Lars and the Cat Man

Hello, readers! I hope I still have readers left - I hardly blog anymore these days. I've been really busy and blah, blah, blah... It's the same old song and dance, I'm afraid, but at least it's true. I've had very little time to relax, but this weekend has been great. I slept until 11:00, which is a rare treat indeed when you have three kids.

So, I have to apologize in advance (before you keep reading), because I have nothing really of any significance to say, nothing poignant or even substantial. But keep reading anyway, if you want.

I was driving down the street the other day, and I saw this man walking (this is the second time I have seen him). He's probably in his early 50's, and he is built like one of those former strongest man champions - very broad shoulders, and he walks with his arms out in that "strong guy" posture. He has a big mustache, the kind where the sides curl up like a smile, and he wears lumberjack boots, shorts and suspenders. No shirt. When I see him, I always wave hello, and I've secretly named him Lars. He's a very interesting character.

There's also a guy out here who rides a bicycle, usually with no shirt (what's with no-shirt guys out here?), and he has a rubber ball that he bounces waaaay high while he rides. Bounce. Catch. Bounce. Catch. He never misses a beat as he rides his bicycle. I've seen him quite a bit, and I always wave, but I don't think he'll ever wave back. That might be a bit much to ask with all the riding and bouncing and catching.

But neither one of those guys even comes close to the most unusual person I've ever seen walking down the street here in Florida. That title belongs to the Cat, uh, Person in Miami South Beach. He dresses in a tight spandex-type suit and wears a cat mask. Then he slinks up and down Ocean Ave at night, among all the South Beach night-lifers. He's totally bizarre but very nice. People are fabulous with all their eccentricities.

Here's an actual video I found of him, the Cat Man:

Cat Man...South Beach


That's really all I have on the table for you today. Now I'm going to go fold laundry and watch Wall-E with the kids. Take care and everything!

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Life's Like a Cup-O-Noodles

Sorry again for being so out of touch lately, friends. Life gets you bogged down sometimes, ya know?

So I've gone from having nothing but business to talk about to having everything else to say. I bet that makes for more interesting reading. Let's hope so. First, Happy Holidays to everyone! I hope they are grand (or at least joyful). This will be my second Christmas celebrated here in Florida, and since I've moved here, it's been a task to get myself into the holiday spirit. Aside from the days being shorter and the tremendous number of inflatable Christmas decorations in the yards of many, many Palm Bay homes, it doesn't really look much like Christmas. We've had some cloudy days and lots of rain, and the temperatures are a little cooler but our holidays are primarily presided over by the Heat Miser.

Heat Miser, you grumpy bastard.

The very idea of dreaming of a white Christmas is just ridiculous. Everything is still green - even my lawn. True I don't have to shovel snow, and the beach is fun on Christmas Eve, but I definitely took the winter season for granted before. Even when I lived in Phoenix, the snow was always a short drive away, and you could see snow on the mountains even from my back yard. But I'm doing my darndest. We put up a chaotic, yet beautiful, Christmas tree, and I've been drenching my home in holiday smells. I think the reason for the overkill on Christmas inflatables here (Santa on a Harley?) is largely due to the lack of anything naturally wintertime out here. We're grasping for whatever we can get.

And while we're on the "Florida" thing... The Smoking Gun Presents World's Dumbest (Criminals, Daredevil's, Meltdowns, etc) has become one of my very favorite shows lately. But I've begun noticing (and this is true of other similar reality TV shows as well), that clips from Florida are disproportionately common. About every third video clip is from Florida. At first I thought that this was maybe because Florida law enforcement is more forthcoming with their police videos, but then I realized that many of the clips they show are from home videos as well. Draw your own conclusion, I guess. Maybe all these here skeeters done sucked the smart right outta Florida!  

And lastly, a cautionary story... This isn't an urban legend. You won't find it on Mythbusters, and I didn't hear it from a friend of a friend's cousin's Great Uncle Bob. (Everyone has an Uncle Bob, right?) Nope. This very thing happened to yours truly. I feel it's my civic duty to share so that nobody else has to relive the nightmare a Ramen Cup-O-Noodles can cause. WARNING: The rest of this blog may not be suitable for those of you faint of heart or weak of stomach. If you are a weenie, please don't read the rest. After all, ignorance is bliss, right? Now, I used to enjoy a Cup-O-Noodles every now and then. It's a tasty quick snack when you're starving and don't mind a slight "foam insulation" flavor. Plus it's cheap. Bonus! But beware. You know the phrase, "You get what you pay for?" Apparently, one day what I paid for was a small cup of noodles with a big clump of hair in it! It was horrific, and I still get the heebie jeebies thinking about it. So, if you must Ramen in the future, please do the responsible thing. Buy the big brick of noodles, go the long way (all 3 minutes of it), and cook your own. After all, life's like a Cup-O-Noodles. You never know what you're gonna get.

Free prize in every cup!

What's a Poor Thinking Girl To Do?

Now that the presidential campaign is in full swing, I have been hearing tons upon tons of "vote for me" ads, but so far I have yet to hear something that absolutely convinces me to vote one way or the other. I plan to vote this year - I always do. In fact, I love to tell how I missed out on a great steak dinner with my family to wait 3 hours, in heels, very pregnant, in the cold to vote in the last election, and I would do it all again. Yeah, I was pretty pissed that everything I voted for lost, but hey, at least I earned the right to gripe about it. Anyway, I've been listening to all the ads. While I have to respect that McCain's ads have all been positive (not much mud-slinging going on there), they are very vague. "Vote for me and Palin because we are just the awesomest! Yep, we are great." Unfortunately, they are not really tellling me a lot about what they will do if they get to run this great nation of ours. Contrary-wise, Obama's campaign ads seem to run a-plenty with mud, but they are at least informative. From them, I understand that McCain said that the answer to the homeowners' in crisis due to the economic downturn is to, "skip their vacations and get second jobs." While that is very Dr. Phil of him, it is not very practical, nor is it very sympathetic to the realities of these homeowners. I also understand that he voted against an initiative that would provide equal pay to women in the workplace, stating it would "place a burden on business" and that "women simply need to seek out more training and education." That's right, ladies - we earn 23% less in the workplace than our male counterparts. How very sexist-pig of him. What say you, Mr. McCain, to a woman who finds herself facing financial hardship? Should she get 2.46 jobs and spend the rest of her waking hours furthering her education? That said, Obama has yet to clue me in on how he would address these issues himself. I find it interesting that McCain would chide Obama for his lack of experience and then appoint a vice president with her own lack of experience with which to contend. I also have noticed that the media has never missed an opportunity to point out untoward remarks made by Obama's pastor, yet McCain's own spiritual advisor called the disaster caused by Katrina in New Orleans "a punishment for the support of gay rights." From what I can find, they are both in support of a wall built to stop the flow of illegal immigration. This is one of the most stupid ideas I can think of for somebody to support. So far, the campaign has left me apalled by the idea of voting for McCain, so I will probably be voting against him, in favor of Obama. But can somebody please tell me what I would be voting for?