Lotsa Little Bits vol. 10

ITEM:  I've been for the last two days a blog post looking for a subject to write about.  So today you get mishmash so I can gratify myself.

ITEM:  Laurie is now employed, having gotten a job at that great anti-union corporate monolith with all the customers whose pictures make up a funny if disgusting website.  She starts tomorrow, and hopefully will take over the company in time for me to retire next week.  In other news, Scrappy has been leafing through "solitaire for dogs" again.

ITEM:  Checked my junk e-mail file, and found nothing worth making fun of.    Outside of a major propensity for a blogging lady I know (whose posts mostly involve taking care of her grandchildren) to get spam comments from those who want to hawk "portable vaginas" for hard up guys.  Who says target marketing is dead?

ITEM:  Quick hockey update:  In Denmark, the regular season champion (and rival of my team SonderjyskE), Herning Blue Fox, got owned in the quarters by the 7th place Rodovore Mighty Bulls!  Gotta laugh at that one!  They move on to face Frederickshavn, who were first for most of the season before fading.  SYU topped the Russian Snow Leopards 4-3 in OT yesterday to knot their series at 3 games each.  The Meteor Guys await the winner, while St. Pete will face Dynamo.  And Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg posted a 5-3 win and a 2-1 series victory over Nurnberg in the German playoffs.  GAW moves on to play Adler Mannheim, who won the regular season with a 30-16-6 mark.

ITEM:  Our local university, IPFW (I Personally Favor Women... er, Indiana U- Purdue U, Ft Wayne), announced that they would be laying off some employees.  From the News15 report:

Chancellor Vicky L. Carwein sent an email to the IPFW community on Thursday afternoon announcing the elimination of 15.5 jobs. 24.5 unfilled positions will also be eliminated. These reductions are expected to save IPFW $2.2 million.

Fifteen point five?  Twenty-four point five?  Damn it, I just got canned from my half a job at IPFW!  Where will I find another campus that offers half-jobs?  My half-life is ruined!

ITEM:  Bobby Smith, the voice of the Spinners, died today.  Which brings up that I am currently researching how many acts that have hit #1 have moved on to the great turntable in the sky.  I'm only about halfway, so it's debatable whether I will have it on this week's Time Machine or next week.  Or what form it will take, or whether anyone will care but me.

ITEM:  I have been absolutely astounded  mildly surprised by how many of my peers here in blogland have described the traditional Irish fare they consumed for St. Patty's Day.  Of them all, I'd have to say the shepherd's pie and the cake that doubled as a bottle of Bailey's by Nain at View from down here was my favorite.  Second place for cutest chef goes to Squirrel, Skippy's Daughter, over at I Make Soap.  Me?  The closest to anything Irish I consumed was when a co-worker bought some cupcakes for SPD at work.  They were a wonderful chocolate with an equal amount by weight dose of green icing on the top.  He joked, "I was up all night making them!"  I replied, "You could have left off about half the icing and got a couple hours sleep."  Still, I think I was the only one (besides him) that didn't throw half their icing away.

ITEM:  Darling Diane Feinstein's assault weapons ban got 86'ed by Harry Reid today.  Seems even with a Democrat senate, Harry and Di couldn't muster the support for it.  Think we'll get "Reid bows to NRA pressure" stories on the network news tonight?  Me either.  Of course, Harry broadly hinted she should try to jam it in as pork an amendment on the floor, which is no doubt just what will happen.  Still, it is amusing that Obama's mandate isn't as invincible as he likes to think.

ITEM: Speaking of amusing, I assume everyone here has heard that the Devil that appeared on the TV miniseries The Bible looked like a weathered Obama.  With those ears, a lot of radar installations resemble Obama, but you don't see us shutting them down- yet.  I did check out a bit of the repeats of the show Sunday whilst doing other things.  Perhaps I was too hard on it in the past- but what I saw resembled a lot of old Cecil B. DeMille storyboards.  And splitting the red sea was better on The Ten Commandments.  So were the commandments.  A fiery hand blasting commandments into a mountainside does a lot more for me than a couple seconds of shaking followed by a rock sliding away and TA-DA! Commandments.

ITEM:  One more thing on the sequester:  Obama says he'll "make it hurt".  So far, the closures have included: ending guided White House tours; no breakfast in Army mess halls overseas; and no more flyovers at sporting events.  What next?  No more toilet paper at VA Hospitals?  I don't know about his other "skills", but Obama has petty down to a T.

ITEM:  Boy, I guess I did have a few things to say!