I think I’m turning into a 14-year old girl. I recently read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and enjoyed it so much that I ran out and bought the three sequels, which are waiting their turn on my reading list. But first, I’m reading Twilight right now and, again, enjoying it. This one also has several sequels that I’ll probably run out and buy when I’m finished with it. What’s next, a Jessica Darling marathon?

Inspired by Mike Reed over at Man About Murfreesboro, I went over to The Something Store and ponied up ten bucks for … something. That’s their deal: you send them $10 and they send you something. You have no idea what you’re getting until you open the package.

It’s a brilliant business idea. You buy up surplus merchandise from various manufacturers for what I imagine would be pennies on the dollar, then you turn around and sell it to schmucks like me and Mike who are goofy enough to buy into a marketing campaign that makes it sound fun to throw ten dollars into a hole in the internet. We are living examples of the old saying that “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Mike got a pair of sunglasses, which I think was kind of a let-down for him. But me? I scored. I got this:

It’s a Katita Wind Up Gear Box from Kikkerland, and I think it’s totally cool. You wind it up and it sort of dances around frenetically for a few seconds until it runs down. That’s it, the end, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for when I ordered … something … without knowing what I’d get. It’s goofy and cool and totally worth the ten bucks I paid for it.

Oh, and that bit about a sucker being born every minute? Include me right out on that. I checked the price for this little baby on the Kikkerland website. Guess how much? Twelve bucks. I paid ten. Who’s the sucker now, somethingstore.com???

My View From Here photo series has gone medium-time.

I took a stealth trip to Fort Worth, TX back in October and did my usual View From Here schtick, taking a picture of the room as I walked in…

…and another picture looking out the window…

…and then I uploaded them to my View From Here flickr set, as usual.

Someone from Schmap, who I guess was assigned the Fort Worth beat and thus was obviously on someone’s shit-list, saw them and asked if they could use them in their new Fort Worth Schmap. Being the publicity whore that I am, I said yes. So now my Fort Worth pictures can be seen by Fort Worth-curious travelers around the world — as long as they’re curious about the Homewood Suites by Hilton ® Ft. Worth-North at Fossil Creek in general and Room 702 in particular. Check it out.

I’m a little concerned about their presentation of that exterior shot, though. It lacks clarity; I think it’s misleading. Is that the Homewood Suites in the picture or is it the view from the window of the Homewood Suites? We know that it’s the view out the window, but there’s nothing to indicate that to Frau Blücher from Stuttgart, who might decide she wants to stay in a motel with a small parking lot and park right outside her room and would be disappointed once she gets there and finds the parking lot is actually quite spacious and that it’s a hotel, not a motel, and she’ll have to actually park her car in and go inside the hotel and walk down a carpeted hallway and maybe even take an elevator to get to her room. It’s a minor quibble, but it’s important to me that my work be presented with accuracy and integrity.

All concerns aside, though: Woo hoo, go me, I’m a professional photographer! (If by “Professional Photographer” you mean someone whose throwaway snapshots of an obscure hotel that very few people will ever even stay at, let alone be interested in, is used without payment on a web-based travel guide that very few people will ever see.) Next stop: Pulitzer!!!

Inspired by the one-eyed Dread Pirate Vane, otherwise known as my blushing bride, I have taken the Pirate Name Quiz. I am quite pleased with the results:

There’s an old song that says It never rains in California / But girl, don’t they warn ya / It pours man it pours. And it’s true; it doesn’t rain for most of the year down here, but when it does rain it does it with a vengeance. Well, it’s raining tonight and I’m so tickled about it that I could die.

It’s the freshly cleaned garage, you see. And the motorcycles in it. The dry, bone dry, not being rained on, safely parked on a flat clean surface with a watertight shingled roof high over head motorcycles. They’re dry, you see. They’re not being rained on. At all.

Oh, it’s a glorious thing. It’s so orgasmically fantastic that I may need to go change my pants.

It’s raining outside and my bikes are dry. Oooo-oooo-ooohhhh!!!! Pllllllllllbbbbttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!

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Aaaaahhhhh…..

I need a cigarette.

I don’t have the most vocal readership around, so comments from all y’all are few and far between and so it could have just been the usual, that nobody was commenting anyway, but if you tried to post a comment recently and found that my anti-spam captcha thing was broken and you couldn’t do it… Well, it’s fixed. You may now comment away again. Or not.

I was trolling the free ads over on Craigslist and saw one from someone asking where they could find a cheap Christmas tree. Being flush with the holiday spirit, I decided to help and posted the following ad:

Free Christmas Trees
Someone posted here looking for cheap Christmas trees. I can tell you where to get FREE ones! Starting December 26, start keeping an eye on the curbs in front of houses and apartment buildings. You’ll find just a few at first, then more and more, until by New Years they’ll be all over the place. You might even find one that still has some tinsel on it! You’ll find the best ones right after Christmas, but they’ll probably keep turning up all the way through February or even March.

Happy Holidays!

It lasted all of about 15 minutes before it was flagged down and removed. Nice work, Grinches.

So regarding the View From Here picture from yesterday of the little hottie sunbathing by the pool. I lied, I didn’t really take 64 pictures of her. But I did take a few. Just to test my digital zoom. Honest. Here’s how effective the 3x digital zoom on my camera is:

I offer this photo only to contrast the next one. I wrapped up work early today and when I got back to my room and looked out the window, I was greeted by this:

That’s just wrong. Not that he’s sunbathing, but that he’s doing it right outside my window. With his shorts hiked up. And with his hairy back. And his callousy feet and gross toes. And… And I think I’ve spent entirely too much time looking at his picture. That’s why I had to post the hottie — to cleanse the palate, so to speak.

And finally, a goofy picture of me. It gets boring out here on the road and you find your entertainment where you can. This is me watching American Idol last night. I think this is shortly before I put on my “Catch the McPheever” pin.

I need to get back home.

I went over to my old buddy Steve’s house yesterday to help him out with setting up his new podcast, The Membrane. It’s really good stuff, I recommend it highly. He only has one episode up so far, but it’s really well done and has that certain… Steve-ness about it that made Evaporation so great. This is going to be one to listen to, I guarantee.

Anyway, while I was over there, Steve played for me the sound file he’s been using as his email notification alert. He was over here at my house awhile back, recording interviews with me and Beth to use on The Membrane, and he got a little bit of me in the background while he was interviewing Beth, which is what he’s using for the email. I think email is not a happy thing for El Steve.

Check it out: Steve’s got mail.

Another week (or so), another podcast. There’s a new episode of No Soap Radio up for your listening pleasure: #28 – Here Come De Bus! Here’s the blurb I posted in the show notes:

Because we care about you, the listener, we’ve added an audio cue to our repertoire: a city bus. So now, when Beth is throwing Chuck under the bus, she’ll have sound effects to do it by. And she makes quick use of it tonight — multiple times.

So check it out, Here Come De Bus!