New Thoughts

-The old man known as 2008 has breathed his last breath and the little baby 2009 has been born. Little 2009 is in diapers, yet it is projected to be a monster. We shall see.

-Pet Peeve: It’s “Happy New Year” or “Happy New Year’s Day”, not “Happy New Years”. There is only one New Year at a time.

-The Miami Heat beat the Cleveland Cavs to make it two wins over the two best teams in each conference (Lakers were the other) over the last couple of weeks. They have already surpassed last year’s win total. That’s two Miami sports franchises turning it around from dismal records last season.

-With my work day starting as early as it does, I knew I had to go to sleep early. I tried, but every time I started to drift to sleep, someone shot a fire cracker and Max barked.

-Last night was going to be my first night in my memory in which I missed seeing in the New Year. Due to my little buddy Max, I ended up going to sleep at 12:30 AM. I did get to kiss Marcela at midnight, though.

-I finally beat Marcela in bowling on the Wii. She nearly came back to beat me, but she came up 5 pins short after I built a huge lead.

-Marcela stayed up until about 11:30 cooking her “chilis rellenos”. I ate the first one, it was most excellent!

-My sis-in-law is going camping this weekend. So I broke out my tent and some camping gear. It’s been about 3 years since I used it. While doing an inventory of the tent parts, Vivi discovered a gecko egg with a baby gecko inside. By “discovered” I mean she accidentally crushed it. NASTY!

-Go Dolphins! I am still in shock that they have made the playoffs and won 11 games.

-Marcela’s new camera I gave her for Christmas has been great. Yesterday we went to the Everglades and she took some wonderful pictures. I will be sure to load them on flckr and post the link. In the mean time, check out my twitter account to see some of the pics I have uploaded.

Thought bearing lobster

• I woke up this morning at 5:50 AM on my day off: the phone was ringing. My work was calling to find out if I wanted to come in to work. Not today!
• I was expecting the call to be from Dave to make sure I was up and ready to go for a day of lobstering. Dave called at 6:30 AM to let me know he was heading out of the plant.
• I was glad that Dave would take the time to go out there with me, since Trav ditched me to visit the family in Louisiana. 🙂
• We loaded up the car, grabbed a couple of Jolt Ultra’s and a cooler of ice, and headed to Card Sound road.
• We had a great time, but after about 2 1/2 hours in the water, we caught only 1 lobster (short) and found about 5 large lobster carcasses. We did see one stone crab, quite a few large snook, some mangrove and schoolmaster snapper, a couple shark, and even some drum. No keeper lobster though.
• A couple of guys in a nice Angler 204 with fishing rods came over to see how we were doing, and they ID’d themselves as FWC. I guess they were undercover. They couldn’t believe we were not from a boat, considering that we were quite a way from the bridge. After they saw that we had our flag, our gages, and we were in the legal side, they wished us good luck and went on their way.
• Dave is a maniac, the guy was climbing up in the mangrove roots. I kept getting tangled in the dive flag line and my legs got a little itchy from what I think were jellyfish. I will go back in a few days to do some snapper fishing and try again for some lobster (August 6 is the regular season opener).
• Due to my wheeling and dealing at work, I now have to work 4 straight to make up for my miniseason time off.
• Tonight, Dave and his family are coming over for some chicken and burgers on the Q. I think we will play the Wii too.
• I spent some good times this week watching movies and going to the mall with Marcela. I still didn’t get to see Hancock yet. Maybe Tuesday.
• The blogroll/links section of the blog have been updated. Also, I have created a “Top 5” page to make it easier to find all of my Top 5 lists.
• Tomorrow, I will unveil a new weekly feature.  It will be a fun one.
• On a different note, the economy grew at 1.9% in the last quarter, oil prices are dropping faster than ever in history, and faster than they grew. But if you watch the news, you would swear we are in a recession.
• The violence against our troops is at an all time low in Iraq, but you hear absolutely nothing positive in the news. Apparently the mainstream news outlets do not report good things, especially if they reflect positively on Bush administration or the Republican party.

Thoughts Over Medium

• Once again I find myself eating breakfast at Marios.
• Nearly each Saturday off, Marcela and I come to Marios for café con leche y tostada. That’s (Cuban) coffee with milk and toast for anybody that’s curious.
• I have been lucky enough to have café con leche, tostada, bacón, y juevos fritos with my mom the last couple days that I’ve been off.
• Today was Marcela’s last day of school with the kids, and tomorrow is her last day at work for the Summer.
• Hurricane season 2008 has officially begun and I still haven’t stocked up on all my supplies. Fortunately, I have most of the supplies I need already.
• The heat at work is no longer a major concern for me since I bought Rubbermaid® blue ice blankets to place in the plate pouches in my vest. I was chillin in one of the hottest places at the plant yesterday while everyone else was suffering.
• I got a good scare yesterday at work when I saw a bright flash and heard a loud boom. It turned out to be a fire in the switch yard at the fossil side of the power plant.
• Tonight is the first night of the NBA finals and they are really playing up the return of the “greatest rivalry in the NBA”. The images of Chamberlain/Russel and Johnson/Bird are all over ABC.
• The ESPN staff are leaning toward LA in this series. It should be a good one.
• LPC has a Twitter account. Follow LPC and follow me!
• Even Jesse is now twittering.  You can follow him too.
• Somehow, Pastor Trav is going to incorporate Twitter into the Sunday morning services. That means if you are not Twittering, you aren’t “cool like that” Chris. LOL
• My poor little lovebird is still sitting on her eggs. She must have no clue that they will never hatch.
• I was playing around with the microKorg today and I realized just how cool that thing is. I have to find the manual because it’s as complicated as it is cool.
• Jesse informed me of his plans for this weekend’s music at Church. I am so ticked that I have to work and I won’t be able to participate.
• There are quite a few people at my job site who believe in aliens. They were talking yesterday and actually theorized that aliens are super-evolved humans who had left and have come back to either harvest or study us. I know I annoyed them because I started talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey and the new Indiana Jones movie.
• Jesse got a kick out of this stuff. I gotta say that it makes good late night radio talk show fodder, but I am waiting for some mainstream independent verification.
• The Wii continues to entertain Marcela and me. I have some online competition in Mario Kart coming up soon. But my mom hasn’t even learned to play yet.
• Is Hillary about to concede? Is she going to be Obama’s running mate?
• Some of the things I look forward to with an Obama presidency: Higher taxes, higher gas prices, more government intrusion with regards to energy consumption, more spending on entitlement programs, and socialized medicine.
• Somebody or some company out there can come up with a solution to the energy crisis. The left wing (Democrats) tends to think the way out of our energy crisis is to punish the companies that are profiting. Forget the American way which is that necessity is the mother of all innovation.
• Call me Commissioner Phil. I am going to create a yahoo fantasy football league as soon as they open up. If you are interested in joining, email me at “thecitizencane-at-yahoo-dot-com”. Go ahead and register for a yahoo account at Yahoo.com Pastor Travis thinks he is going to win, so all you football gurus out there better get ready. Also be sure you have thick skin, because the trash talk gets pretty heavy.

Wii Wii Wii!

Mario Kart has become an addiction for Marcela.  She spent 3 hours playing the Wii by herself last night when she was supposed to be grading. 🙂  Tonight, when I got home from the Miami Seaquarium with Trav, Kelly, and the little munchkins, Marcela and I played for another 2 hours.  She’s getting pretty good and even beat me a couple times.  Don’t tell her this, but I didn’t let her. She actually did it on her own.