Man, is The Girl I Am Interested In going to get another BIG SURPRISE when she wakes up this morning! Last Friday I sent her some flowers and she loved them! NOW, after I found out my vision insurer is picking up the cost of my next set of contact lenses (because they are medically necessary)...and after my BIG BONUS CHECK got deposited on Saturday…

...I went ahead and got her tickets to FLY TO PHOENIX for Memorial Day Weekend! She wants to go to the Grand Canyon, where she visited there as a small child. So we’ll go watch the sun set there...and with that, a new chapter in my life may very well be opening!

Stay tuned!

I’ve been pretty wiped out today after I had my first eye exam in 2 years. Yeah, don’t kick my ass. But I got it done and everything’s OK.
Trouble is, the eye doctor dialates the pupils and that makes driving home FUN. And a nicely concentrated bright light is shone in your eyes and that certainly complicates things. All this was eight hours ago.

I wished the girl I’m interested in could have been here. She would have made it a lot more bearable. So I’ll post something else too to satisfy my readers. Until then, Owie.

There’s this girl I’m interested in...she loves cats. She got on my case when, after I had helped her send a file, I said “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” WRONNNNNG ANSWER!

Anyway, one of my other friends in California (who DOES have a house full of cats and all of whom are zany) sent me this little ”screen saver” which I think the girl I’m interested in will enjoy...as long as she gets some speakers for her computer real soon!

At least I know that I do have friends out there who give a damn! Enough for one of them to send me this a few days early:

Thank you so much. You know who you are!

I HATE this feeling in the morning...someone please tell me NOT to go to Dr. Evil’s Starbucks on worknights...as I lay there in bed and couldn’t get to sleep again until some time after 2 in the morning, which meant I only got around 5 hours of sleep and as a result, I’m very groggy.

But since it’s Valentine’s Day, there isn’t anyone here to take advantage of that.   

There was an actual building evacuation at my work place today. Someone had apparently left an Igloo cooler by the west entrance, and as a result we all had to haul ourselves out to the parking lot and the designated areas while the Phoenix Police bomb squad checked it out.

Fortunately, nothing bad was found and about an hour after we were evacuated, we were allowed back into the building. But what I wonder is...how much time had elapsed between the discovery of the abandoned cooler and the order to evacuate?

This inquiring mind wants to know.

Wow, a frenzied month for me at work...I had four days off at the beginning which gave me a four-day lag on everyone else, production-wise. But yet I turned in a performance which got me back into the bonus winners’ category for the second month in a row!
So if you were wondering where I was at for the last half of November, now you know.

The following is an open letter to the President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the eve of the election.

Dear Mr. President:
Thirty-three years ago, as a fifth grader at Kagnew Station’s Asmara American Dependents’ School in Ethiopia, I shook the hand of its king. Haile Selassie was the last man to go in front of an august society to plead for help for his nation, which had been invaded by Mussolini. His pleas fell on deaf ears.
Three years ago, Freedom called once again for it was in danger. And you, sir, answered the call without hesitation to take the fight away from our shores and onto the home turf of the Taliban. When the Iraqi People called for help last year, after thirty years of despotism and twelve years of pleas falling on another august organization’s deaf ears, you led our nation (and forces from many other nations) to battle against that Evil, which had been Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, and to free the Iraqi People.
But I know, and so do many of us, that the war is not over yet. When you were elected four years ago, I wondered why things turned out the way they did, why it took thirty-six days. After September 11th, we knew why. The freedom of the world is still in danger, and yet it is on the march!
We have God to thank for that, for He put you in that position for a reason. We ask Him to place you in that position again so the job can be finished. We will do our part by casting our ballots for you…as I have already done, and to continue to pray for you, your family, and the Cabinet in this time we are in, so that you may continue to protect the American People.
And perhaps one day I will shake your hand too…and History will come full circle. Thank You and God Bless You, Mr. President!

This speaks volumes either way you look at it…
It’s not the first time I’ve voted “absentee.” I did it 24 years ago when we elected Ronald Reagan. I was going to be out of town on Election Day, so that’s why I requested an early ballot from Maricopa County, Arizona. I just filled it out and after I post this entry, I will drive to the Post Office and drop my ballot in the mail. And it was a pretty loaded ballot too, where the voter must connect the two halves of the arrow with a line to cast their ballot.
Point of the matter is, I VOTED. You who read this had better make sure you’re registered for this election. And no matter who you vote for, once you do so you have earned the right to bitch to the leaders! Otherwise don’t come bitch to me and keep your damn mouth shut!

Thanks Hud for the idea.
Here’s my Dad, one of the few scanned pix I have of him (I’ve got more, but I just haven’t scanned them). RMC Robert T. Spencer, Sr. (USN, Retired) passed away on January 5, 1991 at the age of 54. He had been terminally diagnosed just three weeks prior with metastatic carcinoma. As I understand it, it’s the type of cancer which spreads like wildfire throughout the entire body once it starts.
I had known Dad as a short, skinny guy my entire life (always at 5’6” and 136 lbs.), and then at the end he withered away to the point where I could pick him up and he was as light as a feather!
It turns out that on his deathbed, he told us what really happened in August of 1958. We knew well before then he had been at Eniwetok Atoll at the time, but he insisted that he witnessed only three tests.
Try 35.
I was furious at my government for the first time in my life. It was because my dad wasn’t able to tell us the truth until the end, the good Sailor that he was (he worked on sensitive teletype encryption machines during his years in the Navy and had Top Secret clearance). It took me many years to put the pain and the anger behind me and I’m glad I did.
I wish my Dad didn’t have to go through what he did, but I understand it was for a greater purpose, as painful as it is to admit. He did this so that we could all live in freedom and not as slaves to Communism. It’s one of the reasons why I blog: so I will not have to become dhimmi, enslaved to Islam. If I can’t fight with my physical being, then I will fight with my mind and my words.
Thanks, Dad. I miss you.

Here’s a picture of the company Dad was in aboard the USS Boxer at the time of Operation Hardtack. First row behind the officers, third from the left:

Wow.
A lot has happened over the holidays...and through to the end of January. After eleven months off work, I’ve got a job again...but now I’ve pulled up stakes and moved nearly 1900 miles west of my previous domicile.
I had to take a forty percent pay cut in order to land the job, but I think it’ll be worth it eventually. Things are gonna be a little tight for awhile.
I’ve already received two most excellent perks from my new job: a FREE BUS PASS good until April of 2005, and FREE USE of on-site exercise equipment! I just saved me all told about $600 or so of transit and health club expenses! That’s just for starters.

I was hoping I could have posted my review of The Return of the King by now, but something MAJOR has popped up out West, and I must temporarily take leave to pursue it. I’ll report as soon as I am able. But it may be awhile....

Not exactly, depending on one’s point of view. Thirteen years ago today, my divorce was finalized in Chicago, Illinois. It is a relief in one way, but not in many others. For starters, my 15-year-old son who lives with his mother has chosen not to have a relationship with me. It’s the constant ongoing battle between his mother and me that has produced this result.
I’ve done everything I can over this thirteen-year period to stay involved in my son’s life, and at every turn I have been thwarted by his mother (who’s ten years older than me). She has done all the child rearing and has only once consulted me in all that time, when she wanted me to come to his school and visit his teachers in September 2000. She had the balls to tell me when no one else was listening that the reason she wouldn’t let me talk to his teachers was because she was afraid I ...was going to take her back to Court and have him taken away from her for incompetence. Then she denied it when the principal showed up. What a paranoid attitude!
And she wonders why our son has become distrustful of others. It isn’t because of me, I had nothing to do with how she’s chosen to raise our son.
So I’ve written our son to let him know I love him, but I disapprove of his decision, and have told him that I will give him as much room as he needs to figure things out. But chances are I may not be seeing him again. Ever. Aside from one phone call which I initiated in August, I have not heard from him since Father’s Day.

Time for me to go on living my life the way God wants me to. And it’s hard to do.

Welcome to an idea reborn.
A few years ago I used to publish my own comments on various happenings around the world, and I didn’t get any publicity for it. Now I can, thanks to the help of a few bloggers I’ve made an acquaintance with...like Saurus, Hud, and Amritas!
First of all...I am not necessarily a “lockstep” conservative as some of my liberal friends might think that I am. There will be times where my opinions will differ from the ones who currently hold the highest offices in the land of the USA. There will also be times when I’ll take note of what people write in to me about and I may comment on that. Doesn’t necessarily have to be about current events.
Because I ain’t rich, being a poor MBA student at the University of Phoenix dictates that I can’t get Movable Type just yet. So I will do my best to keep this blog as simple as possible, yet be elegant at the same time.
So feel free to contact me if you’d like to comment on anything I post here. If I discuss it at length here, I won’t post your e-mail address, but I would like at the very least to properly credit any comments.
Wish me luck. Here I go....