Friday, August 31, 2007
Under Pressure
| So today we had a Bloggers meeting at Jeanies. I mean, we had a birthday party for J.C. at Jeanies. Just about everyone who comments here was there. Anyway, a few of us were sitting around telling lies and Kim was telling Eeva about our blogs and I heard her say that mine was the best blog and that I get the most comments or something like that. Maybe she didn't use the word best. Talk about pressure to blog interesting stuff though! My blogging is a little different then everyone else's because I am a loner. I am the only one not married or involved, have no kids and have a pretty boring job. Boring to most anyway. So I can't blog about how mijo did this, or said this, or ate that and I can't blog about honeymoons or anniversaries or domestic disputes. Lately, I have heard complaints that I have not been blogging. In a comment in Jeanies blog I stated that with the whole situation with my father it has slowed my blogging or made me not think about it. I probably don't do it as often but I like to blog my feelings or emotions or how my boss said in our managers meeting, "sal's inter most thoughts" (i know you read my blog sir!) and with my fathers situation I just don't want to talk about it all the time. At times I do talk about it and I am grateful for those that just simply listen but since that is in my head a lot there is no other blogging material in there. With the doorbell incident; that was just a play by play of what happened. Their was hardly any thought put into it. Maybe it doesn't show in my blogs but I try to put a lot of thought into a blog post. Even this one. I thought about it all the way from Weslaco. (i didn't know it was going to be this long.) My favorite part of a blog post is the title and I probably spend more time on that then on anything. I am so glad that many of my friends are blogging because it takes my mind off of things and most importantly it shows me the power of God in their lives and in mine. So keep blogging and don't give up on me and keep praying for me and mine. |
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Things That Go Ring In the Night
 So Juan, DeeDee, their family, Carlos and I took off to South Padre Island tonite to grab some fish tacos. Carlos' wife, Lucy, was at school so she didn't go. Sorry Lucy! Anyway, we come back and I am here at home and I am getting ready to watch the new remake of Halloween, but I am reading blogs and comments. It's about maybe 10:30 or so. Well, all of a sudden my doorbell rings. What sucks is that both my porch lights are not working, so I can't look out to see who it is. So I just open the door. There is no one there but I think I hear something. I come back inside and after a minute or two it goes off again. I go out and nothing. I then start looking out my dens window. It goes off but I don't see anything. I have three doorbells. One in the back and two in the front. The one in the back rings different so I know its the one in the front. One of the doorbells in the front is visible through my dens window. It is just outside the gate. You can see the two front doorbells in the picture if you click it to make it larger. No one was there when it went off when I was looking out and I can't see the other one. I then text message my neighbor to see if it is him or his kids or his sister whom I work with. He says no. He then comes out of his house to turn on his lights and he hears my doorbell go off while he is out front but he sees no one. This makes me think something is up with my doorbell. I then text message my friend Rob and ask him if he ever heard of doorbells going off by themselves. He says no. I lured him over to my house by burning him the Halloween movie. I ask him not to ring the doorbell when he gets here. A few minutes pass, about the amount of time it would take Rob to get here and my doorbell goes off. I go to the door and say "Yo!" I hear nothing. I look out and I see a opossum walking. Surely, if someone was there the opossum would have not been walking all cool. I call Rob on his mobile and he is still at home. He says he is coming right over. As I hang up the doorbell goes off. Rob pulls up in his LOUD 1967 Camaro and I keep looking out the back to see if anyone runs out and if anyone runs out the front he will see them. We see nada. We start inspecting the area and then the doorbells. We try to set them off by banging around the area of the doorbell button, but nothing. As you can see in the picture, above the gate there is a light that is supposed to be turning on automatically at dusk but its not. When I moved in that light nor the doorbell were functional. My friend George fixed that for me. Rob and I replace the bulb and it still won't come on. So we start thinking that because of all this rain it might be shorting out the doorbell. The doorbell never went off while he was here. We then pressed the buttons and they all worked. It has been over an hour since he left and it still has not gone off. I am thinking, hoping that its the doorbell shorting. I got one of my porch lights working so that gives me a little peace. Hopefully I can sleep tonite. |
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Descisions Of My Father
| My dad had an appointment today that he bailed on. Last night I offered to take him to it but when I spoke to him, he was adamant about not going. He says the doctors are mistaken and he doesn't have this disease. I told him that the only way to find out if they are wrong is to go the doctor but he does not want to do so. I want to respect my fathers decisions but I also want him to get well. Sorry, I can't write more about this. To hard. |
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Casting all your care upon him;
| 1 Peter 5:7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. I try to record as many of the preachings at church as I can on my phone and this is one of my favorite messages that I have heard preach. Sounds starts off pretty muffled but gets better. Preacher always says that if he is in the middle of preaching and you need to go down to the alter to do it. It won't bother him and God sure won't mind. During this message I almost went down there. Waited til the end though. This is one of those messages I heard that I felt God needed me to hear that night and that is how I feel about it tonight. powered by ODEO If that dont work click below to download it. http://www.digisal.com/gbc/preaching/12.17.06-6.18 PM.mp3 Or the little play button if you see it. Before the http. |
Rain On Me
| I can now remember four events or days in my life where I was stricken with sadness and it just so happened that it rained on me. Maybe when I was out of tears the skies opened up and shed some tears for me. One of those days was when my mom was having a triple bypass and the fourth day was yesterday, when I found out my father has cancer in his lungs. I desire, and will be forever grateful, your prayers for my father, my family and for me. |
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Nailed It
  It seems that every time I take the Vette out something happens. After all, this is supposed to be The year of the Corvette. It was a nice Saturday evening so I decided to fire her up. I drove over to Carlos and Lucy's home where they were having a birthday/football get together.The last time I took the vette out she kept telling me that my oil pressure was low so I brought her home. I had not driven her since so before I took her out today I went out and got her a quart of oil. Getting the oil in her was fun since I forgot to get a funnel. She is dirty so I take her to the car wash first. That was very frustrating. The last time I went to this car wash the hose was tore up and that was fun trying not to get wet. I pulled into to the first vacant spot, get three dollars worth of coin and put it in the machine. Well, their was no pressure and there was no one there to get me a refund. There was this one guy I thought worked there but I think he was a serial killing cleaning the blood from the bed of the truck. So I have to let that money go, about $1.50 and switch to another spot. All is going well with that one til I get to the "wax", well it comes out like soap and the next thing to do is the spot free rinse and that is not going to get all the soapish thing off, so I switch back to rinse but then the machine wants more coin. Luckily I saw three coins in my glove box so I don't have to cash more dollar bills. I finally get out of there and head off to Carlos and Lucys. I eat, we talk, we laugh, and then we decide to come to my house for some fooseball. As I am driving away I hear and feel something in my tire. When I get home (which isn't to far) I find this thing in my tire!!! Not a good day for the Corvette, oh and the stereo is on the fritz also. But I won't bore you ANYMORE with that. |
Thursday, August 16, 2007
What's in a name?
| "That which we call a rose /By any other name would smell as sweet." -Shakespeare Up until I turned 16 and got my first job everyone called me Jay. Why? Because of my brother the father, I mean The Preacher. Growing up he did not want to call me by my full name or by Junior or J.R. so he simply stuck with Jay and the whole family caught on. So everyone I ever met called me Jay. When I got my first job when I turned 16 at White Cleaners I told them to refer to me as Jay. After awhile I didn't like it but that job was only temporary, although I didn't know it at the time. Any job after that I had them call me Sal. Family and childhood friends still referred to me as Jay but slowly but surely even they started to call me Sal. For a long long time the only friend that still called me Jay was Rob. But even now in the comments, his blog, and in twitter he is referring to me as Sal. That is very weird. When it came to my name things got a little comical at church. It was my brother who told me about Grace Baptist Church in Harlingen so when he told his BEST friend Juan and his family that I was coming he referred to me as Jay. So when I got there I introduced myself as Sal but when Juan and DeeDee showed up they kept referring to me as Jay so then the whole church started calling me Jay. Then it got worse. People started calling me Jeff and Jake and Dale at one time. I finally started telling people I prefer Sal so that started a big confusion with everyone but it was funny and people got a kick out of it. Finally, I just started telling people to call me Sal during the week and Jay on the weekends. Juan can't seem to decide who I am either. He refers to me as Jay or Sal and sometimes just J. So, to recap. If I hear any of these names called I usually turn: Jay, Sal, Jeff, Jake, Dale. Oh and I almost forgot about the time Juan and I went to Central Baptist Church for revival and Juan introduced me to everyone as Big Johns Little Brother or B.J.L.B. for short. My Preacher's son called me Eeyore because I once said that "noone loves me", Preacher once called me Sal Gates because of the whole computer thing and his wife called me Peter Parker for my geekiness. I am sure I missed a few but I have rambled on long enough. |
Moment of Blog Silence: 30 Years of Elvis's Death
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Hurricane Season in Full Effect
 I am no history buff, but I know that the Rio Grande Valley has had its fair share of close calls when it comes to direct hurricane hits. I think it was hurricane Rita that shut us down at work. We took every PC off the floor, wrapped it up in plastic only for Rita to hit father up north. Better safe than sorry I guess. As of now we are on Flood Watches across the valley. At least that is what they tell since I don't have a television. Luckily my friend Pat from work keeps me up to date on the weather via text message. Thanks Pam! I am sure her husband will be raking in the over time due to power failures. Lunch is on you when this clears up! From what I googled here are the list of storm names so far: Atlantic Storms: Andrea,Barry,Chantal,Dean,Erin Pacific Storms: Alvin,Barbara,Cosme,Dalila,Erick,Flossie Flossie is pictured above. She was about to take Hawaii out but luckily it was downgraded a bit. Maybe next time she will take me to Hawaii with her. So keep me in your thoughts and prayers as we ride these storms out because of this. |
Monday, August 13, 2007
Change
| I freak out with life. When I look back at this short life of mine and remember the things and the people that made me laugh and smile it amazes me how all that can change so suddenly and so unexpectedly. I remember days where I knew how the end of the day was going to be. I knew the conversations and the interactions I would have later that evening. "They" tell me to look back and just smile. Sometimes I can do both, but at times I would rather do neither and I just try and look ahead. The one bad thing about looking ahead is that I don't know if I am smiling. I want to though, and that is something to look forward to. |
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Blazin' Like A Mother
| Just a few pics DeeDee took while I was cruising around on Dales dirtbike and Lauras bike. This was the same day as Mike doing the skateboard thing in the other post. There is Video of us on the bikes but we haven't seen it yet so I can rip it and post it. Enjoy: |
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Pop Shove It
| Here is a quick vid of Juan's boy practicing a trick on his board. A quick vid that took forever to put together! Still learning the software. At the end it goes black for awhile. Don't know why. also available on YouTube: |
Monday, August 06, 2007
In a Pickle
| I totally believe that at every fast food restaurant in town there is a cash register where the Pickle and Ketchup buttons are to close together. Every fast food joint I have ever been to has at one time put Pickles in my burger instead of Ketchup. For many years, I thought that I had poor annunciation but there is no way that the words Ketchup and Pickle sound the same when they come out of my mouth. The greatest fast food restaurant invention has got to be the monitor they place at the ordering speaker that lets you see what the person taking your order presses. Just this evening as I ordered my burger the way I always do, only mustard and ketchup, I saw on the screen that it read mustard and pickle! At that moment, Juan called and he heard a little of my frustration with these machines! So, I ask that if there is someone out there working a drive-thru window to please watch your fingers as you press the ketchup (or catsup) button because that might be me ordering and I don't eat green food, cept cilantro. Maybe I should order like this guy: |
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Mobile Phone Photos
| I added a slideshow of pics to the right which displays the latest photos I have uploaded with my Phone. It starts to play automatically and I haven't figured out how to make it loop endlessly. And if you care to know how I am doing this. I am using Picasa Web Albums to host the pictures in a Album I've named Mobile Photos. There is an option to Embed slideshows on to webpages. It just gives you the code and I inserted the code onto my blogger template. Getting the photos from my Pocket PC Windows Mobile Phone takes a few clicks. I am using a program called Shozu. It doesn't work as smoothly as I would like but it gets the job done. After I take a picture with my phone the program is supposed to detect the new photo and ask me to upload it or not, but since the photos I take go to my memory card they are not detected by Shozu. I have to manually copy the photo to the My Pictures folder which is not on the card and then Shozu will detect it. Then I tell it to go to Picasa, type some stuff up, and hit send. Later, I delete the copy I moved. In the end this is a better way to do it since I don't always get nagged to send a photo. I just have to remember to delete the copy I made. Ok, enough of that. --Sa- |