J.P.

So yesterday my father left a message on our answering machine. He and his girlfriend are vacationing in California and are having a great trip and be sure to tape Leno Tuesday night.

Tape it? Tape it? I TiVo’d it thank you very much.

I just took a peek at the opening segment and there’s my dad and Karen in the audience looking like their having the time of their lives! I’m jealous! When Earl and I were in The Rosie O’Donnell Show audience back in 1997, the only thing you could see was the top of my shaved head and Earl’s arm. But there’s my dad and his girlfriend on Leno, plain as day. Oh well.

And yes, I was very clever in getting us tickets to see Rosie O’Donnell back when she had her talk show. Working for a radio station at the time, what better way to get in the audience then to make a huge contest of it and give away tickets to the show, with the winners to be accompanied by station personnel. And of course the station personnel was Earl and me.

Rosie’s people didn’t want to talk to my people, but then I sent her people a fax that said if someone didn’t call me, I would announce the said fax number on the air.

Imagine my surprise when the announcement came over the intercom: “J.P., Rosie O’Donnell’s office is on line 4.”, a mere ten minutes after sending the fax. So we got to see Rosie O’Donnell. The guests that day were Andy Dick, Steve Winwood and Farrah Fawcett. In fact, it was the same day that Farrah had the meltdown on Letterman. She was pretty spacey with Rosie too. We didn’t get to meet Rosie or anything though, she was too busy. And a little cranky during commercial breaks, but we won’t go there.

I can’t wait to hear about my dad’s brush with Hollywood!

Our cat Tom is full of purrs today. He is purring up a storm; much louder than any purring he’s done in the past month or so. He seems to have recovered nicely from his recent visits to the vet and to his Gram’s. How he hates riding in the car. Mom said that he seemed very happy while he was with her, at least until he saw Earl and I walk in, then he hid because it was time to go in the car again. But now its nothing but purr purr purr.

He seems to have forgotten the PowerBook rule though, because the screen had the tell tale signs of cat hair on it when I opened it up to write this blog entry. He gives me an innocent look.

I occasionally rave about the lunches that Earl makes for me. And today is no exception. Yesterday I mentioned that he would be out of town this week, but courtesy of the snowstorms here in the Northeast, his plans were thwarted and he got to spend last night and tonight at home.

So this morning he whipped up a nice lunch for me. Now to ordinary mortals, it would appear that I had a tuna salad sandwich on wheat for lunch today, with a few carrots on the side.

But if you’ve been following along over the years, you’ll note that I am nowhere near ordinary.

Earl made for me tuna salad using his mother’s recipe. God rest her soul, I have another reason that I wish that I could have met the woman. For not only have I been entertained over the years with stories about Earl’s mom, and pictures as well, I have now also experienced Clare’s tuna salad.

Pure genius.

Now I’m not knocking any other incarnations I’ve had of tuna salad, but today’s version hit the spot completely; with a little bit of egg, celery, olives, onion and Hellmann’s (because we’re east of the Rockies, after all) accompanying the tuna fish for a cacophony of flavor.

Oh, there was a lot of love in there too.

Today marks a historical record of sorts for Oneida County, where we live. Our sales tax is now 9.75% on everything except uncooked foods and medical products. I believe it’s the high sales tax rate in the United States. Yep, unlike most states in the union, this includes clothing and footwear, and necessities such as toilet paper and soap.

I often ask Earl why we live here. He replies its because its where his job is and to basically “toughen up cupcake.” I guess I complain too much. But I don’t feel that paying 9.75% in sales tax is fair to the citizens of Oneida County. Surrounding counties have a 7.25 or 8.25% sales tax. In the nationwide scheme of things, that’s still very high. I remember paying 4% sales tax as recently as 1990. Pennsylavnia residents pay 6% sales tax.

I think what ticks me off the most is that county officials made no attempt to curb spending. They wouldn’t consider cutting down staffing, lay offs or anything like that. They didn’t give voters a choice. They just said it was either a higher sales tax or a higher property tax (48% increase!). This is all to cover the increasing cost of Medicaid.

Small wonder people are leaving this area in droves. It’s too expensive to live here! And this sales tax increase hurts EVERYONE, no matter their financial standing. And we’ve just added another reason for new business to look Oneida County over and locate somewhere else.

New York State is a corrupt state and will continue to be. NYS spends tons of money on trivial, unnecessary things. Upstate residents continue to be caught up in one of the worst economies in the nation. I guess I’ll have to “toughen up cupcake” and take my business outside of Oneida County until we find a better solution.

I was once “Empire State Proud”. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

So it’s back to work after the magic of Disney. Work is going well today, with a surprisingly minimal amount of catch-up to do. Either I’m not that important or frightfully efficient. Maybe it’s a delightful combination of both. Either way, work is going very well and its good to be free of complaints.

Earl is on his way to Cleveland tonight, then on to Baltimore. I think he’s going to have an interesting trip with this snowstorm coming up the coast. As I type this entry, I just noticed that he didn’t take his iBook with him, so we won’t be able to ‘cam like I enjoy doing. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to deal.

Now everyone is getting settled in for what is hopefully that last major snowstorm of the season. Wouldn’t that be nice. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

I am so ready for spring.

Here’s a picture of the happy travelers. This was taken at the Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World, as evidenced by the Tree of Life in the background.

More pictures coming to the .Mac account soon!

Earl and I are back home, our vacation rapidly becoming a fond memory. The smells of Florida air are long gone, replaced by the chill of late February in Upstate New York. The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for the area, with up to eight inches of snow predicted by this time tomorrow night.

Why do we live here again?

Tom is back home after a week with Gram, who took great delight in doting over her grandcat. I think he’s looking forward to visiting again, but not too soon as he doesn’t enjoy the ride.

As of last night, I gained just shy of 10 pounds on vacation. I would’ve thrown out a view expletives here, but in trying to stay Disneylike, I’ll just say “Golly gee, I have some work to do in the exercise department!”.

After discussion on the plane yesterday, Earl and I jumped onto a technology bandwagon today and are in the process of switching our phone service to Vonage. Let’s see, nearly $60.00 a month through Verizon or Sprint or $16.00 a month through Vonage. A no-brainer. Plus, it’s embracing the latest rage in telecommunications, VoIP. Mark my words, in ten years, everyone will either be on wireless or VoIP, and the nightmare of the Bell companies will be long gone.

I also picked up a MIDI keyboard for my PowerBook so I can go crazy on Garage Band 2.

I’m leaping into work with both feet tomorrow. It’s an on-call week. Plus, the tests for my surgery are on Thursday, with the surgery on the following Friday.

March is going to be an interesting month. But by this time next month, I’ll be good as new and feeling golden. So I guess it’s worth it. But I wish I could be honest when saying “I’m glad to be home”, but I’m really not. Earl is off on business again tomorrow. After being together 24/7 for the past nine days, that sort of sucks. But I guess it’s something we have to live with. I’ve been saying for the past month and a half that I wasn’t really feeling the winter/cabin fever blahs.

I think I lied.

I opened up my PowerBook to see if I could find any internet connectivity here at Orlando International Airport. I am sitting on the floor in row “B” at gate 120. When you’re a Southwest Airlines passenger, you get used to sitting on the floor to guarantee yourself a good seat on the plane.

I’m not able to connect to the internet here (bad airport, bad airport), however I did connect to the LAN at Mc Donalds.

Would you like fries with that?

As I type this blog entry, Earl is busily packing up our stuff, saying that he’ll take care of it because he has better packing abilities than I do. I won’t argue with him there. So I’m in charge of the various electronic goodies, which I’m going to pack up as soon as I finish this blog entry.

We just got back from Downtown Disney after a relaxing evening. Cirque de Soleil’s La Nouba was out of this world. We bought the soundtrack CD, as the music of the show is absolutely incredible… full of life and energy, melody and harmony, all blending in a unique way. It’s the kind of music that I enjoy, and I will be enjoying the tracks on my iPod when we get home.

I’m all psyched up about staying physically fit again, maybe someday I’ll be the first old guy working Cirque de Soleil, bouncing around on trampolines or something. I think I’m going to start focusing on my yoga practice again and be all stretchy.

We had supper at “Earl of Sandwich”, which seemed appropriate, since Earl makes a pretty great sandwich when we’re at home. We wanted to see how this Earl does. 🙂

So now we’re packing up and getting ready for the journey home tomorrow. We’ve had a wonderful time, and we both feel energized and recharged, ready to take on the world when we’re back on our home turf. It’s much easier to experience life when you feel a little magic.

Earl and I just returned from our 10:30 appointment this morning with the Disney Vacation Club folks. Well, that’s not actually true, we finished our appointment around 2:30 p.m., after that we headed to the Polynesian Resort and then took the monorail to Contemporary, where we had lunch using the Disney tab. That’s one of the perks you get for owning a piece of the magic.

That’s right, Earl and I now own a fraction of a percent of Unit 44C of Saratoga Springs Spa and Resort here at Walt Disney World. We now have the flexibility to travel the world, Disney or otherwise, for a low monthly mortgage payment for the next 10 years or so.

I’m very excited about the venture and I think Earl is as well, though he’s the more sensible one of the family. I’m like a kid, easily dazzled by bright colors, bells and baubles, whilst Earl only sees how many dollar signs.

Now it’s off to Cirque de Soleil’s La Nouba at Downtown Disney. The skies are cloudy and rainy today, our hearts are full of sunshine.