Twas The Night Before Christmas

NOTE: The following blog entry is based from an actual event which took place when I was a kid. Details are as I remember them today and are set to the narrative tone of the famous holiday story "Twas The Night Before Christmas".

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring. Not even a mouse.

That is until you get to my bedroom.

The year was around 1977 or so. I was 11 or so. In my bedroom, I was tossing and turning trrying to get to sleep. My two younger brothers were dead to the world (no doubt with sugar plums dancing in their heads of course :-)). But no matter what I did, I just couldn't get to sleep myself. I tried everything. I tried tossing, turning, fluffing the pillow. You name it, I did it. I even tried counting everything from candy canes to sugar plums and sheep. NOTHING seemed to work.

Then HE came. :-)

Before I knew it, it was midnight. And that's when things REALLY started happening.

Santa recruited my dad as his special "In-House Helper" (he always did this BTW). While Santa was busy working his magic back in the den where the big family Chrristmas tree was, he had Dad stuff the stockings which were hung on the outsides of our bedroom doors (we had no fireplace) and put a present or two under the samll trrees which we had in our bedrooms. The trees were well lit for the occasion (we were allowed to leave the lights on all night on Christmas Eve).

As luck would have it on this night, it would turn out to be one of my biggest problems.

With me still trying to get to sleep, my Dad started to walk in. At first, he noticed me still lying in bed awake & thought it was intentional. He told me to get to sleep. But try as I did, I just simply couldn't. He started to walk in again, bu this time, I managed to fool him by faking the idea I had fallen to sleep at long last. I could hear the slight thumping noise against the door as he stuffed my stocking full of Santa's goodies. After a short while (I assume he stuffed the stockings of my two younger brothers during this time), he came back in with my present. He put it under my tree, which was still lit.

After a while, seconds became minutes. Minutes became hours. And as I looked over at the alarm clock, I noticed that it was now 2:00 AM CHRISTMAS MORNING.

But I knew there was NO WAY my parents were going to let me get up at that ungodly hour to open presents (Heck, even my Dad was beginning to doze off to sleep). That is when I had mischievious thoughts swirling through my head. It was also when I started to wonder what Santa left for me under the tree in the den. It was also around this time I gave up on the idea of getting any sleep at all.

I could already see the package under my bedroom tree, though I didn't open it. I just saw it sitting there as I laid in bed. As I was lying in bed, I started thinking. I asked myself what sort of excuse could I make up that would seem perfectly legitimate enough for me to get out of bed AND get ANYWHERE NEAR the den. I knew that going to the bathroom was out of the question because the bathroom was just outside my bedroom and I could easily slip in there without Dad noticing me. So I had to think of something else.

Knowing that in order for me to get to the den, I had to not only go through the main living room where my Mom & dad were (My parents didn't have a bedroom of their own as my mom laind on the pull-out bed which was part of the couch we had at the time and my Dad slep in his recliner. Don't ask me why they chose to do this), but I also had to go through the kitchen too. As such, I, as an 11 year old boy, had to come up with a perfectly sensible excuse to be in the kitchen during the wee hours of the morning.

By this time, it was about 2:30 AM.

I then started getting thirsty. REAL thirsty. But my REAL thirst was not one which could be quenched with water. It was then that the perfect excuse hit me.

GET A DRINK OF WATER.

I then started to put all the pieces of my master plan into place. After that, I then set forth to execute it.

I crawled out of bed and walked out of the bedroom. I tiptoed across the main living room (this was to not disturb my then sleeping parents, or so I thought). Dad stopped me and asked what I was doing out of bed. I told him I wanted to get a drink of water. He told me to do it and then get back to bed.

BUT I HAD NO INTENTION OF GOING BACK TO BED (at least not right away).

I walked into the kitchen and reached for a glass. I reached for one which was fairly close and would make the least amount of noise. I filled it up once or twice with water and drank it. I then filled it up again, but this one was "for the road".

The road to the den that is.

Before I knew it, I was at the steps leading to the den. I looked back to see if anyone (namely Dad) was behind me before stepping off into the den. It was then I saw the Christmas tree and all the presents under it.

I knew a few prresents were there before Christmas (Ya know....Chrristmas shopping and all), but there were others I hadn't seen before. I could also tell that some of the presents which were already under the tree had been moved around a little. I went to "investivate".

Before I did though, I made sure to look up over the counter to see if anyone (again namely Dad) was somehow on my trail. Once again, the coast was clear. Or so I thought (read on).

I got closer and closer to the tree and before I knew it, I WAS STANDING IN FRONT OF IT. I then carrefully got down on my knees (Ya know, not wanting any of the decorations to fall :-)). Just as I got on my knees and began looking at all the tags - *SWOOP!*

Before I could say Rumpelstilskin, Dad scooped me back up on my feet, turned me around, and paddled my butt all the way back to my bedrroom. It wasn't a spanking, but he made sure I felt it as I was on the move back to my bedroom. He then told me to get me to get to sleep. By this time, I was in no position to say anything in response. Dad wasn't mad, though he wasn't neccessarily very happy at me either.

Needless to say, my little adventure was enough for me to get something resembling sleep for the remainder of that night as before I knew it, it was 4:30 AM or so and everyone was up and about then (Yes, my little adventure was a buzz around the house that morning). We all opened our prresents BEFORE breakfast (this was a tradition in our family) and the rest, as they say, is history. :-)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE.

Pat

News From The Home Front

Sorry for the LONG length of time between blog entries. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving though. I know I did. Spent time with Mom, Dad, my brother who lives in town and his son (learned just how video games and console units have advanced since the old Atari days :-)). Had a great Thanksgiving Dinner too as we all watched the Incredible Hulk Movie on DVD. :-)

As you might have figured out by now, I really haven't had much incentive to post a new text blog entry for quite sometime, hence NO November archive for this year, (though next year will undoubtedly be an entirely different story altogether if we Liberals have OUR way, won't it? :-)).

During my admittedly self-imposed sabattical, I got to surfing one of the Blog Rings and found a very interesting site dealing with the issue of SIZE ACCEPTANCE. We'll touch on that either in another text blog entry or in a Video Blog.

I mentioned in an October Blog Entry that one of my brothers and his wife who live in Kansas City, MO were expecting a little one. While I was away, my sister-in-law has since given birth. I decided to hold off on posting this bit of news because I wanted to include a pic of the little one, but I guess my brother just hasn't gotten around to distributing photos just yet. But when I get one, I'll be sure to post it.

Just remember one thing though. THE KID AIN'T MINE. There were a few on Sullivan's Yahoo! Group who apparently thought that *I* was the father. *LOL!*

However, this was tempered by a bit of bad news. My 72 year old father, who will be 73 in just a few days, had to be taken to the hospital and admitted into the ICU for a viral pneumonia affection. However, all is fine now and he is back home now (word is they had to kick him out so they could treat all the other patients they were getting slammed with - JUST KIDDING! :-)).

It's also just our luck we should be living in "Beautiful" Coloradotoo given all the bad news we've been hearing about the flu bug. Ugh.... :-(

Well....that's all the news that's fit to print from here.

Cheers for now & HAPPY HOLIDAYS :-)

Pat

I'm All Moved BUT.....

As I mentioned in my blog entry of September 23rd I stated that I was moving. Well, that day has come and gone, but it has been ANYTHING but uneventful and FULL of hitches (none of which are to sneeze at either!). :-(

First, I bust the case of my VCR (and probably in all likelihood the VCR itself) as I was moving the TV from the old apartment to the new one in preparation for the cable installer. What's even worse is that the VCR was also doing double duty as the cable box as well (I only have Expanded Basic cable service and Comcast, oiur local cable company, is tossing out the old analog cable boxes in lieu of the ones for Digital Cable. :-( ).

Next, the cable installer shows up, but NEVER CALLED ME IN ADVANCE!!! So, as I'm playing "traffic cop" as I direct the mover helpers where to put each piece of furniture, I'm also on my cell phone talking to a service rep from Comcast, our beloved local cable company .

They tell me they "don't do call-backs" and that I would have to re-schedule. I explained to them in an earlier conversation that I wanted them to call me in advance so A). I could let them into the building when they arrived and B). I could move the power cords for the PC and cable modem down to the new apartment (I had been sitting up in the old apartment as that's where the furniture was at the time and was beat).

Luckily though after about 10 minutes, they call me back telling me that the installer would be here in 10 minutes. By this time, I was just finishing with the move of the furniture (with MANY thanks to my helpers :-)) and had told them as much. Apparently this got to the installer, who basically dragged her feet by doing the neccessary work on the outside of the building before coming in to hook everything up.

With a busted VCR, I directed the cable installer to route the connection via the CD/DVD Player instead. She did. She also hooked up my cable modem and made sure that was working (which it is, but there's a catch to this, which I'll go into later). After she hooked up the cable modem and made sure it was working, she gave me some numbers I needed to know and then left.

Minutes later, I went to turn on the TV to catch The Fox Report With Shepherd Smith as that's my favorite network news program, only to find that my TV can't even receive channels like Fox News because I'm not using a conventional analog cable box or a VCR (remember, the VCR got busted the night before. Try to keep up with me on this if that's even possible).

So I called the local cable company AGAIN and told the rep. what my situation was. He suggested that I power cycle my TV by unplugging it for about a half hour. Figuring he knew what to do, I followed this suggestion even though I had never had to power cycle my TV for any reason whatsoever in its entire 20 year life.

Anyhow, as luck would have it, it would be an hour before I could try again (I still had some more stuff to move). I tried again and got the same result. So I called the local cable company - YET AGAIN!!!! It was then that I actually got someone who knew what the fuckin' hell they were doing!!! As brutal and as bitchy as she was (her communications skills could easily be likened to a mother talking to her child in a parental manner), she told me the only way I could remedy the situation was to A). Go down to the cable company's local payment center and see if they had any analog cable boxes left, B). Get a new VCR or C). Get a more modern cable ready TV (the set I have now already is cable ready, even though it's 20 years old).

I opted to call Mom & dad to see if they had a spare VCR I could have. Luckily, they have one and Mom told me I could have it. :-) I told her I'd be down (hopefully!) this weekend when I return a backpack carrier she loaned to me earlier this week (even though I didn't need it when I went to borrow some food from them).

On to the Internet - Where OH WHERE do I begin to explain this........

TO BE CONTINUED....

News From My Brother In Missouri

On a much lighter (not to mention HAPPIER) note, I also received an email from my brother Lyne (or Leonard as he prefers it today), who's NOW a LICENSED MINISTER in Kansas City, MO (He moved there from Waxahachie, Tx after receiving some sort of degree while in TX). He's married and is expecting his first natural born child in a couple of months (his wife, Suzanna is 7 1/2 months pregnant and they have an adopted teenage daughter). He's younger than me (he's 33 and I'm 37). Anyhow, his email was full of news (some of it I had heard before, but never blogged about it till now) so I'll try to summarize some of the things he said in his email. :-)

First off, Suzanna is 7 1/2 months pregnant, but they're kinda hoping for a New Year's baby as that would just make the event just that much more special. I can just imagine him spending ALL of New Years Eve in the Delivery Room of the local hospital doing the same song and dance of Bill Cosby's "Push 'Em Out....Push 'Em Out....Push OUT" while she's gasping for air. :-)

Okay, maybe that's putting it on a little thick (and it probably won't happen like that anyway given the odds of being so lucky to have a New Year's baby to begin with), but you get the point. :-)

The only downer to this is the fact that it's a high risk pregnancy. Out of deference to her (my sister-in-law I have yet to meet I might add), I won't go into why this is. But she's made it this far, so I think it's reasonably safe to say that she's a real trooper who'll wait it out until THE day comes. :-)

Three days before they found out she was pregnant though, they purchased their first home in the K.C. area. They did this as they were pressuring their Ministry goals. My brother also has an "ordinary" job working as a marketing person for Cingular Wireless (Not sure what kind of marketing he does though).

To give you an idea as to the kind of person he is, here's an excerpt from the email he sent describing their marriage and their adventures so far (DISCLAIMER: I have permission to blog about the email and he chose to have me not leave anything out, though I won't quote the entire email as it's quite long and redundant :-))

Our marriage is strong and has proven itself to be quite an adventure. However, life as you know has its ways of throwing "curve balls" and Suzanna and I have not been exempted; especially as it relates to medical issues. Shortly after we were wedded I contacted vertigo or what is more commonly know as dizziness. Of course the doctors put me though a serious of tests in attempts to find the answers. From CAT scans to ENG, EEG, MRA and two MRI of my head and all they found was a great mind, ah, ah, ah. In the course of this past year they sent me to just about every kind of specialist they could find, neurologist, ENTS (Ear, Noise and Throat Specialist), and two inner-hear specialists. After a year of suffering with vertigo I was final sent to an inner ear surgeon. He re-did some tests and did some more new ones this past mouth. These tests finally revealed a definable problem. The doctor said, "it's all in my head" (ah, ah) or to be more specifically it's in my inner ear. I have a type of Meniere's disorder called "Cochlear Hydrops." This diagnosis is very consistent with my symptoms: episodic dizziness and ear pressure, hearing loss, passing out and "tinnitus" (ringing in my ear). CH or Cochlear Hydrops in English is simply an abnormal amount of fluid build up in the inner hear. This fluid in turn is pushing against my vistibular nerves. It's these nerves that help keep our body in balanced, which explains why I'm dizzy. My dizzy condition is propitiates as my body heat rises. Meniere's disorders are very tricky to diagnosis and it's still a possibility that I may loose my hearing in my right ear which is where the Cochlear Hydrops problem was found, but it's still in the early stages so the doctors are hopeful about their ability to help me. Treatment of all of this is the same as all other forms of Meniere's disorders. First of these treatments are medication and diet (no salt, no caffeine) to see if we can get my body to heal itself. If this dose not works then there is one of three surgical procedures that can be done. This means there is still a long road ahead for me in this area. Our lives have been seriously altered as a result of this issue and have caused much stress in our lives as we both prepare for the new family arrival. But in the mean time continue to pray for God's healing power.

Can ya tell he doesn't write email very well?

He's been married for over a year now, but guess what he got for a One Year Anniversary "Gift", courtesy of some IDIOTIC COOK from one of the local Applebee's Restaurant ....

A One Way trip to THE EMERGENCY ROOM after an ALLERGIC REACTION to honey which was put on the ribs that he ordered (he didn't order the honey) which triggered his asthma (sp?) that almost caused him to have a NEAR FATAL HEART ATTACK!!!! I told him in a reply email that he should consider taking LEGAL ACTION against Applebee'sbecause they put his health in danger.

I have yet to hear a response to my reply email, which I sent yesterday.

Suffice to say, since he has been married, neither he nor his wife are strangers to the Emergency room staff. Though, as anyone who's spent time walking in their shoes on a similar basis would imagine, IF they had to visit the Emergency Room, THEY WOULD RATHER NOT BE THE PATIENT. :-)

So indeed, life as a married person has been an adventure for him in his first year, although there are many things he would just assume forget. :-) Here's to hope that his 2nd year of marriage is filled with more joyous adventures than not. :-)

Well....That's the good news for today.

Cheers for now :-)

Pat

Some REALLY BAD News

Events of this past week have all hit within the last 24 hours, so as such, I'll be making seperate blog entries for each event.

We begin with some REALLY BAD news. About 24 hours ago, I learned that my 72 year old father has a urinary tract problem of some kind. If his doctors can't identify and fix it, he may have to undergo surgery to have a catheter permanently implanted inside him. We should know by Monday just how serious his condition is and if surgery and/or hospitalization is required. We're praying and hoping that it can be treated without surgery OR hospitalization. I'll post another blog entry regardless of the outcome.

In the meantime.....Cheers for now :-)

Pat

TAXI....TAXI....

Well....I see it's Columbus Day. *WHOOPIE-DOO!*

Had to do yet SOME MORE running around last night (geez....Am I *ever* gonna catch up with myself?). This time it was Grocery Shopping - Round Two. The place - The usual. Albertsons on Alameda & Broadway (For you Colorado Bloggers out there :-)).

Prices for most of the items I regularly buy returned to normal (hence NO 10 for $10 for cans of soup :-( ). Got the usual amount (Eight cans to cover the next week; I wonder WHY I'm still using that number). The nice bonus though was a half gallon of Heath Toffee Bar Ice Cream for $3.50 or 2 for $7.00

Anyway....Got all checked out so the store knew I wasn't stealing anything and called a cab so I could get my stuff home WITHOUT breaking my foolish neck in the process. I asked for a van from Metro Taxi

While I was waiting, I spotted an old friend and we talked for a few minutes until her taxi came. Was sitting out front with three HEAVY bags of groceries (good thing they were those big cloth ones) waiting for my taxi to arrive.

20 minutes later, my cell phone rings. It's Metro Taxi saying "Your cab has arrived".

I'm like Okay....I'm sitting outside in front of the store with a clear view. WHERE IS IT?? I don't see it, so it OBVIOUSLY hasn't arrived yet.

After a minute or two of this, GUESS WHICH taxi shows up.

THE VERY SAME TAXI WHICH TOOK MY FRIEND HOME!!! A car.

The reason why this is significant is because I order vans due to the extra head and leg room they have over the cars as I'm a tall man.

Anyway, I send the man on his merry way after telling him I ordered a van.

So NOW I figure GREAT! Not only am I with a half gallon of MELTING ICE CREAM, but NOW I've BEEN KICKED OUT OF THE METRO TAXI SYSTEM TO BOOT!!!

Needless to say, I call Metro Taxi AGAIN to RE-ORDER the van (or double-check to see if my order was still in the queue, which it wasn't). They assure me they'd get one out to me "on a priority" (whatever the hell that means).

20 minutes later, I call them AGAIN because the cab I had re-ordered had still not arrived. The man tells me that cab 142 had left six minutes ago to pick me up. He also said there were NO VANS in my area. I said GREAT! you're sending me ANOTHER CAR! He assured me that wasn't the case. I said "okay" and hung up. Two minutes later, my cab FINALLY pulls up.

But the cabbie DOESN'T KNOW THE AREA!!!!

He told me he normally does business in the SE part of town (didn't say where, but it was obvious he didn't know the streets in my area too well, but he eventually figured it out).

The fare came out to $2.80 so I gave him $3.00 and we called it even (afterall, what can you do with 20 cents these days?). After the better part of AN HOUR, I finally got my stuff home and sat down with my ice cream (which MIRACULOUSLY hadn't melted as much as expected), Diet Pepsi, and glass of water. :-)

Ahh.....Nothin' like unwinding for the evening..... :-)

Cheers for now :-)

Pat

Forgetfulness

Do you ever have just one of those days where you'd probably forget your head if it wasn't screwed on right?? Well guess who had one of those days.....

Yep! You guessed it. ME!!!

For starters, I had taken some forms with me to fill out while I was out earlier today cashing my check. But, as luck would have it, I forgot to BRING A PEN with me so I could fill them them out (I had planned to fill them out while at the local Subway sandwich joint after I ate).

CORRECTIVE ACTION TAKEN - Scrap the idea.

Next, I got to the local Albertsons grocery store where I would borrow one of their two electric buggies and go up to the Customer Service counter where I would cash my check. Every thing went normal there except for one tiny little detail.

I LEFT MY KEYS IN THE ELECTRIC BUGGY WHEN I LEFT THE STORE TO GO TO SUBWAY.

What's worse, I didn't even realize this until I checked my pockets while at Subway. Luckily I had planned to return there to do some grocery shopping anyway. So I thought it wasn't a really big deal.

Ahh.....But this was on a day in which Lady Fortune WAS NOT smiling at me.

Anyhow, I return to the store, only to find the buggy is in use. So I walk up to the same customer service desk I had been at not even an hour earlier and ask the clerk there if someone turned in any set of keys matching the description I gave. He told me no.

Now I'm REALLY freaked because NOW I don't even know WHERE the keys are.

Bur then I figured what goes up must come down(OR IN THIS CASE, what goes to the back of the store must eventually make it's way back to the front of the store where the buggies are kept). So I decided to wait a few minutes for the buggy with my keys (which I STUPIDLY left in the buggy's ignition) to return. But then I decided that this was like wsiting for a watched pot to boil. So I got another key from customer service and used the other cart.

Just as I was checking out, I spotted the woman in the other cart. I tried to get her attention, but could do little more than to verify that the keys were still left in the ignition as she passed by in front of me. Fortunately they were. I knew I could then breathe a huge sigh of relief knowing that all I had to do was wait for her to check out and bring the cart up to the front.

10 minutes later, she did just that. I kept the other key in case she needed it as then this way, we could just simply swap keys (some of the store clerks let people have a key of their own, but it's not neccessarily something they "boast" about). Luckily, after some explaining, she was very understanding and we swapped keys and waited for our taxi cabs to arrive. She was about my age and could understand what it's like being in my position. :-) We enjoyed a nice conversation while we waited.

I suppose the day wasn't a complete disaster. I've had worse days than this. But after nearly leaving my Subway Twister cup behind after taking my groceries over to the bench at the front of the store where I would wait for the woman to appear, I said to myself that I'd forget MY HEAD if it wasn't screwed on right as I walked back to retrieve my cup.

Just thought I'd share this with you. :-}

Cheers for now :-)

Pat

I'm MOVING (Well....Sort Of :-) )

Well after MONTHS of trying to put off the inevitable, I was recently told that I either had to move out of my one bedroom apartment (due to my housekeeping problems, which is a LONG story which too lengthy for a blog) or move into a studio apartment if I wanted to stay where I'm at now as far as where my snail mail goes.

Faced with this ultimatum (not to mention a LEASE RENEWAL to boot), I chose the latter. I was offered one on the 1st floor, which would be great as far as walking is concerned, but as far as some of my hobbies (one of them being a Ham Radio Operator are concerned, I may as well be UNDERNEATH the building (RF doesn't travel very far if it's confined to a ground level apartment :-( ). Given this scenario, I told the manager that I'd take the 1st floor apartment if nothing else was available, but I'd much prefer something on one of the upper floors (I'm on the top floor, which is the 9th flooor now).

Luckily, my only phone is a cell phone, so I won't be out of touch with the outside world. However I'm gonna have to get my cable service (which includes the Internet) transferred as soon as possible once I know for certain when I'll be moving into the new apartment. Early guesstimate is I'll be able to start moving in as early as the middle of next month, though I doubt that will be written in stone just yet. I'll also have to notify the Post Office as well as just about everyone else I do business with (at least those who need to know) of the apartment change. I'm also luckily as this won't affect my ability to vote in the upcoming November election (it's a mail-in election with a ballot here in Colorado full of referendum measures and other ammendments. Nothing which will really draw a large voter turnout), though I'll have to send in a change of address when I mail my ballot and follow that up with a trip to the DMV to get a new ID or a sticker put on the back of my current one (Being an experienced Election Judge here in Denver County, I know that if I don't do it this way, it'd be just my luck for it to be an issue during the Presidential Primary. I see it all the time while sitting at the polling place and hear other people's stories. Really quite fascinating - NOT).

Speaking of judging elections, how many of YOU have done this? It's one of THE most important roles of our electoral process!!! Why, without us JUDGES, the election officials would have to DO IT THEMSELVES!!! And you know how much THAT would cost.

Anyways, back to the subject at hand, I'll try to keep you all posted on this. I'll also try to post a quick blog entry the day before (if not then, maybe in the wee hours of the morning of moving day itself, which is likely to be the case :-( ). I doubt I'll post about anything else during this period (unless another 9/11 happens - heaven forbid of course :-}).

Well....time to the wrapper on this one and post it. Cheers for now :-)

Pat

Fullfilling "The Need"

I know I said on Friday I would be doing a blog on SPAM email as Saturday's blog (a double-blog will be made this week - I promise!). Well, as luck would have it, the desire to fulfill "the need" got in the way of those plans and wouldn't let up (yes, I went through the whole day with lewd [READ - SEX] images swirling in my head). Do you ever get that feeling? Yeah, yeah....I know what a lot of you out there are saying. You saying things like "Pat, my dear friend, you need a WOMAN in your life" or something like "There ARE just some things you just don't blog about".

But think about it. If ya can't "get it" the natural way (i.e. with a partner you love) and "get it" SAFELY (i.e. NONE of the SLUTTY BITCH WHORES (Yes, I will call 'em that) who hang out on [for you Colorado Bloggers out there] East Colfax at night), then HOW ELSE can you "get it" that won't give you an STD or land you in jail?

Simple. You put on a porn clip (either on your TV or PC) and DO IT YOURSELF.

THIS is what I was doing ALL DAY Saturday and part of today. Ugh...I *hate* this feeling. Even the most hardcore clips I have weren't enough to break the ice. :-(

Oh well. You know what they say about the 3rd try. :-) *crossing fingers*

But I take comfort in knowing that some people WILL go to great lengths to "cure themselves". We see many of them on the news labeled either as CHILD MOLESTERS or other SEXUAL PREDATORS. THOSE people SHOULD be locked up (either in a mental institution or prison). And unfortunately, many of them use the power of the Internet (and target our kids :-( ).

FOR THE RECORD.....I AM **NOT** A SEX PREDATOR OR REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER AS I HAVE DONE **NOTHING** TO WARRANT SUCH ACTION. I AM MERELY BLOGGING MY MOOD AS IT STANDS RIGHT NOW.

Anyways....I just wanted to let you all know why my blog on SPAM email hasn't been posted yet while, at the same time, vent a little frustration over my current need. There's really nothing anyone can do (except offer a little sympathy perhaps? :-}). It's just something I'm just gonna have to ride out.

Till next time.... :-)

Pat

Platonic Friendships - The BEST Intimate Partners?

Boy, my day yesterday was one I'd just assume FORGET!!! :-( More on that in another blog entry. :-)

But if there was a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud, it would have to be a copy of last week's edition of Time Magazine In it was an article by Pamela Paul on Platonic Friendships, which i felt was most interesting.

Although the article profiled three happily married couples, one of the most interesting statistics was that One In 10 25 to 34 year olds say their BEST FRIEND is a member of the OPPOSITE SEX.

Speaking from some personal experience, I am a HUGE fan of platonic friendships. Not only that, but I believe that, in a day and age where the divorce rate in this country (and abroad) is higher than the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were before 9/11, it's ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to have a plutonic friendship for couples to fall back on in case marriage doesn't work out.

Now, of course, I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems to me that people tend to be quick to rush to the altar FAR too quickly these days. OTFS, some would argue that some of those platonic friendships would amount to long-distance relationships, which don't work either (just ask my brother Bill who thought getting married BEFORE shipping out to join the United States Navy was an absolute "brilliant" idea. - NOT!).

Also, according to the article, Match.compolled 1,514 of its members and found that 83% believe that men and women can be just friends. In a way, this isn't much of a surprise. I mean, when you take into into consideration of Friendsand Seinfeldand the success and the chemistry the cast members have among each other, it should be of little wonder that people would want to "mimmick" what the cast members of those shows do. It also wouldn't be surprising if there were ROLE PLAYING groups (I didn't find any on Yahoo! Groups) whereas people act out the roles of the various cast members either.

Some have even found that marriage even strengthens the bond that makes a platonic friendship work. I'm a true believer that relationships don't work very well without a platonic friendship to back it up. But then too, I'm not the expert on the subject. I'm just your average, ordinary blog writer sitting in front of the computer who also spends some time making friends with others on this massive "Information SuperHighway" who also just happens to be SINGLE and in his THIRTIES. :-)

Author Michael Monsour was quoted in the article as saying that the different sexes of TODAY have MORE IN COMMON as they go through the life cycle. This couldn't be further from the truth!! As women have (professionally) evolved into almost anything and everything from Astronauts to Zoologists, we AS A SOCIETY are finding out that men and women DO have more in common than we thought.

And as *I* continue my own search to find that special someone, that "Rock Of Gibraltar" (sp?), that one person to turn to when life gets rough, I look forward to experiencing much of this and anything else like it that life throws my way. :-)

In the meantime....Cheers for now :-)

Pat

My First Attempt At Blogging

This is just a test blog to see how this all workks (personally I can do

the same thing simply by creating an HTML page with Netscape Composer and naming it something like blog.html


There's nothing really fancy about it. I mean afterall, it's just an HTML page.

This is just yet ANOTHER way these desperate DOT BOMB companies are managing to stay in business. They think that if they can get the public to believe that blog is another protocol instead of what it REALLY is (which is just a simple HTML page which conveys the thoughts of the poster), they can survive and ride out the meltdown caused (predominately) by 9/11 and the Bush Administration.

Can you believe some of these companies actually CHARGE for this??? It's INSANE. I prefer video (or at least audio) MUCH better. That IS why I host a talk show, ya know (even though I haven't done a show since 9/11). :-) You can't beat an audio or video blog.

Well....So much for a "test" blog I guess. :-)

Anyhow, keep an eye on THIS SPACE RIGHT HERE as I will use this space to convey my thoughts on just about ANYTHING under the sun (I'm a Liberal Democrat :-)). It'll also be used for my upcoming TV show called "Stupid Stuff", which will be on the website my VERY OWN Internet TV station, Jeeper One Television Network (when relaunched) as I'll create a section SPECIFICALLY for that show alone. :-)

In the meantime....Stay tuned! :-)

Cheers for now my friends :-)
Pat Cook
pchamster@comcast.net
Denver, Colorado