Wait! Don’t blow the hatch!
It’s been one hell of a week, to put it mildly. First off, flying solo again at work, and we had a hellacious round of storms and tornadoes on Sunday night, for which the station’s coverage kicked copious quantities of butt. (See the work blog for examples of how we’re “POPping” that coverage – I’ve added quite a few brand new spots.) But that has meant epic-length work days. And last night when I got home, something was wrong – I think it was the fact that every receptacle that’s supposed to drain water had backed up. Toilets overflowing, bathtubs and sinks filling themselves, mass hysteria. So the inevitable call to the plumber went out this morning; I stayed home longer today to meet him when he finally appeared in the afternoon with his robo-rooter. Just snaking that thing through the pipes blasted some clogs out of the system, but there was still something amiss. So there was no choice but to dig up the yard – it was time to blow the hatch. … Read more
So much for winter – in the last week of February, we were having temperatures close to 80 degrees. Now we’re already being put on alert for a “significant severe weather event” in the middle of the week. With that in mind, and to ensure domestric tranquility, I moved my battered, lightning-struck, but still-functional old weather alert radio into the game room today, where it now sits on top of my Vectrex. (The Vectrex is only slightly older than the weather radio…) Throughout this poor old thing’s life span, it hasn’t gotten much respect from anyone – I once lived in an apartment where my neighbor in the unit next door complained that the weather radio’s alarm going off scared her. (Protip: this is tornado alley – it’s supposed to.) It gets more of the same treatment at home now – the message seems to be “if you want it going off in your ear, fine, but I don’t want it going off in mine.” So into the game room it goes.
At last, salvation is here. This may seem like an odd statement next to a picture of orange and grape soda bottles, but trust me, they’re one and the same. Most of my close friends know that I have a bit of a hard time putting down orange soda. The reason I’ve never even experimented with drinking, smoking or anything along those lines is that I know I’ve received a healthy dose of addiction-prone genes from both parents. I made a decision early in my teens to stay away from those things, but of course a tendency toward addiction manifests itself in other ways – my svelte figure is no doubt a result of my admittedly frequent inability to stop chowing down on good stuff, and I’m sure the healthy supply of 50-cent 2-liter bottles of Sam’s Club orange soda aren’t a big help there either. In fact, I was on a routine resupply stop today to procure more of the orange stuff when I saw this newfangled diet soda at Wal-Mart, and just a toe over the $1 line. (Normally your baseline for diet soda is over $1.50 a bottle – at least it is around here.) I grabbed some of this Slice One orange and grape soda, and they both pass the test with flying colors. I’ll definitely be going back for more, Real Soon, and maybe start working on getting into some slightly better shape by the time there are half a dozen baby horses chasing me around this spring. (Hey, I get my exercise one way or the other.) I’ve been hoping something like this would come along; I’ve been working on eating healthier already, but I’m sure pumping about 4 liters of pure sugar water into my stomach a week has probably been negating any gains I’ve even come close to making. Now here’s hoping that this isn’t some promotional price that’s going to get jacked up into the almost-$2-a-bottle stratosphere in a month or two. (And for anyone waiting with the old standby “Well, there’s this stuff you could drink called water…”, save your keystrokes – I’m have indeed heard much about this thing called water. I’m a big fan of water. Just not the remarkably icky water that comes out of the tap in my house, no matter how filtered it is – seriously, I’m embarrassed to give that water to my cats and dog – and I prefer a little flavor.)
Creations and got a whole scrolling message going. I don’t think I’ve touched that particular cartridge in 20 years, and I still scratch my head wondering what Magnavox was thinking there – were shop owners supposed to get an Odyssey 2 with Keyboard Creations and punch out today’s specials on a membrane keyboard to run in a TV in the window all day? I still stick by my assessment of Keyboard Creations as the video game world’s first and only “cable access channel simulator.” Because if you remember the clumsy pixellated scrolling messages that appeared on cable access circa 1980, that’s what this looked like. The thought has occurred that, having gotten good video of that one in action, Keyboard Creations may never escape from its box again.
