostly because I had bigger hair. He joined the Army after our big Stewartstown Community building show and that was more or less the end of the band. Stan looked me up after he came back from his stint, he was jamming with some guys and wanted me to come over and make some noise with them. Suffice to say, he had improved vastly and I had slacked off so that he had a blurry fingered, slash-and-burn, kamikaze style and I was going plink-plink...sqeeeeek, plink... Very embarassing...

Man, the stuff that is goin' on and I can't find time to sit down and write about it. Sunday drive by the creek, skippin' stones, swingin' from vines and getting wet up the the knees in cargo pants, dodging poison ivy plants, spotting deer in the woods. Mom's surgery went A-OK, doing her mowing job while she recovers, like old times with Dad's lawn service, now it's me and my son. More later...

Boy, what a week! Mom's scheduled for surgery this week and she calls Wednesday nite and says'I've got bad news...' Uh-oh... Well, it wasn't the surgery or her own medical condition, rather my aunt, Dad's sister, Betty, had died. What a serious drag. Once in a while our family 'Sunday drives' would take us by her citified stoop and we'd stop in and say 'hi' but it had been quite a while. Isn't it always the way; I thought about her one day last week & thought I'd stop by, but didn't. Too late now.

Favorites

I guess this sort of thing is better presented on a board where it can spark some discussion, dissension, pros and cons, etc. But, hey, this forum is all about self-aggrandizement, congratulation, reflection and so forth, right? Besides, I better think about this stuff in case I become the subject of a People magazine article at some point, inquiring minds will want to know!

Movies

Forrest Gump - Cool Hand Luke - The Cowboys - Unbreakable - The Creature From The Black Lagoon - The Shawshank Redemption - Hidalgo - Unforgiven - Batman(1966 TV version)

I could probably have included one or two more prison movies- Escape From Alcatraz or The Green Mile, for example. Don't ask me why those appeal to me, maybe the 'underdog' aspect of the hapless prisoners vs. the generally reprehensible authority figures they depict. The Cowboys is one of my all-time favorites, I love to prod my own kids at some task by saying 'Let's go! We're burnin' daylight!' Bruce Dern is so stinkin' sleazy as the villain, Roscoe Lee Brown is just a cool cat and the Duke is one tough old bird not to be messed with but the way he softens up toward the cowboys... >sniff< Very affecting.

What can I say about Batman? I loved the TV show, the movie just expanded all the cool things about the show. Bigger, more Bat-stuff, even more colorful, if that was possible. I saw the movie about a hundred times on the Sunday movie throughout the 70s whereas the show often ran only on UHF stations which I could only watch when I stayed weekends with my cousins. So the film version remains my favorite 'episode' of the show. "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!" I really should invest in a Batsuit and paint my car black and tool around as the Caped Crusader. It's just hard to find a utility belt in my size... >ahem<...

TV

Batman(again!) - Star Trek(the original series) - The Beverly Hillbillies - The Twilight Zone - Bonanza - The Big Valley - The Wild, Wild West - Zorro - Little House On The Prairie - That 70s Show

I tried to think of a newer show that I might actually wanna watch after some time and had a hard time coming up with one. That 70s Show, though not generally parallel to the experience of my teen years by any stretch - I wasn't half so intent on 'doing it' as the kids on that show - contains enough familiar elements and popular references that it makes the cut. Of course, the Batman references therein are the best! Remember how all through the 70s the great 60s shows ran day after day in the afternoons after school? Whatta we got these days? Oprah or Who's The Boss... ugh... Sorry, Tony, but I'll take Taxi reruns over that drivel!

Musicians

Sheryl Crow - Van Halen - Soundgarden - Audioslave - Alice In Chains - Chris Isaak - Mac Wiseman - Doc Watson - Roy Orbison - Johnny Cash

This is a hard category to narrow down, there are so many folks I like to listen to in a handful of categories, from bluegrass and traditional country to surf to heavy metal and newer alternative stuff. But a lot of them are more about the songs- or sometimes just one song - than the stylings of the performers. The above are the ones I'd listen to if they were covering Sinatra or songs from Disney movies.

I remember my brother introducing me to Van Halen, their 2nd album, woulda been late in 1979, I guess. Somehow I had switched gears from the country I grew up listening to with my folks, Buck and Roy, Johnny and Sonny, to hard rock. It might have been hangin' out with Curt Gilbert in his jacked-up Camaro. He'd drive us around Millersville blasting Scorpions and April Wine, squealing the tires around every corner, seemed like the cool thing to do at the time. Anyway, when my brother got wind of my new interest in 'his' music, he played that VH for me. I couldn't believe it was a guitar making all those crazy noises! I was hooked and twenty five years later, after fooling with the guitar off and on, I'm still dumbfounded by some of those squawks and squeals and airplane noises. Cool. It lost a lot of the luster when bad boy David Lee Roth left the band though. Some of the 'live', immediate sense of magic - like the songs were coming outta the air fully formed, rough edges and all - were already getting lost in their more 'produced' sound and I lost interest after that.

More to come, dinner time.

Mo' BitterSweet pix

Hey, folks! I've added a handful of new pix to the BitterSweet Studio photo album. Lotsa sketches and co-workers cartoonized. Fun stuff! Yahoo! Photos - clasplas's Photos - Classic Plastick Bittersweet Art Photos Swing by and LMK what you think! Wes

Sunday driving OR 'Hyundai' is Japanese for 'Crash Magnet'

Oh, brother, what a day! Y'know, I've always had well-used cars, newest was once just five years old when I got it-

71 Ford Torino, 68 Ford Mustang GT, 81 Ford Escort wagon, 84 Ford Tempo, 87 Ford Tempo, 72 Chevy Caprice( That belonged to my grandmother! It was a coupla different shades of light blue so we called it the 'Sky Car'), another 70s ChevyCaprice, green this time, an 87 Plymouth K car, 91 Dodge Spirit and a 91 Saturn( still driving that one and sinking more into it this year than I originally paid for the car! )

but recently acquired an 01 Hyundai making it officially the newest car ever. Nice little car, clean, low miles and a suh-weet deal from my brother-in-law who makes a nice living selling cars. Had exactly one ding in the hood, very minor. I guess we've had it about three months now at the outside and we've had 1) the neighbor sideswipe it early one morning while it was parked in the driveway, 2) a county employee obviously eager to get the most out of his company car jump the gun on a traffic light and mash in the driver side rear and just today, 3) out Sunday driving, I turned to look at a local inn whose signage advertised 'All You Can Eat Broasted Chicken - Monday 6 - 9pm - $5.99 per person'. I got a real good look at the sign and when I returned my view to the road ahead had veered to the right and was coming up on the rear end of a parked vehicle! Yow!

I jerked the wheel hard to the left and BANG! the right side mirror ended up in the passenger seat and the bumper of the opposing vehicle made a mess of the Hyundai's right front fender, crinkling it back into the door and, to add insult to injury, swiping a little scrape along the right rear fender that was just repaired two weeks ago(beautifully, I might add, by the fine folks at Jack Giambalvo) from the aforementioned neighbor's midnight mishap. It's plenty drive-able if somehwat worse for the wear but that'll teach me to watch where I'm going and not where I might be going to dinner.

The other vehicle sustained only minor damage, a cracked turn signal lens and a paint transfer on the rear fender. Knocked on several doors in the vicinity w/o finding the owner, finally alerted the local constabulary who sent a pleasant officer we'd met previously while living in nearby Hellam PA. He was investigating the folks across the street, or more specifically, he was investigating their thriving crack business, and used our front room as a spying post. Oooh, cloak and dagger! At any rate, our fine insurance carrier will be happy to hear from us... again...  tomorrow. Sheesh...

Then had to run across town to pick up the Saturn with it's four new tires and aligned and balanced front end, hot on the heels of it's new timing chain and fuel sensor thingamajigger a coupla weeks ago and ready for it's inspection and emissions test tomorrow. I'm thinkin' I won't be driving any more today barring fire or flood in the neighborhood. Just gonna plug in Hidalgo or maybe The Shawshank Redemption and unwind from those stressors, breathe in, breathe out.

Watchtower.org link

I'm loathe to use this one-sided forum as a pulpit, if you will, because it lacks the immediate interaction better suited for discussing one's spiritual views. Nevertheless, submitted for your perusal...
Jehovah's Witnesses--Who Are They? What Do They Believe? - Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site