TheBig Blog

2008 Take one...roll tape...and action!

Welcome to 2008, my name is Stephen and I write the blog that you're reading. If you look to your left you'll probably see a door, and if you look to your right, you'll probably see a window. If not, you will need to adjust your viewing position accordingly in order for the following message to appear correctly.

Wow, that was quite some rant I went on there, and I'm not quite sure why I did it. Anyways, I went through a survey today from MySpace (you might have bumped into them here on TheBig Blog), and there was a question on there about writing, and I realized that I haven't ranted/raved enough lately. I could come up with a thousand excuses as to why, but I'll just have to be honest. I've been lazy. Yes, I'm lazier than I should be. Admitting it is the first step, so hopefully I'll soon overcome it.

I was going to share with you my mechanic�s story of changing my spark plugs, but I only got halfway started with that blog and I never posted it. Long and short of it is that it took a total of about 8 hours and $300 to get my spark plugs changed and it ended up with me buying a nice TV for Shanda�s Christmas present. (My grammar checker tells me that sentence should end with a question mark. Why?) More on that in the future. (Yes, I know that is a sentence fragment and I should consider revising it.)

Ughhhh...we got Mad Gab for Christmas. We played it for the first time a couple weekends ago with Audrey & Brian. That was fun. We were going to play to 30 like the instructions said, but the girls wanted to play until they were winning, so we did. Aim sofa reeking knot key ding.

Things at work are beginning to calm down a bit. We�re pretty much wrapped up on a project that we didn�t want to have anything to do with in the first place. Ya gotta love those upper management decisions.

I was able to provide tech support to my mother over the phone. She�s gained a lot of computer literacy in the past few years. It took us awhile to show her the power button, but she�s surfing HGTV.com on her own now, without the training wheels even. I basically walked her through recreating all of her e-mail server settings. Some people find it hard to get answers when calling tech support. I mean, stuff like �my computer�s slow� yeah, that�s hard to remedy. However, if someone says you tried entering your password too many times and you need to try again in an hour, it�s likely their shift is up in less than an hour.

We got trees cut down from our back yard, and we got a fence put up in our back yard. It�s wonderful being able to see our dogs run free in the back yard. It�s not so wonderful to see them tearing up the flowerbeds, but hey, it�s better the flowerbeds than the furniture. Craigslist was helpful in getting our dog kennel sold, but has proven to be a dud for getting rid of our FREE PINE WOOD. (I�ve had two people say they were coming to get it and I never heard from them again.)

Well it seems as if I�ve reached the end of a printed page, so hopefully I�ll catch up with you again before next year. See y�all!

-S

A Christmas Survey...

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends. Okay, here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE! Just copy (not forward) this entire survey and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I prefer the bags, but I do use wrapping paper if time allows.

2. Real or artificial tree? THE Christmas tree must be real. The secondary trees may be artificial.

3. When do you put up the tree? No earlier than Thanksgiving, and I mean it. Unless she sweet talks me into it, but definitely no earlier than Shanda's birthday.

4. When do you take the tree down? Before the city stops picking them up for free.

5. Do you like eggnog? The Non-Alcoholic kind, of course...but in moderation, still.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Too many to choose from. I think our first computer came around Christmas time...

7. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, or at least had one. I think Shanda may have put it in the yard sale.

8. Hardest person to buy for? ME! Sorry everyone!

9. Easiest person to buy for? No one's easy to buy for...but Shanda's pretty good about dropping hints whether she knows it or not. ;)

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I got some ladies roll-on deodorant at school one time.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail, but that's really not my department.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? You must not remember what happened last year...

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? As soon as I get a chance...which is usually in the December-teens.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Probably. Save the planet!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Dessert.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Doesn't matter, just as long as there are A LOT OF LIGHTS!!!!

17. Favorite Christmas song? Silent Night, Away in a Manger...most of the ones you'd find in the Hymnal.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Did somebody say road trip? :)

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeers? Dasher 'n' Dancer 'n' Prancer 'n' Vixen 'n' Comet 'n' Cupid
'n' Donner 'n' Blitzen 'n' Bruce 'n' Marvin, and Clyde...well, Clyde was actually a camel, but don't forget Rudolph, even though he dislocated his hip in a twist contest and was all stove up in the hospital...and don't forget Leroy the redneck reindeer...

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? An angel...but whatever works!

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? Christmas Morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? See: The Twelve Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers

23. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme? Yes, the theme my wife likes. :)

24. What do/did you leave for Santa? Beer and pickled eggs...uh...I meant milk and cookies?

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

It's my blog, and I can try if I want to. Try if I want to. Try if I want to.

Hello out there in Internet Land. Welcome once again to fifteen minutes of nonsense, brought to you by the letters, um, o, and k then. I am going to attempt to complete this entire blog entry without using the backspace key on any more than one or two words. (Ya know, misspellings and jibberish sounding things get deleted, but whole sentences, for the most part, remain.)

Three Funerals and a Wedding

The last I blogged, I shared my great-uncle's obituary. I attended the funeral, which was a very fitting service. Uncle David was probably the most memorable of my great uncles, because of his unique personality. I felt it would be appropriate to share a joke he shared with me, although, most of his jokes that I remember weren't for mixed company, so I had to keep my mouth shut. It was good to see my extended extended family, but I hate that I keep seeing them at funerals and stuff. Out of the thirteen, only two of my grandmother's siblings are still alive. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that it won't be very far down the road when none of my greats are alive.

Shanda has had two of her high school classmates pass away in the past month. It reminds me of a maxim my passed down by my great grandfather (who started a funeral home with his uncle). Caskets come in all sizes. Its sad that we have to deal with the loss of those in the shorter caskets, but a reminder that we never know when we'll be called to face our judgment. From what I know of these people, I feel confident that we will all be together again someday.

Oh, and after reviewing my post, I realized I had to come back and add that I have yet another cousin who I remember crawling and/or in diapers is getting married. This means I'm getting old, doesn't it? :-(

Back to School

We were in Wal-Mart last week...the first week in July...and they had all of the back-to-school stuff everywhere. July!!! People were in school last month! What's next, when they get the back-to-school stuff out of the way, they bring the Christmas stuff in? Oh, wait, I forgot about Halloween. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of Christmas spirit, but...well, that's a blog where I'll have to complain about come closer to Christmas, and or Halloween.

Shanda is back in school again. She took (and passed with flying colors) Chemistry at her community college during the month of June. It was a crammed course if I've ever heard of one. Maybe that's why I didn't ever get through Chemistry when I was at NCSU�they drew it out too long. I dunno. That and I didn't really get the whole �studying� thing. Shanda's going to be at NCSU for another couple years and then she'll have herself a four-year degree in something about growing things in dirt. Exciting, no? :-)

Vacation-esque

Our annual family vacation took place the last week of June. I think, anyway. We were rushing around the weekend before trying to get everything packed and ready to go. While Shanda was away at class, I was doing my best to recall my life lessons learned during bachelorhood. I did manage to have the house in decent shape when she returned, and most of the clothes were washed and folded and ready to go. Oh yeah, there was rushing. Then, Shanda's last day of class was the last Monday in June, so we couldn't leave until that day. That was fine. We finally made it to the beach Monday evening around suppertime. We finally get back, get the car unloaded, and have a moment or two to breathe. Tuesday and Wednesday flashed by us, and then Thursday it was time to pack up and go home. At this point, we have officially spent more time getting ready to go on vacation than we have actually spent on vacation.

We leave Thursday to meet with Shanda's sister & brother-in-law in Wilmington. We have lunch, walk around shopping for flooring or something, have supper, and then relax for awhile listening to a free concert. Well, I use the word relax loosely as I kept getting ant-bitten from ants which I think were falling from the trees, I'm still not sure. Then we joined a throng of people in watching some fireworks on the beach, followed by a large McDonald's milkshake. Let me tell you about the large McDonald's milkshake. It be large. We finally made it to Shanda's parents to sleep for a little while, all to get up and do more shopping in Myrtle Beach. That day was a little more relaxed, though hot. When you're hot, you tend not to have your mind in go-gear. We spent about 12 dollars on two ice cream cones between the two of us. You gotta be careful about tourist traps like these. Oh...and another highlight of the evening (since I'm pretty much finished with the vacation part of my story anyways) deserves its own little bold underlined heading:

DLP Cinema

Man, is this invention awesome!!! Somehow, I had missed out on this little invention! I've seen several crappy movies, in crappy theaters where crap was stuck to the floor and crap. (No actual crap was used in the above sentence.) Seriously, I've watched blurry, out of focus movies with bad sound, no sound, among other things film is prone to, such as scratches, and one even burned through the film as we watched helplessly. Holy moly, DLP Cinema is the ticket, right there. It was clear, it was crisp...it was like watching the screen the animators made the movie (Ratatouille) on. It was unreal how clear this was. I was doing a little research on the DLP Cinema, and ya know...they have a projector that's powerful enough to run a drive-in, if you so happen to have a drive-in you want to invest in.

Speaking of Drive-Ins...

Look for some details coming soon right here on this blog regarding Starlite. I've...got...an...idea. (Yikes.)

Ebehdeh, Ebehdeh, Ebedeh...

That's all, folks!

Gather 'round, kiddies!

Ya know, there�s probably only one thing worse than having to read my babbling on about random topics. That thing is reading on about me forgetting about which topics I was going to babble on about. About is a preposition, isn�t it? Should that be �about which I was going to babble� or leave it as it is? The underlying problem here is that prepositions are words you don�t want to end a sentence with.

Friday evening, Shanda and I had the opportunity of serving the Lord for �Parent�s Date Night� at our church. Parents of all shapes and sizes would drop their children off while they got to enjoy a movie without a 100% animated cast, or a quiet dinner without having the only screaming child in the restaurant. Instead, the children would stay screaming with us at the church. I�m kidding�well, partly. After the first 15 minutes or so when they realized that mommy wasn�t going to be back for awhile and there were lots of neat toys and three strange adults to play with, it wasn�t so bad. We watched about the first 15 minutes of the Veggie Tales sing-along because that�s how long a toddler�s attention span is. There was an abundance of pizza which was torn into small manageable kiddie-sized chunks. Surprisingly, very little of the pizza actually made it onto the floor.

I was telling Shanda how interesting it was for me to see the children who were all at the same ages and how some of them couldn�t talk, some of them wouldn�t talk, and some of them could say everything except �I just pooped my diaper and I need a new one.� After some time with these kids, I learned to decipher some of what they were talking about. I hadn�t had to translate such incoherent babble into English for my own use since I left work earlier that day.

Much of my evening was spent keeping an eye on the children, making sure they shared their toys and generally didn�t do anything to cause Amber extra paperwork. There was lots of bending to move 1:4 scale chairs away from the television, as well as moving their human counterparts a safe distance from the screen. There was the smell of dirty diapers which I was fortunate enough to avoid by asking where the pressure washer was�

One by one, our children started floating away. Sometimes the parents would come and the kids� faces would light up. Other parents came and the parents� faces would light up. As the numbers dwindled, our faces were lighting up.

I know the evening left me with an experience. It wasn�t so bad, and I don�t think anything happened that left me or the children with any permanent physical or emotional scarring.

What I meant to say was...

So apparently I left out a few important things yesterday. You may recall me making mention earlier of the fact that Mr. Bob died and the Starlite is closed until further notice. I think just the fact that the drive-in is closed makes me want to go even more! Fortunately for us, there is a drive-in theater in Henderson. Yeah, that's a little bit of a drive from our house, but it's right up 85 so it's not that terrible. It was our first experience with the Raleigh Road Outdoor Theatre, and I must say that it was a pretty good one. The owners are drive-in buffs and they happened upon the deal on eBay. The place is really nice. They've really worked on the concession stand and bathrooms. It's all very clean and bright. The concessions are reasonably priced (though not quite as reasonable as they were at the Starlite). Still, you can't beat the admission price of five bucks a head. That also buys you two movies, not one! The only real complaint I had about the place was when they changed the aspect ratio between movies, they lost the focus. A blurry movie is difficult for me to watch. :-P

Also, uh...I've started a FaceBook page. It automatically imports TheBig Blog so I don't have to! Just in case you're reading this on FaceBook, you might want to check out http://Blog.TheBigWhiteWolf.com and http://www.myspace.com/thebigwhitewolf.

I loaded my MySpace page down with pictures yesterday. I do realize that it's probably about time to take down all the March/Irish/St. Patrick's Day related items and throw something different on the page. I'll get around to it sooner or later, I promise! :-)

Oh, and another thing I've added to TheBig Blog is an advertisement for the Harvest Crusades coming to the RBC Center June 22-24th. I'm starting to see the bumper stickers pop up around the area, so click on the ad below and and find out what's going on and why you shouldn't miss it!

Bye!

Tuesday's Typically Tangled Typings

Previously on TheBig Blog, I was experiencing a code black at the hospital in which I work. There wasn't a bomb in anyone's chest or anything exciting like that, just the lack of a functioning voicemail system. It didn't come back up before I left, but fortunately for our customers, we carry pagers as well, and I was soon gotten ahold of as needed. The End. (of that story)

Uhm...since last time, we had our monthly prayer meeting at church. That's always good times. We had several hispanic people join the church. It's a blessing to hear them say "Profeso a Jes�s como mi salvador." It doesn't matter what language you speak, because God understands you, even if I don't. (Fluent English speakers included.)

We went out to celebrate mama's birthday at the Old Country Club Steakhouse. I've come to the realization that if the place wasn't in the old Country Club building, that it probably wouldn't have lasted this long. Don't get me wrong, I like the place. The folks are extra friendly. The salad bar is probably one of the more diverse salad bars I've ever experienced. The food is good, though my wife has spoiled me into believing that the steaks I grill are in all ways superior to any restaurant steak. Aside from new restrooms, the building hasn't had any major renovation for as long as I can remember. My wife wasn't expecting great things judging by the appearance of the building. The thing about it is, the place has great potential! There is a beautiful view of Chub Lake from the front porch. Personally, I would get some architects involved and do a little redesigning to milk that for all it's worth. It's one of those places where you might need a flashlight to read the menu if you're on the border of needing reading glasses. The decor in there leads you to think "golf," however, I don't know that the framed program from the Duke Children's Classic has moved since it was hung in the summer of 1981, perhaps honoring my birth. The tablecloths are, kinda cute. They have a golf theme to them. But they're vinyl, and old. If you're going to charge $20 for a meal, either give me a cloth tablecloth or a bare wood table. The outdoors is kinda bland too. It is definitely in need of some landscaping to cheer up the facade.

(I went on way too long about that, but hey, it's what I do. )

Then there was the Easter drama that my neice starred in. She was baby Jesus. Yes, the role of Jesus was played by a girl. There was also dancing in this drama. Had they used real wine for the communion, I'm pretty sure the church would have been kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Oh...earlier in that day, we started our butterfly garden. We planted our gladioli (or is that gladiouluses?), some verbena, a butterfly bush, lantana, and some pinks. Some of these are the common names, others may be totally invented by my in-laws.

Easter...we did our usual egg decorating and hunting at my in-laws. A bunch of grown folks wandering about the yard with easter baskets on an Easter egg hunt. I giggle at myself sometimes, but I got the most eggs! HAH!

Uhm...now I'm home alone trying to keep things settled down while Shanda is helping her daddy on the farm during her spring break. Thus far, I've managed to not kill any animals or plants, so I think I'm doing good. :)

More news if it becomes available...

Luck Been a Lady With Me!

And her name was Pepsi!

"Who kid awn pa hah nix"

I just realized something...I may actually like to read. If I really didn�t like to read, I probably wouldn�t enjoy writing so much. If I didn�t enjoy writing, I would not be here in front of you.

Now, I need to get me a library card. :-)

Crappy New Year! :-P

So with all of the well wishing of a happy and prosperous new year, I must say it�s not working all that terribly well. Yeah, it could be much worse, I realize, but it seems to be raining poop on the White household. (And that doesn�t have anything to do with the puppy for once...)

Shanda�s sick, and everybody knows if mama ain�t happy, ain�t nobody happy.

Then, when we got home Tuesday evening, I decided to go ahead and pay all my monthly bills in order that we continue to enjoy the luxuries of heating, electricity, and cable TV. Actually, all those bills are automatically deducted from my account, so that really doesn�t count for this situation... Let�s see, I was making sure that I was able to enjoy low rates on my credit cards by paying them on time, and I wanted to continue enjoying my cell phone. Anyhow, I have a spreadsheet that I use to make sure I get everything paid, and that I have enough money in my bank account to cover everything I pay. Then I have another column where I take away everything that I�ve spent that isn�t a monthly expense. I was surprised that I had enough money in there to cover my credit card bills far above the regular monthly payment, so I went ahead and paid that little bit extra. I kept looking at my bank account yesterday at work and I kept thinking that something wasn�t exactly right. When I got home, indeed something wasn�t exactly right. I had erred when putting my account balance, erasing the part where it subtracts everything that wasn�t a normal monthly expense. I said flem flarn filth a few times and then began emptying my savings account into my checking account. Normally, this wouldn�t be a problem, however, the savings account that has the real money in it is at a different bank which takes about three days to transfer the funds from one to the other. So here I sit, broken hearted, paid my dime, and hoped that it doesn�t hit my checking account until all the monies are in place.

Also, yesterday afternoon when I got home, I had a letter from my mortgage lender. It�s time for my mortgage to adjust. I will now owe about $250 more dollars every month. It�s convenient that I just got a raise of almost that much. Bring on the tax refund check, H & R Block.

When I went to put on my watch this morning, the strap that holds the loose end of the band broke off, so now that�s all dangling in the breeze. Relatively minor, I know.

(Day Two...)

Okay, so yeah, it takes me a couple days to get my bloggings in order sometimes. I pull up my account at Wachovia today and (drumroll.........) parentheses around my account balance! OH NOES!!!!! Hopefully soon my transfer from bank B to bank A will occur before any other items hit... Only time will tell.

There goes the Network Neighborhood!

So I'm sitting at my computer, minding my own dang business when I go to upload a new ringtone on my cell phone. I plug the thing in and the next thing I know, my computer doesn't want to respond to me. Something smelled burnt. It turns out that I let the smoke out of my computer. Now I'll spend the next few days trying to get Dell to send me the parts to fix it. This should be fun.

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