Here’s a look at the day ahead for me:

Got a call at work on Monday telling me the laundry room was flooding. Rushed home, shut off the water, examined the carnage. As I suspected, and feared, our water heater that is (was) older than Dick Clark had decided to pull a Julian Assange and then retire. The good news, if any, was that I found a practically new water heater on craigslist for $50. Not that I have an extra $50 laying around, but you do what you have to do. The bad news? I have to put it in myself.

I don’t talk about it much, but my boss and job are awesome. A quick text and I was able to get the day off to play Curly. The new (used) water heater is about twice as tall as the old one. The pipes are not. I get to change that today.

I hope your day is more fun than what I anticipate. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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I mentioned on Saturday that, “I am even more of a Geezer today” and I hinted there would be more later. It’s later.

You see, I turned 56 on Saturday. I didn’t run out and buy a new Testerossa (not that I could afford the key fob for one. Besides, a classic Mustang or ‘Vette would be more to my liking). No, but I did change something. Me.

From the time I started shaving I’ve had at least a mustache. Yes, it was the 70′s, but it wasn’t any great fashion statement, I just never was very good at shaving the real estate between my nose and upper lip. After a while it just became natural.

Even into the 80′s and 90′s I always wore the ‘stache. I’m no Tom Selleck. Heck, I’m no John Bolton, but having a hairy upper lip was as much a part of me as hazel eyes and a strange sense of humor. It’s not that I chose not to shave it, I didn’t even think about shaving it.

Over the years I would occasionally grow a beard. Not all the time, but off and on. Until the last 10 year. Now, I don’t even remember the last time I didn’t have a full beard. Some time it would be neatly trimmed, and other times it would be needing to be trimmed. One theory (and I’m pretty sure this is accurate) is that I was just to lazy to shave. I never did care for it much. I didn’t even have a razor anymore!

I changed that on Friday.

At least I bought the razor on Friday. Then, I nearly chickened out. Friday night, Saturday, most of the day on Sunday – the razor sat, unused, in the bathroom. Finally, Sunday afternoon I took the plunge. After ten years of the beard, it was gone.

I look in the mirror and don’t even recognize myself. I think I like it, but it’s a big change. I sure don’t remember that second chin being under there. At least it’s cheaper than a sports car.

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It’s the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday. I have to go to the store. Not for any great bargains, but to get cat food, dog food, milk, shampoo, etc. This shouldn’t take long.

On a different note, Happy Birthday to the next Senator from Florida — Adam Hasner.

Well, here goes nothing. Pray for me.

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I did get Up Before Dawn yesterday morning, fully intending to find some good posts for the First Cup. Well, it just didn’t work out that way. You see, my internet provider (which will remain nameless) had a bit of an outage. I found out that it started around 4am and lasted until the time I was walking in the door at work.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t get a network connection on my smart phone at the same time. I couldn’t even make a call! I had no idea what was causing that. Between the front door and the office my phone started ringing (no cell phones are allowed on the floor). Got to the office, called home (very glad that I could make a call) and found out that everything else was back on.

I sure am looking forward for the pro-rated deduction they’re going to make from my bill. They’re not? Oh well.

This morning’s First Cup is on the way.

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Just a few random thoughts for a Friday morning.

We are only a week away from September 1st. That’s how long you have to participate in the bRight & Early 2012 Presidential Primary Poll #11. The poll is in the sidebar, and although participation so far has been rather low, the results so far are rather one sided.

I still haven’t resolved the issue between the number showing at the bottom of the site and the number seen on my Sitemeter stats page, but both numbers are now over 500,000 — so it’s official.

Hurricane Irene is well off the Florida coast, but still could impact the Carolinas. Be safe up there.

It’s a Friday and I’m home from work. I was off yesterday, too. And, I’ll be off this weekend. A four day weekend sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? Not in this case. Wednesday night Cindy was on the way to work and our VW Beetle died. She was 10 minutes away from work. I guess it was better then than when she gets off at 2am. Her daughter went and picked her up, but she missed a night of work that we needed (she works for tips). We had the car towed yesterday morning by our mechanic. After taking a look at things he informed us that we have a major short in the electrical system. When he gets the (expensive) repair done he will still have to take the car to the VW dealership to have the computer reset. He will work with us, but if you ever wanted to hit the tip jar, this would be a very good time.

UPDATE: We just heard from our mechanic. It wasn’t good news. He can’t fix it, and estimates that the dealership will charge us over $3500 to get it fixed. That’s more than the car is worth. We don’t have access to the money we would need for a down payment on something else. I’m working on that, but time is not on our side. If you can help, thank you so much. If you can’t do anything financially, can you point people to this post?

Have a great Friday, and a wonderful weekend.

If you can…

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It’s that time of year again — School Time!

During the summer I could sleep late and leave for work as early as I wanted. Of course I usually waited until the last minute so I didn’t end up with overtime. Still, I could have left earlier, if I had wanted too.

The biggest challenge during summer break is getting some computer time. Three computers divided by three growing kids and two adults is math that even I can do. That changes with the ability to use those magic words, “it’s a school night.” On the downside, I have to get up earlier.

Next year is going to be really interesting. We will have one child in each school; Elementary, Middle, and High School. That’s going to be fun.

The new school year is, to me, more of a marker of the years passing than a birthday. That means I’m getting older, and that’s not right.

Time to get back into the school year routine.

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The title of this post will come as good news for my readers. I am joining the maddening crowds today as I get my first smart phone.

I’ve had really dumb phones, not very bright phones, and box of rocks phones, but today I join the Smart ranks. You would think that a geek like me would have jumped on that already, but cheep bastard has won out until now.

I’ll tell you all about it when it’s actually in my hand.

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First things first. I am a pudgy old man. I’ve long since stopped trying to deny either fact. Old there’s nothing I can do about, and honestly I wouldn’t want to try. In my mind, I’m still in my thirties (I used to say my twenties, but I’ve moved on there as well), but my body has a few more miles on it than that. Yesterday I added a few more. Here’s the story.

We had a flat tire Monday night on the new (to us) VW Beetle. Luckily someone stopped to help (I wasn’t there), but there was one problem. Although the car came with a really good, full-size spare, jack, and lug wrench, it was missing one simple piece of equipment. You might say a “Key” piece — the key that allows you to remove the 5th lug. Fortunately, our insurance includes road side assistance and towing, so home it came on the back of a flat bed.

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking I might find the key hidden in some nook of the car. Nope. That was OK, I was sure I could take a short (I thought) walk down to the auto parts store and pick one up. Nope. They told me, “try the tire store on the other side of the bridge”, the same distance from the house, but in the opposite direction. Nope. They didn’t have one either. Nor did the other tire store, or two parts stores FURTHER down the the road.

Finally I accepted the fact that I would have to get one from the dealership, if I could only get there. Now I had to retrace my steps home. I was beat.

Finally we convinced our “car guy” to come out, break of the nut, and replace the tire. And wait until Friday for payment. But this morning, I can hardly walk. To quote Martin Riggs, “I’m getting to old for this ….”

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of you. When you’re an Irish Lad growing up in the north east, St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal, even if your family isn’t Catholic. My ancestors on my father’s side are mostly from Ireland. My 3rd great grandfather, John Lynch, was a graduate of the University of Dublin, as a boilermaker. He emigrated to the Boston area and moved to Philadelphia around the time of the 1876 Centennial celebration.

My other Irish roots are from my paternal grandmother who was a McFadden. Her grandfather was James McFadden

James emigrated from Ireland with his wife, Deanna, and their children William, George, David, Mary Jane, and Nancy in 1854. They departed from the port of Londonderry on the ship Creole, and arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 02 October 1854. The family had brought 2 chests, 1 barrel, and 1 box of belongings with them on the voyage.

James was a laborer by trade. The 1860 Federal Census of Clayton Township. (Glassboro Post Office), four of his children still resided at home, with Charles being the eldest. Son William had settled in at nearby Mantua Township, New Jersey. James was reported as being aged 56 that year, and his wife Deanna age 55. When he died in 1876, his obituary noted that he was born in County Tyrone, Ireland.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all bRight & Early readers, Irish or just Irish for a day.

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This may be a fun post to write. A little background: This computer is shared by two adults and three kids ages 6-13. There is a no drinks other than my coffee rule at the computer desk. The rule was violated some time ago — twice. One time the keyboard was the victim, the other violation involved the mouse. The keyboard continued to work, but some of the keys are awfully sticky. The mouse pretty much stopped working all together. We had another mouse stuck in a drawer somewhere (who has had a computer for more than a few years who doesn’t?) and it was placed into service. (On another parenthetical note, how did I acquire so many computer/monitor power cords?)

Here’s the problem(s). One of the stickiest of the sticky keys is the “Enter” key. So, when I press enter to create a new paragraph I get several dozen new lines. I could just hit the backspace or delete keys, but they are sticky too, so when I try that I end up taking out the extra lines, and the last few things I wrote. The replacement mouse was replaced for a reason. For some reason it has a hair trigger left mouse button. A simple click, like closing a tab or window, also operates whatever is under that spot. I’ve tried to close one window and ended up closing two or three. When I look through my feed reader (as I was trying to do when I decided to write this post) I would try to go from one story to the next and ended up skipping two or three at a time.

Of course prices for both peripherals are really cheep. The problem is that I am cheaper. (My frugalness is kind of selective. It most often shows up when I have to buy something I don’t think I should have to buy — like a new keyboard or mouse. When it comes to buying something I want to buy I can be very liberal.)

Anyhow, due to these issues (and the fact that it’s taken over twenty minutes to write what should be a five minute post) I guess I’m going to break down and part with a few bucks.

So, how do you react when you have to buy something like this?

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