It’s Tuesday while I write this and it will be Wednesday afternoon when I finally get around to finishing and I have to tell you — I’m thankful… I’m greatly thankful.

It’s been two days since Hurricane Jeanne went through Florida… Two days or an eternity for those who lost power during the storm and haven’t gotten it back. It feels like an eternity because, in the Florida sun, the warmth gives away to the uncomfortable humidity and makes living feel attrocious. At least for the non-outdoors person like myself.

The storm went through Sunday and I lost power around 11:45 in the morning. Soon after my text messenger stopped working properly and I was cut off from friends who would later tell me they didn’t lose power or cable over the duration of Jeanne’s lashing of the Tampa Bay area..

It didn’t tkae long for food to spoil, or my parents to insit we gobble up ice cream and what not before it went bad. Outside, the wind howeled and I waited patiently for one of the trees in our yard to give-way to the relentless wind torrent and snap or tip over. Fortunately that never happened. Or unfortuantely? The thing si a very ratty Indian Rosewood that we would probably be better off without in our yard with it’s adventurous roots.

Time inched on and all you could do was try to read in poor light conditions or watch the storm. I kept thinking back to the fact we are so dependant on electricity that it isn’t even funny. Television? Computers? Even cell phones that worked, appliances, etc… This dependance is compounded in the Sunshine state because of the need for the ever-present air-conditioning if you are going to get through on hot and humid day.

By six or seven in the evening, the wind and rain had relented enough to venture outside. I honestly NEEDED to be outside at this point. Cabin fever not only was driving me nuts, but being stuck with my parents and older brother — I felt cramped. I felt stuck. Of course, I wasn’t leaving the yard as the wind still gusted to 50 MPH at times, but it was better than being on the inside — starring otu into the overcast and blustery conditions.

We got power back around 11:45 Sunday night (miraculously). The only reason we had it is because our house is on the same power circit, it would seem, as the stop light at the intersection several blocks away. It was a relief to get cold again from the AC… not just cold but drier than it had been with the windows open and the humid air flowing through the house.

Yet there are neighbors still without power. WIthout cable… And it could very well have been me and my family still trying to get by without power… so like I said, I’m thankful…

And I’m rambling without even putitng up something of substance.

A lot of people might be noticing and wondering why most of the comment sections aren’t open on some of my posts on here lately. The reason isn’t because I don’t want to hear from people — though I have to be honest, you kids bragging about High School Football is something I can live without. It’s because of SPAM. Lots of spam. Spam spam spam spam spam eggs and spam… Without the comments, there is less of an opportunity for spammers to spam.

Yes, those who are on MT will tell me to use the MT blacklist… I already have it in place. Still, I’d like another anti-spam buffer I guess. Either I stick with this or perchance I convert to WordPress and fight spam through that. Oh well.

FOXNews.com – Foxlife – TV Viewer Sues Over Janet Bra-Ha-Ha

Bank worker Terri Carlin (search) wants compensation for herself and millions of viewers “injured” by the lewd behavior of Jackson and fellow performer Justin Timberlake (search) during Sunday’s Super Bowl coverage.

On Wednesday Carlin filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in federal court in Knoxville, Tenn., against Jackson, Timberlake, broadcasters MTV and CBS and their parent company, Viacom.

Give me a break… This woman is just as pathetic – an opportunist – as a lawyer who chases after Ambulances in search of clients, or a hot woman who mariries a rich guy just before his death to inherit cash (hi Anna Nicole!)….

I used to write, a long long time ago, for a hockey publication.. A local one… One that had a good little mix of local readers and local fans talking it up and hanging out on the site…

This of course was a crappy Rivals.com site but it worked. It had a dedicated owner, a dedicated set of fans and a couple of kids (including me) who wanted to do what they could to get noticed and get published and what not….

I’d like to try setting something like that up again…. But an MT version of it… (meaning a journal report on the Lightning if it’s possible).

It IS possible, the thing is I am not a great writer — well, it’s not exactly writing as so much reporting and I am a worse reporter than I am a writer… Why? I can’t get to locations to report… Not only hat but when I DO report, I get the information wrong…

I’d love to have a site, though, dedicated to one of the local sports teams and with a team of fans to help report on the team…. The Lightning is the best team to achieve that with, as the Buccaneers want to keep everything in house and the Devil Rays happen to resent their fans with a vengence….

A Tampa Bay Lightning fan site while the Lightning are getting ready for their next playoff push might be fantastic to launch… Though it also might be suicide seeing the NHL is on a collision course with the Apocalypse.

The Stonegauge has about 300 entries since I switched to Movable Type (this includes entries from my old journal that I switched to the MT Journal) which is pretty cool. in that time I’ve used a lot of different phrases and different word combinations in every one of those journal entries…

Which leads to the Search Engines….

Using any one of the popular search engines (I can’t pick out which ones in particular give which search results), some of the past entries on The Stonegauge will come up under strange phrases. Here are some of the example phrases, linked to the articles that inspired the search engines to believe that these posts were relevant tot he search phrase:

antonio bandaras free nude pictures

take a turd

pie fucker

learn voo doo

OK, these aren’t the meatiest / juiciest phrases that have come up when I view my web site logs — but these are just in the last few days….

I cleared out some of my News / RSS feeds on Trillian Pro 2.0 the other day because the sites in general weren’t getting updated much and basically waiting another few months for a new story on a site like Bush / Orwell ’04 was lame.

SO what doe sthat mean?

It means I am running out of sites and blogs that amuse me. Damnit, that isn’t a good thing.

Now, for my blogdrive friends and livejournal friends as well — I’m sorry but this doesn’t apply to you when I complain about needing new and more newsfeeds. This mainly goes out to news sites and MT type blogs because they can generate newsfeeds through their software (I am NOT going to explain what the hell RSS is :tongue).

I am looiking for more sites to add and read daily… ANy suggesitons out there?

I mean, one of the sites I subscribe to is Howard Dean’s blog — http://blogforamerica.com. Another is Defective Yeti which tends to be amusing more often than not… another great blog is Lies.com… It’s after those three that I have problems finding something entertaining.

Oh well, enough of this ramble. I don’t think anyone will have feedback on my problem but I appreciate it if you could suggest valuable newsfeeds or sites you believe are worthy newsfeeds.

So this is Christmas, and what have I done?
I’ve been newly cut open, now living as a bum…
So this is Christmas, and what do I get?
Another day older and leaning towards debt….

It’s Christmastime ladies and gentlemen if you have been living under a rock the past few weeks. Tis the season to spread jolly good vibes towards your fellow man and all that good stuff.

Personally I am a little perplexed this year as to what to get my family for Christmas. Specifically my older brother who I really want to slay with a gift — slay in a good way. I don’t mean overspend for a Christmas gift, I mean give him something sentimental that he will cherish.

See, Mike is someone who flaunts capitalism and debt in how he operates. He is already going to be giving several thousand dollars worth of gifts jointly in my name to people this year. That tweaks me because I really feel like an invalid shit not being able to pay my own way with certain gifts.

At the same time, it’s nice someone else is picking up the tab of course…

But the thing is, I want to show him that I care. I can’t buy something that will make him say “Oh wow, thanks!” unless I find something that he really wouldn’t have thought he would like. I can’t MAKE him something he would admire, in my humble opinion, because Mike has always given me a tough time with things I do as not being good enough or not as good as it COULD be.

I have the thought of buying him a domain name — as he is currently running a blog on http://foreverlad.diaryland.com — and giving him an MT treatment and web space of his very own, but he doesn’t want to be COMMITTED to anything. I got a bit of shit from him recently because of my birthday gift to him, and Ecosphere, and the fact he doesn’t want to be responsible for these living creatures inside the sphere (feels guilty when they thing doesn’t get proper light, etc).

Should I just say “The hell with it?” and get him a card? What are some of your off-the-cuff ideas for Christmas gifts? Input would be nice here…

Ah, the journal… Now if only I could start writing like a human being again. I’ve found out that I am typing mistakes more often and using incomplete sentences more often because I’ve been stuck on the T900 pager the last week and keeping things tied into my friends online through that.

There’s so much I can say here and so much I want to say – stuff still going on and stuff that I want to talk about to specific people but the time isn’t right.

My hospital stay started with a bang – well not really, it was more like an “Oh shit!” when I forced myself to look at the clock besides my bed and see that it was 6 Am. I was due at the hospital at 5:45… Crap. I jumped, got dressed and got the hell out of dodge… Didn’t get tied up in traffic and actually got to the Hospital before my scheduled operation time… Not just that, was only a few minutes late going into the OR.

Was it scary? Going under the knife is always scary but it wasn’t scary like last year. There was something still sitting with me that was scarier and I was trying to accept things as moving on because of it. O course, waking up and having a mask put on me again didn’t make me feel comfortable either but then again – blacking out and waking up in post-op was about what I expected next.

Though I did dream. Of what, I don’t recall, but I am certain I dreamt this time I was under. I don’t usually dream. Last time I dreamt anything, it was of green clouds during my first operation.

ANYWAY, I wake up in the Post-op/recovery center and I’m watching the clock, of all things, because I was hoping to catch someone on a TV Talk show at 12:30. Of course it’s around 2 at the time and my priorities are out of whack but then again – I guess this also showed my confidence now. Oh sure, I was in pain, I was in a neck brace, and I had little movement in my legs (Muscle relaxants) but I was ready to start recovery.

I’ll tell more soon, other things take precedence now – like sleep.

Dejá-Vu.

Very, very dejá-vu…

See, about a year ago I had some things happening to me that made life a big worry… A worry much bigger than yrou day to day but not so incomprehensible that you would think I’m an alien or something like that (though the Men In Black would argue that)… It’s just something that hung over me much like a new job, moving, or some other great unknown worry would have this feeling of heaviness over you. There’s anxiousness and anxiety to go along with it and a question of just where this will take you.

That was a year ago and I’m repeating it this year.

Yep, John’s got a scheduled date for sugery now – Wednesday, August 20th at Tampa General Hospital. Pre-op on Monday the 18th. I’m thinking of other odd things going on — Bill’s sister is due to have her 2nd kid about that time and — it’s SO STRANGE because that is what happened last year while I was in the hospital.

Very strange, very dej�-vu.

Of course this year I won’t be writing to anyone on the pager, telling them soemthing I should have told them the night before I had the operation…

…Nor do I think I’m going to be out of the hospital in 3 days. Hell, I don’t even know if I will be back to walking anytime soon after surgery. I’ve talked about my legs being weak as is right now – I got to imagine if everything goes fine I’m still going to have weak legs and on top of it I might have to “learn” how to use them again.

I don’t know if I will need rehab or what… I don’t know if I should be looking intot he ibot or the Segway because of future lack of mobility… (then again, I want to look into the Segway no matter what so that whole point is moot).

At any rate, after a night off from the computer, I’m writing again with another story… Maybe assignment 4, I didn’t look at the assignment as much yet but I’m writing with constraints just because. Sort of good story but I think it’s been done before…

Also, Melanie will be glad to hear that John got disc 5 of 24 season 1 in the mail. I may very well have that watched by the end of the day… God I love that fucking show