Merry Christmas

Even More 'Old People' Mail!

I've got quite a backlog of 'old people' mail.  It's getting pretty aggravating.  A lot of it mentions my upcoming 65th birthday (when in fact I'm really only about to turn 38):

When I saw that this next one was from Colonial Penn, I immediately thought of Alex Trebek, and read the whole letter in my head in his voice.

It would be funny while you were deciding whether or not to go with their offer, if the Jeopardy song would play!

Hmm.  I need a little while to mull this offer over, Alex...

OK, I made up my mind.

And here's my answer in true Jeopardy form:  "What is NO?" 

'Cuz, hellooooo, I'm NOT 65.  >:{

And this sounds like a crappy fortune from a fortune cookie:

That last one above also made me have a funny mental image.  'Unique position' when you turn 65, huh?  Fast forward almost 30 years into the future, and this will be me:

Yep, that's definitely a 'unique position' to be in when you're 65...!  O__o

Here's some more 'old people' mail they sent me:

And below, one of my most hated things.  It's bad enough that all these dumb companies think that I'm about to turn 65, but when they spell my name wrong in addition to thinking that I'm about to turn 65, well that just makes me MAD:

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU...IT'S DEANA; NOT DEANNA!!!  >:{

Anyway, then I really had fun with this hearing aid advertisement:

And, of course...

I don't know when they'll stop sending me all these stupid 'old people' mailings.  I have a feeling it'll ramp up big-time, though, when my birthday rolls around in January, and all the 'old people' companies think that I just turned 65 (instead of 38).  *Sigh*!

I've kept track of all of the 'old people' mailings I've received this year, and so far, the total is 35!!!  When is it ever gonna end?

Am I gonna hafta fake my death or join the Witness Protection Program to put an end to this junk?!?  Sheesh!!!  Gimme a break!  :P

Thanksgiving Success!

I've Got Thanksgiving Covered!

Just kiddin'!  I'm actually gonna cook!  ;)

Potential Cause for Alarm!

I took Lilly to her gymnastics class Thursday evening as usual.  Normally I let her go in by herself, while I stay out in the car and enjoy the peace and quiet, and read or play Angry Birds or something for an hour while I wait.  But now, it's too cold to stay outside in the car.  So I've started having to go in and sit in their hard upright plastic lawn chairs in the lobby.

*ahhhh, the epitome of comfort...NOT!*

I don't really enjoy going in and sitting there not only because the chairs are uncomfortable, but mostly because there are lots of kids obnoxiously squirming around in there, making a lot of noise and incessant chatter, and to be completely honest, kids kind of secretly drive me crazy.  If I have a choice between 1) Being around kids, or 2) Being by myself in peace and quiet, I will always choose Being by myself.

Anyway, I went into gymnastics with Lilly, and settled myself in my hard plastic lawn chair.  Kids were everywhere, making all kinds of noise and moving around real fast, and their stupid little video games were making all kinds of annoying Bloops and Bleeps.

The worst part was that all of the kids (and most of the parents) were hacking, coughing, sneezing, and sniffling.  Even though I'm not a germophobe, I felt like I was in some kind of hellatious petri dish of germs and bacteria, and began to hope to heck that I didn't get sick from being cooped up in there with all those disease-os.

After sitting there for a few minutes, I decided I needed to pee.  No problem; the restroom was directly in front of me.  I knew nobody was in it.  The light was off, and the door was barely open.

I got up from my hard plastic lawn chair (which probably contributed to my Needing To Pee feeling in the first place), walked the few steps over to the restroom, swung open the door, and turned on the light.  Instantly, it hit me.  The unmistakable smell that the person that had been in there just before me had taken a dump.  I frowned at the odor, and continued on in to the restroom, shutting and locking the door behind me.  I made my way down to the toilet, and noticed that the lid of the toilet was closed.  Alarms started blaring, and warning lights started flashing inside my head.  

This scenario doesn't usually end well.  Walking into a restroom that smells like poo, which toilet's lid is in the Down Position is almost always a recipe for disaster.

Whenever this happens to you, the same chain of events then unfold.  You automatically assume that the previous restroom visitor had taken a nuclear-strength dump and used an entire roll of paper to wipe with, clogged the toilet, and failed to remedy the situation due to 1) the unavailability of plunging tools, 2) the lack of knowledge of how to use available plunging tools, or 3) sheer shitassery by blatantly leaving the restroom in such a disgraceful shape for the next poor unsuspecting restroom attendee to have to deal with.

However, I like to believe that the toilet lid is left in the Down Position because the person who clogged it up is genuinely sorry about it and mortally embarrassed, and simply closing the lid is the very least they could do in a feeble attempt at apologizing to the next person and somewhat reducing the unspeakable horror of the sight that will inevitably be greeting them as they raise the lid to assess the damage and subsequently have to deal with it.

So what do I do?  Assuming the toilet to be clogged, and not knowing what my eyes would behold upon lifting the lid, I braced myself and proceeded to sloooooowly lift the lid.

Much to my surprise (and relief) the toilet was completely clear.  No paper, no poo particles, no nothing.  So I swung the lid up all the way and proceeded to unfasten my britches and sat down so I could pee.  As I was peeing, I wondered if the toilet only appeared to be clear, but was secretly clogged; upon which only flushing would then reveal.  So when I got done peeing and fixing my pants back, I faced the toilet, took a deep breath (and held it), and with hope, flushed.  WHEW!  No clog, THANK GOD!  :)

I smiled and knew that the Toilet Gods had been appeased that day, but you never know when or where they're going to exact their revenge.

The Jury Duty That Wasn't

Today I had Jury Duty.  I had to be at the courthouse at 9:30 AM.  I went ahead and got to work at 6:30 AM as usual, and left work early so that I could make it to the courthouse in time.  So I got to the courthouse at about 9:25, and found my way to the Jury Assembly Room.  The room was already packed!  I found an empty seat and plopped myself down.  I got very bored very fast, so I decided to document my thoughts by taking notes on my cell phone.  Here's what I wrote:

• There's about 83.5 people in here! (One of them's a midget)
• We were supposed to be here at 9:30.  It's after 10:00 and we're still sittin' here!
• Bored!  Considerin' playin' Angry Birds
• Everybody's holdin' their Jury Summons letter & they're all crumply
• I'm sittin' between 2 guys & they don't talk much, but whenever they do, they both have stale coffee breath!
• People keep goin' to the bathroom.  Maybe if we ALL go to the bathroom, the judge will be SURE to show up then!
• My boots are too tight!  I knew I shoulda took off that extra pair of socks before comin' here!  :/
• The bailiff set off an alarm when he opened a door & it scared the crap out of everybody!
• Everybody's gettin' restless
• Some secretary walked in, and she had a gigantic port-wine stain birthmark on her neck below her ear.  She had on huge earrings.  I wonder if she was trying to disguise it?
• 10:20 -- Now I've got The People's Court theme song in my head & it won't go away!
• I decided it should be mandatory for them to play The People's Court theme song whenever the plaintiff and defendant walk in.  And also, when the attorneys tell us what it's all about, they should have to play really fast typewriter noises just like they used to do on People's Court.
• 10:23 -- I kinda need to pee, but I'm afraid to get up cuz I don't wanna miss anything.
• It smells like stale breath, stale after-shave, and stale lotion in here.  People stink!
• 10:27 -- Ooh, they're comin' in, finally!
• The bailiff said "all rise" just like they do on People's Court, but everybody just stood up and sat right back down after literally 1 second!  Is that bad?  Are we gonna be in trouble?  Is that what you're supposed to do?  He didn't say "you may be seated"!  Is the judge gonna be pissed?
• I wonder if the judge's robe has a zipper, or if it's a pull-over...?  I bet it smells like something very Official.  He probably washes it in a laundry detergent called Justice.
• Better go!!!

Twenty minutes later, the judge announced that this trial was gonna last all week long.  Shortly after that, they allowed people who thought they had a reasonable excuse to get out of having to be on the jury, to come up and talk to the judge to see if they could be excused.  I wondered if they would let me off, since I knew it would be really hard on everybody at work for me to be out all week.  So I eventually got in line, and finally got to talk to the judge about it.  He said no, that I could not be excused.

By that point, I REALLY needed to pee, so I walked back towards my seat, but I detoured to the exit so I could go to the bathroom.  A lady bailiff stopped me and asked if the judge had let me off, and I said no.  She tried to stop me from exiting the room by saying WELL YOU CAN'T LEAVE; YOU GOTTA STAY, but I repeated twice that I knew; that I was just going to the bathroom!

A couple minutes later, after peeing, I returned to the Jury Assembly Room, and was trying to shuffle my way back through the crammed aisle full of seated people to plop back down in my seat and try to make myself comfortable, because I knew I'd be in for a long day (and week), but before I made it 2 feet, the lady bailiff got my attention and told me that the judge needed to see me again.  I was a little puzzled and kinda freaked out, because I'd never been on a Trial Jury before; only a Grand Jury, so I couldn't imagine what the judge needed from me.  So I walked back up there to the judge, and he asked me if I had served on the Grand Jury the previous year.  I said Yes, and then he grinned and said "well you can go then"!

I literally did the YESSSSS fist pump right in front of the judge, embarrassingly.

So by 11:15, I was excused from Jury Duty, and got back in my car and went back to work.

And now, here's The People's Court theme song for your listening pleasure (and so I won't be the only one around with this junk stuck in my head)!:

Dig that crazy hi-hat!

LOL!

Our Day at Hillcrest Orchard

Yesterday, Lilly's clogging class got to perform at Hillcrest Orchard.  So we got to get in FREE!  :D  We took full advantage of the super-nice day, and stayed at the orchard until it closed!  Here are some pictures and videos of what we did:

Crazy Picture Discovery!

Recently, we had to clean out the garage of my Me-Maw and Pe-Paw's old house, because the house had gotten sold.  There was all kinds of junk in the garage because Me-Maw and Pe-Paw used to have garage sales pretty frequently over the years, and they also liked to go to yard sales and flea markets all the time too, so they accumulated a lot of stuff.  A lot of the stuff that was in their garage was just basically old junk that we had to cart off, but some of the stuff was actually pretty neat, and I ended up keeping some of it for myself.

I happily toted my treasures home, and over the course of a week or so, slowly began cleaning up the dusty old items one by one and having fun figuring out how to arrange the cool new stuff in my house.  One day, I decided to clean a couple of matching framed pictures that were really dirty.

Here they are (all cleaned up):

(Trust me; they look better in real life).

Anyway, these pictures were really filthy with years and years of layers of dust, dirt, spiderwebs, and grime from being in Me-Maw and Pe-Paw's garage for no telling how long, so I took one of the pictures, gathered up some cleaning supplies and tools, sat the picture in my lap, flipped it over, and proceeded to pry up the prongs using a flat-head screwdriver so that I could take the back cardboard cover off (they're just those cheapo frames).  I was going to take the glass completely out so that I could give it a thorough cleaning front and back.

Well, when I lifted the cardboard backing off, I saw a blank sheet of white paper.  Assuming it was just one of those 'filler' things, I picked it up to set aside, but I noticed that the other side of the sheet had something on it.  I turned the sheet of paper over to look, and immediately began to laugh.  It was the dorky sample picture that comes with the frame when you buy it in the store, and the people posing on it were hilarious!  I found a date printed on the bottom of it, and it said Copyright 1986!  Check it out!:

Dig that 'feathered' hair...(on BOTH of them)...!

LOL!

After I got done gawking and laughing, I started to resume disassembling the picture for cleaning.  But lo and behold, there was yet another white paper that had been beneath the silly one pictured above.  Wondering how many crazy layers there was gonna be to this whole mess, I lifted that paper up and flipped it over, and BAM!  A portrait of this little girl obviously from the '80s was staring me in the face!:

'LOL...Hello!'

I was dumbfounded.  Who was this kid?  Then I realized that she was probably around the same age as me (or maybe just a year or two younger) -- that means that she's around 35 now!  Then I thought it was kinda sad that her portrait had been forgotten in this old frame.  After I reflected on it a while, I wanted to see what else was in this crazy picture frame.  Underneath the girl's portrait was...what?...a page from a 1987 wall calendar?  Yep, that's what it was!  And on the flipside of the calendar page?  This picture:

So this 'picture' wasn't technically a 'picture' at all; it was just a page torn off of a wall calendar from 1987 that somebody liked, and framed over top of what was probably a portrait of their kid (or grandkid)!  It was like a weird vintage lasagna -- layers and layers from the mid-1980s!

Even so, I still liked the picture, so torn-off wall calendar page or not, I finished cleaning it all up, and put it back together (minus the crazy 'example' picture and the little girl's portrait)!

Well, after finishing that, I still had this second matching picture to clean up:

I wondered if it would have the same silly 'example' picture left inside of it.  Then I wondered if the second picture had another kid's picture left inside of it.  I laughed to myself, thinking it would be really funny if this one had a little boy's picture in it.  So I eagerly began taking it apart, and, sure enough...BAM!:

I couldn't believe my eyes.  And I laughed and laughed and laughed!  Not only did there turn out to be another kid's picture in the second frame, but I had thought it would be really funny if it was a boy, and there he was!  And just look at his expression!  It's like he's sitting there thinking it's just as funny as I thought it was!  He's all like, 'Tee hee hee; I've been hiding back here waiting for you to find me for 28 years...gotcha"!  ;P

My guess is that the kids are probably brother and sister, and that their parents or grandparents just left their portraits in the frames when they put those torn-out wall calendar page/pictures over top of them back in 1987, and forgot all about them.  Then I guess the pictures traveled around who knows where, for no telling how long, before Me-Maw and Pe-Paw probably picked them up at some yard sale or flea market somewhere who knows how long ago.  I never saw these pictures actually hanging up as decorations in Me-Maw and Pe-Paw's house; I never even saw these pictures before I discovered them stashed behind some other cruddy framed pictures in their garage several weeks ago while cleaning.

But who are these kids?  Where are they from?  What are they doing now?  And would they think it was as funny as I did that their old portraits from 1986 gave me a hilarious surprise?

I guess we'll never know...!  :)