Living In the World, Not on It

. ..Start Driving Golf Carts! HOUSTON -- In the garage where chiropractor Rick Peters once parked his Dodge pickup, two tiny electric cars now sit back-to-back next to his wife's small SUV. For trips to work, to run errands or visit friends, Dr. Peters, 43 years old, and his wife, Kris, hop into the munchkin-size cars while their old gas guzzlers gather dust. Admittedly, it's cramped inside the miniautos, which move along city streets at just 25 miles per hour. But the Peterses are converts to their low-speed vehicles. "It makes so much sense for getting around. We go everywhere in it," says Mrs. Peters, 41. It's a sure sign electric cars have a future when they're catching on in Texas. Others here, too, are abandoning the family car and driving to the office in what appear to be fancy little golf carts. Small battery-powered vehicles have been on the market for years but have mainly been used by workers driving around factories and university campuses. The sm...

Love Love You make me feel like a sticky pistil... leaning into a stamen You make me feel like a mister sunshine himself You make me feel like splendor in the grass... While we're rollin' Dance with me baby You make me feel like the Amazon's runnin' between...my thighs CHORUS: You make me feel love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love You make me feel love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love You make me feel like a candy apple All red and horny You make me feel like I wanna be a dumb blonde In a centerfold, the girl next door And I would open the door and... I'd be all wet With my tits soaking through this tiny little t-shirt... That I'm wearing And you would open the door and tie... Me up to the bed Lover, but I don't know who I am Am I Barry White? Am I Isis? Ohhh... Lover, I'm laced with your unconscious Oh baby babe babe baby I will be your Desdemona ahhhhh... Take your timeYou make me feel Ahaa You make me feel WooWoo ba...

I've tried Feng Shui but using math and a compass to decorate my house was too much... The entrance to your home is: A little inviting - you have a welcome mat or plant Plain or somewhat messy Very inviting and beautiful Can you see your bedroom door from your bed? No You have a full view of your door You have a partial view of your door How cluttered is your house? Very cluttered. You don't throw much away. Somewhat cluttered. There's some stuff you could get rid of. Not cluttered at all. You are a minimalist when it comes to stuff. Your kitchen: Is bare and bland. Is full of stuff on the counters. Is warm and clean - with a vase flowers or bowl of fruit. How often do you rearrange your furniture? Every year or so Every few months Hardly ever How much natural sunlight do you let into your home? A fair amount Hardly any A lot How many plants do you have in your home? One or two You have at least one plant in almost every room None Your Feng Shui is Amazing Your home is the ...

Uh-oh... I'm in trouble now! How would you describe your spending habits? You buy as little as you need, and even sometimes put off important purchases. You buy whatever you want now, and you figure you'll pay for it later. You end up buying a lot of stuff you don't need. In fact, you have so many things, you forgot where you got them all. You buy only what you need. You understand the difference between what you need and what you want. How would you describe your saving habits? Any savings you have are pure coincidence. You don't save as a matter of habit. You don't really have much in savings to speak of. You do, however, have a lot of debt. You have a lot of money in savings. Savings come first. You save a percentage of your income every month. If a friend asked you for a big loan (as much as you make in a month), would you loan out the money? Yes, but you would just give them the money as a gift. No strings attached. Probably not. Not unless it was a truly life ...

Check all that apply to you or that you agree with. You would ask your husband's opinion before making a big decision or purchase. X You tell risque or vulgar stories. You would often remark on your husband's strength and masculinity. You smoke, drink, gamble, or use drugs. You keep snacks in the refrigerator that a man would like for late night eating. X You walk around the house in your stocking feet. X You are not crabby first thing in the morning. You wake up with a pleasant disposition. You wear red nail polish. You keep yourself dainty, feminine, and smelling nice. X You use slang or profanity. You are a good seamstress. You can sew your own clothes and clothes for the children. You wear your pajamas while cooking. You have some of the attributes of an ideal 1930's wife... but you probably didn't intend it to be that way. You don't buy into retro gender roles, though you do embrace your femini...

Article (my comments follow): "Greenies aren't the only ones looking to limit their car usage these days. High gas prices are fueling inflation for everyone across America. No matter if you drive a Prius or a Hummer, you can probably stand to save a few bucks on gas right now. Here is our collection of tips for getting the most out of each gallon... Use the cruise, clean the car : Forecast Earth covers the classic tricks, such as using cruise control and maintaining your car. This is a great list to begin with. Hypermile your way to better mpg : Pulse-and-glide driving is how those ultra-efficient hypermilers get great mileage, even without a hybrid car. Carpool at least once a week : Ask around your office and see whose route meets up with yours. Parents can also arrange carpools for driving kids to school . Alternate who drives, and you'll automatically cut gas costs. Drive slower : Driving just 10 miles slower can reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent. And no, you won...

Tom SheepandGoats commented: "Alright, let me weigh in here. Ima Hogg, Texas philanthropist. Here was a person with a self-deprecating name who actually amounted to something. Is there a moral here? The more modest the name, the greater the person? (contrary to urban legend, there was no Ura Hogg….google the name). Or what about a boy named Sue? His fists got hard, his wits got keen. It was that name that helped to make him strong. Let Nosmo King (as first and middle names) alone…. it comes from the hospital sign…. maybe the last thing a woman in labor remembered seeing before she went under….. “No Smoking.” Same with Oranjello and Lemojello, from the hospital menu. As for me, I’ll stick with good ol fashioned Bible names, like Shearjashub or Mahershalalhashbaz, the name’s of Isaiah’s kids." OK, I get it. And I am well-read - I have read about Ima Hogg: "After the birth of his only daughter, Jim Hogg wrote to his brother, "Our cup of joy is now overflowing! We ha...

This is it! My 1,000th blog post! Even more staggering, this is my 363rd post of 2008! Obviously, some posts are better than others. There are weekly memes, weekly posts about the Word.A.Day e-mails I receive Monday through Friday, posts about my cousin's trek through the Pacific Coast Trail, a multitude of astronomy-related posts and of course numerous rants about people and their unbelievable behaviour. And my somewhat unconventional and irreverent look at different things. And I'm completely sacreligious. But one thing I have learned about the world from blogging is that no matter how many people don't see my take on things as I do, there are so, so many who do! When I make fun of celebrity names and disparage the nuts that are too rigid in a religious way, there are plenty out there who tell me that they agree. I used to think I was the only person who felt this or that way about something, but now I always think that there is someone out there who will agree wholeheart...

The honour of Post #999 goes to my cousin, Dawn! "Hi family and friends! Well, it's been 14 days since Bridgeport, CA. And I've hiked another 138 miles. Leaving Bridgeport, I passed a Marine Mountain Training camp on the drive up to Sonora Pass, and wondered how Kev was doing. I bet he spent some time training at this facility, actually. On my way down into Bridgeport, the guy who's in charge of the facility's training ops actually stopped and gave us a ride partway into town, and I got an interesting earful about what goes on at the camp. It made me want to join the Marines just so I could get a job as an instructor there! At the Bridgeport post office, I got rid of my 2.5 lb bear canister plus 5 more lbs miscellaneous stuff by sending it ahead to Echo Lake in the bear canister. My pack now felt super light at 27 lbs (and that's with 4 days of food for the next leg of my journey). I'm making small steps toward this whole minimalist mentality, but I'm s...

Men's Restroom Mural - Read before looking at picture! Edge Designs is an all-women run company that designs interior office space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in NYC. The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design aspects. The client was a company that was also run by all women execs. The result, well, we all know that men never talk, never look at each other... and never laugh much in the restroom.... The men's room is a serious and quiet place. But now, with the addition of one mural on the wall... let's just say the men's restroom is a place of laughter and smiles.

1. What is your language pet peeve. (example 'hot water heater', why would you heat hot water) The unbelievable use of the word "like". It has, like, completely, like, permeated everyone's, like, the word "the". You see what I mean... 2. What is your favorite word? Both dirty and clean? Puscillanimous. I love that word. Obsequious - that is a good one, too. How about ubiquitous? Another truly delightful word. I don't have a favourite "dirty" word - I don't consider words to be clean or dirty. How do you put dirt on a word? 3. What is the one word you cannot spell? Hmmm. Oh, yes. I don't know if this counts, since it is French, however, it is in common use. Hor's Duvoures... no, hor's devours... no. I don't know. Even when I look it up I have trouble with it. That is unusual for me. I'm an excellent speller. 4. What is the one word you always pronounce wrong? Another tough one. Oh, yes, I know. Archipelago. I consiste...

1. What’s the last card game you played, and with whom did you play? Oh, gods, I have no idea. The last game would have been Cribbage but when? I don't know. A long time! 2. What’s the last board game you played, and with whom did you play? Um... backgammon, with my father. We love playing backgammon. 3. What’s the last computer game you played, and with whom did you play? I don't play computer games. Not even a little bit! 4. Take the quiz: Which chess piece are you? Wow, this is not the best quiz for me. I don't play chess at all. I'm intelligent, but I can't focus long enough to pull that off! And I find it boring. The thinking time is ridiculously long. 5. Of the games you listed in the first three answers, did you win any of the matches? Yes, I won both playing Cribbage and at least four of the several rounds of backgammon. 6. If you could only play one single game for the rest of your life, which game would you play and why would you choose it? Well... I don...

...Just one of those days? I did, today. The devil got me. Two little heinous conversations in a 30-minute period and *POOF* the whole day is right down the tubes. I was there until 1645 - I got in at 0545. A LONG bloody day! I figure this would be an optimal time to get this off my chest... a rant. A rant about those really stupid magnetic ribbons that too many people have on the bumper of their cars! I hate those things. Call me an unfeeling wretch. I don't have a problem with supporting your favourite group or whatever. I support our troops that are overseas, for example. But 1. I have my strong doubts that a single penny goes toward that group and 2. what is the purpose for announcing every group you are into? And on your vehicle, no less - because other drivers need that kind of distraction. Well, I have the perfect picture! I was not driving when I saw this, it was on someone's vehicle when we went to the Balloon Festival (so named for the many balloons I saw - none of t...

1. What part of the world and country do you live in? I live in what is considered the Northern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere of the planet Earth. I live in the United States of America, the northwestern portion, in a state called New Jersey. 2. What is the furthest from home that you have been, and where is it? I have been to Inverness, Scotland, very far north, in the Eastern part of the Northern Hemisphere. 3. What travel destination have you enjoyed the most? All of them. 4. What travel destination have you enjoyed the least? None of them. 5. Is there somewhere you’d like to visit but have not, and where is it? Everywhere I haven't been. Mostly New Zealand. 6. Do you prefer traveling to see historic places or to hit the beach and relax? Historic places, by and far. 7. What popular vacation destination have you never considered because you think you’d not like it? Mmmmm. I don't know. Maybe Atlantic City. 8. Where did you travel to most recently? Last trip was to Hou...

If the jurispredunce system was good, would we still have criminals? Realistically, the answer is yes. It is the nature of human beings to push the boundaries. To see how far one can go. Or, sometimes, just basic survival demands it. People will say that we've too many laws, too many rules. It comes up in the workplace, on the squad, in everyday life. But once society gets too big (more than two people), rules need to be established. It begins as little things: don't drive too fast, call in to the office if you can't make it in. But then there is someone who bends the rules or finds a loophole or a way around the rules. Then you rewrite the rules to work. And then you have people demanding to know why we don't do this or do that, and you are explaining that the verbiage works this way or that. Sometimes I just want to say, "Suck it up and deal with it." Instead, when people tell me they want to leave I hear myself saying, "You need to do what is best for ...

Fairs are fun; big outdoor events are entertaining. However, there are somethings that can be renovated; or just offset by introducing more options... and then there are the attendees! This was my second time attending the Readington, New Jersey Ballooning Festival. I loved it the first time, minus the 100°F weather, and it was entertaining once again two years following. I'm not surehowever, that I was entertained by the same things this year that I was in 2006. We got to Jerry and Kelly's around 1230, waited for Jay and Kate to make it, and left around 1415 to head down. It was an hour trip, maybe slightly less. We went to the huge field (that's right, folks, New Jersey does have huge fields. Shocking, I know), clearly desegregating the trucks from the cars (I had a chuckle over it), and parked. We walked to the entrance and presented out tickets, went in and began walking about the fair. This fair is almost perfect with one teeny exception... it is on the tarmac for the ...

Earlier this week I sent a message to inform someone of a new hire. The new hire, coming from another country, wrote his dates "backwards", just as a heads up, so that when the person came to get the badge, this person would know that dates given might be incorrect for the system. Such as a birthday written as 03-05-19XX is really 3 May 19XX. I threw in the side comment that really we are the ones doing the dates backwards... what dating system is month-day-year? On my computer, I list all my dates as YYYY-MM-DD. That is the most sensible way of doing it. However, on paper, I write out my dates: 27 July 2008, because I hate MM-DD-YYYY. But if I write the date this coming Friday as 01/08/2008, e veryone in this country will read it as January 8, 2008. I am not sorry for feeling this way. The recipient of the e-mail saw me a couple of days and harangued me on knocking this great country. At first I was totally confused and had no clue what the problem was - two mintes after I...

I'm down to the last ten posts before I reach my 1,000th blog entry. That is amazing! I've been doing this since August 2005, and like anything else, it began slowly... a post here, a rant there, days of inactivity... now, I log in to Blogger first thing when I get home. There is always something to say, something to copy, whatever. Fishing through my older posts to find the 2006 trip to the Hot Air Balloon Festival, where we are going today, I found one of my other early August 2006 posts, entitled The World is My... Ashtray? Reading it was funny - nothing has changed. Two years later I am still fuming about the same thing! "How did this happen? After a particularly trying day at work, dealing with some knotty issues, I find that the commute home was fraught with little examples of all kinds of annoying, stupid and of course, outright dangerous behaviours that were staggering in their stupidity! Not that this is unusual... nay, it appears to be normal, thoughtless behavio...

I knew about the red light on cars, but not the *77. It was about 1:00 p.m. In the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have always told her never to pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc. Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called *77 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way. Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pull...

"So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with," wrote philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). While there's truth in Locke's assertion, it's possible to overcome the difficulty to some extent. We construct small unambiguous building blocks, define them as precisely as we can, and then put them to work for bigger purposes (though in some languages, such as German, we often get carried away). Fortunately, the English language abounds in words. And there are plenty of terms to describe these words themselves. This week we'll look at some of these meta-words or words about words and language. grammatolatry PRONUNCIATION: (gram-uh-TOL-uh-tree) MEANING: noun: The worship of words: regard for the letter while ignoring the spirit of something. ETYMOLOGY: From Greek gramma (letter) + -latry (worship). catachresis PRONUNCIATION: (kat-uh-KREE-sis) MEANING: noun: The misuse of words. ETYMOLOGY: ...

This doesn't make you unique... and it certainly won't make the other drivers better and more cautious - sorry, just cautious - than if you did not have a baby on board. Seriously, what is up with that? I suspect strongly that this is a form a bragging. I hate to disappoint anyone with my normally cynical attitude about the procreational process. And I am not saying that your kids aren't special and that they aren't great. But bragging that you had a kid? Again, not something unique. More people have them than don't and I'm sorry, but anyone can do this - for the most part. In fact, I'm surprised at how many people just, oops, get pregnant and then decide, why not, I guess I'll have it. What kind of attitude is THAT about a huge, life-altering decision that you have to live with for the rest of your life?! I can't believe that. What a stupid thing that is. It is one thing to plan for this but I have found throughout my life that most kids are not pl...

I still enjoy - thoroughly - Penn & Teller's Bullshit!. This week? The green movement! Al Gore has been promoting the whole save the earth thing, and on the surface, it looks very good, doesn't it? Of course, his big mansion uses far more kilowatt hours than the average American. He travels all over the country, using a ton of (now) very expensive fossil fuels. And he buys his own "carbon credits". Wondering what "carbon credits" are? So was I, although my eyeballs fell out of my head when I found out what a scam this is! You don't want to give up your SUV but feeling a little guilty about using it? Buy carbon credits! The money will go to wind power farms, solar paneling, etc. Go on line and put in your mileage and this Web site will calculate - somehow - your carbon production. Not that carbon is a bad thing (what do you think we are?). And of all the carbon being produced, we make under 3% of it. Volcanoes and forest fires are the biggest producer...

I can't call this an Odysse unless it is an odysse in boredom. This is an abyssmally boring movie. It's endless and long and has no music. It is what SpaceBalls had to be making fun, since it is just endless footage. BORING!

Ah, my favourite! Check this out... "Apparently, some celebrities just don't get enough attention, so they name their kids something really dumb to stand out. Here are some of the weirdest. #20. Kal-El Child Of: Nicolas Cage Fun Fact No. 1: Nic Cage likes comics. Fun Fact No. 2: Nic changed his last name from Coppola to Cage in honor of Marvel character Luke Cage. Fun Fact No. 3: He named his kid Kal-El after Superman. Fun Fact No. 4: Why didn't he name his kid Luke? #19. Pilot Inspektor Child Of: Jason Lee Jason Lee is a pretty funny dude. Maybe, you've seen a Kevin Smith movie or the first season of My Name Is Earl. Maybe, sometimes he should stop trying to be so funny, like when he named his kid "Pilot." Why "Pilot?" Because he heard a song by the band Grandaddy (called "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot"). If the man had just waited for eight more tracks on the same album he could have named him E. Knievel Interlude ...