Ron's posts with tag: lisa
 | Stuff | Nov 10, '06 12:32 AM
for everyone |
Well, I haven't written a "real" blog entry in a long time, so here goes a long, rambling one about a whole bunch of things... Two weeks ago, Paul's van got hit in his apartment's parking lot. The guy took off, no note or anything. The damage is bad enough that the van can't be driven. By piecing together the broken taillight parts left behind, Paul figured out that it was a Chevy Lumina that hit him, so he was on the lookout. A couple days later in the laundry room, he encountered a Spanish-speaking resident that asked him if he'd gotten his van fixed yet. There was apparently a communications problem, but the guy ended up pulling a piece of paper out of his wallet with a license plate number written on it! Paul took a look at PublicData and found that the plate belonged to a Chevy Lumina. (What do you know?) It also gave a name and address. On Halloween night, Paul and I took a drive to that area of town, camera and flashlight at the ready. It wasn't nearby, and wasn't one of the nicer areas of town, but there were trick-or-treaters still roaming, so we walked up and down the street for awhile without raising any suspicion. Didn't see the car. The next day, another resident told Paul his pickup had also been hit, and he had the license plate number and even knew where the guy lived. This was a closer address, and they went there - it was a lot closer. The car wasn't there, and nobody was home. Paul walked back later in the evening, found the car, took a picture that showed the license plate and missing taillight pieces, and was pretty excited to have found the obvious culprit. The guy has no insurance, and the police are investigating. Paul still hasn't been able to get his van fixed since the police case hasn't been resolved or something. I don't know how he gets by without wheels. Paul's an avid bicycler, and his solution to the problem was to buy a bus pass. I'm meeting him for dinner tonight, and he'll take a bus, the light rail, and another bus to get there, even though I said I'd pick him up. Before Halloween, Wal*Mart had all their old lame scary movies on DVD on sale for $4.88. I bought a few, and then later returned and found the complete collection of Friday the 13th (volumes 1 through 8!) and bought them all. In the time since Halloween, I've watched 7 of the 8, and the last one is in the bedroom DVD player now, ready to be fired up this weekend. Jason takes Manhattan. They're starting to all be about the same though... I saw Saw III in the theater last weekend. I liked the first two, and a friend called asking if I wanted to see III so I jumped at the chance. Plus I had $6 ticket coupons in my Passbook. It was great. I always used to kind of tolerate the scary movies, but Lisa taught me an appreciation for a good horror flick so I guess that's one good thing that came out of that relationship. (Just kidding, Lisa!) Every couple of years, I call up a tree company (arborist) to trim my trees. I have three vey large Fruitless Mulberries, which left to their own devices would take over everything in their path, including the overhead power, phone and cable lines. I've been told that the best time to trim is right before the leaves begin to fall. Four years ago, it cost $275. Two years ago, it was $495. This time, they quoted me $695. Yikes! Those trees aren't growing exponentially faster. I guess I need to get another quote or two before I do that. I've lived in my house now for 12 1/2 years now, and have been paying extra on the mortgage toward the principal. It will be paid off with my December payment. Since I paid so little in interest this year, I think I'm going to pay my property taxes in January instead of December. Then I'll take the standard deduction for this year instead of itemizing, and double up the property taxes for 2007. Mortgage burning party! I've never owned a property free and clear before, it's a pretty neat feeling.
 This seems to have originated over on Frozen Fire's blog. Kinda silly, kinda goofy. I've seen a few other people posting theirs, so I figured I'd throw mine into the ring too.
I'm such a lemming.
(Click a picture above to enlarge it) Friday, September 22 Breakfast at McDonald's in Burlington at 9am before hitting the road. Colorado / Kansas border at 10:30am. Stopped for pictures (of course). Please set your watch forward to Central Time. Late lunch at Chili's in Salina, KS at 3pm. Filled up the tank in Salina, too. Got on the Kansas Turnpike and headed for the Oklahoma border. Got there at 5:30pm. Peed in Paul's Valley, OK at 8pm and filled up the tank. Stopped for dinner at 9pm at Applebee's in Ardmore, OK. Got to the Texas border at 10:15pm. The picture above was the only one I took with a flash the entire trip. Got back to Dallas at 11:45pm.
\r\n \r\n Wednesday, September 20 \r\n After breakfast at Burger King, we headed to downtown Denver to visit the Downtown Aquarium. The pictures above are all from there. Yes, they have tigers at the aquarium. Go figure. We wandered around in there from about 10:45am until 3:45pm. \r\n Then we drove up to Broomfield, where I've been before (I helped with the installation of the voice system on their ZIP Shuttle, the free shuttle that takes people around the Flatiron Crossing area). We had lunch at Red Robin, and then rode the ZIP Shuttle around the loop. I recognized the driver and called him by name, which kind of surprised Lisa. \r\n After our little bus ride, we watched The Black Dahlia at the AMC theaters in Flatiron Crossing. Good movie, but a little hard to "get" on the first watch. Might be a good one to pick up in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart someday. \r\n After driving back to Denver, we found a Super 8 motel in a better part of town. \r\n\r\n \r\n
\r\n \r\n Thursday, September 21 \r\n We slept in and ended up having breakfast at lunchtime at the Denver Diner. \r\n Then we headed for the Denver Zoo, and got there about 1:30pm. We probably should have tried to arrive earlier to spend more time there. There was some confusion about when the zoo closed - one sign said 5pm and another said 6pm. According to their website, the admission gates close at 5pm, but shortly after 5pm, most of the animals were brought indoors, and there wasn't much to see anymore. We thought we had until 6pm, but if I'd known what it was going to be like after 5pm, I would have gone to see favorites first instead of saving them to the end. I only saw a few monkeys, and no birds of prey. \r\n We left the zoo about 5:30pm and decided to get a jump on the drive home since we had already checked out of the Super 8. We had decided to go back the long way (but on more major highways), so we headed east. \r\n Stopped for gas in Deer Trail, CO at about 6:15pm; and had dinner in Limon, CO at Denny's about 7:30pm. \r\n We got to Burlington, CO at about 8:45pm and spent the night at Chaparral Motor Inn. \r\n\r\n \r\n
\r\n \r\n Tuesday, September 19 \r\n \r\n I made reservations for the Royal Gorge Railroad. This is the main thing that I wanted to do in Colorado, and the reason we stopped first at Ca\u00f1on City. I've been over the bridge (it's been a number of years), but hadn't ridden the train through the canyon. I bought tickets for the 12:30pm trip, and they said we should be there around noon, and would start boarding at 12:15pm. \r\n We slept in, packed up, checked out of the hotel, and went to Denny's for breakfast about 10am. Then we set off for the mouth of the Royal Gorge. \r\n There are quite a few pictures above. We waited around for the previous group to arrive, and then loaded onto the train. There were a couple of open cars with just rails around them so you could get a better view not only to the sides but upwards, as well. The river ran on the left of the train as we were going up the canyon. There was an old water line that was constructed of wood and wrapped in wire many years ago. It was obviously not in use anymore, and breaking apart. You'll see pictures of the bridge (long claimed to be the world's highest suspension bridge at 1,053 feet) as taken from below. The train only goes about 15 mph, but in a couple of shady, windy places, it was actually chilly on the observation car. Whooo hooo! I really enjoyed this. \r\n Filled up the gas tank and got slurpees at the "Loaf 'N Jug" quicky mart, and then headed back into town. \r\n We stopped at the Holy Cross Winery and visited their tasting room. The winery and the abbey are separate buildings, and apparently the abbey was converted into a monastary a number of years earlier. And since that time, the monastary had ceased operation and the land was sold to the state corrections system. The winery leases its land and building from the new owners, and there's an agreement that the original abbey/monastary building's exterior will be left unaltered. Only a small percentage of the grapes are grown on the premises - most are a collection from other vineyards in the area. I enjoyed the visit and bought a mixed case of their wines. I would have liked a tour of the winery itself, but it was their busy time and they weren't offering tours that day. \r\n After imbibing in some wine, we hopped into the car (shhhh) and made the short drive to Denver, where we drove all over the place looking at hotels and trying to determine the "bad" parts of town and the "good" parts of town. We ended up in the Westway Motel, which was in the "bad" part of town. \r\n For dinner, we went to Dino's Italian Food in Lakewood, which turned out to be very good. We walked in at about 9:45pm, and were told they were open until 11pm. They even make their own sausage on the premises for the meatballs and links. \r\n\r\n \r\n
Monday, September 18 The Days Inn had a continental breakfast, so I grabbed some coffee, sweet rolls and bagels while Lisa was making herself pretty and packing. We were back on the road by 9am. We hit the New Mexico border about noon, and stopped to take pictures. Adjust your watch backwards one hour, please. We had lunch at Subway in Clayton, NM. We stopped for gas in Raton, NM. At just over 1/4 tank this time. Hahaha. We stopped at the Colorado border at about 3pm for pictures again. Pulled in to Ca\u00f1on City at 5:30pm and found a Best Western in which to spend the night. After getting organized and having a long potty break, we went out to dinner at Chili's about 7:30pm.
Sunday, September 17 After church, I came home and loaded up the rental car with my suitcase and toys and headed for Lisa's apartment. She made lunch and finished getting her stuff together, and we were on the road at 2:40pm. Since I figured we'd be stopping every hour or so for potty breaks (her norm), she did everything in her power to prove me wrong and keep going without a break.  Finally she could take it no more, and we stopped at a rest stop in Quanah, TX at about 7pm, after a little more than 4 hours of driving. Not bad. Lisa took over the driving. A short time later we pulled into Childress, TX for dinner at Dawson's Family Restaurant. Lisa checked the gas gauge and started getting panicky. The needle was on empty, but the dashboard display showed that we had 48 miles left before empty, and the next city was 28 miles away. I figured no problem - the dashboard display is probably pretty conservative. Lisa just knew we were going to run out of gas and be stranded "in the middle of nowhere". We made it to Claude, TX about 10pm and put 15.4 gallons into our 15 gallon tank. Lisa was a nervous wreck by the time we got there. We could have gone another 20 miles.  We pulled into Amarillo about 11pm and checked into a Days Inn.
| Reunion | Jun 29, '06 12:32 AM
for everyone |
 I've done ESL tutoring for several years for the Richardson Adult Literacy Center. My student is Japanese (which is unusual, most students are Hispanic or Mexican). We meet once a week for an hour at the Richardson Public Library. My student is pretty advanced, and just needs a little help with vocabulary and speaking more fluently. We spend the first part of our hour doing a sheet in a workbook, and the rest of the time taking turns reading. We each read for ten minutes, and then we stop and go over vocabulary words and pronunciations of difficult words. We're almost done with The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, who I had the pleasure of hearing speak when he was here in north Texas last year. Anyway, the past couple of months have been a little chaotic at the library because they've been doing some remodeling. Now that the work is about done, there has been a lot of activity with people checking it all out. The area we usually meet has become a wonderland of children's stuff, with a "Oh the Places You'll Go!" bridge from Dr. Seuss, Jack climbing the beanstalk, a huge Clifford the Big Red Dog sitting on top of a cloud up high, etc. So it's been a little noisy too, since this area is more interesting to the little ones that are vocal when they get excited... So we've had to cope a bit, and have opted to go to the basement to one of the "quiet rooms" a couple of times. So it wasn't so unusual this evening to have people milling around, talking, kids yelling, etc. But there was a voice that was quiet but persistent and constant... When I looked and found the person attached to the voice, there was a sense of familiarity, but I couldn't quite place it. He was standing, and didn't seem to be talking to anybody in particular. He wandered around and stood near our table. A little too near, in fact, and suddenly it dawned on me. It was our good friend Mr. Red Pants. I almost giggled. When our hour was over, he was still there, wandering around, and I was really tempted to try to get a picture of him with my camera phone, but I chickened out. Lisa would've freaked, because I bet she thought wrong when I sent her a text message saying "OMG! You'll never believe who was at the library."  Anyway, I'm happy to report that his, um, physical condition seems to be under control. However, his mental problems continue unchecked.
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Here's what's been on my mind lately and how my day has been going today.
1. The IRS audited my 2004 tax return and determined that I owe them $9,691. I got their letter in the mail on Saturday.
2. Yesterday, my girlfriend was bitchy and moody, broke into tears twice for no apparent reason, wouldn't tell me what was wrong, ignored most of what I had to say, and finally just left and went home without any kind of explanation.
3. I went to Taco Bueno today for lunch. This lard ass woman in line ahead of me was asked "for here or to go?" and she said "here" and then ordered her food. I placed my order, they gave me my cup for the self-serve drink and my receipt with my number on it. I filled up with Lemonaide and was milling around waiting for them to call my number. They called the number of the lady in front of me, and as she walked up to the counter and saw her tray she said "This was supposed to be to go." Since it was one of those messy meals (you know - rice and beans, sour cream, guacamole, melted cheese over everything) instead of moving it into a to go tray, they just made her another meal, put it in a styrofoam tray, and put that into a bag with plasticware, napkins, etc. One of the gals on the food assembly line chastised the order-taker, told him to make sure he asked if the order was to stay or to go. He just said okay. The blubberbutt lady didn't say a word to them as she took her bag. She went to the "salsa bar" and grabbed some napkins and a fork (maybe not realizing that they were already in her bag). Then she went into the dining room to join her friends, sat down and proceeded to take out her food to eat. Later, as I watched her leave I saw her dump the empty bag into the trash can.
4. After waiting while they called about 10 numbers, I finally came up to the counter, showed my receipt and said "You've called about six numbers that ordered AFTER I did, and I still haven't gotten my order". The girl looked at my receipt, checked the computer, apologized, and proceeded to get my order ready. She apologized again as she gave me my tray. I thanked her and took it.
Sounds like a great day, huh? Well, lemme tell you.
1. I checked my 2004 tax return. Yes, there were a couple things I left out. Namely, the purchase price of a couple of trades I'd made. The 1099-DIV form shows the sales price, but doesn't tell the purchase price. In fact, the $25,000 CD was bought for $25,500 and the interest WAS reported during the time I had it, so that $25000 gain should have been listed as a $500 loss. A similar thing happened with another smaller investment. So this will be a hassle, but in the end, I simply overlooked something, and if anything, the IRS should be giving me money back for a couple of capital losses I neglected to report.
2. I'm going to help Lisa move a treadmill from her parent's house to her apartment today. I'm confident that she'll be sweet as can be, and won't even mention her little outbursts yesterday. In fact, I'm sure of it.
3. The beached whale woman at Taco Bueno didn't have any effect on me really, although I did feel a little sorry for the order-taker. It should have pissed me off, because usually people like that irritate the heck out of me. However, it gave me something to write about on my blog, and surprisingly, it made me feel good. Sometimes I feel like I should try to drop a few pounds. Sometimes I feel like I'm not a good enough person. It's people like this that make me feel good about myself, in lots of ways.
4. I got a free order of Cinnamon Chips because they took so long. Yummy!
This has been a GREAT day!
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 Hey, it's Earth Day! That's a pretty cool thing for a tree-hugging geek like me. I took three days of vacation this week, and Lucky Lisa and I went to Bossier City. We left Wednesday about 10am and got there around 1pm. She hung out in the room and watched the games in the casino. I played Blackjack. I gave back all the money I earned on my previous trip, and even a little more. :-D We started back Friday evening and got back to Dallas around 9:30pm. I had a great time. Lucky Lisa is now called "Lisa". LOL
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