Check where the heat is coming from

Staying married is like keeping an electrical appliance running.  You have to keep feeling and watching where the heat is coming from.  If it’s coming from the right places, be happy that things are going well.  If it is from an inappropriate place then you have to check where the source is.  Is it coming from loose joint, jammed parts or ruptured cable? 

Sometimes you can’t find where the fault is until you see sparks flying.  When that happens, you have to shut down the appliance, find the cause of the problem and correct the fault before everything goes haywire. 

Sometimes there is just that irritating buzz and rattle and you get a whiff or two of burnt insulation.  That’s the best time to correct the fault and solve an impending problem before it flares up (and sparks fly and things get ugly).

The best way to keep an appliance running perfectly is keep checking periodically and maintaining it.  Prevention is better than cure. 

But this is not a perfect world.  So don’t be dismayed that sometimes you still get some unexpected sparks or shocks from unexpected sources.  Best thing you can do is ensure it doesn’t get too big or happen too often.

A Feeling of Weightlessness

Sometimes 

I feel like I’m a loose piece of Styrofoam 

floating around in the water, 

going whichever way the current takes me 

or whichever way the wind blows.  

Sometimes, 
like the lightweight piece of debris, 

I go round and round in circles 

because the tide flows in one direction 

and the wind blows the other way.   

Weightless.  
My mind is drifting aimlessly

And just like any piece of packing material, 

used and discarded, 

or chucked in a corner 

for any ‘just-in-case’ occasion

I lose my direction.  

I could not forsee

I thought I was such 

a happy-go-lucky ex-worker 
glad to get out of the rat race

heading for the retirement village 

only to be waylaid 
and recycled 

for some other purposes.

So
is this all

a part of life?

Or 

is it just an existence?

to be borne till the day 

Someone switches off 

this life-support system?

In the US the recession has hit everybody really hard...

Thanks, Quinnie for this one....
---------------------------------------------------------------

My neighbour got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.

A stripper was killed when her audience showered her with rolls of
pennies while she danced.

I saw a Mormon with only one wife.

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you call
them and ask if they meant you or them.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.

Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America.

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's
names.

My cousin had an exorcism but couldn't afford to pay for it, and they
re-possessed her !

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

A picture is now only worth 200 words.

When Bill and Hillary travel together, they now have to share a room.

The Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas is now managed by Somali
pirates.

And, finally....

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs,
my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc., I called the Suicide
Hotline. I got a call centre in Pakistan, and when I told them I was
suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck !

I'm a lot

I'm a hero to some
a nobody to others
a saint to a few
a Mr fix-it sometimes
a butler
a shoulder (to cry on)
an ATM
an 'uncle' to many
a son to a couple of old folks
a 'brother' to all
a dad to 3
a hubby to 1
.........
hey! that's a lot!

How you'd get around in Heaven.

This Heavenly joke came all the way from my school days:

Three men died and went to heaven.  They met St. Peter at the gate.

Peter told them, " You're all gonna get cars up here for transport, but if you were bad you get a crappy car, if you were good you'd get a great car."

And so Peter asked the first guy, " John, did you cheat on your wife while you were alive?"
John said, " No.  Never..."

Peter said, " Your'e lying, we know because it's recorded.  So here's a 69 Volkswagon.  It needs a lot of work."

The next guy Joe stepped forward and Peter asked him, " Did you cheat on your wife Joe?"

Joe replied, " Well yes, I did while we were in high school."

Peter replies, " We know cause it's recorded.  Here's a 1974 Chevy Caprice.  It needs a lot of work."

Finally old Mr. Jones came forward and Peter asked him the same question.  So old Mr Jones replied, " No, as a matter of fact I never even cheated on her in high school."

Peter said, " We know cause it's recorded.  So here's a top of the line Rolls Royce fully loaded.  Congratulations!"

The next day John's car got stuck on the road so he kicked and cussed it.  Then he saw Mr Jones in his Rolls Royce across the road, head banging on the driving wheel crying.  So he went over and asked him, "Why are you crying, Mr Jones?  I should be the one crying cause my crappy old car broke down.  But you should be laughing all over Heaven."

Mr Jones wailed, "I just saw my wife.  She was wheeling by on a skate-board!"

Ssssnake In The House!!!

It's still a jungle out here I suppose.  Our friendly house seems to be attracting all the wrong company.  There used to be stray cats, musangs, monkeys, bees...  Then there are also snakes.

This morning as soon as I got into the office, wifey called.  She said there's one in the house.  I clearly heard the tremble in her voice.  I quickly locked the office and drove back home.

Probably due to the current hot and dry weather and the depleted patches of greenery around the neighborhood, it was heading for a cooler place to hide during the day.  It just happened to find its way to my front door and slid into the house.  It raised its head and hissed at wifey in between the hallway and dining room, right in front of our bedroom door. 

That was when she called me on the phone.  Then she waited until it tried to snake its way under the screen door into the bedroom.  She then made a dash to the front porch, grabbed hold of a can of Mortein H2O and gave it a huge dose of the spray.  It was stunned for a while, and because of the wet terrazzo it couldn't crawl away.

Then she grabbed a can of acidic floor cleaner from the kitchen and gave it another dousing.  Fearing it may revive and give us the slip, she quickly went to the kitchen, filled a pot with water and heated it up.

By the time I arrived the critter was almost dead but still wriggling around.  I whacked it a few times with a stick just to make sure. I noticed the tell-tale icon on the back of its head; a pair of spectacles.  It was a baby Cobra.  Small, but just like its parents, mean and menacing when confronted. So when wifey came out with the boiling water I turned the thing into a coiled sausage.

Certain intruders are definitely not welcomed.

By the way, this is not a picture of the one that came a visiting.
In my hurry to get home to save a damsel in distress I left my camera in the office.

Cold Sweat...

Want to know what it feels like when your finger slipped (or is it the mind?) and you punched the wrong button which deleted the partition on the disk containing all your customer's important data?

Yeah... cold sweat... And with the customer breathing down our necks, checking every few minutes wanting to know when we can deliver the restored PC, it wasn't an easy job. 

Jeff and I searched the internet for every data recovery software available, hoping to undo the damage.  One software managed to scan and showed us the files we lost but it ended there.

1900hrs:  I didn't have the energy to go on so I called it a day and went home.  But Jeff wasn't the type to give up that easily.  He went on working at it. 

He just sent me a message at 2300hrs and said we can sleep well tonight.  He did it!!!  He undeleted the partition and recovered the precious data!!!  I call that persistence!