Bits

Just some random ideas, notes and other such things that have occupied my head over the course of the last few weeks:

* * *

Between the rest of the earnest payment and estimated closing on our house, and the money owed for a truck to bring my Lovely Fiancee™ up here, I just spent close to $6000 this weekend.  

While that might not seem like a whole lot of money to some people (and let's be honest; if that doesn't sound like a whole lot of money to you, there is every possibility that I hate you just on general principle alone), and that cost might sound like a very standard amount to your average prospective home-buyer and mover, this is somewhere near a ludicrous amount of money to me.  I have never-- ever-- ponied up that sort of cabbage, let alone over a two-day span.  Hell, if I added up all my bills, it would probably take me a solid five months to come up to $6000.  When I bought Reno, new off the showroom floor, I only wrote a check for two thousand dollars, and even then it felt like having a sadistic dentist extracting a few teeth from me.

Without the benefit of good loopy drugs.

Using a pair of vise grips and auto-repair pliers.

And keeping me from fidgeting by attaching electrical clamps to my genitalia.

Really.

And what's the worst thing about it?  The fact that the four-thousand-plus-extras of the money on the house barely even scratches the surface.  In the grand scheme of things, I have officially dribbled a teaspoon of water into the rain barrel of what we will owe.  I haven't even managed to pay enough to fully constitute 5% on our house cost.  And since I got the money in the first place from my 401K, I have not only managed to barely ripple the water of our final house tally, but I've also managed to push back my retirement age to somewhere around 84.  Conservatively.    

Which coincides pretty nicely, actually, with when the house will finally be paid off.

Oh, and with all of that said, the thing that pissed me off most was having to spend $48 on windshield wipers for Reno because the store was out of the silver and gold series in Reno's size, leaving me with no choice but to buy the Platinum ones.  $48 for wipers?  Really?  Seriously?  Do they compose f**king sonnets while they're wiping bird shit off my windows?  Do they sing the chorale from Handel's Messiah while they're clearing road salt?

* * *

We got information today at work about the possibilities that while in at work tomorrow, the weather may get really nasty.  Like, a foot of snow or an inch of ice (unilaterally, we would prefer snow, so in keeping with the idea that God Hates Me, we will doubtlessly get ice). In a not-quite-worst case scenario, we will lose power at our house.  Possibly for days.

In the worst case scenario, we will not lose power at work-- our work is in the medical field... so our building has been built to withstand oddities like Rain, Snow and the Wrath of a Wintry God Gone Berserk.  But there is always the possibility that the bad crap happens while we're here... which means, in such a case, a travel advisory could then blankets the county and we could end up stuck there at work. Warm (which is a plus) but without food, beds, or the ability to shower.

In other words, inside of two days we could become like the contestants in Survivor: Norway.

We could have to eat one another to survive.  Yes, I know there's a gas station a couple blocks away, but if we're under an emergency, who will let us in to raid the chip aisle?  Hell, who will be there to put the hot dogs on the rollers to heat them?

That alone should warn you how desperate this could become.  I could be stuck at here, at work, with only parental-guidance-blocked internet, and no heated meat entrees outside of the mystery stuff in the vending machines?  

Oh, hell with that.  I may just call in sick out of a sense of self-preservation.

* * *

Loggerheads

So I'm talking to my Lovely Fiancee™ some nights ago over the phone, and somehow the subject comes up that the kitten (our Pet-to-Be) sometimes doesn't listen when she tells it not to bite or go somewhere or do something.  Like apparently, it very sweetly and very cutely leaps onto the power supply for her computer and shuts it off without a proper shutdown sequence.  Or it endearingly rips gashes in her bare legs.  Or it makes her go Awwww as it goes into heat and yowls incessantly, parades around with its ass in the air looking for something to make it have more kittens, and forces my Lovely Fiancee™ to frantically explain to her young daughter why their male cat is not allowed in without using any animal terminology like sex-starved slut, or gaping slick orifice of cat-hell.  Or to put it in a much more urbane way of phrasing, "she is sometimes a little shit."

I could have told her this long ago, seeing that the creature in question is a kitten. I could have also gloated that the only times I worry about the fish not listening is when I'm trying to take pictures of them, and then, it's most often more of a laughing manner than a genuine "What the fuck is wrong with you!" manner.  I could have also said, "Awwwh," because this is the sound I gather most cat-lovers like to hear.  Usually followed by a cutesy variant tone of the kitty-cat's name, or "Schmookums" or something equally inane and offensive to English-speakers everywhere.  "Him's a widdwe pwetty-puss, isun't him?"

I, however, knew I was treading dangerous ground here, as I constantly am whenever we talk about the cat.  My Lovely Fiancee™ is more than just an animal lover. She is a hardcore, third generation-- possibly more-- animal lover, and is instilling that same love in her children.  She moreover loves lost-cause animals-- runts the mother has tossed aside; wounded strays who look utterly pathetic; guys who play role-playing games and haven't dated for years.  I fear that soon, between the three of them, I will be on a first-name basis with every attendant at the Indianapolis Zoo.  Most women cry during chick-flicks; my Lovely Fiancee™ cries at shows on Animal Planet.

I knew all this, and yet, I responded with one of my usual wonderfully well-thought out replies: "The cat does realize that it's not going to have complete run of the house when we move in, right?"

Numerous married men are very likely now grabbing their nutsacks in empathy.

There are a lot of things that you simply aren't allowed to do to have a long, happy marriage, and you can probably guess a few of them, such as "don't say someone else's name during sex", or "don't sit there and laugh when it turns out she's wrong."  However, when your significant other is a cat-lover (hell, any animal-lover), a whole new set of land-mines arises, around which you'd damned well better tread carefully, no matter what you think.  When discussing said animal, you are in no way expected to insinuate that A) she doesn't have control over the animal situation, B) the animal in question might be problematic, or C) that you would not be disappointed beyond measure if the animal in question accidentally fell into a wood chipper.  Any of these are akin to saying something like, "dinner was pretty good, honey, but next time you ought to try to this dish my ex-girlfriend was really good at..."  You can literally watch the air get cold enough to see your breath from one moment to the next. 

I was fortunate in that it snowed a couple nights ago, so I was better prepared for the frostiness.  But it's still like a Japanese horror movie-- it puts chills up your spine for reasons you don't really understand.

"What is that supposed to mean?"  She said.  I could have almost sworn it was a hiss.  I'm genuinely hoping it was bad cell service.

After stumbling through an apologetic reply that amounted to recanting everything, I did what every man who deeply loves his fiancee would do... I showed all the backbone of a jellyfish and tried to look for a good, legitimate compromise that would at least leave me a slight, small sliver of masculinity.  And in the meantime, while doing so, I have begun making plans for what brand of hard liquor I will bequeath the rest of my life to.  As I told my Lovely Fiancee™ earlier, there is no doubt in my mind that if we ever look at separation and divorce, that little ball of meowing fluff-- or the five to ten that are sure to come after it, because cat people can't be fucking content with one-- will almost certainly be the root cause.

So, yes, the compromise.  The problem was one I figured the internet could take care of:  I needed something to keep the pet-to-be from getting onto the counters and the furniture in the new house.  I needed a way to keep this dirty beast from turning our expensive new house into the Chateau de Felinus Fuckoff (the sort of place even non-cat lovers can immediately enter and say, oh, I see by the way your house is set up that either you own a cat or have a new child with acrobatic-contortionist DNA).  I need this cat to be a ground pet, and I need it not to sharpen its claws on our new furniture... apparently that should be preferably without de-clawing, because most cat-lovers and bleeding hearts will tell you (with a venom not unlike a Vegan card-carrying member of PETA) that de-clawing a poor widdle kitty is an inhumane torture not unlike tearing your finger down to the first knuckle.  And, no, you cannot respond thoughtfully with "No, inhumane is what I will be the first time I catch the little fucker ripping up our $500 couch or pissing on our $800 carpet because, and I quote, 'that's just what they do'," no matter how much you want to, or how much you fucking mean it.  So I looked it up, and these are the sorts of answers I found for the inquiry at various websites, help-sources and stores:

1) Citrus 
Apparently nothing says, Begone, foul thing, like oranges or grapefruit or lemons.  Also apparently, cats despise the smell of citrus, so you can spritz a lemon-water mist around places that you don't want the poor kitty to go, and it will get the hint.  Supposedly.  Admittedly, it sounds way too good to be true-- srsly?  I can keep them away from my computer by spritzing around it with lemon?  For reals?--  and it does have a far less effective rate than some of the other styles, but the big thing is that you have to keep doing it.  As in Constantly. Like, every week.  Or more.  So at some point, you have to ask yourself, do I really want to sit on a grapefruit-scented couch to go along with our orange-scented kitchen, lemony-fresh computer area, and cat-shit smelling garage?  Do I want to constantly live in a place that smells like the fucking fruit du jour?  If the words fuck, no came to mind, you would be on the right track. 

2) Cat-Away Sprays
This sort of solution sounds too good to be true!  I can spray something with this, and the special chemical pheromone mixture in it will keep the cat from spraying or clawing whatever I hose down, by making the cat feel comfortable in his surroundings!  Unless he's not, because, as the bottle notes:

"There are several reasons why a cat may urinate in your house -- medical problems, old age, the litter box is full, the cat doesn't like the litter you're using, or the box has been moved to a location the cat objects to.. the cat just feels like pissing you or your husband-- because we know no man is going to buy this except out of a sense of total fucking desperation-- off. (okay, I did sort of add that last one.) 

Urine marking is normally found on vertical surfaces, approximately 8 inches above the floor... Only a small amount of urine is discharged in a spraying effect. Male and female cats may mark -- even neutered and spayed cats.

Oh, fucking wonderful.  Now I have to also worry about the cat spreading urine on my walls (but only a small amount!  Only a little bit!  Don't worry!  Just like how you don't worry if slightly daft Uncle Walter shits himself in your kitchen, because at least A) it's mostly in his pants and B) he can't help himself)!

Oh, and on top of that, this stuff does not keep the cat from leaping on our countertops or anything above or beyond possibly spraying.  And again, we would have to use this stuff constantly.  At least for 30 days.  And lest we forget, some of these sprays cost upwards of $20 per 150 milliliters.  At that price, why don't we just walk around with Old West gunbelts on and keep spritz bottles of water in them, pulling them out to spritz away when we happen to catch the cat after it finishes with scraping dirty dust-ridden clay over its own shit and decides that means it's time to jump onto the food prep table?  That would mean the times that one or the other of us aren't at work, or that we're not busy, or we want to be in the kitchen, or... well, shit, that sort of puts that idea out to pasture, doesn't it?

3) Scat Mats
Apparently, enough people have had issues with dogs and cats getting onto the furniture that someone decided the best way to handle it was to introduce static electricity into the equation.  Now, admittedly, this was an idea I could more get behind.  You unroll this mat, place it on a 'problem area' where you don't want the thing to leap up onto, and plug it in.  Voila, instant mild instructional shock when it jumps up there.  The beautiful part of this was watching the promotional video, which actually seemed to show the cat leaping up and then leaping off as though its nuts had caught fire.  It was a thing of beauty.

Now the problems with this scenario?  Aside from the fact that I'm pretty certain that those same types who think de-clawing is terrible-oh-noes-inhumane probably think this is equally terrible-oh-noes-inhumane (in fact, they most likely think every deterrent is inhumane, and that the only steps that should be taken are to sit aside and let the cat literally walk all over you and anything within the house) there is the fact that just because you light up one counter with electricity doesn't mean another is safe.  Or the couch.  Or the upstairs.  Or the entertainment center.  Or you get the picture.  At fiftyish dollars apiece, we can get enough of these to handle the areas of the house the cat shouldn't be... if, say, we eschew buying a laundry dryer or a refrigerator.  But what the hey... we're not all that fond of drying clothes.

Along these same lines are the lesser expensive means that offer the same "The cat doesn't like it here" efforts, like double stick tape and aluminum foil.  And because God knows how cool it would be to consistently set my hands down on double-stick tape while I'm making dinner, or have to uncover the couches from their foil because company's coming over, I will not go into detail on my thoughts on them.

4) Sonic Things
Again, seemingly the perfect marriage, sonics and cat deterrent, this is another thing that sounds (Haa! Pun! Get it?) much better on the surface than it apparently is in practice.  The Sofa Scram mat, which is a little like the Scat Mat, but half the price, emits a sound not unlike a smoke detector.  Which is all we fucking need at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Sound:  BEEP.  BEEP.  BEEP.

Lovely Fiancee™: Mnnh.  What is that?
Me: It's the Scram Mat.  The fucking cat's on the furniture again.

Out Of Control Fire: *Laughs Maniacally and Consumes Downstairs*

The other one is ultrasonic, which might work.  But the price is higher.  Oh, this is me being surprised at that.

5) Claw Caps
This is one of the ideas put forward by my Lovely Fiancee™ as an alternative to the declawing issue.  And it seems to work.  For the scratching thing, at least.  Which is great!  Except I have been told they need to be changed out about every three to six months, and that this is a two person job.  And that I have been volunteered to help out to ensure the cat doesn't scratch my Lovely Fiancee™ into an indefinable bloody mess.

This also thrills me to no end.

And apparently there is no Counter Caps or Couch Caps to keep the cat from jumping onto either.  I did suggest weighted chains, but that idea has so far met with resistance.

6) Small Battery-Operated Guillotines Located At Tactical Areas Throughout The House
No, this will totally not work at all.  But I would admit that I would be a lot more inclined to be happy with this solution, if just for the designs alone. 

7)  Good Fucking Luck
Nothing you do, no matter how physically ingenious or chemically glorious, will stop the cat from scratching your sofa, leaping up onto the food-prep table with its shit-ridden paws, or doing whatever it feels like-- up to and including finding your PIN and taking money out of your bank account, when you're not there.  You can use a squirt bottle, a shook-up can of pennies, or a small flamethrower, and it will be effective.  But only while you're there.  Once you leave the room, the cat will do the feline equivalent of flipping you the bird and do it anyway.  Or if it doesn't, it will plot against you... like waiting until you're sleeping on the couch in your thin lounge pants to leap up and claw at your genitalia.

So out of these ideas, the more I look at each one, and the more I know my own luck, the more I'm thinking that we'll probably have a solution more like: 

8) I Quietly Bow to the Mandate of my Unfortunately-Cat-Crazy Lovely Fiancee™; I Do Absolutely Nothing About Said Creature, Deal with Cat Funk and Hair in my Food and Everywhere Else in Our New House,  and Begin Married Life by Having Myself Emasculated So As Not To Cause Civil Unrest.

Yeah, that about covers it.

Bli$$

So the wedding date has been officially set for about two weeks now, and I’m starting to think seriously about calling it off.

Let me try to keep people from becoming apoplectic by saying I in no way mean the marriage itself.  Oh, hell, no.  I’m all good with the being married thing.  I don’t think a lot of people realize what an unbelievably lucky bastard I am finding someone who shares a great deal of my likes, overlooks a lot of my faults and quirks, and seems-- oddly enough-- to find me enjoyable enough to be around that she wants to keep doing it.  Finding her was almost certainly the best thing that’s ever happened to me, quite possibly even better than finding ephedrine, and I have no intention of fucking that up.  No way in screw.  And I should point out that I’m not just saying that because my Lovely Fiancee™ reads this blog… although, if it wins me brownie points with her I won’t turn them down.  (As a male, I need to build up my reserve of those as quickly as possible, because I will spend the rest of my life calling them in when I inevitably do something stupid, drunk, pigheaded, or a combination of all three.)

What I’m talking about is the wedding.  As in the ceremony, and the reception that comes with it.  Look, no one wants a dashing, romantic, bigger-than-life wedding for his wife-to-be more than me.  No one wants the big, lavish, decadent Renaissance/Medeival themed celebration for their wedding more than I do.  Or to be correct in my verb tense, no one did, until the realities of things came into it… realities like, say, the ratio of “How Much Money We Have” to “What Anything Costs”.   To put it mathematically,  A ![] <  B   (or in other words, How Much Money We Have is ridiculous fuckloads less than What Anything Costs).

This sort of thinking first reared its head when we were looking for a photographer.  My understanding was that a photographer was someone who shot pictures.  In other words, like you or me, only with much more expensive cameras and equipment, a well-trained eye and a helluva lot more practice. 

And then I saw what they charge, and I realized that some photographers are artists.  Because no one else but an artist would have such a fantastical vision that I would be willing to pay $2300—on the low-range side—for someone to shoot pictures of me and my Lovely Fiancée™ on the day she becomes my Lovely Wife®.  (Quick moment of true story: We are very fortunate in that my niece referred us to a pair of photographers whose work is extremely good, and whose price was not only fair but did not make my insides crumple like a wadded-up toilet paper ball when I heard it.  So let me clarify, not every photog has a price package like that.)

That said, here’s the thing.  I’m an artist, and if I charged someone $2300 dollars for 20 pieces I made totally from scratch starting with a blank piece of paper, I would expect someone to punch me right in the nads.  It's not that I think photography is terribly easy-- quite the opposite-- or that I think it has any less artistic merit than drawing with pencil on paper… it just seems really freaking expensive to pay more than the down payment I made for my car when we’re already covering the event itself, event setting, costuming, makeup, and in most cases, booze. 

So that sort of explains my response to this sort of price quote, namely: “For that price, do we get his and hers oral sex?”

The part that galls me is that I have been told that this is actually very competitive pricing.  (My response to that was, competitive with what, heart surgery?) 

As an aside, I have made my thoughts known on other sites about artists and prices.  Being an artist myself, I would find myself very hard pressed to charge anyone more than $75 for any piece I made.  And I realize that strikes a bad chord with people... I've heard the rejoinders siding with artists charging arms and legs before: “But that’s their only means of income,” or “but they have to cover the price of equipment” or “but they do such high quality work!”  To which I say, Tom Clancy worked an insurance job while writing his first three books, and McDonald’s hires daily; if what you do doesn't make enough to cover the bills and you need the supplemental income, then you really need to do the math.  (Besides, you’re an artist!  Who cares if you demean yourself?  Demeaning yourself in the name of-- for the sake of-- art... dammit, isn't that what’s expected of us artists?!?)

Here’s my thinking.  I work a somewhat menial job that requires me to remain a little active; causes me at least a slight bit of stress; and in which I have to deal sometimes with inane questions, people who do stupid things, and a lot of laziness and politics-- same as just about anyone else who works anywhere in blue-collar/low white-collar places.  And like many other people, my job is not what I’d prefer to be doing, even if I like it.  At said job, I net somewhere in the area of $90 a day… maybe as much as $150 when I’m pulling overtime.

So maybe you can understand why my blood pressure spikes like the jab of a syringe full of adrenaline to my chest when I see that someone is suggesting that them shooting pictures for somewhere from five to eight hours is a competitive rate… and that competitive rate just happens to be the equivalent of me working my job for a month.

And you know, I could even understand-- and maybe even get behind that-- if the photographer were the only expense.  But according to the numerous checklists I’ve looked over, the photographer is barely the tip of the Titanic-Killing-Iceberg that is the modern wedding and reception.  In fact, the photographer is the stuff that falls on the deck and is just enough to chill the drinks.  The average—yes, average­—cost of a traditional American wedding is $22,000.   

Twenty.  Two.  Thousand.  Dollars.

It hurts to fucking say it, let alone consider paying it.  Hell, I  paid $22,000 for my car only when you added in the insane annual high-risk percentage rate and the fact I’d be paying on it for six solid years.   That’s 1/6 of the price of my not-yet-built house!  Holy scrod, it’s no wonder everyone opts for common-law marriages anymore!   Or a JoP or Vegas deal... License, check; blood test, check; bam!  Thank you, have a nice day-- it's the Home Depot of instant gratification wedded bliss, and it's cheap!

Fortunately, my Lovely Fiancée™ realizes what a cash-strapped bastard I am, and as such has mostly gone along with me on certain ‘budget cuts’ that I have suggested for our wedding, including making the reception a pitch-in, holding the wedding at a retreat center (it’s a pretty retreat center, though!), and having our wedding and reception music on an mp3 player and speaker system rather than hiring a DJ or band.  Alone, that’s cut us down about $4500, which can instead go to the sort of trivial things that we might otherwise have to eschew; things that make a house truly a home-- like, say, food or heat… or walls. 

She’s holding firm on some areas, however, and because this is her special day as well, I guess I can’t begrudge her those things.  So I can probably get by without finding old wedding napkins, crossing out the names and writing in ours.  We don’t necessarily have to see what wedding cakes go unclaimed at the bakery and haggle for a reduced cost.  We can decorate the tables without re-using last year’s Halloween decorations.  

But I think we’re still going to look carefully at some of my ideas.  I mean, who needs rice when they can toss pouches of freshly shredded credit card applications?

FOOTNOTE: Lovely Wife® is a registered trademark of Anonymous Moron Enterprises, and is only used for purposes of demonstration.

Resolute

So everyone lately has been asking me what my New Year's Resolutions were.  I've always hated the idea of New year's Resolutions... not just because of the assertion in them that I'm not perfect (which we know not to be the case), but because the word resolution has such a grim, thickly final sound to it.  And by all rights, it should sound very final.  That's appropriate for a true resolution, after all.  The word resolution has its base in resolve.  One is resolved-- determined, staunchly firm in purpose, resolute-- to do something to make themselves a better person over the coming year. 

The problem is that no one takes their New Year's Resolutions that seriously.  No one ever plans for them, or takes steps to ensure that they accomplish them.   Hell, the only reason anyone even makes resolutions is because it's traditional, or because their friends are doing it and it's something to talk about over mocha lattes and finger food at the local coffee pub.  That's not a resolution.  On Facebook, we would be called a meme, and 90% of your acquaintances would ignore it if you posted it.  (And most likely, out of the other 10%, at least half of them agree to everything you say, anyway.)   Every year, I hear someone chuckle about how they're going to lose weight this year, or exercise more, or do something more often, or insert your clever riposte here... and you can look at them and tell that by February, they're going to forget they even said it.   That's not a resolution... that's a conversational gambit.

A resolution should have the weight of a set of proper bull's nards.   Resolutions were what were made in Parliament to remove absolute monarchy from England.  Resolutions were what were made in the Continental Congress to disengage from being British subjects.  Almost no one in the modern age, especially with the attention-deficit-issues and instant gratification mindset of Joe Internet User, is qualified to make a true resolution.  

So I no longer make resolutions, per se.  I do, however, tend to make myself a nice list of goals that I call Hopeta's.   I make a large list of goals I'd really like to accomplish over the coming year-- this can include things I'd like to buy for myself, places I'd like to go, things I'd like to do, betterment of myself that I'd like to make, or anything of the like.  The list is intentionally big... and every year, I hope to (thus the name) hit about 50% of those goals.  My thought process is that anything more than 50% is a pretty damned good year, and it keeps me from the all-or-nothing mindset of having a single 'resolution'.

So without further ado, here is a few of my 2011 Hopeta's.

In 2011, I Hope To spend at least thirty minutes a day (preferably an hour), five days a week, occupied in some form of activity that can at least functionally be called exercise.   This does not include walking around at work or standing up to cook dinner.  As an aside, it would most likely make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives if they followed the suggestions for the NFL's Play 60 for kids.   One hour of honest-to-goodness healthy activity per day-- running,  walking, biking; doing anything besides just sitting around-- would be a good goal for anyone.

In 2011, I Hope To have our house built and not be crushed under the weight of a monthly mortgage.  (As another aside, thaaaaank you, economy, for deciding to f***ing make the housing market rebound four f***ing months before I'm eligible to lock in an interest rate.  So now, instead of a 4.25%, I get to hope like f*** that we can still manage to swing a 5% in April.  Or in other words, I get to hope like f*** that we only pay $50 a month more on our mortgage payment.  You know, $50 that we might have been able to use on... I dunno.... food, or utilities, or bailing me out of jail when I get arrested for vagrancy while holding up a "Need Money Please Help God Bless" sign at the highway off-ramp.)

In 2011, I Hope To move my Lovely Fiancee™ up from Florida to our new home in wonderful Indianapolis, Indiana, and do my best to make her forget that winters here are the primary reason why people generally choose to move to Florida in the first place.

In 2011, I Hope To learn that fatherhood-- at least step-fatherhood-- means a lot more than just saying, "Sweet Mother of God, DON'T--!!" and "What did your mother say?"  I'm sure it does.  I am just looking forward with both excitement and terror to learn what exactly it entails.

In 2011, I Hope To get  my gaming company-- the same one I've been trying to get started on and off for the past three years-- off the ground, if for no other reason than to justify the amount of money I will be paying next year to keep its website running.

In 2011, I Hope To be a lot more creative than I did last year.  I would love to add to that, but nothing is coming to mind over it.  That is probably A Bad Sign.

In 2011, I Hope To be less judgemental than I was last year.  You know, like when it throws me into a frothing rage because someone did something so absolutely, incontrovertibly Stupid, Self-Serving, Inept, Unthinking, Egocentric, Dimwitted, or Lazy and I call them Moronic/Insolent/Pea-brained/C****ucking/Assheaded/Reprobate/Retard/Choadsmoking/Irredeemable/Imbecilic/Douchebags/Dumbasses/Sh**-for-Brains/Any number of other insults.  Instead, I will take a few moments, count to ten, and try to see everything from their point of view.  And only then, if I cannot find a way to justify it, will I go into a frothing rage and let the profanities fly.

And finally, In 2011, I Hope To survive through to 2012.  That would be an important thing.  Cause God knows, I can't wait to do another one of these 'Resolution' blogs next year.

Oh, yeah.  And I Hopeta about that marrying thing, too.  Cause, dammit, I know what's good for me. XD