And Bill calls me cheap...?

I'm moving down the road from Lincoln to Omaha to be closer to my job, which is a good thing now since gas prices are rising to insane levels. My brother, Bill, commented to me that he'd like for us to go to a Nebraska football game this year as a kind of twin-brother bonding thing "since you're moving!" he exclaimed as if he was actually crying, but wasn't.

I said sure, but that Dad hadn't mentioned anything about getting tickets from his brother this year so I wasn't sure if we'd be able to go to any games.

Yesterday, I see a thread on a local Husker football message board that informs me that there are still some tickets available for purchase for the NU/Pitt game coming up in three weeks.

I call up Bill and tell him so.

His response, "Well, I don't want to pay for it!"

And he calls me cheap. He'll try to tell you that it's because his wife is starting a new job and things are tight, but admit it, Bill. You've got a little of the cheap in you. We are twins after all...

See the original Bill calling me cheap story here...

We have reached a few milestones with Julia...

My daugher, Julia, is 4-years-old. Literally, for years I've tried off and on to teach her how to use a mouse for the kids computer learning games we have. Up to this point, it's been fruitless. A few nights ago, she declared that she wanted to play the I Spy Jr. computer game that we have. I pop it in and I'm tired, so I suggest that she does all the clicking. I guide her hand over the areas and show her went to click.

Like a fish takes to water, she started to slowly moving the mouse and clicking the images in the right way. Now she's off and running and managed to not only finish one of the mini games, but to also start several new mini games within the program. It then that I was happy and sad. Happy that she had a achieved the independence, but also sad that she doesn't need my help as much.

I'm already starting to embarrass her, too.

I picked her up from daycare the other day and ask, "What did you do today?" while we're walking through the center and towards the door to leave. Normally, I wait to ask her when we get in the car.

She says quietly, "Stop talking."

I thought I didn't hear her right, so I ask again, "What did you do today?"

Julia responds with, "I need you to stop talking now."

"What?" I ask increduously.

"Stop talking!" Julia exclaims.

It was only until we were driving away in the car that she told me what she did that day.

Thinking it might have been a fluke, I ask her again the next day, "What did you do today?"

She again responds with, "Stop talking!"

"Why can't I speak to you," I ask.

"I need you to stop talking to me!" Julia exclaims.

I don't know if it's a class thing or if she's seen her friends not talking to their parents when they get picked up because it's not something I've seen in any of her movies that she watches.

It's interesting to see her get an independent streak, but it kind of stings when your daughter tells you to stop talking to her.

That doesn't come at a price, though. We're walking to the car and she says yesterday, "I want some Newtons (Fig Newtons)."

I say, "Why should I give you Newtons? You won't talk to me."

She hasn't gotten the correlation between me controlling her food and snack intack and her being nice to me, but we've got years to work on that (heh heh).

Remind me not to sell a house to Mary...

My friend at work, let's call her Mary, is buying a house from these people. I don't know them, but the more I hear about the house, the more I'm feeling sorry for them.

Mary had been renting a house because they're old house in a small town far away from this job had sold a lot sooner than expected. They had moved closer to Omaha and were renting a house while waiting for their old house to sell. When they had bought the old house, it had taken four years. This time, it only took four months for them to sell it, which is very unusual for a small town market.

So Mary and her husband ended up offering on a house close to Omaha. All seemed to be going well when the offer was accepted. That's until the house inspection was done. Radon was detected in the basement. For those of you that don't know, Radon is a colorless, oderless gas that has been linked to giving people lung cancer.

Mary and her husband demanded that a Radon venting system should be installed in the house. That costs over 1000 dollars. Now I'm in the process of selling my house and my liability for fixing stuff on this house is only 1000 dollars. Apparently, the people they're buying for have no limit because they not only have installed the Radon venting system, but they've also made various other repairs to the house to the total of over 2000 dollars.

I swear once a week, Mary comes over to me and says, "Wait 'til you hear what's happening with the house now?"

I sigh and say "What now?"

She'll tell me the new thing and I'll hold my hands to my temples because I'm not feeling sorry for Mary, I'm feeling sorry for those poor people that they're having to fix more and more things. One of them was a load-bearing pole that was taken out of the house for some reason and now has to be put back in. And there might have been some bug spraying, but I'm not sure about that.

The other day, she comes over and says, "Wait 'til yo hear what's happening with the house now?"

I say, "What now?!" again because I'm already cringing at this point.

"It rained really hard the other day before the last inspection and the house inspector detected two roof leaks!"

"Oh no. What's going to happen now?" I groan. I can alreay guess what's going to happen next. Those people are undoubtedly in for it.

She says, "Well, they're going to have to fix it."

"Oh! Those poor people! I can only imagine this happening to us." I'm picturing my wife going "What now?!" and crying everytime a new repair comes up.

"I know, but it still needs to be fixed. They've already tried fixing it, but I guess they just put tar over the spots. I'm like 'That's not going to cut it.' I want a contractor to come and fix it."

I realize that it has to be done, but somewhere along the line, this couple that's selling the house got screwed. They went with the wrong realtor that isn't protecting them or they didn't pick a home warranty like we did or the weather was bad or someone like Mary bought their house (just kidding).

Has it been seven days already...?

I kind of pride myself on getting an update on this site at least once a week to give people a reason to come back. Usually, it's on a Tuesday, but a litany of mitigating circumstances have hindered my ability to post.

First off, I take a bus on my way to and from work. On the bus, there are AC plug ins so I can plug in my battery-less 5 dollar laptop. However, I ended up not typing anything one day because I forgot the damned thing. Then the next day I remembered, but the AC plug ins and the air conditioning went out so I just took a nap since I couldn't type and it was a sauna in the bus. This morning, I was almost late because I ran back into my house to grab the laptop only to find out that the bus wasn't even the bus, it was a mini-bus with no AC outlets, so I was kind of screwed.

So I've got excuses, but oh have I got ideas! I'll probably post some tomorrow, but it's not as if anyone is paying attention. Maybe I shouldn't feel guilty for neglecting this site, but I do feel it's a habit that I need to continue.

Most Haunted is most excellent...

There's a show on the Travel Channel called, Most Haunted that my wife loves to watch. Lately, she's been interested in shows about hauntings, which is a welcome change from the 24 hours of cops and detective reality shows that she usually watches. If it isn't City Confidential, it's something like Cops that she's watching.

Most Haunted is a show show in England and the crew there visit some of England's most haunted places, hence the name. The crew consists of the female host, a historian, a paranormal research and various other crew members. The only one that I really remember the name of is Derek Acorah, a medium who speaks to his contact 'Sam' for information about places they're visiting. He gets a sense of what's happening in places and gets the names of people that haunt the place from Sam. Usually, he freaks out the staff by freaking out at things they cannot see. In one episode, Derek continually yells at a bad spirit, who he claimed was responsible for most of the mischief in the place

They usually hole up in a haunted place for 24 hours. When it gets dark, they turn off all the lights and use night vision cameras. They get in groups to see if they can contact the ghosts or sometimes they split up even more to single camera encounters in dark rooms to try to get in contact with the ghosts that reside in these haunted places.

The Most Haunted crew has visited a brewery, several hotels, a huge opera house-type mansion and a prison. Some have shown more activity than others, but all had something strange happen at one time or another.

One particular hotel in England had activity in room 214 and 217 in which guest have been woken up in the middle of the night to see a woman in white. Other times, people hear someone whispering in their ears or pushing on their chests. The hotel staff said that people come down white as sheets with tears in their eyes requesting another room.

In this hotel, nothng extraordinary happened other than the women crew members that were lying on a bed in one of the haunted rooms felt that the bed was moving. It was only when they reviewed a stationary camera that they noticed the chair and bed moving. Over a six-minute period, the chair turned to one side and then back to it's original position and the bed shifted in place a few times. This was from sped up footage. Pretty creepy if you ask me.

At another location, some of the guys on the crew attempt to contact a ghost that supposedly threw a boy across the room in a haunted hotel. After a long time of nothing happening, one of the men yells that the ghost must be afraid because there's a room full of grown men. It's at this time that a door across the room bangs hard and the TV turns on. The guys turn it off. It comes back on. They keep trying and it comes back on. They unplug the TV and it still turns on. Needless to say, they hightail it out of there and spend the night in one of their crew trucks rather than go back.

Personally, I think that ghosts exist. If I ever saw one, I'd be screaming and running out of the place I saw the ghost like a little girl. I'm that much of a pussy when it comes to ghosts. If I see a movie about ghosts, I usually have to turn on all of the lights when I move from room to room. Sleep that night will usually be restless as I'll relieve the parts of the movie that were creepy.

In most haunted, I have to admire the restraint and courage of the cast members of the show. When they turn out the lights, it's bad enough that every light in the place is off, but some of the members go off by themselves to try to contact the ghosts. I just have to say something to that if that was suggested to me "No f&*king way!"

Oh sure, I might go in there and sit down, but as soon as a gust of wind goes by me, a floorboard creaks or any other strange noise occurs, you'd probably see the camera flying to the ground and me running away like the sissy boy that I am. I mean, what's the point? Why by myself? Send me with someone braver than me that I can cling to? Sure. Send me in the deepest, farthest part of a haunted house by myself? F&*k. That.

I'm sure my days of not seeing ghosts are going to expire sometime. There are too many strange places to visit. Too many hotels to frequent. New homes to buy that may have had a murder committed in them.

The closest I've ever came to seeing or feeling the presence of a ghost was when I went on a business trip to Davenport, Iowa. The guy I went with was a devout Catholic and booked up in a place that used to be an old Abbey. Consequently, it was called the Abbey. Basically, it was a place that used to have a chapel and nuns would live there until they died.

Before we got to the place, the Catholic guy talked about how he had stayed there the year before and he just had such a feeling of peace when he was at the Abbey. He talked about it at length. I'm not religious, so I knew I wouldn't find peace there, but I figured that maybe it was relaxing so I'd be open minded.

We check into the hotel and we each go to our separate rooms. My room was the room closest to everything. The Catholic guy informed me that the rooms on the second and third floors were rooms that used to be part of the rooms the nuns used to stay in, but walls were knocked down and three nun rooms were made into one big room.

I walk in the room and set my bags down. Everything is white. The building was white. The walls were white. The bedspread was white. Interesting...

I sit down on the bed and turn on the TV. It was then that I noticed the pamplet on the table. I start to read. It's the history of the Abbey, which explains that the nuns stayed here until they died and never left. During Sunday mass, they were behind a veiled screen so that people wouldn't see them clearly. After the died, they were buried in the basement, which were ... (say what?) I read that back. Yep, it says the nuns were buried in the basement after they died. The next sentence assured me that all of them were removed and buried in a cemetary during the renovation of the Abbey. Very reassuring. Isn't this how Poltergeist ended? They found out that there were ghosts because the suburb was built on top of a cemetary?

Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but I always felt that I was being watched when I was there. I hated going to sleep because of the whole alone in the dark thing that I mentioned. I would eventually fall into a restless sleep. It was then that every single night I was jolted away to find myself staring at the alarm clock at 4 am. I never saw anything or felt anything move in the room, but I was still creeped out.

Curious, I go upstairs one day to the third floor where I was told that one of the old nun rooms was set up to show people what kind of room they lived in. I walk onto the floor and feel creeped out already. It's not a very wide hallway so I immediately hope I don't see at the end two dead nuns like Danny sees those two twin girls in the Shining that ask him to play with him. I quickly walk down to the middle room and peer through the glass door set up. There is a room the size of a walk in closet with a small bed and some clothes hung up near it. I turn and quickly race to the end of the hallway, all the way not looking back while the hair stands up on the back of my head.

Yes, I'm a wimp and it was probably my mind playing tricks on me, but I genuinely felt creeped out. Not the Catholic guy! He would come to breakfast every morning and ask how I slept. I'd say that I slept okay and he'd go one his usual, "Oh, I slept so good! I feel so at peace here!" spiel.

Okay, so that story wasn't that creepy save for the realization that bodies were at one time buried in the basement, but I have a better one of what happened to a friend of mine on another company trip.

I think it was in Michigan where this occurred. My friend Cody was set up to stay with a few other guys on a company buying trip in a historic hotel. This historic hotel also had the reputation for being haunted.

He had checked into his room and not noticed anything unusual, but it wasn't until they had returned from their first day of work and were sitting at the hotel bar when they started to hear the stories. The barmaid there was telling them that some think the hotel was haunted because strange things happened. She said a few of the rooms had activity in them. Cody asked if his room number was one of them. She smiled and said, "Oh, you're going to have fun tonight!"

Cody thought it was weird, but didn't place much stock in the story. He went to his room and watched TV until it was time for his usual bedtime. At one point, Cody reached for the remote and noticed that he couldn't find it. He had just used it, but now it was gone. He looked under the covers, under the bed and in the desk drawers, but found no sign of the remote control.

He thought he'd look for the remote in the morning and turned out the light. Shortly after turning out the light, Cody was startled by the knobs on the locked double doors suddendly clank hard as if someone had tried to open them. He sat up with a 'Huh!' reaction when he felt something whiz by his head. Bang! Something crashed into the headboard behind him. He quickly turned on the light. It was the remote control. Quickly, he turned on the TV and just sat there... for two hours. It was about 2 in the morning when he finally said aloud, "Okay... I can live with you if you just deal with me for a few days." He shut the light and TV off and went to sleep without incident.

Not wanting to be seen as a total wimp, he didn't mention it to the hotel staff, but he did mention it to his co-workers. They'd say stuff like, "Hey Cody, good luck with your ghosts!" when they'd leave him for the night. Cody didn't go right to his room after dinner, however. He went to the bar and stayed there drinking until the bar closed. Then he'd quickly run into the room, take a shower and go to bed. Cody would then get up in the morning an leave as soon as he was dressed.

The remote control flying by his head wasn't the only incident, however. Cody said that even though the hallway behind the wall that his bed sat against was usually deserted, it seemed well traveled during the night as he heard contant sets of footsteps all night long.

With the week finally over, Cody wearily checked into another hotel for a layover before flying back to Nebraska. When he checked in, the desk clerk told him that all the regular rooms were booked, but they had put him in a suite for the night. He opens the door and there's a room with a hottub in the middle of it. He thought to himself, "Well, this makes up for it."

When a I worked in San Francisco, another friend of mine was telling me about a friend of his in the San Francisco area who lived in a haunted house. He said that this guy didn't really like to talk about it, but would say that there were mainly things that would move, lights that were switched on that shouldn't have been and doors closing or opening by themselves.

One incident occurred when this guy was sitting in his living room by himself watching television. He hears the garage door open up and a car drive in. Pretty soon he sees his wife walk through the living room. He said hello to her, but she just walked on by and up the stairs. He just figured that she had a hard day at work and wanted to rest. He was just starting to wonder when she was going to come back downstairs when he heard the garage door open, a car pull in and his wife walked into the room. He turned white as a sheet when she walked in and said hello.

He had sort of noticed that this woman that walked through looked indifferent to him being there and was dressed in clothes that he had never seen. They looked upstairs, but the mystery woman was no where to be seen.

All of this talk of ghosts tends to creep me out, especially when it's dark and I'm alone, like right now. Granted I have my cat with me, but it still creeps me out. However, part of me seems compelled to read up on ghosts and to someday try to seek one out. I just love to torture myself I guess.

Pop-Tarts winning race for most disgusting breakfast cereal...

I can see how hard it would be to invent new cereals. For that matter, inventing any type of breakfast food seems to be a challenge in an off itself. Does the inventor dare introduce a food that normally isn't reserved for breakfast?

When it comes to breakfast, you have your staples. There are your basic eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, french toast, waffles, pancakes, cereal, etc. Some items you can get away with at breakfast time, others you can't.

Growing up, I always envied kids that could eat cereals like Fruity Pepples or Cocoa Pebbles. I would see the commercials with Fred Flintstone about to kick Barney Rubbles ass for stealing Fred's pepples and immediately I would think that would be good to eat. For some reason, I was never allowed to get these cereals. Was it some vendetta my parents had against Hanna Barbera for commecializing their most famous characters? Was my Mom still in shock over Wilma being the first pregnant cartoon character on TV? Who knows. The party line at my house was that it was too expensive, which I've come to realize now is a complete load of crap.

I shop. I compare prices. It's one of the cheapest freaking cereals in the cereal aisle! Mom has some explaining to do.

So we were limited to the basics on cereal: Rice Krispies, Captain Crunch, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Wheaties and Life. Wheaties were fine if you put a shitload of sugar on them. Life, on the other hand, was only good if you put a shitload of sugar on it AND ate it really fast since it seemed to go soggy within 30 seconds, which rendered it gross to eat. We rarely ate stuff like Pop-Tarts, but I wasn't really that much of a fan of them. Maybe it was because we were limited to flavors like Strawberry, which I didn't much care for.

Fast forward 25 years and the breakfast fare hasn't changed much for cereals. You still have your cereals based on the cartoon character of the month. You still have the selections of healthy cereals like Shredded Wheat which tastes like shit no matter how much sugar you pour on it! You still have the old favorites like Cap n Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, Honeycomb, but there are more variations of them, not that I'm jealous. I still prefer the originals.

Pop-Tarts on the other hand have gone through a sort of whacky transition that one can only guess that the flavors are thought up by a bunch of guys getting drunk, stoned or both the night before and wake up at noon to come up with ideas. I thought Pop-Tarts was getting a little edgy when they introduced a Frosted Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tart. Then came such gems like Frosted Smores, Frosted Chocolate Chip, Frosted Caramel and Chocolate, French Toast and my new favorite, Frosted Cinnamon Roll. Maybe that's why they have the slogan "Crazy Good" now.

I was strolling the cereal aisle a few weeks ago when I came across this:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pop-Tarts. That's right. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough that is normally cold and used to make Chocolate Cookies. The stuff normally rolled into balls that you used to sneak off of your Dad's kitchen counter when he was out of the room because he'd yell at you for not eating the ones baked in the oven. That stuff. In a Pop-tart.

Maybe I had a sugar rush high that told me to grab it, but for some reason, it sounded really good. Laura made a face, but I grabbed it anyway.

The next morning I grabbed the box, unwrapped the Pop-tarts and popped them in the toaster. I plopped them on a plate and sat down in front of the tv for what promised to be a unique and delicious experience. I took a bite and then another. Then I took bites less frequently. It wasn't long before my hope of a blissful breakfast experience had turned to hell faster than Honeybunny yelling "Any of you pigs f&*king move and I'll execute every last one of you motherf*&*kers!" in the coffeeshop scene in Pulp Fiction. The problem is this. The mind remembers how good chocolate chip cookie dough is, but you don't eat it hot, you eat it cold. Quickly, the Pop-tarts start tasting like sweetened glue stuck in a pastry. I could only eat one. I stuck the rest in the freezer and they do taste okay frozen, but not by much. It's safe to say whoever did the market research for this product picked kids that had no tastebuds. Or they bribed them with better Pop-Tarts.

Should it surprise you that there are several other disgusting sounding flavors ready to be tasted? Let's see the hitlist.

There's Strawberry Milkshake. Aww... isn't that nice. We have the cold fuzzy feeling of an ice cold strawberry milkshake in a tall glass all stuff down in a crusty pastry all set for a warm up in your toaster. The only product with milk in its name and isn't cold that actually tastes good has to be milk chocolate. Any other attempts, and I'm mainly referring to those horrific cereal bars with milk in the center, all make the milk taste like sweetened paste. I can only assume this holds true.

There's Frosted Cookies and Cream, which actually might work, but the Frosted Hot Fudge Sundae sound just as bad as the Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tart. Memo to Pop-Tart guys. Keep the hot stuff hot. Keep the cold stuff cold. Let's put a McDLT spin on this one guys.