Holy sticky-footed felines, Batman!

This was posted to Stuff on My Cat a little while ago …

… it might be a good idea to lock your screen doors and hide the birdies and fishies! Yikes!

Leave it to the French…

You’ve heard of wine clubs, right? Well, what about wine pawns?

According to Slashfood, the Crédit Municipal de Paris is accepting wine as collateral for loans to its customers.

A spokesman for the pawnbroker says that this move attracts customers who wouldn’t want to pawn jewelry or the like, but a valuable bottle of wine is discreet enough to remove from the home.

Funny thing … in our house, alcohol would be one of the first things we’d notice missing!

There’s a Monty Python skit in there somewhere, I just know it!

“Bring out your wine! Bring out your wine! … ” :wink:

Weird deliveries come by email

I got all kinds of weird things via email. Hell, half of them are from Uncle Monster. ;P hehehe… But he’s not the only one … I have a friend in CA who owns a little San Diego carpet cleaning company. He sent me a whole slew of stuff today (bored are we, George? ), including two pieces in the animal kingdom that caught my eye: apparently it’s not the feathers that makes a bird, and scientists work on fishing for the lazy. The first one kind of surprised me … I always thought peacock feathers were the ultimate end-all-be-all of sexy costumes of the animal world.

Shows what I know. :lol:

Senate says ‘no’ to guns on campus

Several local ‘Bama blogs are already steaming over news the proposed campus gun bill has been blocked by the Senate. A shame really, because personally I thought that was a pretty good damned idea! Per Erwin, it was “designed to discourage gunmen by making them aware someone could shoot back quickly.”

Ya damned skippy.

Something a little lighter

Want a good laugh? Check out this SondraK post.

Very cute. :mrgreen:

Spice of Sci-Fi

And last but not least … because I have GOT to have something sci-fi every day, here’s a list of the six most brilliant “bite your head” dragons from science fiction.

Because dragons are cool, mmmkay?

A Tide star taken too soon

I had posted back in September about Victor Ellis, a former University of Alabama linebacker who was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away last night.

Rest in peace, Victor.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones.

Resistance is futile, you will be widgetized

I have been messing with various parts of my theme over the last couple of days. Sadly, I have not yet widgetized this theme (shocking, I know) because I had so much custom code in it. I have been looking for a replacement to the Twitter swf and nothing I’ve run across so far has fit my liking (yet), but I did see a WP widget that looked promising.

Key word being ‘widget’ … OK, so I’m stubborn.

I know I could hack up the plugin code to make it work for a non-widgetized theme, but honestly, if I’m going to find new toys to play with, I need to clean up the playground — so to speak. Get on the ball, re-arrange my theme’s innards, banish those last handful of code gremlins back to the outer banks of Hades, and “get with the widgets.” *nyerk*

So, over the next few days, don’t be too surprised if I break something …

Humpday Hilarities

The following funny came via email from the LinkedIn Troops Support group:

CHP vs USMC

Two California Highway Patrol Officers were conducting speeding enforcement on I-15, just north of the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar. One of the officers was using a hand held radar device to check speeding vehicles approaching the crest of a hill.

The officers were suddenly surprised when the radar gun began reading 300 miles per hour. The officer attempted to reset the radar gun, but it would not reset and then turned off.

Just then a deafening roar over the treetops revealed that the radar had in fact locked on to a USMC F/A-18 Hornet which was engaged in a low flying exercise near the location.

Back at the CHP Headquarters the Patrol Captain fired off a complaint to the USMC Base Commander. The reply came back in true USMC style:

Thank you for your letter. We can now complete the file on this incident.

You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Hornet had detected the presence of, and subsequently locked on to, your hostile radar equipment and automatically sent a jamming signal back to it, which is why it shut down.

Furthermore, an Air-to-Ground missile aboard the fully armed aircraft had also automatically locked on to your equipment location.

Fortunately, the Marine Pilot flying the Hornet recognized the situation for what it was, quickly responded to the missile system alert status and was able to override the automated defense system before the missile was launched to destroy the hostile radar position.

The pilot also suggests you cover your mouths when cussing at them, since the video systems on these jets are very high tech. Sergeant Johnson, the officer holding the radar gun, should get his dentist to check his left rear molar. It appears the filling is loose. Also, the snap is broken on his holster, and his Dansko shoes were untied.

Thank you for your concern. Semper Fi.

God Bless the Marines!

Insurance swindlers

As I indicated in a previous post, it really burns my hide to see senior citizens get taken advantage of. A friend of mine who works in the insurance industry in Georgia sent me a link from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with an article about a shady insurance agent who swindled some folks out of their Medicare coverage and/or Medicare supplemental coverage:

The sales agent said he worked for Medicare. He really worked for a private insurer. And, after he came to Dorothy Consalvo’s Stockbridge home and signed her to a new insurance plan, one she thought would enhance her existing benefits, the 81-year-old said she was shocked to find she had inadvertently given up her longtime Medicare coverage.

Up the road in Norcross, another agent talked Violet and Carroll Cox into signing up for a private Medicare plan at the low cost of $7 a month. They say they were told it would give them the same coverage as their supplemental insurance. It didn’t. “This agent lied all the way,” Violet Cox contends.

It’s a crying shame! If you have loved ones who are “a little on in years,” I would suggest keeping a printout tucked away somewhere with their coverage plan details and any uncovered or out-of-pocket expenses (if any) listed. Most insurance companies have this information accessible via a website, or a quick call. Handy information to have, not just in times of (medical) need …

Obama’s blind spots and Vote for mom!

Lately I’ve been inundated with comments, articles, and general STUFF about Obama. I said it once, and I’ll say it again … the more I read about that man, the more he scares me. A couple people sent me this link, a post on ZardozZ detailing a very well put together article by the National Black Republican Association detailing some little known facts about the man.

Go. Click. Read … now!!!

Put down the bagel. Go read those web comics later. Stop surfing for auto insurance online or whatever it is you’re Googling … seriously. It never ceases to amaze me how many people who are planning to vote for that man, but no absolutely NOTHING about him, his views, or where he stands on which issues … but I digress.

Vote for Mom!

Anyways, after you go read that article, go vote for America’s Favorite Mom: Patti Bader, founder of Soldiers’ Angels!!! (also posted to SA of AL site!)

[ Note: voting requires registration ... might I suggest a disposable email address? ]

Calling for help for a beloved ‘birdie’

She’ll probably want to smack me for calling her that.

As someone who’s been victim to identity theft, my heart goes out to Raven and her family. She recently posted about her family’s findings about her grandfather (now deceased) who was being abused by his caretaker. That in itself is heinous, but to add insult to injury, his caretaker had also stolen his identity and depleted his savings, writing checks and using his credit cards. Reading her story infuriated me, not only bringing back my personal memories dealing with FuckHead, but also in thinking about how I would feel if my beloved Gramps had been treated that way by one of his caretakers.

An open call for help

Those who have been keeping up with this journal over the past week or so are already familiar with the situation I am in, for the most part. For anyone else, here is an overview. I did not put in a cut, as I really need everyone to see this.

My grandfather died at the age of 94 about 8 days ago. This followed an emergency trip to the hospital, where it was found that he had bled out through an intestinal tear. My parents decided to put him in hospice care rather than subject him to radical or invasive procedures, which was in accordance with his wishes. He died about 18 hours later.

At this point my parents started trying to put his affairs in order. As they filled out the death certificate, a nurse took my mother and her sister, my aunt, aside to tell them that she believed my grandfather had been severely abused by his caretaker, and if they had been able to save him, she would have personally intervened to keep him from being sent back to his caretaker to spare him a great deal of pain. He had bruises in several stages of healing all over his body, and possibly worse injuries as well.

The hospital records, over 100 pages corroborated this abuse pattern over the past few years. However, Texas, the state where he resides does not have a mandatory abuse reporting policy apparently, so no one bothered to report it to adult protective services. Then, as my mother tried to continue putting his affairs in order, she was stunned to realize that this same caretaker had used my grandfather’s credit cards to make purchases and drained his entire life savings to the point where he did not even have any money to live on. Even two days after his death, this woman was still writing checks in his name, obvious forgeries of his signature on each.

This explained to us several references in his letters about being tired of living and wishing God would take him away from his pain. None of us knew this was going on, and apparently even my grandfather’s financial advisors noticed the pattern but did not see fit to notify the rest of the family for whatever reason.

My family contacted the Lubbock, Texas police and were told flatly that they refused to get involved at all and would not pursue the case or try and find the caretaker. They contacted adult protective services and found out that the police should have suggested an autopsy to prove abuse, but it was too late as my grandfather had been cremated. Apparently they can only intervene if there is a live person to question or an intact body. The attorney they found also basically told my mother that this was not a winnable case. After contacting the credit card companies about the theft of my grandfather’s identities, one company told my mother that they too refused to get involved at all.

At this point, we just want to see the caretaker prosecuted for her fraud, have the bills in my grandfather’s name cleared and make sure the woman does not do this to anyone else’s loved ones. The money, my grandfather’s savings that he had been building since just after the Depression, when he first started building his accounting firm is probably not retrievable, though it would be wonderful if it was.

This is an open request for help from me and my family. If you have any suggestions at all of how we can at least get someone to help us on this, we would be very grateful. Please re-post this to lists and pass it along, as any help at this point would be welcome. We are drowning in bills that were run up by this caretaker, and the police, lawyers, and credit company will not help us. The only people who have aided us are the hospital staff, who have come forward with statements. However, this does not really help since the police will not listen and my family does not know where else to turn.

I can’t pretend to know how Raven is feeling. I know it has got to be frustrating as hell when local authorities, credit companies, and legal venues are not helping in even pursuing possible prosecution of the caretaker! That woman took the old man for everything he had (and physically abused him on top of that!!) and left a mountain of bills in her financially destructive wake for the family to sort out.

Anyone with ideas or advice for Raven and her family, please take a moment to leave a comment on her post.

Site for Bama Angels

It’s been up for almost three weeks, but I’ve kept its location pretty hush-hush until I had the “go ahead” from someone at Soldiers’ Angels. Well, last night I got the OK from Patti Bader (the MAIN woman herself!), so of course I’m all giddy and happy this morning. :mrgreen:

So, without further ado … www.BamaAngels.org

There’s not a whole lot on there yet, but I have several things bookmarked that I want to post so I’ll be adding more content this weekend! :grin:

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