David's Tangled Thoughts

There was a dish that my dad made for Thanksgiving. I've had it once before and thought that it was quite good. I asked for the recipe and I got a card. I must warn you though, I don't think that my dad faithfully followed the recipe. Sweet Potato Casserole 1 (14.5 oz) can mashed sweet potatoes 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup milk 1 tsp grated orange rind 2 tbsp orange juice 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 large eggs, beaten 2/3 cup flour, divided 1/2 cup melted butter, divided 1 cup chopped pecans 1 cup packed brown sugar optional: pinch of nutmeg, cinnamon Mix the mashed potatoes, sugar, orange rind, orange juice, vanilla, eggs, 1/3 cup of flour, and 1/4 cup of butter together. Pour into greased baking dish. Combine pecans, brown sugar, and the remaining 1/3 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of butter (and the optional ingredients). Sprinkle this over the mixture. Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes or until bubbly. My dad said that he used three sweet potatoes instead of the canned but that seems to be a lot

The decorations came up at our home this weekend. Thankfully, I was spared the grunt work as I have been busy at work. Come to think of it, I haven't put up decorations for about four years now. I kind of miss decorating the tree especially. My mom and I have different tastes when it comes to the tree. (Shhh, don't tell anyone though.) Since I am always concerned about Christmas overkill, I would prefer that Christmas not start until about two weeks before. If I had any say in the matter--and I don't-- decorating wouldn't occur until around the 15th. Mom says that she's going to do it because it's not cold. (It's been in the high 40's.) Make sense but I think risking your life up on an icy roof putting up string lights adds a little thrill to the holidays. It's not like we live in a two story house anyways... Merry Christmas! <--That's going to have to last you for a couple weeks.

There is an article that I found quite interesting. It is that the emergence of China as a superpower may occur faster than we have predicted. The estimates that I have heard placed China as surpassing the US somewhere around 2050. The article that I came across reported that there is widespread skepticism from our allies in East Asia that the U.S. could win a war with China. As much as it pains me to say, I agree with them. The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. There is no debate that the U.S. military has the best toys and well trained soldiers. But that is not enough to win a war. Although people would point to the Balkans and the first Gulf War as evidence that high tech/precision warfare can be successful, I don’t see it as convincing evidence. The milita

Sometimes, I am amazed by my own stupidity. The Saturday mail brought me my tickets to see a Broadway musical in Chicago. Capital One upgraded my credit card account to platinum. Michigan State University Federal Credit Union sent me checks, basically telling me to spend just under $2,500 for the holidays. The Broadway tickets I regret getting. Oh, I have the funds to cover it but considering that I will be quitting my job in less than a month, it's a cool $150 that I could have saved for something else. Actually, regret isn't the right word. I'm still glad I'm going, it's just that if I could go back, I would definitely have thought twice. The new Capital One account has No Hassle Rewards. My Capital One card is my secondary card. Most of my charges are to my MSUFCU credit card because the APR is almost 10% less. I pay my bills off every month so the APR's on these accounts don't really affect me. So I could make Capital One my primary use card and take adv

Today was one of the rare days that I had completely free. Usually, my days off from Wal-mart occur during the work week. So on those days I go to my internship. Since the council on aging is not open on a weekend, I was free to do what I wanted. What did I do? A whole lot of nothing. I drove into town to get a haircut. I did go to Rural King, though. When I was in high school, I worked at K-mart. During my time at State, it was closed and for a while the property just sat until Rural King just moved in. I made plans to go in some day and see what changes they made inside. That day was today. They took out the floor tiles but utilized many of the fixtures that K-mart left behind. It did look like K-mart took out their register equipment. I only stayed a few more minutes. But before I left, I saw one of the oddest things ever: A woman with a dog and two cats on leashes. They let her into the store too! Since when did cats become service animals?

Today we had our first real snow. It wasn’t much, especially around home. You would think that living by the lake, we would get more snow than the greater Michiana area. This is not always so. Lake effect snow can be weird sometimes. While my village got a dusting of snow, 12 miles down the road and to the east, they got a good couple of inches. As I was driving to Cass, I almost slid off the road. I almost got a muscle cramp the way my butt cheeks were clenched. As soon as I got into Cass County, the skies started to clear up and by the time that I got to the internship site, the skies were blue but I could see the snow lines just to the south. So I took a picture.

A while ago, my faithful Tracfone cell began to die. I had a difficult time trying to get the unit to recharge. I’m guessing the connectors were bad. After getting sick of it I decided to get another phone . My faithful Tracfone was an old style phone and my service was contracted out to Alltel although my phone could jump from network to network. As I considered new phones with Tracfone, I found out that they didn’t do this anymore as the new coverage maps showed less coverage even though it was now a national service. (When I was with Tracfone/Alltel, I could only use it in the western half of Lower Michigan, any other place I was roaming.) So I decided to go with Virgin Mobile . Bad idea. There are three places that I spend most of my time: My home (which had no bars, but service), my place of employment (which had a full set of bars until I got inside in which case I got service but no bars), and my internship site (which has no service at all.) I was finally fed up with it. So ch

My sister, Kristel, turned eighteen today. Legally she's an adult, but she won't really get the full benefits package until she's... oh... about 25. So happy birthday Kris, if I was there, you'd have a drink on me. But since I'm not, I'll save it for my lunch at Subway tomorrow :P

"What the fuck does that mean?" I probably said that a little to loudly when I punched in for work and got that weird message. I had put in a request for the 27th and the 28th off so that Season and I could make a trip to Chicago. I also made a request to have the 14-24 off in December. Well to get to the heart of the matter, I my request was rejected. I suspect that it was an automatic rejection because all the others in the computer indicated that they hadn't been reviewed yet. Only the 23rd of Dec. was rejected. I've been wanting to quit Wal-mart for quite some time now. I had hoped to find a job by now but admittedly, I have been lazy and quit my job search after so many rejections. Maybe by quitting, I will have a new motivation to get back into the job hunt. It's probably not smart, but I really want to go with my family down to Florida. It's been two years since I've been on a family vacation and I'm not sure that I will be able to do it again.

Last night as I was eating dinner at work, I heard a familiar song playing over the store speakers. Have your self a merry little... Oh, crap! Christmas songs are now being played. It's not even Thanksgiving yet and I am already sick of Christmas. I'm sure you've heard this complaint before but it seems all the Christmas hoopla starts earlier and earlier every year. This whole thing reminds me of a post by another blogger who lives in England. He had posted about his distaste for Halloween, chalking it up to another commercialized American holiday. Wouldn't it be nice not to have to think about Christmas until it is only days away--not months? And wouldn't it be nice where you actually think about the giving and sharing rather than the buying? I'm trying my hardest looking forward to Turkey Day.

An article linked on Drudge caught my attention and thought that I would post it since it has a little to do with the previous post. Teen Holds Two-Vote Lead in Mich. Race The Associated Press Friday, November 11, 2005; 7:32 AM HILLSDALE, Mich. -- An 18-year-old high school student held on to a two-vote lead to become mayor of this southern Michigan town. County Clerk Thomas C. Mohr on Thursday announced the official tally: Michael Sessions received 670 votes. Mayor Doug Ingles had 668. Earlier unofficial figures had shown Sessions with a 64-vote lead over the 51-year-old incumbent. But several votes for Sessions, a write-in candidate, were disqualified because they were actually cast for other candidates. Ingles has until 5 p.m. EST Wednesday to ask for a recount. Sessions used $700 from a summer job to fund his race, putting up signs throughout the city and campaigning door-to-door in the town of 8,200 people. Sessions appeared Thursday on "Late Show with David Letterman" t

Sorry to everyone who has stopped by here in the last couple of days only to see the same things over and over. I usually mean to post at least every other day but things lately have kept me from wanting to sit down and type. Although they are not my problems directly, there have been some events that are tugging at me. I'd go into it more, but there are privacy issues with my family and friends. Let me just say that I am worried about all of them while at the same time I am trying to crawl through a set of my own. Hopefully, the holiday season will brighten me up a little. Even though this year is a non-election year, there were some interesting things on the ballot. Voters nixed a millage increase that would have provided more funds to Southwestern Michigan College. I'd say it was a pretty close vote. But it doesn't really matter to me as I live outside the district, am registered to vote in another part of the state, and do not plan to attend SMC. SMC, however will get t

I really wanted to go out tonight (Sat/Sun). But the more responsible David reared his ugly head and refused to call in sick. And did I ever regret it. Two big ass trucks with no room in the back. I just resigned myself to my fate and just let it happened. If Dennis or Sam had come back their and started to raise some hell about the crap being processed quickly enough, I would have snapped. Those damn morons can't expect us to work miracles so they can get their numbers in. Give us the people and the working condidtions and everything will be fine. Since we don't have workers and OSHA would have a fit if they saw our back room, it's only natural that it's going to be slow. Oh why didn't I just call in?!

I just heard this a few minutes ago on the local news. Apparently, Congressman Fred Upton will be leading the congressional delegation to Rosa Parks's funneral. It certainly is an honor, but I am wondering just how he got chosen. Why am I posting about it? If had been anyone else, I probably wouldn't have but Congressman Fred Upton represents my district (which is MI-6) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Well the big blue box allowed us workers to dress up for this Halloween. Out of all of us on the GM (General Merchandise) unloading team, only Tammy and Joni dressed up. Tammy came in as "Poor Black Bitch Barbie" and Joni came as a witch. Tammy tried to get me to dress up as a cow so I could have my utters molested. Sadly the costume didn't fit. I would have bought it, Tammy, if it had fit I swear! Tammy and Joni are available. Just email me and I'll pass on any inquiries. :P