Happy New Year from the Englewood Ewys

'06 brought us many changes.  Some good, some, well, have taken some getting used to....

 

Morbid Curiosity

Does Saddam Hussein count as completing the trifecta?

Another Blizzard Update

That's the garbage we put out on December 21st.  It probably won't be picked up until some time next year. 

Governor Bill Owens has declared yet another state of emergency.  I don't remember state of emergencies being so common.  Maybe Owens, who has a week left in his gubernatorial tenure, is out to bolster his legacy, or we're just really wimpy.  A flake falls and we call in the the National Guard.   Although after the last blizzard people have become a bit jumpy.  The local news, thrilled to be relevant, has pushed aside pet fashion shows and smoldering investigative reports into old people giving their retirement to telemarketers and elevated their wacky weather guy to the anchor chair.   Yesterday every channel listed the top five or ten or how many important blizzard tips they could brainstorm.  On every list was the importance of having food.  Thank God someone tells us this stuff.  Anyway, Sarah went to the store last night and there was no more milk, the bread was gone and the produce had been decimated.  So we have a sack of hamburger buns and some kind of diet soy drink.  Bring it on!

God Grants Gerald Ford's Wish to Meet the Godfather of Soul

James Brown recently shimmied into eternity and now, finally, Gerald Ford has pardoned himself.  It's not like I was impatiently waiting for the former president to die, but you've got to know that CNN has had his obit queued up since the Reagan era.   Now the Godfather of Soul and Richard Nixon's Republican friend are sharing a room in Purgatory.  Is this Hell for Brown or Ford?  Of course everyone will want to know who will complete the triumvirate of the deceased.  I think the appropriate finish to this unlikely duo would be the sudden passing of Jennifer Lopez.

But it won't be.  It very much feels like it will be me.  It's three in the morning and I'm only up because of a visit to this Noodles and Company.  Sarah and I were in our typical post-work hunger frenzy when we ended up at the pasta chain's latest Denver location.  I ordered the "balanced meal" deal.  It had a salad and some noodles and chicken.  It was their newest promotion and it chimed the benefits of a good square, including weight loss.  I had no idea they meant bulimia.   I'm sure this doesn't happen all of the time but you get what you ask for when you order chicken from a high school kid.   I should have just said "yah, I'd like to be eye level with my dog in the wee hours of the morning.   Do you have anything that'll do that?" 

Why, yes, it's the Balanced Meal.  You'd be surprised how stable you are on all fours.

What's Hot this Year? Junk

As with other years, junk was the number one bestselling toy for children.  Junk has traditionally topped the gift-giving charts and there's no sign of it ever losing any ground to the number two gift, gum, or the very distant number three, apple in the toe of the stocking.  Some rumors have surfaced that it's the same apple year after year. 

The junk that has the most staying power is the electric racetrack.  I got the opportunity to help Santa by assembling for Tyler and Tucker the same type of track that twenty-five years ago had been painfully pieced together for my brother and myself.   That year, however, Santa somehow found a track that was a hand-me-down from my father.  He didn't, however, bother to find the second car so the races were rather predictable.  But that track, like the one that nearly brought me to tears at 1am Christmas morning, worked one time and inexplicably stopped.  The toy lasted approximately one hour less than it took me to affix all the little warning stickers to the guardrails. 

The piece of junk winning the award for greatest comeback is the Transformer.  Nothing beckons destruction like the folding and unfolding of cheap, plastic parts.  Tyler got one that's supposed to morph from a firetruck into a robot.  That's not natural.   Maybe it's because my brain has hardened but I could not figure out how Optimus Prime's head is supposed to come out of the engine.  Mr. Prime has since suffered severe trauma and he's currently day-to-day for the upcoming battle to destroy/save the universe.

Finally, the junk to most likely to poison the cat is the annual Silly Putty/Flarp gooey gel creation.  What joy for  the toy industry that something typically sealed in 55-gallon drums and buried deep beneath the Nevada desert can be marketed as a toy.  The Flarp makes great fart sounds that brought endless joy to the five and six-year-old boys.

One Last Blizzard Update

Left:  Paco the Pica Pup feeling pukie. 

Friday, 4:10am:  Paco vomits Brillo pad.  Take the worst thing you've ever smelled, steep it in a fermenting stew of dog bile and cat poop, let it sit for at least twenty hours (lower elevations about 16) and you have what was ejected from our little boy's belly.

I tried to go back to sleep but wretched just thinking about it.  Paco did his best to comfort me by licking my face.

 Right:  Brillo™ stomach cleaner.

  Below:  A new day dawns.   We might get mail today.

 

"We're going to be Walking"