RETIRED WARRANT

Today, I had to do a little grocery shopping on the way home from the post office, and one of those annoying things happened that kind of ruined my good mood for a few minutes, though after joking around with the clerk I got my spirits back up.

I was on my way to the checkout and like everyone else I try and pick the shortest line. There was a line with two ladies in it and they seemed to be together, so that was going to be the fast line, nope. It seemed like they wanted to know the price of several of their items and then putting things back. They also had their items split up in three different purchases. Four people went through the next line over while these two were getting checked out. I held back saying anything, but I was really tempted.

Anyway after they left I told the cashier “oops I didn’t want to get that, or that or that” and after she looked at me in horror she figured out I was joking and we had a good laugh. Sometimes I just don’t understand people. The prices are posted, and everything has a description on it. If they are worried about running out of funds they can always carry a calculator.

Anyway that was today’s experience, and at least they didn’t have coupons or WIC vouchers which makes the line go even slower.

Well the wife didn’t make it home last night.

I guess she got into Los Angeles a little late and decided to stay up there for the night. I slept in until about 9 and then got up to find that my son had left. It kind of ticked me off because we were supposed to pick up the wife’s car from the repair shop today (they managed to get it done).

Anyway I waited all day for the car dealer or the wife to call. Neither did, so I finally called the car place and they said it was ready for pickup yesterday. Anyway the son came home and I told him we would have to go get the car.

I guess he didn’t listen as when I got ready to go he was gone already, to where, I have no idea. So I decided to have an adventure and take the bus. So I walked to the bus stop which is about a mile and a half from the house. I was pretty overheated when I got there and really sweaty. After what seemed like a half hour the bus showed up and I was glad that it was air conditioned. It was not the fastest way to get to the car dealership but it did get me there, even though I missed my stop and had to backtrack about a mile.

Anyway I got the car and got it home, but still no son and the wife hasn’t called. Hopefully she got everything she needed to get taken care of in LA is done. It is really getting boring being the only one home all day.

I just saw something on Fox News that disturbed me, and then just plain ticked me off. They were talking about the background of some of the suspected terrorists and the fact that two of them were receiving welfare from the British government. I guess that had some Brits really angry, but then they were interview people on the street and one of them said something that I could not believe.

This idiot they were talking to said “they should have bombed Parliament or 10 Downing Street”. He said that on camera, and that should manage to get him on every terrorist watch list. The guy appeared to be some type of immigrant, and I think they should look into that too!

I find it hard to swallow that there are people like this in the world, supporters of hate. Being as how, these terrorists are targeting us, this type of talk from citizens should get them on some type of watch list and I hope that is happening here. I am for freedom of speech; however there must be consequences for speech that would support our enemies. I know some would call that a contradiction as penalties for speech would be an attempt to restrict it, however I could use an ethnic slur and have myself prosecuted for hate speech. I think the same should apply for this type of speech too!

Just my thoughts after seeing this on TV.

I just got home from a run to the post office and stopped off to vote on my way home. There are only two things on our ballot. The first thing is to vote for Mayor and the second was a ballot measure to save the cross on Mount Soledad.

My vote for Mayor was pretty much an anyone but Frye vote. She has the support of the unions and is way left. She has the most name recognition. Whoever wins needs to get over 50% of the vote and I don’t think any of them will so this isn’t going to be decided until November.

The second was to turn the cross over to the federal government and I fully support that as I have blogged about in the past.

I was just thinking about how much money has been spent over this cross thing. I don’t have any figures but I am sure they have spent a small fortune in the courts on this, plus all the money spent to get this on the ballot. All of this because some jerk doesn’t like seeing the cross up on the mountain. I think when these idiots bring up these lawsuits and they are defeated by either a vote of the people or in the courts they should have to pay all the costs of the trial. That would make these activists stop what they are doing. Frankly I am sick of it.

I am glad to see that the space shuttle got off safely. I woke up early and watched it, and the launch seemed to go very smoothly. The only drag was that I had to watch it on NBC as I don’t have DSS upstairs and I was a little slow getting up this morning. Vacations are good that way. I absolutely hate the Today Show with Katie and Matt, but that channel comes in the clearest on my upstairs TV. Anyway good luck to the astronauts and may they have a safe and successful mission and a safe return.

The wife is back in Puerto Rico and will leave for New York tomorrow. She will stay there for a day or so and then go to Los Angeles for a day and return on Friday or Saturday, depending on when she gets all her buisiness taken care of. It all has to do with family matters as she and her cousin owned some stuff jointly. She then gets to spend next week in Sacramento, but that is work related.

I feel really bad for her. I guess her step-mother is going senile. She hasn’t cleaned her house in years and I guess it is really in bad shape. The wife is thinking about having her committed, but it is very stressful on her. She hasn’t been able to talk to me about it until this morning as her mother was out of the house today. They got her out and hired a crew to come in and clean the place up. She was in tears and I felt bad for her and the decision she must make. That would be hard, as when my mom died with cancer back in the late 80’s the hospitalization decision was easy to make for my family. I don’t know what I would do if I were in her position. I told her to bring her step-mother back here as we have two extra bedrooms, but I think the old lady wants to stay there. Oh well, I guess I will wait and see what happens.

Anyway I guess that is my comments for today. I have some chores to do and A little running around town to get done. Actually I think instead I will get a few things done around the house and put off the running around town until tomorrow.

On the 5th of July my wife had a fender bender up the street. A lady pulled out right in front of her and she was left with two options, hit the lady’s pickup truck, or a kid on a skateboard. She hit the truck thus saving the kids life.

Well the lady’s truck was one of those jacked up high suspension models hat basically came out of the incident unscathed. I had the wife’s car towed down to our local GMAC dealer for repairs the following day.

The guy I dealt with told me it should be repaired in 10 days and told me I should be able to pick it up on the 20th of July. It wasn’t ready, which didn’t concern me too much since she is out of town. But when I called today, I found out that the person I was dealing with went on vacation, and the guy taking over was still trying to get caught up on all the damaged cars my guy had been handling. I sat around the house all day waiting for him to call and finally I called him. He told me it might be ready Friday evening.

The wife comes back this weekend and needs her car for a trip to Sacramento. Now it may not be ready and if it isn’t I am going to catch the wrath. Maybe since I am on vacation I should do the brave thing and go fishing in northern California for a couple of weeks until she cools down.

Anyway I hope this guy gets it done by Friday. He didn’t sound very confident. And I know she doesn’t want to drive my bug on a trip that long as it is a good car for gas mileage, but not the most comfortable vehicle for a long trip.

I received the following letter from Sarah, our blogshares sponsored child.

The English translation is:

Dear Mr. Hicks

Good day sir! I received your letter and am glad that you are my sponsor.

How is your teaching? What subjects are you teaching? I hope that you will enjoy your work.

Please send my regards to your wife and to your kids.

Are you fond of the internet? Me, I enjoy singing. I hope that you may be able to help many children in your teaching career.

Again, thank you, and I hope that you will write me again.

Take care always. God bless.

Ma. Sarah E. Alea.

Well, today was a pretty busy day.

We had a farewell party for one of the guys at work at Hooters in Mission Valley. Since the wife is out of town, she is in Italy now, I figured I would go. Since she managed to demagnetize her ATM card I gave her mine for the trip so I had to go to the bank and get some funds to pay for lunch.

I was on my way home and decided to go to Circuit City, as my sound card was out and I also wanted to see about getting a new phone. The phone we currently have does not have an answering machine and also since we added the family room, we can’t hear it when it rings. Well I found the perfect phone. It has a built in digital answering machine, a clock, a phone book, and all kinds of other wizzbang stuff. But what is better is that it has a repeater station that I was able to set up in the family room and now we can hear the phone when it rings and even answer it in the family room. I also got my sound card and a web cam, though I am still trying to get that to work with my Yahoo Instant Messenger.

Anyway, I was almost late to the farewell party as I was playing with the phone and left late. I love new toys, and just had to have it all set up before I left.

When I got to Hooters I couldn’t believe how many people showed up. Our group was at least 40 to 50 people. We got a lot of attention from the Hooter Girls, well the younger guys anyway. And of course the food was great.

I stayed there for about an hour and a half and said goodbye to Chris as he transferees to Texas and then came home to install the sound card and web cam. The sound card works great and I am sure the web cam is just operator error. I may have to reinstall it. The picture looks great and Yahoo says it is compatible but then they say webcam not found or you are using a firewall when I try to use it on YIM. I turned off the firewall nd still no luck. I’ll figure it out since I have all weekend here by myself.

Anyway that is it for the day. Have a great weekend everyone.

I am bummed, one of our poodles has passed away.

I don’t know how or why but I noticed him in the back yard and he was gone. Skrover was a good little dog though he did start a lot of the fights we had with the other males. He wasn’t that old, I think about three years so I think either he picked one fight too many of a spider or snake may have gotten him as we have had a lot of wildlife in the area this year, maybe due to all the rain we had earlier in the year.

Skrover was one of the poodles that really didn’t have an owner. Poodles are very possessive and will pick one person in the house to hang with. He played with my son David a lot and with my son-in-law Steve. I played with him a bit, but then Mr. Wiggles, my dog would get jealous. Anyway we buried him in the back yard and I while I feel really bad that this happened I am thankful that it wasn’t one of the wife’s dogs. With her being gone that would be very bad to have to explain.

Anyway, God Bless you little Skrover and may you have a great time in doggie heaven.

Here is wonderful San Diego, recycling is suggested and they have issued us special blue trash cans to put our items that can be recycled in. They collect it every other week.

I have no problem with that and we fully support the program. What I do have a problem with is the folks wandering around the neighborhood with shopping carts digging through the blue trash cans. Today is trash day, and since I am on vacation from work I had a chance to drive around the neighborhood. Today is trash and recycle day and I must have seen 5 people digging through the blue trash cans.

I am sure there must be some law being violated. Also this takes away from money the city would normally get for the items. It just really bothers me, and though it is minor I think it is wrong.

On another note, even though I am on vacation, I had to get up and go into work. We just unionized at work, even though I am not a fan of unions and the union guy wants a tour to see what we do. Since all three of us were on vacation I figured I would go in and show him around.

Since I did have to get up I was surprised to see that London was having problems with bombers again. I guess these guys were some really dumb bombers as their bombs malfunctioned. I am glad that no one was hurt.

Tomorrow I have to go to a going away party for one of my coworkers. That is the one thing I dislike about my job. I am the only civilian working in the Ultra High Frequency area, the other two civilians work in High Frequency. The rest of the instructors are active duty military, on shore duty. They are only stationed here for three years and then they are transferred. The time has come for another one to leave, and seeing shipmates leave always makes me feel bad. I guess because I usually lose contact with them over the years.

I used to feel the same way when I was on active duty, whenever I transferred. It is like moving across country and leaving the family behind. Anyway, another buddy leaving and it gives me that empty feeling.

Well I guess that is it for now. The folks should be getting here for their tour any time now.

Well, after an interesting and very stressful day the wife finally made it to Puerto Rico very early this morning. She had a very miserable trip though.

First, she had the hassle with security that I wrote about yesterday. She almost missed her connecting flight when she got to New York. She had 15 minutes to change planes and somehow made it. I hope her luggage made it, too.

She called me once she landed, and she was checking to see if the luggage made it. After seeing the weather front they were going to pass through I couldn’t go to sleep last night until I was sure she made it, so I had a very late night last night. I am glad she made it though.

I just finished deleting a bunch of Viagra adds that somehow appeared in my comments sections. I am beginning to hate these darned spam adds that keep showing up on my blog.

Also be careful of some e-mails that have been circulating about PayPal and some credit union agency. They are requesting that you reenter all of your PayPal account data. It basically told me my PayPal account was under suspension and would stay that way until I submitted the requested data. I clicked on the link and it took me to a PayPal look alike site. I sensed something was wrong, so I entered a bogus password and then logged off and logged on to the regular PayPal site.

My account was fine so I then checked the rest of my email and found one from some credit union that I do not even have an account with. The information contained with this one was identical to the PayPal letter except for the logo’s and stuff, which were for this credit union. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up, the identity thieves are out there alive and well. Be careful with your information and if you get one of these e-mails check with the parent company to see if they did indeed send it.