This is NOT an SNL parody commercial product.  This is REALLY being sold!

chiaobama.com/

2 2nd place roto finishes in last 5 years.
1 1st place Division A  finish
Lots of fun and friends ...
Paying it forward by donating prizes for the tourney

Personal best 239 point play - SK(E)TCHED
Personal best 661 game

661 game

Edit: Here is the annotation.  My only really suboptimal play was missing CLOWNISH holding CHOWLI? through an open N.

Anyone use "Visual Thesaurus"?

Is it worth the investment?

It looks very cool.

So I'm at a friend's house for a holiday dinner yesterday, and we're all gabbing and having a punny, wordy time ...

Someone asks me to pass the gravy boat .... and a thought instantly pops in my head ... and the thought then passes directly to my lips ...

"What happens if the gravy boat crashes into the iceberg lettuce?"

(much laughter ensued)

Yes, you too can drink wine from a baby bottle ... at La Cave Des Fondus.

"While drinking alcohol in a container otherwise used for Similac may be a novelty in New York (at least in public), it has already been tried in that world capital of gastronomic sophistication, Paris. Paris, France.

La Cave des Fondus is a faithful homage to the Montmartre restaurant Le Refuge des Fondus, where Parisians enthusiastically suck down the house red and white.

Jacques Ouari, who owns the Manhattan restaurant but not the one in Paris, said, “I wanted to set up my place exactly like the one in Paris. It’s such a fun place. Everybody loves drinking beer and wine from baby bottles - even my father thought it was fun - and I think New Yorkers will like it too. I checked with the health department and as long as we put the bottles in the dishwasher they have no problem with it.”"

As some of you already know, I've been recruited to write for a Yankee-centric blog called "Bronx Banter", hosted on SportsNetNewYork's website.

My job is normally to provide a daily recap of links to various articles on the Yankees.

Yesterday, I got to add my story on my memories of Yankee Stadium (part of an on-going series of remembrances, including submissions by Ken Rosenthal, Allen Barra, Jon Weisman, etc.)

Hope you enjoy this.

Neal Hefti, composer of Batman TV series theme, dies.

"Oddly enough, his most famous tune is among his least musically interesting, even if it was somehow brilliantly apt: the jauntily arch and repetitive theme for the television series “Batman.” Mr. Hefti said that the show was so campy it took him weeks to come up with a suitable melody. It won him his only Grammy."

===================

THAT won a Grammy????

Hi folks ...

Last night I attempted to open a previously created Word file.
The MS Office Word 2000 splash screen came on, then the normal.dot file started to load. At that point, the Word toolbars didn't appear, the program started to hang, and then it closed with no error message.

My Excel program (also part of MS Office 2000) runs fine.

I'm running Windows XP SP3.

I tried opening a different file ... didn't work (same symptom)
I tried opening Word just by itself ... didn't work (same symptom).
I tried "detect and repair" .... didn't work (same symptom).
I tried "uninstall" and "reinstall" .... didn't work (same symptom).
I searched for and deleted all normal.dot files and opened Word again .... didn't work (same symptom).
I went back to a few earlier restore points (maybe something changed since I last used Word a few weeks ago) .... didn't work (same symptom).
I used the RUN command line winword.exe /a .... that DID work.

I ran a VirusScan recently .... its clean.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

TIA (as always),
Diane

Update: I ended up having to regedit the registry, delete the DATA directories for Word, then get into Word via the command line, and click off one of the add-ons that ran at program start-up.  Voila!

Thanks for your help.

Firefighter revives unconscious cat.

"Al Machado rescued the cat from a burning apartment Tuesday, telling The Standard Times of New Bedford that he saw immediately that it needed air. Machado began performing mouth to mouth on the animal as he carried it outside.

Video shot at the scene shows Machado bent over, breathing into the cat's mouth several times. The cat, a tiger angora, was revived and resting comfortably soon after."

 

I just saw it yesterday ....

The bad:
* 30-40 minutes too long. It was perfectly paced and taut for the first half of the movie, but just when it seemed ripe and right for a climactic scene, there was ANOTHER turn/plot twist. After a while, the climax had no place to end up but be watered down.
* Too much unexplained anarchy ... let's see how they got the explosives in the warehouse, or on the ferries, or in the hospital. Let's see how Joker actually *plotted* some of this anarchy.

The good:
* Heath Ledger .... it's amazing that this is the same man that gave us as disparate a character as Brokeback's Ennis Del Mar. The Joker portrayal proves the depth of Ledger's acting abilities. It's depressing to know he'll never get another shot at thrilling us again. Every "Joker" scene made me sit up and take notice .... in fact, I kept waiting for the showdown, as I thought Joker wasn't in the movie's first half enough.

Twice in the past week, I've walked into my kitchen to discover what appear to be very small slugs (not the slimy trail behind them ... the actual slug).  One was brown and white, and a little more "mature" in terms of development.  It was on the kitchen counter, near the toaster oven and an unopened package of english muffins.

This morning, there was a smaller all-brown slug in a cereal bowl that I had washed out and was now dry and left upright near the dish drain.

I live in a 7-story apartment building, on the 5th floor.  There has been no apparent "dampness" issue, or water leak issue in my apartment.  I highly doubt I brought them in from the outside (on my shoes?).

My next door neighbor is a bit of a packrat/slob.  There has been massive renovation going on in an apartment all the way down the hall.

I have not seen any roaches/waterbugs in my kitchen.

The heat is such that I generally leave a window slightly open, even in the winter.

OK ... so ..... what are they being attracted to ... residual dampness around the sink/dish drain?  Possible remnants of grain products/crumbs on the counter? (I'm diligent on cleaning the counter, including use of antibacterial cleansers on the countertop).

The bigger question .... how do I get rid of them?

I've always been a credit card therapy spender .... if I was feeling down ... I bought myself something .... something I probably didn't need (like that authentic NY Rangers jersey with my name on the back when they won the Cup in '94).  I had no self-control, and since I always managed to pay my bills on time, it didn't matter that I had no savings, and no long-term plan for something like buying a house or some such.

About 5-6 years ago, after consolidating $12,000 of debt from high interest cards onto one card, I paid off that card, while running the others up again to even higher amounts. 

Not too long ago (maybe 2-3 years ago), I had $19,375 in outstanding credit card debt (yet somehow maintained an excellent credit score, high 700s).  It was at that point that I finally said "enough" .... time to grow up.

I once again consolidated the debts onto one card, with a 4.9% interest rate for the life of the balance (thank goodness).  I then went and cancelled most every other card I had no use for, or hadn't used in years.

I cut back on the Starbucks .... I CAN have regular coffee .... :-)
I didn't need to buy every magazine or CD that caught my eye.  I kept my eye on the dwindling balances ... it became a little carrot and stick game for me .... how low can I get it THIS month.

Each month, I threw $300-$700 at that debt, and combined with the reduced spending (and tapping into my small rainy day fund and my small stock fund), I whittled that debt down quickly.

Well .... next Friday (after my paycheck), I will for all intents and purposes be debt-free!  No credit card balances!!!!

The following month, our union is supposed to be getting over long overdue raises and back pay, and with part of that I will pay my mother back for the money she floated me to help me move last year.  The balance of that raise and back pay money will go towards a new air conditioner for the apartment, and to replenish the rainy day fund.

Damn this feels good!

Man Rides Lawn Mower to Liquor Store

A man was charged with drunken driving after going through two bottles of wine, cutting through a snowstorm on his lawn mower and riding down the center of the street to reach a liquor store, authorities said.

Police found Frank Kozumplik, 49, homeward bound on a John Deere tractor Saturday night, toting four bottles of wine in a paper bag, officials said.

He told officers that his wife had taken their car to work, and that the mower was the only way he could reach the store, two miles from home.

His blood alcohol level was 2 1/2 times Michigan's legal driving limit of 0.08 percent, police told WLEN-FM. They arrested him and confiscated the mower.

=======

"One bourbon .... one scotch .... one John Deere"

Well, you gotta admire their ... ummm .... something.

Excerpt:
"Two men were arrested Tuesday for allegedly wheeling their friend's dead body in a chair from a Manhattan apartment to a check cashing store nearby.

Police say David Dalaia and James O'Hare, both 65, put Virgilio Cintron's lifeless body in a chair, then wheeled it from the apartment O'Hare shared with Cintron, 66, in Hell's Kitchen, to a Pay-O-Matic nearby on Ninth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street.

Investigators say the men then tried to cash the dead man's $355 Social Security check. A detective having lunch nearby noticed a crowd and went to investigate.

Witnesses told police that Cintron's body was flopping from side to side as the two men tried to prop him up."

EOM  

On this rainy, dreary morning, after a very long train trip to work (debris on the express tracks, forcing me to take the local all the way into Midtown), I switched to the 2 train down to Chambers Street.

Upon exiting the train, I ascend the stairs, only to find ascending the stairs in front of me, the pink thong of a teen-age high school girl peeking out from her low-riding jeans.

(shaking my head as I've become my mother)

.... its gonna be a loooooong day