Category: General (page 24 of 121)

In more ways than you thought! Here are some of the highlights…
(NOTE: The following account contains a secret hidden message…it’s invisible.)

• Deposited a great card and a special mix CD in the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie’s” car before she headed off to work this morning. (Put it this way…any mix CD that starts off with The Manhattans’ Shining Star, includes goodies like Josh Groban, Larry Graham, and Sinatra’s They Can’t Take That Away from Me is a super-duper way to start off a Valentine’s Day, don’t you think?)
• Good, no, great! workout this morning at the Y! (The unexpected “heart day” thing!)
• The “big scales” at the Y show that there’s 19 pounds less of me than there was at the first of the year! Woo hoo! (The unexpected “heart day” thing, part dos!)
• Immediately after the workout, headed over to check my blood pressure. (Remember my comedian doctor was concerned about the bottom number?) Well…the bottom number is just about where she wanted it to be – and that was right after a long, pretty strong workout! (The unexpected “heart day” thing, part the third!)
• Great breakfast with our senior adults!
• Goodies for the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie!” (Including a very funny encounter with a lingerie saleswoman/grandma at Macy’s! Let’s just say I’ve got two valentines this year!)
• Candles, roses, chocolate covered strawberries (that I made!)
• Grilled salmon with with mustard dill sauce, ginger rice, asparagus with lemon butter (that I made!)
• And the piece de resistance…raspberry vanilla cheesecake (that I also made!)

Hope your “heart day” was – still is! – a great day, too!

OK, OK…Now I’ve been tagged, by my buddy Gary Lamb…

Four Jobs I’ve Had

• Short-order cook
• Rental car agent
• Librarian
• Shoe salesman

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:

• Braveheart
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Casablanca
• Dead Poets Society

Four Places I’ve Lived:

• Rincon, Georgia
• Tallahassee, Florida
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Moreland, Georgia (mash here and here and here for some Moreland tidbits)

Four Shows I Like To Watch:

• House
• Nip/Tuck
• Gilmore Girls
• Good Eats

Four Foods That I Like:

• Seafood
• Italian
• Chili Dawgs at The Varsity
• Cheesecake

Four Sites I Visit Everyday:

• Bloglines
• Snoopy.com
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• InBubbleWrap

Four Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

• Learn to speak Japanese
• Skydive
• Conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• See baseball games at Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium

Four People I’m Tagging:

• Tony McCollum
• Ken Miller
• Brian Bowen
• Rob Riggs

OK, guys…now you’re “it”!

Just gotta unload a little tonight, I guess…

I got a call yesterday from the daughter of one of my seminary buds, telling me the shocking news that her dad had died suddenly, from an apparent heart attack. Bummer! Anyway, she was calling to ask if I could and would participate in her dad’s funeral service, tentatively scheduled for “sometime this week, probably Saturday.”

“Sure,” I replied. “I’d be honored to be a part of it, etc. etc.”

Well, tonight, she called back to let me know that the service is actually going to be Sunday, at 2:00 p.m. I hate being the bad guy, but there’s no way I could be at my place Sunday morning, and then make a 6-1/2 hour drive to be there. I hate it, I told her I hated it, but there’s really no way around it.

So then why do I feel like such a heel?

From Oscar Wilde…

A mask tells us more than a face.

One more interruption…move along, nothing to see here…

Funny? No, ridiculous!
Smart? No, stupid!
Friends? No, people who don’t give a rip about you!
Good times? No, bad experiences that will bite you in the butt, sooner, rather than later! (Oh, wait…those are multiple bite marks I see!)
Grown-up and mature? No, infantile!
Cool? No, lame. Very, very lame.

Excuse the interruption…

When they look you in the eye and say, “I don’t do that stuff anymore,” and then proceed to post photographic “evidence” on the web, you can’t – and won’t – trust anything else they ever say.

Just a thought…let the reader understand…

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog perusal. Thank you.

We had our own little “Soup-er Bowl” get-together at our church last night. In preparation for the evening, the lovely and gracious “Mrs. Just Charlie” and I were out Saturday getting decorations, etc.

Here’s what I discovered…

• Hardly anyone in Atlanta is/was a Seahawks fan. We found tons and tons of Seahawks banners, pennants, signs, window decals, etc. Right next to them were the empty spaces that once held the same amount of Steelers banners, pennants, signs, window decals, etc. They were sold out at almost every place we went!
• The Steelers fans in Atlanta are absolutely, positively crazy! You could tell who had been buying the sold-out Steelers paraphernalia – they were walking/driving around with all that stuff on their cars, their bodies, their kids, and yes, their pets!
• Regardless of which team you root for – or don’t root for – that “Made in China” officially-licensed NFL stuff is way overpriced! And some of it reminded me of that old George Carlin line…
  

  If you put together two things that have never been put together before, some schmuck will buy it!

Well, enough Super Bowl stuff for me for another year. I didn’t really have a dog in the fight, and since I had jumped on the Steelers bandwagon earlier, the game turned out OK by me.

And actually, after a wintry day’s worth of “research,” I’ve about changed my tune on the commercials, too. They weren’t all that bad.

OK, it’s snowing here in north Georgia. It’s coming down pretty good for our neck of the woods. It looks cool and all that. But it can go ahead and get to 70 degrees as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, and I betcha if you go to our usual local mega-mart right now, you’ll have a real hard time finding bread or milk. I’ve always wondered why there’s a run on bread and milk when wintry weather comes to our neck of the woods. Milk and bread. Whatcha gonna do with milk and bread if the power goes out?

OK, I didn’t see very many of this year’s crop of Super Bowl commercials in “real time” – that is, I didn’t watch but a few minutes of the game – so I had to check ’em out this morning.

Fortunately, you can see ’em all in a convenient package over at Google Video.

UPDATE: A more complete catalogue is available over at iFilm.

I’m the guy who cares more about the ads than the game, and I just felt a little…underwhelmed this time around.

Having said that, my favorites were the Budweiser Wave and Clydesdale American Dream ads.

Some of the others were amusing. Some were pretty silly. But, hey, what do I know? Somebody somewhere thought they were worth $2.5 million per 30 seconds.

A couple of other related thoughts…

The Burger King king is still the creepiest ad character.

And,

Doesn’t anybody have any new ideas for movies these days?