Tag: job

Another Diet

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Exercise, Food, HealthLeave a comment

I went to the doctor’s office yesterday for my regular visit and found out how much weight I have gained. Over 20lbs.

Here’s the story for those who aren’t familiar. I was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year when I weighed 252lbs. I went on a diet and went down to 215lbs.

Our diet wasn’t very inventive but it was good enough for me since it had protein, grains and vegetables. I had cut out all breads from our diets (mine and Chips) and my diet gave me so much energy that I was always cleaning.

One night Darrin said to me that he didn’t want to eat this anymore, you’re working too hard and it makes me feel bad. Well, I had lost 37lbs and by telling me that, he discouraged me. He started asking for pasta and for other things and next thing you know, he’s buying cookies and donuts.

I started gaining weight again and before I knew it I was losing all of my energy and becoming lazy again. Now, I’m 239 according to the doctor’s office. The doctor said 20lbs but that’s according to where it says 218 in my chart.

What happened was, I was 218 then went to the doctors then lost more weight and before my next visit I had already gone back up to 218 because of Darrin not wanting to continue the diet. Then I just kept gaining more and more weight.

So now that he has a job, he can’t tell me what I can make for him for dinner or to not clean and I’m going to tell him flat-out that he needs to just let me do what I’m gonna do to help us lose weight. I can’t keep up with this yo-yo dieting. I have to lose this weight.

I’ve already started cooking vegetables for dinner again so when Darrin comes home from work he has a balanced dinner to eat before he collapses on the couch for the evening. I’m going to get off my M&M’s binge and stop eating sugar and breads altogether again. I can do this, I know I can.

I have a feeling I will be hosting Thanksgiving this year which means I gotta get this house clean lol. In order to do that, I need to eat balanced meals to give me the energy. I just drank a Red Bull to give me the energy to mop the kitchen floor which takes all of about 10 minutes to do lol.

You know your energy levels are at 0 when you can’t even do the simplest chores such as mopping the floor. I seriously don’t know how I cleaned the bathroom and living room last week.

If I am hosting Thanksgiving this year then I have a lot of work to do to get this house up to snuff. I’m sure I can do it all by myself… UGH! I’m gonna need a LOT of Red Bull. I wish I had the money to hire a housekeeper a couple of days before they arrive to make damn sure this house is spic n span.

Education School Security Orders CO Teen to Remove American Flags From Pickup Truck

On By Michel McDonaldIn News, PoliticalLeave a comment

Imagine if you will, a scenario where you are living in a country like the United States where you are told you are not allowed to be patriotic because it might upset someone. That is what happened to a Colorado Junior at his high school.

He was caught squealing his tires in the high school parking lot and got into trouble by the security guard who suspended his parking privileges for 2 weeks but then she had the nerve to tell him to take down the 2 American flags he had waving from the back of his pickup truck. She told him that it might upset someone.

If I were living in Mexico and I saw the Mexican flag waving proudly from a Mexican’s truck, I would not be offended because I am in Mexico. If I were living in Italy and I saw an Italian flag waving proudly from a Italian’s truck, I would not be offended because I am in Italy. And if I were living in ANY other country over the planet it would be the same thing. I would be proud to wave the flag of the country that I live in, even if I wasn’t born there.

What makes this security guard think that being proud of your country would upset people? It makes no sense. I think this security guard needs to re-evaluate her patriotism before she tries to tell someone they cannot be patriotic. In fact, I’d venture to say that she doesn’t deserve to have a job where she is in charge of telling people that they cannot wave the American flag in the United States.

Heck, the school itself waves an American flag on the flagpole, what makes her think that it’s not ok to wave a flag from your vehicle?

I’m sorry, it just upsets me to hear this kind of thing especially with September 11th coming at the end of this week.

For some reason I couldn’t amplify the video in this article so please follow the link below to visit the website that this article comes from to see the video. It takes seeing the video to get the full story, besides the text from the story that is.

Amplify’d from www.theblaze.com

Education School Security Orders CO Teen to Remove American Flags From Pickup Truck

Jeremy Stoppel is man enough to admit that he deserved getting a ticket for squealing his tires in the school parking ticket. But he has a problem with the order that came down from school security — no more American Flags. He told KMGH-TV:

“She said I should take my flags down. She said this is a school that focuses on diversity and she doesn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable,” Stoppel said. “How do you suppose anyone would feel uncomfortable in America with an American flag? That’s where I’m confused.”

Jeremy and his dad told the station they are looking for an apology:

“To me, she’s just threatening him, hoping that she can just bully him so he’ll just take ‘em down and just put his tail between his legs and say, ‘I’m done. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’ And that’s just not gonna happen,” said Dan Stoppel, Jeremy’s father.

The principal is promising to look into the matter. Stay tuned.

Read more at www.theblaze.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9wo9

Night Mare

On By Michel McDonaldIn BooksLeave a comment

I’m having a nightmare, or really, I’m about to start reading Night Mare, the 6th installment in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.

This next book begins with a character that was in the previous book, Ogre, Ogre.  Mare Imbrium along with 2 other night mares rode the trio out of the Void and took her payment of a half soul.  Here is the synopsis from the back of the book.

“The Nextwave of barbarian warriors was invading Xanth from the north, ravaging and destroying as they advanced. But Mare Imbrium had her own problems. Ever since she had gained the half soul, the night mare had begun to mishandle her job of delivering bad dreams. Now the Night Stallion dismissed her, exiling her to the day world with a message for King Trent: “Beware the Horseman!” She had no idea of what that meant. But that was the way with prophetic warnings, nobody could understand them until it was too late. Then she met the Horseman. And she discovered that one who would ride a night mare was a master of bit and spur, and not a man to surrender her. For the night mare, it began to be all a horrible nightmare!”

When I read the previous Xanth books, I read them little by little over time, some days I only read 1 chapter per day and other days I skipped reading.  I was into the books but not that much apparently because they made me sleepy.  But when I read Ogre, Ogre I was able to commit myself to reading more than 1 chapter per day.  In fact, I read the first chapter maybe in February then gave up until recently when I read the entire book in 3 days.

If I can read the entire book in 3 days then I have a feeling that maybe I can read half of the next book today and the other half tomorrow.

I only have 4 more Xanth novels in my queue, although there are 32 available for sale, I don’t own any of them so they are not all in my book queue.  I do plan on buying more but for now I have other books to read.

If you have not read the Xanth novels you are missing out on some great adventures.

My Pez Collection

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog1 Comment

It was time to dust off all of my pez dispensers.  They collect a lot of dust sitting on the shelf that I made for them and I don’t clean them very often because it’s such a job but they desperately needed to be cleaned lol.  While I was cleaning the dust off I decided to take pictures of them in all of their collections.

There are a couple collections that I wasn’t quite sure about like the first one with all the bugs.  I’m not sure what those are from.  I think 2 of them are from Bee movie but then some are from Bugs, I don’t know.  They are all bugs so I just added them together lol.  Then there are the Madagascar ones, I accidentally added a panda to it not knowing where it belongs but apparently that collection only has 3, not 4.  But I don’t care lol.

The very last picture is all of them on the shelf (except for the boxes and the petz, those are on another shelf).  I made that shelf by the way out of very very thin wood that I found at Home Depot when we were still living in Hollywood.  It started out as a smaller shelf but then I kept adding to it so I had to buy more wood and made another shelf.  I’m getting to the point where I think I’m gonna need to plan a bigger shelf lol.

I wanted to compile all of these pictures into a video and put on YouTube but I looked at other peoples videos and they all put mine to shame so I thought that they just deserved a blog post at least lol.











bat

Edit 8/28/09: I went to Walgreens today and they already have the Halloween stuff in their seasonal aisle so I went to look at the Pez dispensers and they have the new glow in the dark Bat Pez.  I added the picture above next to the pez dispenser collection rack.  Click on it to see full size.

Bad Tenants

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Ok they are gone so now I can talk about them…

In the middle of April these people responded to the ad that we put in Craigslist to rent the little house next door.  They wanted it so bad so they put a deposit down which would be their last months rent.  See, Darrin wants people to pay first, last and a deposit.  The rent was $625 so to be able to move in you have to give $1250 plus $500 for a deposit.  When they give a 30 day notice to move out then the “last” kicks in so they don’t have to pay their rent for that last month.  This way they can use what they normally would pay for rent as a deposit for another place.

So anyway May 1st comes and they move in.  They pull up in a U-Haul truck and I’m standing there waiting patiently for them to come and I hand them both their own set of keys.  I even help them unload the truck.  I’m such a nice guy right?  LOL

The tenants were a couple, Robert who was unemployed since he was coming here from another state, obviously he had no job so he said that when Monday came he would go search for a job.  His pregnant girlfriend, no, not wife, Sarah used to work at this hospital in town (allegedly) and so they said she could come back to work.

Well, after they were living there a whole day they started complaining about stuff.  Sarah said that she was having to scrub down the stove/oven because it was absolutely filthy.  Well, I take that personally because I scrubbed it for an hour and half way before they moved in.  The previous tenant, Justin, left the place so gross that it took me forever to clean it.  So when she said it was filthy I felt like it was a slap in the face to me.  I spent my own money on the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and I spent my own money on the oven cleaner and I spent like I said, 1 1/2 hours scrubbing it clean.

Then she calls and says they are having such a huge cockroach problem and I told her that you can be the cleanest person in the world and you will still get them at this time of year.  It is in fact roach season when it starts getting hot out and when they moved in was around the time that it started heating up outside.  I mean, it wasn’t in the 100’s but I think it was in the early 90’s.  I can’t remember.  But she told me on the phone that she has lived in Bakersfield for 30 years and she has never seen 1 roach.  LOL Yeah right.  In what reality was she living in those 30 years because I’ve lived here in the 70’s and the 80’s and I’ve lived here since 2000 and the roaches are out every summer crawling in the back yard, crawling on the front yard, they get inside the house and you can’t get rid of them.  But she insisted I was wrong and she was right.

So Darrin calls Banks pest control and pays $150 for that 1 visit.  Of course she still complains.  On the 3rd day She had asked for a can of white glossy paint so she could paint the kitchen cabinets lol.  He went over there and just lit into her because she was being too demanding and asking for this and that and the other.  He even tells them they have 3 days to move and the guy Robert says well give us back all of our money.  Darrin goes, ok, I’ll give you your money… after you have moved out and I see how clean the place is, then we’ll talk about getting you your money back.  Of course then he has them both by the balls.

On June 1st instead of putting an envelope in our mail box with a rent check in it they put an envelope in our mail box with a 30 day notice to move lol.  Thank god!  Good riddance.

So they are gone by June 30th and they leave 1 set of keys in our mailbox.  I didn’t hear them drop because I was asleep.  I only found them when I got the mail.  So I went over there to see what damage they left for us.  They left what was a clean couch when they moved in but now it’s filthy.  And they took the door knobs in the house which were all original when the house was built.  I don’t know how many they took, I just found out today when Darrin went over there to look.  And the back yard they left a lot of trash and a lot of cigarette butts on the ground lol.

I never met them until they moved in but if I had met them when they were looking at the place I would’ve told Darrin not to rent to them because they both looked like white trash.  I could tell just by looking at them.  I didn’t have to get to know them to know that, I could tell.  Frankly I’m surprised they aren’t either living in a tent or a trailer.  I’m sure that’s next though because Robert got like 3 or 4 of those little post card sized letters from Bank of America that you tear off the sides and the top to reveal it is insufficient funds fees.  I’ve gotten a couple of those in my lifetime but never have I gotten 3 or 4 in 2 days lol.  Plus they’ve gotten a few letters from what looks like collections by looking at the name of the company on the return address.  We threw all their mail out because they refused to give us a mailing address and they took all the door knobs so screw them.  They also aren’t responding to our calls so how else can we give them their mail?

Let’s hope the next tenants who occupy that space aren’t such dicks.

Oh I forgot to mention something.  The whole 2 months they were living here, Robert wasn’t working.  All he did all day long was either sleep or play with his $400 remote-controlled car that takes its own gasoline or he sat on the couch playing X-Box online with other people.  I know this because I had to go over there a couple of times to install stuff like a new light fixture and a smoke detector.  So he had the nerve to make his pregnant girlfriend work while he hung out at home all day.  What a dick!

14 Years Old and 555lbs.

On By Michel McDonaldIn NewsLeave a comment

Should mom of 555-pound boy be charged with neglect?

That is an article on the SparkPeople website.

The mother claims that she works too much and doesn’t always have any time to give her child the right foods.  She buys fast food for him all the time for his dinner and he has reached a very dangerous weight.  Can you imagine being 14 years old and weighing 555lbs?  I certain cannot.

Ok some may say that because he is 14 years old he is old enough to feed himself but come on, when I was that age if it were up to me I’d be eating candy bars and cake and ice cream for dinner every night.  You cannot let a 14-year-old make that decision on his own unless you have already taught him from birth the right foods to eat.

When I was a kid my mother fed me the right kinds of foods and I was always very very thin.  Ok so I wasn’t model thin but I had a small waistline.  Mainly because I was very active on my bike and running from bully’s and also during P.E. class they always had us running around.  There were times that my family went to McDonald’s to eat dinner and we went to other dining restaurants for dinner too, not just fast food.  My favorite place to go was Bob’s Big Boy (which I’m happy they are coming back to Bakersfield YAY).  But I wasn’t given that everyday so I knew that you weren’t supposed to eat that crap on a daily basis.  Not just because it’s not very good for you but because back then it was expensive.  The burgers were about $2.50 or so and you know, in the 70’s and 80’s money was always tight so it wasn’t too often that we would go there.  It was cheaper for my mom to go to the store.

Personally I think that this kid should be taken away from the mother because they gave her lots of chances to help her son get down in weight by teaching them better eating habits and the mother refused to comply so they took him.

This woman needs to get a better job where she is able to pay more attention to her son so she can walk with him and maybe get him a gym membership.  Go there with him every day to make sure he does what he is supposed to and not just sitting down listening to his iPod outside in the front of the gym.  She needs to take responsibility for HER actions in getting her kid fat.  If you don’t then your child needs to be in a better home environment.

Well, that’s just my opinion, 1 opinion out of probably billions.

Video Calls

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cell PhoneLeave a comment

I’ve seen in tv shows where people are using an iPhone and they are talking to each other and they can also see each other. Like in Knight Rider for example. I’m curious if that really is possible. Maybe someone call respond to this question.

Since Darrin has a job now we’re both going to get a cell phone plan and new cell phones. He’s been taking our only cell phone to work but it’s a pre-paid cell phone which means for $25 he gets 2 1/2 hours to talk. He’s calling me all the time and he’s calling other places and I just have a bad feeling about it. He’s going to need a cell phone plan with an unlimited calling feature, GPS and internet. I figured that we could both have them so we can call each other for free.

I’m going to need one too because as soon as I get a new bike wheel I’m going to be riding my bike again and when he calls me I’d like to be on video phone chatting so he can see what the bike path looks like. I think that would be cool.

Anyway, please, if someone can respond to let me know which cell phone has that feature. I’d like to get blackberries but iphones will be cool too. I just need to know which phone is best for video calls. Thanks

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

On By Michel McDonaldIn Celebrities, TVLeave a comment

There is a movie that I just heard about that is from Joss Whedon and family that I am head over heals for.  It’s called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog which stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible and Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer.

OMG it is so good.  It’s basically a 42 minute musical (as by the title) comedy all about Dr. Horrible sitting in front of his computer doing video blogs and he tries to rule the city while Captain Hammer always tries to save the day.  But Captain Hammer is a pompous prick.

Normally you would root for the good guy but in this movie the good guy is a douche and you root for the bad guy instead because even though he is evil to the core, he’s still a sweet lovable guy who just wants to get the girl (gag).

Let’s face it, Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are perfect for these roles.  They both can sing.  Oh boy can they sing.  And they both do such a great job in this as their characters.

Dr. Horrible’s… was a little movie with 3 acts filmed during the writer’s strike of 2008.  I was told by a friend tonight about this musical episode that it was going to be a new summer 2009 show for ABC but when I went to ABC.com it didn’t show anything so I just assumed it was Hulu only.  Then I discovered that Amazon has the DVD for sale.

I also Googled the shows title and found the official website.  I’m reading the “Master Plan” and I see that it was only going to be available to see on the internet until July 20th 2008 then it’s gone from the internet forever.  But… it is still on the internet.

If you would like to buy it on DVD make sure you go to Amazon and to www.drhorrible.com to download it on iTunes.  They also have some t-shirts for sale for $25.

Nathan is in his own show on ABC called Castle which is on Monday’s at 10/9C and Neil Patrick Harris is still in How I Met Your Mother on CBS Monday’s at 8:30/7:30C.

Which ever show you watch you can also watch them at Hulu, that you can be sure of.

Job at Wal-Mart

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Times are definitely tough for a lot of people… ****EDITED****

I’ve already put an application in to Wal-Mart via their website to be either a greeter or a stocker or checker or whatever they can use me for.  I’m actually looking forward to getting out of the house and going to a job so I can’t wait and I hope they accept my application and hire me.  Even if I’m a greeter that’s fine, as long as I get a check you know?

Day Without A Gay

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gay, Gay RightsLeave a comment

Today is Day Without A Gay day.  That means that all the gay people are “supposed” to call in sick (or gay) and not work today and not even spend any money today as a form of protest because of Prop 8.

I don’t really have to go to a job every day so that isn’t a problem for me but I do support this protest.  For example, I barely have any food in the pantry and fridge but I will eat tuna and egg salad sandwiches for lunch and dinner if that means I am helping out.