If you participate in several "lose 5 lbs in 2 weeks" diets do the powers combine to make you lose more weight? Or just lose the 5 lbs that much faster? Or do you eat so much yogurt, Special K, Hollywood Cookies, Vita-Muffins, and cayenne pepper water that you GAIN weight a waste tons of money?
If the latter is the case the programs should come with a disclaimer; "This diet fad, though ridiculous, will be even less productive when combined with equally unhealthy copies."
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Concise
Welcome to my concise post of the week.
CNN sucks. Way to box out a viable candidate from your debate on technicalities that still weren't true.
CNN sucks. Way to box out a viable candidate from your debate on technicalities that still weren't true.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Bitter Sauce
So I know that the things I’m going to complain about aren’t anything new. They have probably plagued each and every one of us in our lives. I also know that some might not be interested in reading my rant here and I will try not to go on for too long but then again you don’t even have to keep reading if you don’t want to. Unless you happen to be my wife . . . . . or brother-in-law . . . .or someone who subscribes to this blog . . . anyway. This all stems from random events that all seemed to happen to me yesterday for some reason. I guess the universe wanted to get my tormenting out of the in one chunk yesterday. So this is the story of Star Wars . . . .no wait . . wrong opening . . . .my bad. The following story you here is real. The names have been changed to make it funnier. All persons are considered jerks unless otherwise noted.
It all started out a few days ago when MamaBear and I decided to get patio furniture for our deck. We got a nice table and chair set but without the umbrella. Now we need some sort of shade because our deck gets all of the afternoon and evening sun. We didn’t buy the umbrella that and base that went with the patio set because it cost $400.00 all together which I thought was a little crazy for something that wouldn’t be able to provide shade to the whole table. That’s when we started looking into retractable awnings. I knew that it was going to be way more expensive then the umbrella and base but it would allow for the deck to be completely covered in shade and even to be used during rain showers . . . as long as the rain is only coming straight down . . .and that the wind doesn’t start blowing above 20 mph. Which is better then what the umbrella could provide. So we decide to get an estimate for an awning.
So on my way home yesterday I call the MamaBear and she tells me that we need to contact our homeowners association to get approval for the awning because it would be an addition to the exterior of our house. Now what MamaBear didn’t tell me at the time was that there were already several stipulations from the HOA for getting this awning.
1. It could only have a straight edge on it. Now this I could really care less about. It doesn’t bother me to not be able to have curved edges.
2. The Case had to be the same color as the accent on the house. Which goes along with number
3. Which is that the color of the fabric for the awning had to match the color of the siding on the house.
Why do we have HOAs in the first place. They are a no good crap money stealing industry that only wants to make sure that we all live in a stupid cookie cutter style community. I know that there are probably a few good points to them but I don’t care right now. And I know that some of you are thinking “Well why, Mr. Tank, did you buy a house that belongs to an HOA if you have such a hatred for them?” And the answer is that in the area we live in it is next to impossible to find a housing development that does not have its own HOA unless you move way far out and then the land is still so expensive that you would be forced to only be able to live in a tent, which sometimes I think I might prefer instead of having to deal with all these rules and regulations.
Besides all of the color stuff that we have to comply with we also have to turn in the paperwork to the HOA which only meets once a month. And that day was yesterday, which would have been enough time for us to get the paperwork in for the approval except for the little fact that we have to get our neighbors who would have to look at the apparent monstrosity hanging off the back of our house. Now one of our neighbors is never home so of course I couldn’t get them to sign yesterday. Our other neighbor is always home . . . .except for yesterday. So I was screwed in getting this turned in last night. This means that we will have to wait until they meet next month to even turn the paperwork in, then they can take up to two weeks to decide. This puts us at the start of august. Then we can order the awning from the company after which it takes three weeks to get the in from the factory, which is uses inmates supposedly to keep the prices low, sure. . . . whatever. So we are looking at the middle to the end of august before it could get installed which basically makes the patio set useless this summer unless you want to get fried while you eat fries . . .tehe. So that’s my first complaint that HOAs are useless and I hate them.
Now while I was driving and talking to MamaBear on the phone I was already not in a good mood because of the HOA crap. At this time I was passing a dump truck. Lets pause right here and talk about my dislike for dump trucks. I know that we need them in order to get a lot of heavy lifting construction work done. My problem is that there is so much work going on that on my hour long drive home I always seem to have one in front of me. As soon as I pass one another one seems to magically appear in front of me. Even when I get into my lovely community there is still at least one. Some of them I don’t have a problem with. These are the newer ones, they might still be slow but they tend not to let loose rocks and jankus come out of the back. My beef is with the ones that are so rusted and old that they are much slower and probably lose half of their load on the road between sites. I was attempting to pass the latter one on my way home while talking to MamaBear. He just so happened to drop a nice rock which took a good bounce and then hit my windshield leaving a nice spider-web style crack. At this time I let out a few expletives which I then had to convince MamaBear that they weren’t being leveled at her. Which brings me to my third and final rant target of Car Insurance.
Car insurance has to be one of the biggest scams to ever be invented on the face of the earth. I am paying for something that I will most likely not use to the extent to which I pay. I pay XXX amount of money every month. Now if I ever want to use my insurance to say . .get a window fixed because of stupid rock pooping dump trucks I have to pay a deductable in order to use the insurance. So I am paying money to use something that I already pay money to use. Then they will come back and raise my rates to discourage me from trying to pass a slow moving dump truck on the interstate. How have we let them do this to us for so long. Sigh.
Okay. I’m sorry that this went on for so long and I hope that some of you stayed with me on this journey. I feel slightly better now . . . . .except for the HOA . . that I still hate more than ever.
Mr. The Tank
It all started out a few days ago when MamaBear and I decided to get patio furniture for our deck. We got a nice table and chair set but without the umbrella. Now we need some sort of shade because our deck gets all of the afternoon and evening sun. We didn’t buy the umbrella that and base that went with the patio set because it cost $400.00 all together which I thought was a little crazy for something that wouldn’t be able to provide shade to the whole table. That’s when we started looking into retractable awnings. I knew that it was going to be way more expensive then the umbrella and base but it would allow for the deck to be completely covered in shade and even to be used during rain showers . . . as long as the rain is only coming straight down . . .and that the wind doesn’t start blowing above 20 mph. Which is better then what the umbrella could provide. So we decide to get an estimate for an awning.
So on my way home yesterday I call the MamaBear and she tells me that we need to contact our homeowners association to get approval for the awning because it would be an addition to the exterior of our house. Now what MamaBear didn’t tell me at the time was that there were already several stipulations from the HOA for getting this awning.
1. It could only have a straight edge on it. Now this I could really care less about. It doesn’t bother me to not be able to have curved edges.
2. The Case had to be the same color as the accent on the house. Which goes along with number
3. Which is that the color of the fabric for the awning had to match the color of the siding on the house.
Why do we have HOAs in the first place. They are a no good crap money stealing industry that only wants to make sure that we all live in a stupid cookie cutter style community. I know that there are probably a few good points to them but I don’t care right now. And I know that some of you are thinking “Well why, Mr. Tank, did you buy a house that belongs to an HOA if you have such a hatred for them?” And the answer is that in the area we live in it is next to impossible to find a housing development that does not have its own HOA unless you move way far out and then the land is still so expensive that you would be forced to only be able to live in a tent, which sometimes I think I might prefer instead of having to deal with all these rules and regulations.
Besides all of the color stuff that we have to comply with we also have to turn in the paperwork to the HOA which only meets once a month. And that day was yesterday, which would have been enough time for us to get the paperwork in for the approval except for the little fact that we have to get our neighbors who would have to look at the apparent monstrosity hanging off the back of our house. Now one of our neighbors is never home so of course I couldn’t get them to sign yesterday. Our other neighbor is always home . . . .except for yesterday. So I was screwed in getting this turned in last night. This means that we will have to wait until they meet next month to even turn the paperwork in, then they can take up to two weeks to decide. This puts us at the start of august. Then we can order the awning from the company after which it takes three weeks to get the in from the factory, which is uses inmates supposedly to keep the prices low, sure. . . . whatever. So we are looking at the middle to the end of august before it could get installed which basically makes the patio set useless this summer unless you want to get fried while you eat fries . . .tehe. So that’s my first complaint that HOAs are useless and I hate them.
Now while I was driving and talking to MamaBear on the phone I was already not in a good mood because of the HOA crap. At this time I was passing a dump truck. Lets pause right here and talk about my dislike for dump trucks. I know that we need them in order to get a lot of heavy lifting construction work done. My problem is that there is so much work going on that on my hour long drive home I always seem to have one in front of me. As soon as I pass one another one seems to magically appear in front of me. Even when I get into my lovely community there is still at least one. Some of them I don’t have a problem with. These are the newer ones, they might still be slow but they tend not to let loose rocks and jankus come out of the back. My beef is with the ones that are so rusted and old that they are much slower and probably lose half of their load on the road between sites. I was attempting to pass the latter one on my way home while talking to MamaBear. He just so happened to drop a nice rock which took a good bounce and then hit my windshield leaving a nice spider-web style crack. At this time I let out a few expletives which I then had to convince MamaBear that they weren’t being leveled at her. Which brings me to my third and final rant target of Car Insurance.
Car insurance has to be one of the biggest scams to ever be invented on the face of the earth. I am paying for something that I will most likely not use to the extent to which I pay. I pay XXX amount of money every month. Now if I ever want to use my insurance to say . .get a window fixed because of stupid rock pooping dump trucks I have to pay a deductable in order to use the insurance. So I am paying money to use something that I already pay money to use. Then they will come back and raise my rates to discourage me from trying to pass a slow moving dump truck on the interstate. How have we let them do this to us for so long. Sigh.
Okay. I’m sorry that this went on for so long and I hope that some of you stayed with me on this journey. I feel slightly better now . . . . .except for the HOA . . that I still hate more than ever.
Mr. The Tank
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