I’ve been drooling over the Canon T3i, but by the time I add all of the accessories I want and the waterproof housing, it would be well over $1000. We currently have another financial goal so that is a little steep.

Flash forward to Black Friday. Old Navy’s offer was a FREE waterproof digital camera with a $40 purchase. No problem there. I needed some jeans and we needed to pick up our gifts to donate to the kid’s school as we do every year. The only issue: “quantities are extremely limited”.

I arrived at 7:30pm on Thanksgiving in anticipation of the midnight opening. Several other adventurous shoppers confirmed that there were only 40 cameras available. I was number 9 in line when I got there and about 23 by the time the store opened (thanks to some very unethical people).

Now I don’t think many people actually shop for holiday gifts on Black Friday. People pretty much just buy things for themselves. I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t stand in a line like that for anyone else.

Here are my tips for other Black Friday shoppers:

• Black Friday is not necessarily the best time to score a deal. Other than the “doorbusters”, like the cheap laptops and TVs (and the camera), the prices aren’t that competitive. Of course, the selection on Black Friday is better than the selection near Christmas when the deals are better. It’s all a trade off.
• Those aforementioned “doorbuster” TVs and laptops are usually cheap knock-off brands like Dynex, Visio, Emerson, etc. They aren’t worth even what you paid for them. Hold out for a good deal on a Samsung or Toshiba instead.
• While the coffee and hot chocolate might be great in the 40 degree weather, you will need to get out of line to relieve yourself. It’s better to go without.
• You might think you are making friends in line, but when those doors open, it’s every man for himself.
• When you arrive, count the number of people in front of you. That number is guaranteed to at least double before the doors open. Suddenly, everyone is best friends with the person at the front of the line.
• Don’t call the cops. It is private property, so unless they are invited by the property owners, they probably aren’t going to help with crowd control. Besides, it isn’t a crime to cut in line. Besides, they probably aren’t happy about working on the holiday anyway.
• If you’re too fat to get out of your car, you need to stay home. Sitting in the car doesn’t count as waiting in line.
• I’m all for equal access (OK, so not really. And I really mean not really.), but wheelchairs and handicapped people have no business trying to compete on Black Friday.
• Prank calling the store workers so that you can watch them answer the phone through the window doesn’t accomplish anything.
• Calling the cops a second time for the same reason (see above) just pisses them off.
• Don’t cut in line. It will piss people off and you don’t know what kind of rage they are capable of.
• Trying to be the line police makes you look more like an asshole than the people cutting in line.

I’m sure I could keep going, but you get the point.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I got the camera! And I got some mediocre deals on clothing. So look for some awesome water shots right here, next June!

Other than that, the church is fine.  I did some technology work for them a while back.  We attend festivals and other events there every blue moon and my kids even play Upward Soccer there.

Anyway, certain days of the week are “visitation days”, where the members are supposed to take tracts or flyers and canvas their communities to reach the lost. Now, this isn’t a small church: each week, nearly 1000 attend (according to numbers published in their bulletin) and every few years they are building new buildings or additions.  I point this out so that you don’t think that this could be considered a “neighborhood church”. Rather, the members that we know are from communities all around, up to a 50-mile radius. 

Our street is the closest possible residential street to the church.  Every time the members go out to visit, they hit our street (and our house).  EVERY TIME.  It’s like the members are trying to see how they can “get credit” for evangelizing by putting out the least amount of effort.  It synonymous with the whole Livestrong bracelet fad from a few years back: by buying that yellow bracelet for $1.00, it truly is, the least you can do to fight cancer.

Today's flyer from the church. We get tracts or flyers about twice weekly.

From my perception, this is complete laziness.  Only one household in our neighborhood attends this church (and they aren’t the ones canvassing).  Over half of our neighborhood is a different race than 99% of the church’s membership and it is an undiputed fact that churches in the south are still as segregated today as they were in the civil rights era.  I note that to prove that they aren’t purposely targeting our neighborhood, but rather being lazy.

Wouldn’t it be a better use of their time and resources to visit their friends, family, and colleagues who could potentially be interested in the church? According to the church’s teachings, they should be giving ten percent of their income and significant amounts of their time to the church.  Why wouldn’t they want to see their investment pay off?

Welcome to America, where even the churches are lazy.

• First of all, it is NOT a spill.   Nothing was spilled. It is a natural substance bubbling up from under the ocean floor.  God made oil, not man.
• Nobody intentionally caused the disaster.  It was an accident.
• Due to the complex distribution network of petroleum projects, it is NOT POSSIBLE TO BOYCOTT BP.  Oil is used in plastics, jellies, paints, detergents, film, ink, etc.  The gas stations are owned by small businessmen who are simply marketing the BP brand.
• We all share responsiblity.  BP would not be drilling at such depths if we weren’t so addicted to oil.
• Did they ignore proper procedures? Does it matter? We ALL ignore proper procedures at work.  That’s life.
• Do we owe the gulf coast anything? No. Their economies have been stimulated by oil companies for years.  That’s our money already going to support them.

If you look at company stocks in the years after disasters, you’ll see why I will be buying BP stock while the price is low.  Just look at how Exxon stock performed in the early 90′s after the Valdez spill.  Other disasters produced similar results.

Businesses are jumping on the bandwagon as well.  Hotels don’t want to wash your towels and sheets every night, but again, that’s probably more for financial reasons than for environmental reasons.  Other business decisions, such as recycling are practical and noble. There is, however, one place where businesses should not “go green”: the restroom.

My biggest pet-peeve about the whole thing is when paper towels are eliminated in favor of the air dryers in restrooms. The paper towels that most public restrooms have are the brown ones anyway, made from previously-recycled materials.  So by providing them, you aren’t completely anti-Earth.

First of all, they are loud and they scare the crap out of small kids.  Trust me, I know.  If the kids were to dry their hands before using the restroom, it would make them wet their pants.  It’s a good thing they wash their hands afterward.

Yesterday, we visited Stone Mountain and Tristan had an accident.  I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that the accident was so bad that I lost my lunch during the clean-up process.  That is not an exaggeration.  Some messes can not be cleaned up with cheap toilet paper.  When we left, that restroom stall was thoroughly violated.  I honestly would have cleaned up the mess had paper towels been around.  Unfortunately, some minimum-wage employee had to do it.

I was once, in my grocery store days, the guy who had to clean up comparable messes.  I always wondered how someone could “violate” a restroom like that.  Now I know.  In this case, it’s because someone tried to go green.

I was just mad about having to fundraise for the little league organization because I don’t like asking people for money and I don’t like being asked for money.  I was also mad about the fact that we still haven’t received a schedule and the games start in 2 days.  I also exagerated some Lizella stereotypes to add humor to the post. Again, there is nothing wrong with the coaches or other parents.  They are just different than me.

I’m not making this apology post out of fear that one of them has read or will read my blog.  That’s very doubtful.  I just felt I needed to right a wrong.

Hopefully the next post will be more positive (and therefore not about t-ball). It’s also been a good while since I’ve included pictures and/or video.  Let’s see if I can change that.

T-ball should be a learning experience for kids who are interested in trying out a team sport or learning the game of baseball.  Unfortunately, it is not.

When it is 40 degrees outside and the wind in blowing 30 miles an hour, practices should be cancelled. Unfortunately, they are not.

There is no praise for the kids.  No “Good Job, Tristan”.  Nothing.  Just screaming non-stop at kids who don’t even understand the game.  One kid ran off of the field when told to “Run home”.  Tristan walked around in circles when told to play shortshop because he was never told where or what that was.  No explanations, just expectations.

The “coach” coaches a “kid-pitch” team as well, so he’s at the field at least twice as much as we are.  That’s how much these folks love little league.  For me, it’s just one of the “balls” that I juggle.

Speaking of balls, Kimberlie and I are the oddballs at practices. To fit in better with the other t-ball parents, I would need to do at least a few of the following:

• Get a blue-collar job.  So blue-collar that it would borderline red-neck.
• Trade my CR-V for something that consumes much more gas and has much bigger wheels.
• Get a trophy-wife who is a stay-at-home-mom or who works a dead-end job.
• Give up grocery shopping. Apparently all necessary food can be found in the woods.
• Preserve the unetible portions of said food and display them in my home.
• Grow facial hair and a beer-belly and get lots of tattoos.
• Start smoking and communicate using more colorful language.

I’ve discovered that little league system has been designed to nickle-and-dime you.  We paid $110.00 for registration, thinking that would be it.  It included the hat, shirt, and socks and I was to provide the pants, cleats, etc.  No problem.  Then they decided that they needed an additional $5.00 to have the letter put on the back of the shirt.  If every kid is required to pay that, why not just include it in the registration fees?

Yesterday, we were handed ten BBQ plate tickets and told that if we didn’t sell them all, our name would go on a list for everyone at the ball park to see. What???  If it truly costs $150.00 per kid to run the ballpark (for the entire 3 months of the year that it is operational), then charge us $150.00 up front.  Or give us an option to pay more instead of sell BBQ plates.

I told Kimberlie we should consider quitting now and we would only be out $35.00.  We paid $115.00 but we could then sell the $80.00 worth of BBQ plates and pocket the cash. She wouldn’t go for it.

Thankfully, I never had dreams of retiring early thanks to a professional-baseball-playing-son.

Here is a question for the reader(s): Suppose you arrived somewhere an hour early to get a good seat.  You rushed home from work, rushed to change clothes, and had to entertain two small children for that entire hour.  All of that just so you could (hopefully) take some decent photos of your three-year-old child singing carols.  After sitting for 45 minutes (and trying to entertain those two small kids), the room is about 90 percent full.  There are several seats in the back and one seat next to you. A man with a cane sits in the empty seat next to you.  His overweight wife then asks you to give up your seat so that she could sit next to her “handicapped husband”.  What do you do?

Now I certainly have ranted before on this issue.  I hate it when handicapped people attempt to exploit their disability to gain something.  I politely suggested that they sit together in the back, however, the thoughts going through my mind were much more colorful.  Throughout the entire evening, the man kept making remarks to his wife about how sorry he was that she didn’t have a seat and how inconsiderate people can be.  I bit my tongue . . . so hard.  I haven’t had a reason to show anyone at Mackenzie’s preschool the ugly side of Jonathan and I certainly didn’t want to do it at the Christmas Open House.

Should handicapped people have reserved seating at the front when there are clearly no visual or hearing disabilities?  Parking is one thing, but seating is another.  Like you, I may have left my “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet back in the nineties, but I would have given up my seat to a blind or deaf person.  I will not, however, give up my seat to someone attempting to exploit their perceived handicap.  Notice I say “perceived”, because I doubt that toting around a cane makes you handicapped.

So that’s what Jonathan did.  What would you do?

Tiger Woods is a human being — a member of the animal kingdom. He has the same non-manogamous desires as a dog or a rabbit or a . . . tiger?

While some humans, in fact, have the ability to demonstrate self-control, the vast majority do not. Let’s take food and exercise for example — 64% of adults in our country are obese. No self-control there. Then there is alcohol, drug, and prescription medication addictions . . . no self-control there. Oh yeah, credit card problems and other money issues . . . no self-control there either. I could go on and on.

And today, over 50% of marriages end in divorce. The vast majority of those divorces are the result of infidelity. On top of that 50%, not all instances of discovered infidelity end in divorce and on top of that, I would bet that a good number of affairs are never discovered. So take the facts above — humans do not possess self-control and infidelity is rampant.

Now add in the temptation factor. Look at rock stars, politicians, and athletes and their groupies/fans/advisors swarming around them constantly. Lots of temptation there. And being on the road constantly away from his family probably didn’t help the situation.

If the math equation isn’t enough so far, add in the clubbing.  There are three reasons to go to clubs — to people watch, to be seen, and to hook up with people.  Enough said.

I’m not condoning his affairs, but seriously people . . . you’re surprised?

Now watch, the media that made him is the same media that will dismantle him. Let’s just hope he can still hit a golf ball after this.

Any sentence that starts with “But” is most likely an argument or a whine.  I don’t want to hear either. If the phrase is injected in the middle of a sentence, the person saying it most likely assumes that you don’t want to do something, yet is still attempting to justify their request.
Argument example:
Homeless man: “Got a dollar?”
Me: “No”
Homeless man: “But I just need . . . ”

Whine example:
Tristan: “Can I stay up 10 more minutes?”
Me: “No”
Tristan: “But I just . . ”

Assumption example:
Law student: “I know you’re at lunch, but I just need . . .”

I really can’t think of an example where you could use the phrase “but I just” in a statement that I want to hear.

“I’m sorry, but I just . . .” (they aren’t really sorry)
“I know I shouldn’t, but I just . . .” (they knew they shouldn’t)
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but I just . . .” (they meant to interrupt)

I initially planned to write more about my least favorite phrase, but I just have better things to do.

My first clue was that Georgia Power wouldn’t let us use our new number to have power turned on for our address, because the number was associated with a delinquent account.  After that, it was credit card companies and even Gillead Christian Academy (a local extremely conservative private school).

Joel and Sonja P… are the main culprits and their son Jonathon gets almost as many calls.  Here is how the conversations for Jonathon would usually go:

Bill collector: “Hello. Is Jonathon there?”
Me: “This is Jonathan.”
Bill collector: “My name is blah blah and I’m calling about the money you owe me blah blah.”
Me: “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

Do you think the bill collectors bought it?  Of course not!  Once they confirm there is a Jonatha/on here, they think I’m changing the story when I tell them they have the wrong number.  So here we are, six years later, still getting harassing calls for the P… family.  

So how am I smarter than the bill collectors and why all of this tonight?  Using my common sense approach to researching on the internet, I’ve found them all.  Joel works (or worked) at the local Honda dealership, Jonathon is currently in the Marine Corps and Sonya (and possibly the others) attends a baptist church that is 1/2 mile from my house.  The latter two are on facebook, along with extended family, cousins, etc.  Why can’t the bill collectors use google?  It certainly would increase their recovery rate.

The number actually forwards to my cell phone now — our land lines are long gone — and when this AT&T contract is up in 2011, the number I’m referring to will be gone as well. 

Now, even though hardly anyone reads this blog, I’m calling these people out.  They deserve it after years of telephone calls and dinner interruptions.  I did hold back a little.  I haven’t published their address here.  They moved into their current house (which they paid $84,000 for) in November 2002, about 5 months before I got stuck with their number.  It’s all about research!