if there was a way to just "mail in" my work daily, so I could sleep late say, till 10 every morning, I'd do it. With all the stories I've heard about telecommuting, I'm looking for a way to do that here. But that's kind of hard to do in the garden center-nursery-landscaping business, I suspect. Much easier for someone who builds websites or works with spreadsheets or writes editorial or ad copy. I've stopped taking work home in the evenings on my Zip disk; it's easier to get it done at the office, where I don't have 2 frisky cats who want to spend some quality time playing. I enjoy their personalities, and their company. (I still feed the feral cats in the vacant lot behind McDonald's, Red Lion, PA). Oh, and I still work on gdnctr.com in the evenings, since uploading the files is more easily accomplished via my constant 500kbps cable modem, than the 56k dial-up connection in my office. The main drawback to doing everything at the office is that the incessant phone calls and walk-in customers continually break my train of thought and it's a struggle to re-focus on the myriad tasks at hand. Sorry, but I digress. Did I mention Happy Holidays and such? Around The Garden Center. After a meeting with Lynn, my General Manager, and Alan, my Landscape Foreman, we've focused on the 3 Winter projects: replacing the front steps' timbers, replacing GHs 1-2-3-4 doors and installing drip irrigation in the front field for an 800 additional trees. The materials and parts are now on order/ bid-request and should be arriving within 2-6 weeks. After the Holidays, we'll all take a few weeks off and then begin the projects here, in earnest. Spring will come quickly, and with it, a flurry of activity that is mind-boggling. I finally got serious about getting the eNewsletter Pages up; last Friday I closed down early during a daylong, mildly-violent downpour. I took the 349 revised files home and worked them through my 500kbps two-way cable modem, on to the server. Because it's a UNIX box, certain "protocols" must be observed, unlike a Windows NT Box, where anything goes. I played around with the files and code and got it right, after months of diddling around. Right now, I'm working on rebuilding the Journal Pages for 2000, archiving '99 with the other pages from 96-97-98, and adding a "wee new look". Plus, the new copyright 2000 dates must be added to all 349 pages within this site; luckily HomeSite, the HTML editor I've used for years, has a "global search and replace" function, so all those nasty, mundane tasks like that can be accomplished fairly quickly. We lost half of last week to much-needed rain; work had to be suspended until the ground dried out. Machinery was getting stuck all over the place just trying to get trees dug for landscape jobs. I had a few of the crew come in for "rainy day" in the greenhouses. I sent everyone home early on the rainy days and closed up; no sense in running all the heaters, lights and computers when nothing's happening. Pickle was in charge after I left. Back at the Condo: as much as I enjoy cheffing for others, my repertoire of stainless pots and pans is getting a bit long in the tooth. So I decided to shop for some new cookware. I tried Chef'sCatalog.com and almost had a heart attack: $1648 for a an 8pc set of French Copperware pots & pans. Yikes! I've used the Cuisinart Stainless sets for 19 years — I've got 3 older, complete 18pc sets — but don't remember them being that expensive, for less-than-half the hardware. Good grief! Tempus fugit. Ah what the heck: I ordered the 8pc stainless Cuisinart Everyday set and several additional sauce & fry pans, exclusive of the set, for around $600. Plus, some whole black truffles at US$100ea. Cool eating, coming up real soon. Merry Christmas to me, myself and I, from me, myself and I. Late Wednesday, I came down with an ear infection; the ear closed up and became very painful. Fortunately, I had some "douche & drops" at home and that got me through until I got an early appointment at York ENT (ear, nose, throat) associates on Thursday morning. They updated the prescriptions and, at least now, the pain's abated. The swelling continues, but the medication is beginning to work and I should feel some relief soon. Some moderately heavy snow squalls rolled through the York area Thursday afternoon as I addressed/ inscribed Christmas cards and included cash bonuses for my remaining employees. It was a beautiful sight, what snow there was. None stuck — the ground's still too warm — but the anticipation of the season's first substantial snowfall stills holds joy for me, as it has for the past 50 years. Yeah, yeah, I'm a chump. To Be A Kid Again. Well, time is getting short, from what I've been told. Evidently, the most prized possession you can be hoarding for the coming Y2K dilemma is toilet tissue. Somehow, I'm not sure that I could eat something that I had to trade tissue for. With all the fuss about Y2K and the new Millennium, I have to admit that there are times when I really wish I was a kid again. with nothing to do but jump in puddles and play with frogs. Hmmm... Therefore, I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of a six year old again. I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four-star restaurant. I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks. I want to think M&Ms are better than money, because you can eat them. I want to play kickball during recess and paint with watercolors in art class. I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summers' day. I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all you knew were colors, addition tables and simple nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care. When all you knew was to be happy because you didn't know all the things that should make you worried and upset. I want to think that the world is fair. That everyone in it is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible. Somewhere in my youth, I matured too early and I learned too much. I learned of nuclear weapons, war, prejudice, starvation and abused children. I learned of lies, unhappy marriages, suffering, illness, pain and death. I learned of a world where men left their families to go and fight for our country, and returned only to end up living on the streets — begging for their next meal. I learned of a world where children knew how to whack — and did! What happened to the time when we thought that everyone would live forever, because we didn't grasp the concept of death? When we thought the worst thing in the world was if someone took the jump rope from you or picked you last for kickball? I want to be oblivious to the complexity of life and be overly excited by little things once again. I want to return to the days when reading was fun and music was clean. When television as used to report the news or for family entertainment and not to promote sex, violence and deceit. I remember being naive and thinking that everyone was happy because I was. I would walk on the beach and only think of the sand between my toes and the prettiest seashell I could find. I would spend my afternoons climbing trees and riding my bike. I didn't worry about time, bills or where I was going to find the money to fix my car. I used to wonder what I was going to do or be when I grew up, not worry about what I'll do if this doesn't work out. I want to live simple again. I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness and loss of loved ones. I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind and making angels in the snow and truly believe that there is both a Peter Pan AND a Santa Claus. I want to be six again. Dammit. Heads In The Sand. Every once in a while, I stumble across something in the news which wakes me up and makes me sweat. Now, I'm not a conspiracy nut by any definition, but some things do stand out and fly in the face of reality. Like TWA 800. Actually, it stinks. At dinner with some friends last week, I broached this subject and was roundly castigated as a nutcase for ever believing that our government would do something so heinous as covering up terrorist acts for political gains. When the truth finally comes out — and it will — the American Public will be outraged that they were lied to. There is evidence, ample hard evidence, that a missile brought down the airliner with 230 people on board in July '96. And these is evidence that the US Government is hiding critical pieces of evidence. Cover up? Yes. Over 150 witnesses saw the missile rise, explode and cause the fuel tank explosion that fateful night. The FBI and NTSB discounted all eyewitness sightings and produced a comical CIA video that purports to show them what they saw. I would be livid if someone told me that I didn't see what I saw. f*cking outraged, more like it! There is some fascinating reading about TWA 800 here, but the massive piles of evidence — photographic, laboratory, eyewitness etc — are here. Is it that my friends just don't want to know? Or perhaps they don't care even if it's true? I can't believe either is the case. I suspect they're afraid to find out the truth, and brand this and other unexplained acts as just more "conspiracy nut" theories. I hope I'm wrong and that they take the time to read the above links, examine the evidence and find out for themselves. Huh? This dottering, old son of a bitch scumbag, couldn't find his own ass with both hands. Sen Orrin Hatch, (R-UT) is a perpetual loser, lowlife and GOP traitor; he sold out Microsoft for campaign contributions from the whining Silicon Valley scumbags. And much, more criminality, too! He's now suspect all thru the GOP, and the World. Who is this two-bit, Alarcon moron? I'd drop him like a 50lb pack on a 20-mile hike. He's the son-of-a-Nazi hiding in South America. Check his White-Ayranian features. Very revealing. (Actually, I think he needs to be kidnapped and executed and returned to public display, all within a 2hr period.) I'm talking respect, here, for the perps dontcha know. Here's six losers all in one room debating junk. Nothing of substance. Am I too jaded by this whole so-called political process? Probably. Years ago, before the Clinton morons trashed the process and the Nation, it was kind of energizing to hear concepts and ideas for America's future. After the lying, rapist, criminal scumbag Clinton, I don't give a flying rat's ass anymore. When the American warden and guards are released, execute the illegal alien filth hostage takers without mercy. The Carter & Clinton morons have sold the US down the river; within 10 years, we'll go to war against the stinking Chi-Comm yellow dogf*ckers, and have to take the Panama Canal back militarily, because the stupid illegal alien f*ckers can't control the place. Here, read the pros, but mostly cons of the transfer. Once again, juries and their awards are out of control. They've awarded $50 million to some inner city lowlife who was playing on an escalator and lost a foot. Big f*cking deal. Give the cretinous-moron $1 million for his foot. Absurd and obscene. So we gave the Panama Canal away this week; in 15 years we'll have to go back and militarily take it away from either the stinking Red China dogs, or the commies now taking over Columbia. Either way, we f*cked up in giving it away to the shithole Panama, who has no army, no honest police and is rife with communism and corruption. Some legacy the lib-dem morons Carter & Clinton have left the USA. The gambling criminal Pete Rose and the lying obstructor of justice criminal Bill Clinton are well matched: both criminals and scum. Rose was indicted and Clinton impeached. Rose should never get back into baseball, let alone the Hall of Fame. Never. Listen to the bed wetting, whining, bleating lib-dem scumbags criticize a program to identify violent students. The same program's been around 20+ years for workplace id-ing — perhaps they should deployed it in the US Postal Service offices first — and has just been modified to correspond to school students. f*ck you, lib-dem scumbags. We'll use it if it gets the psycho-cases out of the school. Got a problem w/ that, lib-dem shit? Nope? Didn't think so, lowlifes. We live in a dysfunctional family society now, as compared to when I was a kid and we discussed problems w/ family. Doesn't happen today, Sherlock. Sure, it will be worse; the scumbag morons cut down everything in sight, creating an ultra-massive desert. Nothing grows in a desert. We know that, kaffirs. Consequently, people die by the tens-of-millions from starvation, after they've eaten their cats and dogs, and children, and anything else which moves. These are your people, NAACP. Not mine. I don't give a flying rat's ass if the whole Continent dies from AIDS. Great "urban and suburban and rural renewal", baby. It's amazing just how many symbols of Christmas come from the pagans and not from Christ. Surprised the shit out of me. Read how nasty ethnic politics can get. The lib-dems downplay it all in the name of "political correctness", and no one has the guts to investigate, indict and prosecute the illegal alien scumbag, Bert Corona. Why? Good riddance to the corrupt, criminal Reno bitch, who, hopefully, will soon die from her disease. That'll be one less lib-dem moron polluting the air we all have to breathe. Yet the Clinton idiot who is #2 at the Dept of (In)Justice, Eric Holder, is just as bad a criminal as Reno is. The son a lowlife Barbados immigrants, Holder is one more reason to strictly tighten-up immigration policies and keep the filth out. Want to read the truth about Clinton's criminal campaign fundraising connection to the stinking Chink filth, which the liberal mainstream media were and still are afraid to report? If you despise the fat, waddling sweathog, dyke liberal Rosie O'Donnell as much as I do, read this piece by two of comedy's best funnymen. It's great. Capitol Punishment. With all the whining liberal scumbags bitching about Florida's use of the electric chair, the-powers-that-be have now added lethal injection to the options. Okay by me, as long as they're executed in a timely fashion, instead of the 15+ years it usually takes. Whatever it takes to rid the world of those subhuman filth. Was it road rage or a racially-motivated hate crime? Who cares: both of these brotherly White trash need to die for Killing a Black woman and wounding her two companions. Only 96 executions this year, so far? Whoa, that's not nearly enough to rid the Nation of the 3,500+ subhuman filth languishing on death row. Not by a f*cking long shot, baby. There should be 10x that amount of executions per month, until we're rid of all the stinking death row-clogging, subhuman filth. This piece of illegal alien terrorist filth should have been executed years ago. Hey, there's still time. Clintonazis. To cover their own inaptitude and incompetence, the Dept of (In)Justice (DOIJ) indicted a chink scumbag who wasn't directly involved in the wholesale dissemination of US nuclear secrets to China. Poor gook f*cker; you're going to take the brunt of the public punishment for the Clintonazi filth. Enjoy! The sons and daughters of bitches at the NTSB and FBI are still denying that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by 1-2 missiles in '96; the evidence is there and plain to see. This kind of conspiracy — the deliberate withholding of facts and concealment of crucial evidence — is the worst to be propagated upon the American Public yet, much like Waco. The Clintonite scum is still operational and at it's best when it can smear, bribe, lie and spin, or preferably destroy someone — like Linda Tripp, who taped Lewinski and got Bubba impeached, but not convicted. They accomplished that and more when they "owned the crooked judge" — Circuit Judge Diane Leasure — who ruled on a technicality of immunity. She's a Clintonista-ite-oid-nazi lowlife. Starr's people should have been there for her defense; instead the few punks who showed up were ineffectual. They handed over Tripp. She's toast and headed to prison ... unless Bill Clinton steps in and pardons her? Nah, too good a script. Spielberg stuff. Nah. Nah. Maybe. Googie Architecture On-line. Googie refers to a popular style of commercial architecture that thrived across the U.S., but especially in Southern California, in the 50s and early 60s -- Googie was rooted in "car culture," and inspired by Disneyland, the space age, and optimistic, post-atomic industrial design. This affectionate homage describes Googie's essential look: organic, yet abstract; disdaining gravity; and blending disparate structural elements and influences. Visit the gallery of photographs that document coffee shops, bowling alleys, neon signs, and tiki huts -- lingering icons of the whimsical glory that was Googie.