California is legalizing gay marriage. A gay couple will now be able to be legally bound to each other.

Some gay couples are ecstatic that they can finally be legally married. But, I suspect that there will be negative repercussions.

In the past, some one could say “Honey, I would marry you in an instant but it is not legal so lets just live together.” But, now with the new law, one member of the couple might feel the push to commit to something that he/she is not really interested in doing. In short, now that gay marriage is legal, the fear of a legal commitment suddenly exists.

Of course, anytime you have the option for a legal marriage, you also have the option for a legal divorce. I suspect that the main beneficiaries of gay marriages is going to be divorce lawyers.

Our Meijers (regional grocery chain) has small flat screen TVs at all of their checkout counters. According to the advertisement on the screen, you can rent screen space to advertise your business or what ever.

But, I suspect that they have a screening process for these ads. After all, they wouldn’t want an adult product store advertising. Nor would the want D&W (local grocery chain) advertising. And, I suspect that the ads are expensive.

Personally, I never pay any attention to the screens as I am usually too busy reading the front of the tabloids. After all, how am I going to know who Brad and Jen are with this week.

The scrape book store closed a few weeks ago. I am not surprised. Actually, I am surprise that it lasted as long as it did. I guess that Lowell did not buy enough scrape book supplies for it to stay open. And I guess that people were not willing to drive to Lowell just to buy their scrape book stuff.

Personally, I fail to see the interest in scrape books. But, to each their own.

Our purchasing department has an electronic white board. After you finish writing on it, you can hit a button and the contents of the board are scanned and printed. It is pretty slick and simple.

Seeing how simple this worked, we decided that we too needed an electronic white board. Of course, we already have an electronic white board but no one knows how to use it. So, you would think that we would buy one that is easy and simple to use. But no, we bought one that requires an advanced degree to operate.

Not only does it connect to a PC, it also connects to the LAN. So,  you can record the contents of the white board and you can send the contents around the world. Unfortunately, no one knows how to use it.

So, the new electronic white board now sits next to the old electronic white board. And, if anyone needs to record the contents of the white board, they can get out their pencil and paper and write to their hearts content.

Don’t you just love this high tech stuff?

For lunch, I quite often eat frozen dinners. They are cheap, easy, and for the most part, tasty.

Now, Meijer’s (regional grocery chain) has a whole freezer case full of frozen dinners, so they carry quite a variety. Some of the selections are quite healthy while others are high in fat and starch. Since I am trying to eat healthy, I am picky about what I eat.

So, when I saw a selection of meals by Weight Watchers, I figured that I couldn’t go wrong. After all, Weight Watchers is an organization that is committed to good health, right?

My first Weight Watchers meal was called Fiesta Chicken. It was chicken with squash and black beans with a tangy sauce. It was just the thing I was looking for and it was only 240 calories. Great! So, I threw it in the microwave and began cooking it.

Now, part of the cooking process called for stirring half way through the cooking process. After doing so, I licked off my fork. WOW! It was salty!

When the meal finished cooking, I took a couple of bites and then threw it out. It was too SALTY! 800 mg to be exact.

I won’t be buying Weight Watchers again. If the food is too salt, you can’t eat it. Maybe that is how they help people loose weight.

One NFL franchise has announced that it will allow men to tryout for cheer leading positions on the team. While having male cheer leaders is not new, these come with a little twist. You see, these male cheer leaders are dressed like women; as in Transvestites.

Now having Transvestites on the cheer leading team would add a whole new dimension to the game. Would the sports commentators discuss which ones are women and which ones are men? Would the men watching at home bet with each other as to the real gender of the girls?

I wonder which locker room they would use?

The New York Time is available on line. You can read every article in the paper for free. The only thing that you don’t have access to is the crossword puzzle. If you want to do the crossword puzzle, you have to pay.

So, the news is free but the games aren’t. Must be that people buy the NYTimes for the crossword puzzle and not the news. Works for me.

It was the Friday before the long 4th of July weekend and Jimmy T. planned to go boating for the weekend. And since he planned to leave right after work, he brought his boat with him.

Now, normally most people would pull their truck through the parking spaces so that the truck is parked in one space and the boat is parked in the parking space behind it. But not Jimmy T. He was concerned that someone might ding his truck or his boat so he parked his rig next to the curb, perpendicular across 6 parking spaces.

Now this was a problem. You see, his boat was about 3 feet from the communications manhole where I needed to work. And that manhole was full of vile, stinky water which needed to be pumped out before I could work down there. And rather than pumping that vile stinky water on to the grass, we had to pump that vile stinky water into the parking lot where Jimmy T.s boat was located.

In all fairness to Jimmy T. I decided to ask him to move his boat. But, being a good judge of character, I was pretty sure what his response would be. And, I was right. So, 10 minutes later, I popped the cover to the manhole and prepared to pump.

The pump that I used was powered by a small gas engine and it could discharge into a standard fire hose. But since I was so close to the parking lot, I chose not to dirty the hose. So, with a couple of pull of the rope, the motor started and the pump began doing it’s thing.

And as expected, the water was vile and stinky. It was so bad that I moved up wind of the stench. Unfortunately, Jimmy T.s boat was down stream of the spray. And while the water was not directly spraying on his boat, the light wind of the day carried the mist into the boat.

After I finished pumping out the manhole, I tossed several of those toilet scenting cakes into the manhole and closed the lid. The manhole would need to freshen for several days before I could work down there.

And Jimmy T.?  Well I am sure he had a good holiday.  After all, he wouldn’t have been bothered by mosquitoes as the flies would have been too thick.

Now that Jimmy T. had a new office and a campus phone, he needed a loud bell so that it could be heard in the building.

I always loved it when self important people would ask me for a loud bell. They may as well have asked me for a sign which read “kick me”.

You see, a few years prior, I came across a construction horn left behind from the construction of one of the campus buildings. And that horn was good for a 1/4 of a mile. So, when Jimmy T. demanded a loud bell, I knew just what to give him.

I hung that horn inside the building near his office. Since the horn was really made for outside use, it really rattled the windows inside the building.

Now for the best part. Since I was the campus phone man, I had one of those clip on phones just like the phone company. And, I could go to any telephone terminal on campus and place calls.

So, whenever I saw Jimmy T. standing right next to the horn, I would clip into a terminal and give him a call. The loud horn would make him immediately jump and run back to his office. Of course, by the time he got there, I would have hung up.

Now, he suspected that it was me so he would immediately check the telephone terminal near his office. Of course, what he didn’t realize was that I was in a different building, watch him through the windows.

He should have let me thrown those boxes in his dumpster.

When the build was far enough along in construction, Jimmy T. moved from his trailer into one of the offices in the building. That is when he told me that I was going to be putting in a phone for him whether I liked it or not.
So, I installed a phone for him. It was one that I had sitting on the shelf. It was a princess phone. It was pink. He was not a happy camper. I thought the phone was appropriate.

He knew that it would look bad if he complained about the phone so, he asked for a 15 foot handset cord. He was betting that I would not have a pink 15 foot handset cord in stock and that I would have to change out the phone with another style and color.

Well, he was correct. I did not have a pink 15 foot handset cord but I did have an orange 15 foot handset cord. So, I installed an orange handset cord on the pink princess phone. And to make things more interesting, I removed the pink handset and replaced it with a green one.

He should have let me throw those card board boxes in his dumpster.