My wife and I usually celebrate five-year-incremental wedding anniversaries by taking a trip. Five years ago we went to Las Vegas and ten years ago, to Disney World. Our daughter-in-law has to be in Washington next week for a conference. Our son flew here a couple of days early to visit. So, instead of a more elaborate trip, my wife and I will join our daughter, our son and his wife in Washington on Saturday night for a family dinner. On the day our son called and told us he was coming, I was looking into taking my wife to London for a week. So, even though a weekend in D.C. isn’t cheap, this is saving me a ton of money.
My wife usually drives our new Hyundai. Most people get less than the EPA estimate for around-town gas mileage. So does she. I’ll be driving it to Washington and I’ll be interested in seeing what kind of gas mileage it gets on the highway.
Silver, gold, ruby, sapphire, diamond? Why are there no traditional wedding anniversary presents for guys?
Last night, I found an anniversary card that tells the woman recipient that marrying her is the smartest thing her husband ever did. Of course, I bought it. I’ve been saying that to so many people for so long now that even Hallmark knows.
While our son is here, I’m going to get him to help me carry two old, metal radiator covers out to my truck so I can recycle them. I never liked them and I recently replaced them with wooden covers I built myself. I stained them to match the wood trim in the house and they look much nicer than the old ones.
It now appears that Paul Ryan will be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. It’s hard to imagine why he wants it. The Republican caucus in Congress is fractured. A sub-group, the Freedom Caucus, is very conservative and disinclined to compromise, so being Speaker is a job that is a lot like herding kittens. Plus, since he ran for Vice President in 2012, it’s reasonable to surmise that Ryan has designs on the White House. The last Speaker of the House to become President was James K. Polk who was President from 1845 to 1849. Polk was, in fact, the only Speaker to go on to be President. It’s an awfully high ranking dead-end job, but if Ryan becomes Speaker and wants to be President, his most likely way to achieve the Presidency is if both the President and Vice President die. It’s relatively little known that the Speaker is next in line to the Presidency after the Vice President.
If California Congressman Kevin McCarthy withdrew from the race to become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives to keep rumors of an extra-marital affair from becoming widely known, that didn’t work very well at all. For the record, I read those rumors in the newspapers, as most people did, and have no idea whether they’re true.
Verizon wants you to update the software on your computer that interacts with your Verizon cell phone. So, they send updates, a lot of updates. And, in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, a little dialogue box appears urging you to install software that’s been downloaded. The box doesn’t tell you what software or carry a Verizon logo. Until I found out what it was, I would never touch it, even though it nagged me. I did update once, but it’s still nagging me. I can tell it to install later, and it asks me again multiple times a day. Eliminating the nagging is more important to me than updating the software. If Verizon doesn’t change its ways soon, I’ll just uninstall the software to end the annoyance.
I used to think I had made two mistakes in high school: I thought I was the only person that awkward; and I thought I’d get over it. Turns out I made three. I also thought I’d eventually be too old for pimples.