Timmerov's Blog
greenday
sometimes at work we get free tickets to concerts and stuff. employees get them by lottery. alisa's eyes lit up when the greenday tickets became available. i guilted the winners into giving up their tickets for my 40th birthday. i'm a bad person. but everything turned out well in the end because other ticket winners had to leave town. alisa can dance. and she likes to dance to greenday. so she did. i wasn't the only one watching her.
solar powered flashlight
got one for my birthday. no really. it works too.
airzooka
the cat absolutely hates my favorite present this year. the air-zooka is a big drum that fires a ball of air. i'll leave the scene at my house to your imagination. let me just say you /can/ teach an old cat a new trick. run kitty run!
nola
rove's in charge of the hurricane katrina relief efforts. his task is to build homes for all those poor displaced democrats. i'm sure he will. in mississippi, texas, alabama. red states. the gop will probably pick up two more seats in the house. mission accomplished. fuckers.
sent sovi
alisa took me out to dinner at sent sovi in saratoga for my birthday. we had fish and lamb. it was good. she wore a new blue dress that fit perfectly. it was snug across the chest but not tight enough to pull the buttons. i spent the whole meal with a goofy grin on my face wondering what exactly she was wearing underneath.
god is great
belief in an all powerful divine power looking after you and your interests is great. really. killing people because they believe in a different god is evil.
birthday
i'd like the thank everyone for giving me my birthday wish: to quietly turn 40. thanks all.
dryer hair
so the dryer went on the fritz again. a while ago one of two wheels the tumbler rolls on disintegrated. we called the repair man to fix it. the other wheel looked okay but i bought a replacement for it anyway. now we just needed to install it. the boys helped. alisa helped. it was very dirty. reassembling the parts was a bit of a puzzle. one had to lie down on the garage floor and peer under the tumbler. alisa had just gotten her hair cut. so she was unaccustomed to its new slightly shorter length. she got down on the floor with me. to help. that beautiful blonde hair cascaded across my face. i couldn't see a thing. repair jobs that don't go right usually make me pretty testy. this time i was torn. i wanted to get mad. but i didn't want that soft silky goodness to go away. i did the only reasonable thing. i got the giggles. she had no idea why. who knows what might have happened right there on the garage floor if not for them boys.
butterfly
chaos theory states that very small changes can have very large effects. a butterfly can flap it's wings in malaysia and cause a hurricane in the atlantic. the 21st century has a butterfly. her name is theresa lepore. who? she's the person who designed the butterfly ballot used in palm beach in the 2000 election. it is widely held that enough people accidentally screwed up their ballots to prevent al gore from winning the state and the presidency. small change. gigantic effect.
pledge 2
one nation under god. i am half christian. christ boiled religion down to two very simple ideas that could be consumed by the masses. love your neighbor. and love god. i am philosophically aligned with the first part. i find the second part quaint. ergo i am half christian. anywho, one nation under god affirms that somebody thinks this is a christian country. yeah sure they don't specify which god. but it's clear they mean the christian god. so if i'm not a christian am i not part of the nation? indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
pledge
as a kid i was always rather uncomfortable saying the pledge of allegiance every day. i did it of course. the pledge was (and still is) rather incomprehensible. i pledge allegiance to the flag. i what!? is this idolatry? of the united states of america. and to the republic for which it stands. okay that makes more sense. one nation. under god. okay, this part makes the pledge serious business. mystical shit. the big man's involved. indivisible. with liberty and justice for all. amen. i always thought that last part. never actually said it. in class. am sure i said it in the playground to the amusement of my friends.
hippo birdie
hippo birdie two ewes. hippo birdie two ewes. hippo birdie deer timmerov. hippo birdie two ewes.
responsibility
heh. bush took responsibility for something. was rove out of town? i immediately checked the sky for flying pigs. and checked the news for reports of snowball fights in a frozen over hell. i was nice to bush yesterday. today's back to normal.
roberts
i'm usually pretty critical of the moron in the white house. but today i'm going to say only nice things. well, two nice things. he smushed the taliban. that was good. and the apparent confirmation of roberts as chief justice. i'm stunned that the mental midget would nominate someone so even-keeled appearing. sorry, i meant to say the president. i'm saying only nice things today.
nicknames
i've had many nicknames throughout my life: timmy, timmer, the amazing timmer, butch, butcher, hangman, snotter, nature boy, and now apparently for at least one blog reader i am the great and powerful timmerov! ignore the man behind the curtain. p.s. i fixed the link to my home page which really isn't all that interesting.
card sharks
way back long ago when i was in college a couple of my friends got on some game shows. one was on card sharks where you guess if the next card is going to be higher or lower. i worked out the probabilities for him. i loaned him nice clothes to wear. he won a few thousand dollars. i got nothin'.
stupidity
stupid should be painful. it used to be. in some ways the world was a better place then.
rurdoch
we sorted through all of bennett's school work from last year. the boy cannot spell. rurdoch the red nosy rander. i saw mommy kising santy closy.
59M
59 million americans must be feeling pretty snookered right now.
donuts
the boys and i made donuts the other day. mmmm... they were good! i'm pretty sure i ate most of them.
katrina
i'd sure like to blame bush for the extra destruction leveled by hurricane katrina. unfortunately that position isn't as supportable as us bush kickers would like. hurricanes are likely a wee bit stronger due to global warming. but not much. cutting federal funds to maintain the levies and pumps probably made things worse. but not much. shipping off the national guard to fight a stupid war on the other side of the world probably had a negative impact. but not much. putting a crony in charge of fema instead of someone with experience probably made things worse. but not much. homeland security paranoia probably diverted needed attention away from disaster relief and made things worse. but not much. adding many layers of bureaucracy to fema which used to be cabinet level probably made things worse. but not much. building a city on "land" at elevation below sea level and surrounded by water is probably where the fingers point.
abstinence
there's a school in ohio where 13% of the girls are pregnant. crikey! the abstinence only philosophy is a wonderful ideal. unfortunately the real world isn't ideal. teaching abstinence only is dumb. the median age for becoming sexually active is 16. that's pretty much true across race, culture, income, class, etc. over half of high school students don't practice what you preach. we must follow up for the majority: don't have sex. but if you do, use a condom. omitting the second half is irresponsible.
meters
the english system of units is dumb. we switched over to the metric system at work. i'm going to switch over at home too. i am now 181 cms tall. and i weigh 86 kg. i should drop about 5 kgs. i'm happy to exercise more. i get more fit. but i stay the same weight. or should i say mass? heh.
diet coke
so i drank a diet coke the other day. first one in a long time. i just wanted to check if maybe i gave it up in haste. immediately had to void my bowels. wee. bumped my head getting into my car. sharp shooting pain went down my neck. arm went numb. pah. keep that crap away from me.
cutie
at camp there was this preteen girl wearing shorts with the word cutie written in big white letters across her bum. i have to admit i looked. it gave me impure thoughts. and i'm not even a pedophile. think people.
business cards
a couple of times a year some piece of information for my company changes and i get another box of 500 business cards. i now have over 2000 of them. i never give them away. i use them for other things. like jotting notes for this blog. as bookmarks. i keep them in my flight bag and write atis information on one before every flight. there's a handy dandy holder mounted on the dash to hold it firmly when the plane's upside down. need paper that's small and rigid. note paper is too big and flimsy.
civil war
the goings on in iraq sure look like civil war. maybe if we accepted that reality we could deal with it. we know how. we did pretty well in the region formerly known as yugoslavia. then we could focus on fighting terrorism effectively. it's rather ironic that the country that's giving us the most help on that front is france. who we mocked. go us.
fast play
netflix sent us a chip and dale disc from disney. it's bad enough that i have to wait for the stupid fbi notices and copyright notices... i saw them last night. and the night before. and the night before that. but disney decided to add this thing called fast play. what it really means is listen to this spiel about how wonderful fast play is. then watch all the previews we packed onto this cd for movies you've already seeen. then we'll play the feature. cheap trick. the feature should be called waste-your-time-play. asstards.
numerical recipes
i bought this book for work. it's great. it has lots of source code for solving all kinds of wonderful math problems. like the ones that come up continuously at work. but it's kinda depressing in a way too. my college education was creative. this book makes me realize just how much useful information i missed. ah well. maybe i'll go back. heh.
legobot
alisa and bennett made a neat robot out of legos. the wheels can be controlled independently so it can turn. it has a bumper in front so it can tell when it bumps into something. they programmed it to back up and turn when it bumps into something. i like to set it loose in the big room and just watch it drive around. the boys like to jump in front of it so it bumps into them.
