When Phillip Johnny Bob...



....gets down in the dumps the whole world seems a tad darker just keeps on spinning.

Grandma J would notice PJB staring our the window, confused over what was happening. This whole moving thing was new and foreign to him. He wondered just what did this new Spa place have, that the Compound didn't? Surely there couldn't be a better band of loonies this side of Albuquerque neighbors to entertain him there.

Grandma J was a bit put out to see all the junk Phil was force feeding himself. This plate of left over Easter candy troubled her. Especially since he didn't have candy in his Easter basket this year. Come to think of it, Phillip Johnny Bob didn't have an Easter basket.

Phillip Johnny Bob said it kept him "regular" was comfort food, and he was confused over this moving thing, and he knew JJ was riding around with Grandma J. He was jealous. He wanted to run away. That's when Grandma J came up with a solution...

He was going away on a well deserved trip. One that would take him to meet fiddler crabs new friends on the shores of Chesapeake Bay.

That's right, he's off to help Chesapeake Bay Woman plan the biggest blogfest ever....the Virgina Blogfest in Mathews, VA. Of course Big Hair Envy will lend a hand, and for that Phil is grateful.

Jack wasn't working at the Post Office and this guy told Grandma J not to take his picture. She obediently said, OK.




Too bad smug postal worker doesn't know that Grandma J doesn't use flash in well lit buildings.....Gotcha, Mr. Postman!

Travel safely, Phillip Johnny Bob. I hope you write home, and I will see you next month. JJ says good riddance have fun dude.

May I Have Your Attention, PLEASE!

OK, so I tricked you with the naked sign. Sorry, but I just wanted to get your attention for an important announcement.

Grandma J is moving. Not really earth shattering news, right? But she's like actually moving as in eating, sleeping, showering, and cleaning house at a different location. By different location, she means she's left The Compound for The Spa....and there's no turning back. Of course, she's actually leaving Thursday morning because that's when the "movers" are showing up.

I wanted to post a sign, so everyone would know that I may be MIA or AWOL for a day or two. You know, service interrupted. This is the best I could do on my budget........

Just so you know, I'll be checking your blogs on my cell phone, so be careful what you say in my absence but even though it lets me type out a comment, it never publishes them.....ARGH!

My Greener Side


Starting today, Grandma J is focusing on her countdown to moving calendar. It's all about packing, cleaning shopping. There are purchases that have been on the back burner for a while, but with the upcoming move, they have jumped to the top of the "how I spend my spendable income list".

One luxury item will be a new flat panel TV because Huey, the maintenance guy at the new and improved compound, which is more like a spa, has offered to mount stuff and install stuff for Grandma J. And yes, I know that last sentence could have easily been three paragraphs.

That's why the timing is right for a new wall mounted TV, and decorator rods and pictures to be hung. Huey could easily become Grandma J's best friend. But what I really want to talk about is being green.


Grandma J went to Walmart yesterday to get some boxes so she could start packing. While she was making her way through the bakery hardware department, she saw these......




Green totes for only $4.50. The free cardboard boxes were tempting, but Grandma J bit the bullet and bought these totes to save a tree or two. There is an overlap of six days for moving stuff, so the same two totes can be used over and over....along with four older totes that Grandma J already has.



Oh yes, and I know what you are thinking! That's right, you saw that bottled water. Well, here's the story on the water. Grandma J hates water......really hates water. She hates bottled water. The thing is, she has to drink a ton of it a day, and Aqua Fina is the only stuff she can drink. A Brita filtered carafe of tap water is used for coffee and cooking. But here is the good news. Lookie.....

Aquafina is getting GREENer! Yeah for Aquafina.

And check this out! Here is a very green thing, Disney and The Nature Conservancy has vowed to plant 2.7 million trees in the rain forests bordering the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil. The effort is a promotion on Disney’s part, as well as an act of environmentalism.

Disney is planting one tree for each movie-goer who buys a ticket to “Earth,” Disney’s sweeping nature documentary that follows families of wild animals through their struggles.


I plan on seeing this movie, how about you?

Don't Hurt Me Bro!

or as they say in Chinese... 不要傷害我好朋友!

Tonight, I took my neighbor, (no not that neighbor), Donna, out to dinner for her birthday. We tried a new Mexican restaurant in our local tiny mall, called Hornduck Tavern. It's so fancy shmancy, the only thing I found on the Internet was their Temple Texas location, and a karaoke singer with them featured on her Facebook page. I'm serious. It looked the same but the menu wasn't Mexican....or as it's referred to here...Tex Mex.

The food was great, and the place was packed on a Tuesday night. The main dining room was still being remodeled, but the accommodations in the lounge bar were just fine.

Another event to celebrate was Donna and I both signed leases on apartments in a brand new adult complex gated compound that offers amenities more fitting our lifestyles. Only a few units are ready and we will be the first to move in. For me, I get an actual garage and a kitchen with a granite counter top. The granite part isn't important, it's the whole counter top concept that had me sold. I won't have to roll out pastry on the bathroom floor my dining room table.

Donna likes the sprinklers over her bed in the event one of her boyfriends gets too hot to handle...she seriously told me that.

We both like the idea of the pool being heated year around, and the concierge service that includes coffee and pastry on the house every morning. Oh yeah, and someone named Huey will come collect my trash off my front porch three days a week at 8 a.m. We will have a movie theatre which won't stop me from going to the theatre with the hand dip ice cream counter for first run matinees.

There's a ton of stuff that I probably won't partake in but it's nice. I took my daughter and the kids over on Easter Sunday to see if we could get in one of the units. As soon as my daughter walked in, she said "and the reason you have to think twice about moving here is....?"

OK, so Donna and I finish our double whammy celebratory dinner, and decide to get one of these Chinese massages in the mall. You've seen them, right? They usually set up next to the people who sell the beauty products from the Dead Sea. Grandma J told you all about her experience with the Dead Sea people...remember?

Donna goes first.......

..... and I wait because the other masseuse is in the middle of molding this man into her new sex toy.

Yeah, of course you think I'm kidding...but she was really getting physical and scaring Grandma J.

In the end, twenty minutes of a good Chinese massage was worth making a spectacle of myself in the mall. Have you ever had one of these mall massages?

It's A to Z Monday

.... and you know what that means. That's right, it means the stock market is continuing it's downward spiral. Or it's the day I'm supposed to tell you all about youth baseball and men who go commando dedicate their lives coaching youth baseball.

But, more importantly, boys and girls, it's all about the letter I.

This could have been all about my love of Iguanas, but that would be a little bit redundant and cause some fellow blogger to get extremely jealous leap off bridges. And then the rest of you would insist I tell you all about the time I had iguana tacos in San Blas, Mexico...or how I swam nude with six life guards in Maui....even if it was only a dream. The swimming with lifeguards was a dream...the iguana tacos was real.

For the letter I, I'm going with IKEA..because that's where I went yesterday after a baseball tournament. It's a big deal around here because IKEA is fifty miles away, and it's been two years since I've been inside an IKEA.

Can you believe the only thing I bought was this candle and coasters? For real. Oh, and some snazzy napkins.

I got lost in the maze and all I can remember was wandering past the same sink made from cardboard shoe inserts real bamboo. I finally ask an employee if there was a secret to finding the cashiers.....and the exit. He told me to follow the signs towards the restaurant....yes he did.

Three hours later I bid adieu to IKEA. As I drove away, I couldn't help but think how awesome these flags would look at the Compound. Maybe by the pool. Do ya think?

Here is a bit of IKEA trivia...because I might be the only person who doesn't know this:

"The guy who started this retail chain is named Ingvar Kamprad. That gets us the I and the K. Well, Ingvar grew up on a farm called Elmtaryd. Now we have I-K-E. And Elmtaryd is in a town called Agunnaryd. I-K-E-A. And that's how this company got named."

FRIDAY MATINEE



Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail

Madea Goes to Jail just might be Tyler Perry's best movie to date. The film stars Tyler, back in drag, as the sassy, pistol-packing Mable "Madea" Simmons.

At the beginning of the movie, we find Madea in front of Judge Mablean who recognizes Madea and rattles off her previous run-ins, complete with mug shots....

The judge is reminded by Tyler Perry, as Medea's attorney, that she was never read her Miranda Rights by the arresting officers.....then we see the three officers sitting in the courtroom all beat up and battered... Judge Mablean tells her she has no choice but to let Madea off with a slap on the wrist and a stern warning for leading police on a high-speed freeway chase. Instead of landing behind bars, she is ordered to undergo treatment for anger management with Dr. Phil. While "on the couch", she and the shrink engage in a hilarious exchange causing Dr. Phil to throw up his hands in defeat.

Needless to say, the therapy doesn't work, and Madea goes berserk again when a customer steals her parking spot at the mall. After wrecking the woman's car with a forklift, Madea is arrested again but ends up this time in front of a very incensed Judge Mathis who decides to teach her a lesson.....

.......a sentence of 5-10 years.

Meanwhile, there's a whole parallel, serious, life-lesson plot unfolding involving Assistant District Attorney Joshua Hardaway (Derek Luke) who is engaged to Linda, a bourgie colleague who doesn't understand why he might care about rehabilitating Candy (played by Keshia Knight Pulliam), a former friend who has turned to streetwalking.

With the help of a prison minister, Josh does his best to get his friend the help she needs anyway, a decision which destabilizes his once solid relationship. Everything comes to a head when Madea and Candy cross paths in a correctional facility, leading to tidy resolution which not only ties loose ends but elicits a few tears.

The cast also features an incredible number of celebrity cameos, most notably, Dr. Phil, and TV Judges Greg Mathis and Mablean Ephriam, not to mention Reverend Al Sharpton, comedian Steve Harvey, DJs Tom Joyner and Michael Baisden, CNN news anchor Tony Harris, and The View talk show hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Fortunately, for Tyler Perry, balancing all the egos never gets in the way of making a hilarious flick. The finished product is a rollicking roller coaster that ought to be fun for the whole family.

FYI...stay for the closing credits, for some bonus bantering between Madea and Dr. Phil.

I give this movie 4 1/2 out of 5 jail cells.

BITS AND PIECES

It's Friday, and I'm not going to a matinee because I have real important stuff to do. Important translates into shopping cleaning and laundry.

But don't let your hearts be worried, I have some local pictures to show you. These are pictures that take you beyond the Compound and into the heart of Texas. There's something for everyone. I bit of Geography like this.....

Did you know that the ground is solid rock here? Could this be the reason why it cost more to put a pool in your backyard than it cost to build your house?

This is about 40-50 ft of rock.....carved out of a hill to level out the land to build a shopping center.

It's a fine center, that was desperately needed around here. I don't have a panoramic picture, but one of the stores is a Bed Bath and Beyond. By Beyond.......I mean this.

These women come here everyday for their massage.

Now, if we drive a bit down the road, we come to Salado, TX. This is a bridge in a nice golf community.

This low lying bridge floods often, and then you have to park and swim. Only one car can drive across at once. I don't know what the rule is when there is a car wanting to cross from both directions. I figure it's the one that drives the fastest.

After you cross the bridge there are quaint little farms with red barns like this....

If this picture wasn't blurry, you might think you were in Mathews VA. But it's blurry and you're in TX.

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS....

The deadline for naming my Astro Bear Contest... is tomorrow!

In case you haven't entered yet, and you can't think of a single name.... I thought I'd let you know a little bit of history about Astro Bear...

Life started in a small Build-a Bear town at Downtown Disney in Southern California .....and today? My astro bear is right around two years old.

Astro bear unlike the cowardly Lion, has two hearts. I'll say it again....my sweet bear has two hearts.

Placed in his chest with good wishes and kisses by these two.

Now, Astro Bear has been through thick and thin with me. We traveled from Southern California to Central Texas when I retired. Life has been much more relaxed here..... less hustle and bustle.



He enjoys everyday activities like the rest of us, and is enjoying his life here at the compound with Grandma J.

If you haven't entered my "Name the Bear" contest yet, you still have until noon pdt tomorrow.

This is the grand prize. The best part is my bear will have a real name...chosen by the lucky winner! Could life get any better?

When The Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie...
......your career as an astronaut is in trouble.


Lately, some of you have wondered why I've been hanging out with my old astronaut buddy from NASA. Business has been slow for the Space Shuttle, and it looks like there might be some cuts in the Space Program in the future.

You might remember the unfortunate situation he experienced with the unexpected malfunction of the space toilet in June. He was one of the few astronauts who had the where-with-all to have a back-up solution...

the official NASA diaper....

Then, the new Russian bathroom ended up with it's own issues, by issues we are talking gas...gas separation type issues.

With time on his hands and only a few bucks in his pocket, my old buddy has been hanging around the Compound....

.......traipsing along uninvited to the movies with me, and eating like there's no tomorrow all day. The old saying "hungry as a bear" has taken on a whole new meaning.

With cutbacks looming, my friend went job hunting. Looking for a career change. Something to put bread on the table if you will. This is what he came up with.....

Yeah, he's looking for a quick buck....and based on the amount of money he's bringing in, pole dancing just might be his calling......just maybe.

But it attracts the seediest groupies.