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The Teenager called me unexpectedly this evening to ask for advice on how to react to an issue that developed while he was staying at his girl's house involving a disagreement between her parents.
After listening to the gist of the story, I told him to calm down and come home for the evening. I think I made sense to him and he should be home by the time I come home from playing Scrabble in Palos Verdes this evening.
We'll See.
From the AP:
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) -- Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.
Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.
Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.
Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.
Although he dropped off the pop culture radar in the '80s, Knievel always had fans and enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in recent years. In later years he still made a good living selling his autographs and endorsing products. Thousands came to Butte, Mont., every year as his legend was celebrated during the "Evel Knievel Days" festival.
"They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives," Knievel said. "People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner."
His death came just two days after it was announced that he and rapper Kanye West had settled a federal lawsuit over the use of Knievel's trademarked image in a popular West music video.
I remember having some of his toys in the early 1970's, including getting a a cool-ass motorcycle that had EK as a posable action figure on it for my 7th birthday. I could take the EK figure and make him stand on his head on the handlebars of his motorcycle.
RIP, Evel. You thrilled us all.
So, having successfully (crosses fingers) staved off the 2nd Allergy attack of 2007, I started yesterday and continue today with a god damned toothache. It is towards the back of the right side of my mouth and it is extremely annoying.
This has the ramification of necessitating a hellish, On-The-405-San-Diego-Freeway-During Rush Hour, 45 minute (90 minute round trip) ride to my dentist who is in North Hollywood, a good 32 miles from my house.
It is a trip that must be made however, because this is just going to get worse.
Damn, this bites. :>(
Just received a phone call that my paternal grandmother is in the hospital in Huntington Park, due to a Kidney and Bladder infection.
Considering her advanced age (92), she is most definitely in the sunset of her life, so I think that a visit to the hospital to see her is in the cards, because the very real possibility exists that she may not make it out of this hospital visit alive.
I hope she does make it out alive. With God as my witness, I really hopes she does.
Just a matter of record, my supervisor showed his face at work today for the first time since 10/2/07. Who knows when I might see him again, so here it is recorded.
My son had an interview this afternoon in Downtown L.A. with Mutual Life of Omaha to see about a position doing life insurance sales.
Good luck, AJ. You go boy!
So, finally, after like 4 months, our pet dog who is part Beagle part Chihuahua has gone to the Hawthorne Dog and Cat hospital near the house for a full checkup, shots update and full grooming.
She will be ready to be picked up after 1500 hrs. Once this is done and we have legal proof that all of her shots are up to date, we can have doggie tags made up for her and take her to the police department to be registered.
She will be our dog legally, once and for all. Yay!
Miserable fucking day, spent sneezing and with a runny nose all day. God, days like these at work are freaking endless.
Needless to say, I arrived home, stumbled into my bedroom and knocked out for like 2 1/2 hours. My son woke me up about 1800 hrs and I had dinner with him and his girlfriend and then went outside, still feeling like crap. I can tell I have another 24 to 48 hours of drippy-nose, sneezy, allergy-induced hell ahead of me.
God, how I HATE these 2 to 3 day events during the year. And now, with what happened to me last year with the irregular heart beat (induced, I believe by the cocktail of medicines I was taking to try and ward off a massive cold), I am completely gun shy about cold meds that can increase your blood pressure.
So, I am going to ride this one out, letting it flush itself out of my system of it's own accord. more suffering ahead, me thinks. *Sigh*.
So I arrived home to find that the Teenager was griping that the sound on his TV was cutting in and out randomly.
I messed around with the menus on both the TV and the DVR to no avail. One phone call to Time Warner later and we were on the way to the local Time Warner office to get the boxed replaced. Replaced it was and we came back to the house where the Teenager set it all up once again.
Presto. No more sound fade out the rest of the night and there ws joy in Mudville once again and order was restored to the Universe. I hope we are able to enjoy HD content in the house without any further problems. So far, I have NOT been impressed with the QoS coming from Time Warner.
Par for the course I suspect, what with the the Monopoly powers enjoyed by Time Warner in our area. Double *sigh*.
Isa stops by
In other items of note, Isa and Tori stopped by after 1800 hours to give me temporary access to a picture of my cousin Terri for me to scan so that I could uploaded to a blog post I made recently commemorating what would have been Terri's 45th birthday this past November 14.
A Visit to PC Club
Also, before going to Mom's house for a visit (where I replaced her Wireless mouse with a wired, USB model) , I stopped by PC Club in Hawthorne to see about determining the cause of failure on the last working (or so I thought) PC that I had in my garage. No Joy. It would seem the unit has a bad motherboard.
Considering that PC Club has brand-new 2Ghz Celeron PC's with an 80GB HD, 512 MB of RAM and a copy of XP home for $299, there is no way in hell I am going to put any money in to this PC I brought in tonight. It will be disassembled and the HD's backed up as soon as I have some time.
Well.
While at lunch earlier this afternoon, I spoke to the cable guy who was at the house working on getting AJ's new HD TV working with the HD DVR we got on Friday from Time Warner. So, the guy asks me *WHY* he is there, because he claims that the signal is working perfectly well.
He also assures me that he has setup the TV to talk to the DVR via the HDMI Cable and has configured the TV to output the sound via HDMI also. Anyways, he verifies for me that the HD signal is coming in sharp, as he has surfed over to Discovery HD and it's all good.
So, the very first instance of High Definition TV has arrived at the Lopez Manor and life is good.
Nice.
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