Saturday Musings and Fifteenth Birthdays

Julian turned fifteen years old Thursday, which was a great surprise to me. I'm astonished his mother or I didn't kill him long before this.

He actually had a surprise or two for his birthday this year. He wanted a figurine of the Starfire character from the Teen Titans, but the one he wanted was a $250.00 maquette statue that was a bit pricey after his Sony MP3 Player he received a week early.
(You can see the product description by clicking on the title of this post above.) He also loves to eat out and was fairly certain we'd do it again for his birthday, but his mother was determined to surprise him, saying "We are NOT going to go out for dinner this year!"

So his mother and I both arranged to be off on Thursday and after dropping him at school, we cleaned the house and went to Target (for a folding Papa-San chair for his room, a new hassock, and a wooden wall shelf), Wal-Mart (for new bed linens and decorations), Bob's Comics (for a smaller, less expensive paperweight version of Starfire), and a Chinese Restaurant for his favorite Take-Out. We cleaned his room thoroughly (no small task -- how the HECK did he get it so dirty since moving in 2 months ago???) and redecorated it with his new linens, chair, hassock, and Starfire prominently displayed on her new oak shelf on the wall. We also put Halloween lights up on the windows and had them all plugged in, ready to go when he came home.


The bed linens are particularly nice, made from a fabric called "Microfiber" that looks like suede, feels like silk, and is machine washable -- very nice and luxurious -- not to mention affordable.


His first words when he sat on the bed were "I feel like a Millionaire!" So, it was worth it, I guess. (Heh.) Well, he did make First Chair in Orchestra with his violin, so I expect he deserved some reward for the hard work.


Some small changes to the 'blog: I've added two links to the massive amount of Internet Debris on my 'blog. The First is "The Radio Equalizer" a blog on the server I post with also -- by Brian Maloney, a radio host out of Michigan, I believe. Brian is also one of the insiders in the radio industry and has some fascinating stories of the crap going on behind-the-scenes at various and sundry places, like Air America and the hardball tactics being used by ABC Radio Corporate with their local hosts. (Those of you from the Chicago area might remember how Garry Meier was forced off the air at WLS-AM through these same tactics two years ago while being half of the top-rated duo on Afternoon Drive in Chicago. Well, same stuff, different day -- just in San Francisco this time.) Fascinating and intelligent reading.

The second new link is "Protest Warriors.com," which teaches budding neo-conservatives how to use the Left's own tacticts against them. They cite using the ACLU's own website as a reference point for information (Love It!), how to sneak into Leftist demonstrations and disrupt them with counter protest (something the Left isn't used to doing or seeing -- with hilarious results); as well as first-person accounts of some of the Lefty forces of Indoctrination confronted by neo-cons with their own side of Free Speech. Love these folks. Scroll down the Left-Hand side to the "Favorite 'Blogs" section to find them.

And finally, I've stopped allowing comments to the postings. Apparently one of the new ways for advertising leeches to rip you off is a new variation of the e-mail "spam" theory -- they post bogus comments with links to their websites. I discovered they were bogus when (a) one of them was referencing something I hadn't even talked about, and (b) a comment turned up on a post I hadn't even completed yet! So, since they've ruined this for the bloggers as well now, I've just cut them off by eliminating the comments sections. E-mail me if you want to say "Hi!"


Oh, and my Cat says "Hello!"