-- The youngest Secret participated in a spelling bee at the library on Saturday.
Toney signed him up for it, and when she told me about it I had my doubts. I mean, how many kids would take part in such an event, at the tail-end of the school year, on a Saturday? I thought he might be declared the winner by default, because he was the only person who showed up.
But I was so very wrong. The place was PACKED. They held it in an activity room, and there was an overflow crowd. All the seats were taken, others were standing shoulder to shoulder against three walls, and still more were out in the hallway listening through an open door.
At a spelling bee?! It was bizarre.
They separated the kids by grade level, and the first graders took to the "stage." The very first contestant spelled pet "pot," and I thought we might be out of there within thirty minutes. I had all my hopes and dreams riding on inferior educations...
But it settled down after that, and dragged out. The first graders went on and on, and the second graders took even longer. Finally the only part I cared about, third grade, was underway.
There was a bunch of 'em, and several went out in the very first round. (One girl spelled candle "cindl.") Within a fairly abbreviated length of time it was down to the Secret and a kid who looked like Waldo in the
"Hot For
Teacher" video.
And the two of them went back and forth, back and forth. Each word was gut-wrenching for me; he was so very close to victory. Every time one of them said another letter, my southern-pucker became more pronounced.
But, unfortunately, the Secret stumbled on "pageant," and Waldo was the winner. The kid's dad was pumping his fist in the
air like his son had just blasted a walk-off homer, and his mother was wiping away tears with a cloth handkerchief.
"Screw this, let's go get some ice cream," I said. And we got out of there, before Waldo spiked a hardcover Merriam-Webster and did a victory dance. Decorum probably dictated we stick around to watch the fourth and fifth graders compete, but I'd had enough.
We came, we spelled, we left.
-- I had a craving to watch baseball on Saturday, and actually located a Braves game on one of the roughly 500 cable channels we receive (we watch about four of 'em). Ahh yes, this was going to be very fine indeed…
But I couldn't get into it. The only person I recognized was Chipper Jones, and every other player was an absolute mystery. It was like watching college baseball, or something.
And the picture was horrible. It reminded me of the days when my grandfather would climb up on the roof of his house to "adjust the aerial." Who the hell knows what channel I was watching? Maybe the
1971 Reception Network?
Within ten minutes I'd bailed out, and probably won't watch another inning until the playoffs.
-- After I passed a little time with the National Pastime, I asked Toney if she wanted to keep watching the second season of
LOST on
DVD. So, we took in two episodes.
It's fun going back and watching that show from the beginning, but you find yourself saying, "He's dead, he's dead, she's dead, he's long gone…"
Man, they sure don't mind killing off regulars, do they? Heck, the seven castaways were on Gilligan's Island for many years, and not a single one of them was ever eviscerated by a smoke monster. How unrealistic!
-- I'm in the midst of a substantial Marah jag. I recently weathered a pronounced
Wilco
fixation, then passed through a more modest Teenage Fanclub obsession, and am now hung up on
Marah.
People at work have their iPods filled with random songs, from all genres, and just listen on shuffle-play all the time. That simply won't do. I need full albums, at the very least, and often an artist's complete catalog.
I don't think my central nervous system could handle going from "Welcome to the Jungle" to "Cleaning Out My Closet" to "Your Cheatin' Heart" to "Chattanooga Choo Choo." This ain't some 5-watt college station, dammit.
No, I survive from jag to jag, with random full-length CDs and Phil Hendrie bridging the gaps. It's the way I roll.
-- A few weeks ago I signed up for a free Twitter account, and think I actually like it. Up until now I haven't been too enthusiastic about so-called social networking sites.
I have a MySpace page, but rarely use it. I tried to maintain it for a while, but lost interest. I logged on a few days ago, for the first time in weeks, and there were dozens of requests to be my "friend."
Of those dozens, I'd say a full 75% were from "girls" who look like nineteen year old strippers, bent forward at the waist, pursing their lips, and mashing their breasts together like they're caught in an elevator door. Yeah, right. They want to be my friend... For some reason my ulterior-motive alarm just caught fire.
I x'd out of it, and may never return. I don't think I've ever seen a Facebook page in my life, and never really got into Digg and Reddit and those kinds of things, either. StumbleUpon sends me a lot of traffic, so I have a warm spot in my heart for them… But other than that, not an abundance of enthusiasm.
Twitter, however, is pretty cool. You're supposed to post short answers to the question "What are you doing?" throughout the day. Each post is limited to 140 characters, so you can't go on and on with it. And you can "follow" what other people are doing, and interact if you'd like, etc. etc.
I was highly skeptical at first, but find myself enjoying it. I'm not real consistent with my posts so far, but usually get going on the weekends.
If you'd like to follow me around, in a virtual manner, be my guest. And I, in return, will follow you.
-- And finally, the Question of the Day: Have you ever knowingly been scammed?
Remember I told you we bought new mattresses and box springs for the boys' beds, with some of our stimulus money? Well, we paid for delivery, and specifically asked the guy if it included removal of the old mattresses. He assured us it did, and it even said as much on the receipt.
But the guys who delivered them tried to tell Toney (I was at work) she needed to give them
$30 cash, before they'd take the old stuff with them. She showed them the receipt, and they backed down. But wonder how many times that crap actually works?
Toney called their corporate headquarters the next day and ripped them
a whole series of new assholes, and they tried to convince her it was all a big misunderstanding. Uh huh.
Years ago Sunshine and Mumbles were moving, and called several moving companies for estimates. They went with the lowest bid, of course, and they arrived at the agreed upon time.
And as soon as the company had all of S&M's worldly possessions, they demanded two thousand additional dollars before they'd deliver it. The original amount, they said, was an estimate, and the actual amount was more.
A classic moving company scam! Sunny tried to play hardball with them, but the guy told her their stuff was "somewhere" inside a huge warehouse in Brooklyn, NY.
And it wasn't unusual for entire truckloads to go missing. Heh.
So, have you ever been scammed like that? You know, where there's not even a shadow of a doubt what happened? Use the comments link to tell us about it.
