Point.Click.Jeff

Some videos I found today

2010-08-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

New car fever won out

2010-08-17T22:55:00.001-07:00

I looked at a 2006 Volkswagen Toureg and really liked it. It had a lot of the luxury extras but had higher mileage and I started thinking about the cost of repairs etc. I started thinking about new cars and thought I'd give it a try but didn't think I could find anything I would like in my price range. My credit is less than perfect but I found out that it was much better than I had feared.

I had always been intrigued with the Toyota Prius so I drove over to the Toyota dealer and gave it a shot. I was approached by the "typical" salesman. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but I wasn't in the mood for a schmoozing. I politely told him I used to be a Realtor and I didn't need him to sell himself and that I had researched the car and we could both save time by just getting down to the numbers. I gave him my final numbers and said I will not budge..period. Since my Dad is taking my car I didn't have to do the trade in tango.

I was pleasantly surprised that the deal only took about 30 minutes and the finance took about 10 minutes. Then he wanted to go over the features of the car. I said I'm a technical person and had driven the car for a few hours and played with the buttons and figured most of them out and that I had only a few questions. He answered them while they detailed the car and gassed it up.

Overall it was a good experience as compared to some of the car purchases I've had in the past. It gets 51mpg and has a bunch of bells and whistles that I love. I know it looks like a turtle but I'm happy with it!

Vintage Packaging

2010-04-11T23:05:00.000-07:00

I found this earlier - someone's Flickr page with pictures of vintage packaging pictures

Crazy weekend

2010-03-29T18:54:00.001-07:00

Rick got attacked and mugged Friday. We spent 7 hours in the emergency room and after all the tests the ER let us go. He has a concussion and is black and blue all over.
He tried to do too much today and got dizzy-he is stubborn and I can't get him to lie down too long.

We found out later that someone else was attacked in the same manner on the same night a few blocks away-same description of the attacker. I hope they catch him before someone gets killed. Rick was lucky, the guy had a knife but didn't use it. He kicked Rick with his heel on the face, head and chest. Thankfully nothing was broken and his teeth are fine.

He might go to his regular doctor tomorrow to see if this dizziness from today is normal.

Four eyed salt or pepper shaker

2010-03-28T02:52:00.000-07:00

I found this at a thrift shop years ago for a quarter and for some reason I was thinking about it today. I looked online to see if I could find any information about her but didn't find anything. The two sets of eyes and eyebrows on a salt and pepper shaker doesn't make sense to me! I've always been curious of what the mate might look like.

Stunning

2010-02-03T21:07:00.001-08:00

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

A single sheet of paper

2010-01-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

Amazing artwork!

One example:

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-20T20:15:00.001-08:00

Back at home

2009-11-29T01:06:00.000-08:00

We were able to pick Sissy up from the Vet Wednesday and she was so happy to see us and even happier to be back home. She is still confined to her crate and will have to be for the next few weeks. She still isn't walking but is showing signs of muscle tone in her back legs and will support her weight on her back legs. 3 times a day I have to do some exercise therapy and she seems to be doing better with it. Her attitude is that nothing happened and she still wants to go go go so that is a plus.

The other dogs want to be near her, but I have to keep them away in case they jump on her and hurt her staples. I'm hoping to see some definite feeling back by at least a month and walking within 3 weeks. Time will tell.

I had a good Friday-I got the $3,000 check that I won from Digital Insights in the mail and I'm expecting to see the $1200 that I won from Albertson's in next week!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

The surgery went well

2009-11-18T21:59:00.001-08:00

She still isn't walking but is in good spirits-I might be able to pick
her up Monday

Moments...

2009-11-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

William Hoffman is a New York filmmaker who put this video together and uploaded it last August. It’s finally getting some viral activity, and rightfully so. It’s “a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman’s book, Sum.”

I do enjoy a perfectly realized edit, and this one’s full of them. Via Neatorama

A great win!

2009-11-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

I got a call today that I won $1200 from Albertson's!!! That, added with the $3,000 from Digital Insights in October will make for a wonderful holiday season!!

My win blog

Taylor

2009-10-29T23:10:00.001-07:00

Taylor all curled up in a dog bed 3 sizes too small!

Petey & Oliver snuggling

2009-10-24T14:09:00.001-07:00

Latest pictures of Oliver

2009-10-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

Work work and more work

2009-10-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

I had a long week with 3 events we had at work. Friday I worked from 10Am to 11:30Pm mostly on my feet running around. I slept a lot this weekend recovering-40 has caught up with me.

I have a few projects I need to get done around the house and just keep putting them off. Oliver has kept me busy, running around like he has fed on jet fuel.

Oliver won't take the hint from Petey that he doesn't want him chewing on his ears and keeps on bugging him. The first week, he bit Petey's "grapes" and Petey's has been on guard ever since. Oliver spends all of his spare time humping on Taylor. Taylor is so laid back he just lays there and yawns. It has been nice having a puppy around, he is a cutie and I fell in love the first day!

I took a few pictures recently, I'll upload them this week.

I've finally started winning a few things again-I went through a long dry spell for a few months and have won another Nintendo Wii system that has some kind of Star Wars party pack with it-all valued at $600!! That added with about $200 in gift cards and smaller prizes has me energized again so I have been more excited about entering every night.

My desktop computer crashed a few weeks ago, so I splurged and got another Dell. It is really nice and I validated the purchase saying it was my birthday present to myself! I probably could have gotten away from having a desktop and just used the laptop, but I didn't come to that realization until it was too late to take it back!

After the computer crash I switched from Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla's Thunderbird. After a few days of playing around with it and configuring it, I like it so much better than Outlook. It's faster and easier to configure. Like Firefox you can install add-ons as well, which is nice.

Rick just got one of those small netbook computers and they are better than I had thought. It has Windows XP and a 160Gb hard drive and the small keyboard isn't hard to type on than I thought it would be.

A local builder has donated a house to benefit The Myelin Project and they are selling 3900 tickets at $50 each. Then they randomly draw 100 tickets from those 3900 and have a reverse drawing and the last ticket wins! I have got three so far and might get two more before the deadline. I don't know how I would react if I won a house-I hope I find out!!! I also heard that a local furniture company is donating furniture as well!

I hope everyone has a great week :)

Oliver

2009-09-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

He is a good boy...when he is asleep!

More of Ollie

2009-08-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

Oliver

2009-08-25T21:42:00.001-07:00

Oliver

2009-08-25T21:41:00.001-07:00

Oliver

2009-08-25T17:06:00.001-07:00

The newest member of the family

Spider

2009-08-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

I went out onto the porch to watch it rain and walked into this web...

Kole

2009-08-09T13:44:00.001-07:00

New plants

2009-08-01T19:24:00.001-07:00

Cacti

2009-08-01T19:22:00.003-07:00

Cactus

2009-08-01T19:22:00.001-07:00

Cactus babies

2009-08-01T17:25:00.001-07:00

Cactus

2009-08-01T17:24:00.001-07:00

I re-potted my cactus & pulled some of the little babies off & put in
another planter

Aloe vera

2009-08-01T00:02:00.001-07:00

My dad got these for my mom a few weeks before she died 4 years ago.
He gave them to me a few days after her funeral. It has grown at
least 3 inches in the last month since I repotted it!

Close call!

2009-07-29T22:38:00.000-07:00

Rotten Tomatoes had a twitter poem contest and although I didn't win, I was one of the 20 finalists! The winner got a trip to the premiere of a new film called Paper Hearts.

It was a hard poem to write, you had to do it with your twitter account and you could only use 140 characters! Mine is listed as jefftexas88 on this list.

Follow me on twitter if you have an account over there.

Petey

2009-07-29T22:37:00.001-07:00

Petey will be 5 this year & he is spoiled rotten!

Taylor

2009-07-29T22:34:00.001-07:00

Taylor will be 13 this year!

Kole

2009-07-29T22:31:00.001-07:00

Brylee & Aspyn

2009-07-29T22:30:00.001-07:00

Mason

2009-07-29T22:29:00.001-07:00

Trumpet Vine and Chaste Tree

2009-06-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

Ballon Flowers

2009-06-29T18:24:00.001-07:00

Rufus-Day 4

2009-06-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Rufus the bird

2009-06-08T21:17:00.001-07:00

Bird news

2009-06-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I found my dog Taylor holding a bird in his mouth. I got it away from him and it died before I could figure out how to get it back in the nest.

The nest is in an odd place up in my eaves where I can't quite get my hand through. A little later I went out in the yard and noticed the dogs were focused on that area again. I heard some chirping but couldn't see anything. I went around to the other side of the fence and found another one! He was feisty and hidden amidst the wisteria.

I picked him up, deciding to try to see if I could find some place to take it and give it a chance rather than leave it to become cat food.

I couldn't find any place so far and then found some websites that gave information on how to feed baby birds.

So far so good.

He has eaten a few times with the food I made up and has a full gullet and is asleep at the moment. Hopefully when Rick gets off work tomorrow he can make some calls and find someone that knows more of what they are doing to take him.

On a sad note, the barn swallow babies who were in the hanging geranium basket met a sad end. When I was going to work one day last week I noticed a bunch of geranium leaves on the porch and looked in the basket and they were all gone. Rick noticed later a cat hanging around looking for more.

I guess the cat had made its way up the porch railing and got them. Hopefully the cat cannot get to the babies that are higher up in their nests. I won't be hanging any baskets on that hook anymore just in case.

Mums and roses

2009-06-06T23:18:00.001-07:00

From the past

2009-06-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the past of me, my parents, my brother and sister, my grandfather and my great grandfather.

Paris, France 1994

2009-06-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

I borrowed an old photo album and scanned some pictures out of them. I found these that I took in Paris in 1994, pictures of me and my family. The last picture I took in black and white looks so eerie when you click on it and make it full sized!

Elderberry, trumpet vine and Washington Hawthorne

2009-06-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Eerie clouds after the storm

2009-06-01T18:48:00.001-07:00

Newly hatched

2009-05-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

The barn swallows that built their nest in my hanging geranium basket have some chicks!

The dove chicks from yesterdays post are gone, I took a picture just in time!

Dove nest in the apple tree

2009-05-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

Peonies, geraniums and yarrow

2009-05-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

Flint Arrowheads

2009-05-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

I thought I had lost these, but I found them while cleaning out some boxes the other day. I found them originally while hiking at a canyon back in 1978

Around the yard

2009-05-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Around the yard

2009-05-20T19:54:00.001-07:00

Around the yard

2009-05-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

New plants for the flower bed

2009-05-19T18:29:00.001-07:00

New plants for the flower bed

2009-05-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

New plants for the flower bed

2009-05-19T18:23:00.001-07:00

Canada with a twang?

2009-05-17T22:09:00.001-07:00

Keith Olbermann makes some good points about the idiotic idea of Texas secession...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A job to fall back on

2009-05-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Miss California at it again

2009-05-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

It must take a lot of energy to spread hatred

A surprise

2009-05-10T16:25:00.001-07:00

I have some hanging geranium baskets on the porch and I was taking one down earlier and found a surprise that the barn swallows left...

Around the yard

2009-05-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

No hamsters were harmed during filming

2009-05-10T14:35:00.001-07:00

All kinds of wrong

2009-05-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

But leave it to Saturday Night Live!

Who knew?

2009-05-09T22:56:00.001-07:00

Grisly yet fun...

clipped from www.uniquedaily.com

Happy Mothers Day!

2009-05-09T22:55:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.farmingtonlibct.org

2009-05-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

My friend Ginger wrote a good political rant article yet again...

Geese

2009-05-07T20:39:00.001-07:00

Various pictures from around the yard

2009-05-07T20:35:00.001-07:00

Various pictures from around the yard

2009-05-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from last fall

2009-05-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Swan

2009-05-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

While walking in a park today I found her, sitting on her nest. She moved up and I saw the eggs, but I couldn't get focused in time to get that picture.

A nice way to say

2009-05-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

A nice way to say F&ck you

NSFW but catchy!

Thanks Donna!

Do you believe her?

2009-05-06T19:52:00.001-07:00

I think

2009-05-06T19:51:00.001-07:00

That all dogs go to heavean

It must be hip

2009-05-06T19:49:00.000-07:00

for movie stars to make foreign commercials again...

The birds are back

2009-05-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

It was nice to see our birds again. The have three summer nests up in the porch eave that have been there forever. They just do a few renovations and cleaning and move right back in!

These last 2 years I have noticed three things they haven't done in the past. They completely destroyed one nest after some finches started to bring twigs and fluff to make it their home and have started to rebuild it.

Then, a few nights ago I started leaving the porch light on overnight and they plastered the side of the porch light globe that faces their nest with the mud they build their nests with. I'll take that as a "shut the light off!"

The other thing I hadn't seen before was the pair laid their first nest and the 6 babies hatched, grew up and flew away-and the same pair laid another nest and had 6 more.

Lifestar landed at our office today

2009-04-17T12:45:00.001-07:00

Thankfully it wasn't an emergency-but a demonstration for students at
a local high school

I Dreamed a Dream

2009-04-12T02:16:00.000-07:00

Via Neatorama

Surprise Win

2009-04-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

But not for me!!

I normally have Friday's off but I had traded a day off earlier in the week and worked on Friday. I was at my office computer typing and had my radio on. I heard them announce Rick's son Brad's name and said he had 10 minutes to call in!

I was able to get hold of Brad and he called in. The station had a promo going on where if your name was called on the hour, you had 10 minutes to call in to be put on their payroll. You win $50 for that hour and then at the top of the next hour they call another name-if that person didn't call in within the 10 minutes, you stay on the payroll for another hour and earn another $50.\

He ended up winning $250!! I was so glad that I just happened to hear them call his name.

I hope everyone had a great weekend, and here's to a great week ahead :)

Petey

2009-04-04T23:03:00.001-07:00

Experimenting with a new photo program

The blizzard last Friday

2009-04-01T17:48:00.001-07:00

We had 4 feet snow drifts and it snowed for hours. All the snow had
melted off by Sunday when it got up to 70 degrees

Aspyn

2009-04-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

Kole lounging

2009-04-01T17:34:00.001-07:00

What's this I hear about a blizzard?

2009-03-25T20:26:00.001-07:00

Spring was finally beginning to unfold before our eyes-and now the local weathermen are calling for blizzard like conditions starting late Thursday night lasting all day Friday with 10" of snow possible and 50 mph wind gusts! Brrrrr!

British Columbia, Canada-Taku River 2001

2009-03-23T19:50:00.001-07:00

Less than 2 steps behind me was a drop off that I estimated to be at least 300 feet. I was so glad to get far away from the ledge!

Paris, France 1994

2009-03-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

If my memory serves me correctly, this is a statue of Zeus and his children-it is in the Jardin des Tuileries. We found it after we walked for miles to see the Louvre and saw the signs that said the museum was closed for renovations! It was still fun walking around that area and seeing all the sights.

Paris, France 1994

2009-03-23T19:41:00.000-07:00

It rained the whole time we were in Paris, but it was still the most beautiful city I have ever seen. I could never get a good picture with the Eiffel Tower in the background because if was in the clouds.

New Orleans, Louisiana 1998

2009-03-23T19:30:00.001-07:00

An ornate mausoleum outside of New Orleans

Munster, Germany 1994

2009-03-23T19:28:00.001-07:00

The spire of that church has cages-they would put various criminals inside of them until dead back in the day. Shudder.

Juneau, Alaska 2001

2009-03-23T19:27:00.001-07:00

We are taking off from the Juneau airport in a boat plane to be flown to the middle of nowhere to a mountain lake. Then we were taken by helicopter even further to a point on the Taku River. We then rafted/roughed it back to Juneau for 8 days.

British Columbia, Canada-Taku River 2001

2009-03-23T19:25:00.001-07:00

I found this rock on a hike we took up the side of a mountain in search of a glacier.

British Columbia, Canada-Taku River 2001

2009-03-23T19:24:00.001-07:00

I finally got the hang of rafting-the water was so cold that it hurt to touch it. I'd have to fill up my jug and set it near the fire to get it to a temperature to be able to drink it.

British Columbia, Canada-Taku River 2001

2009-03-23T19:23:00.001-07:00

You could close your eyes, push the button and take a picture like this everywhere we went!

Near Munster, Germany 1994

2009-03-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

I actually forgot where this was-I think it was somewhere between Munster and Norderney-it was such a whirlwind trip.

British Columbia, Canada-Taku River 2001

2009-03-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

I scanned some of my favorite pictures today of various trips. This is one night before bed, I loved how the clouds were among us. It got just a bit darker than this but not by much-I never did get used to it being light all the time.

Efficiency Expert

2009-03-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

The efficiency expert concluded his lecture with a note of caution. "You don't want to try these techniques at home.".

"Why not?" asked somebody from the audience..

"I watched my wife's routine at breakfast for years," the expert explained. "She made lots of trips between the refrigerator, stove, table and cabinets, often carrying a single item at a time. One day I told her, 'Hon, why don't you try carrying several things at once?'"

"Did it save time?" the guy in the audience asked.

"Actually, yes," replied the expert. "It used to take her 20 minutes to make breakfast. Now I do it in seven."

Via Misscellania

Someone is smiling....

2009-03-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Puppies sleeping

2009-03-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

The cutest thing I've seen all day...

Sleeping Puppies - watch more funny videos

Via Unique Daily

Wonder why this isn't in mainstream news?

2009-03-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

Report: Slain US Nazi hated Obama, had parts for 'dirty bomb'

Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, an American Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states.

The man, allegedly furious over the election of President Obama, purchased depleted uranium over the Internet from an American company.

Via Fark

The next president of Texas?

2009-03-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Chuck Norris has lost his mind

It is amazing how someone can go from "America: love it or leave it" to "America: let's secede" in a few short months.

Spring is here

2009-03-08T13:44:00.000-07:00