3/11/08 Diez on whatever Tuesday is in Spanish

Guess what day it is- That's right, it's Tuesday! And for my established readers (all three of you), you know that that means it's 10 on Tuesday time! Oh stop groaning- they aren't that bad. You'll scare the new readers reader that I managed to lure over here from the blog party. Anyway, every Tuesday, I list 10 random little things that I pull out of my...I mean, off the top of my head. These little things would never be substantial enough to become a post on their own, but but with their powers combined they become...an easy post to write! (You thought I was going to say Captain Planet, didn't you?) Okay, here we go:

One: Like any good post, we'll start with chocolate candy- specifically little balls of goodness called Sixlets. Anybody remember those? I had a dream about them over the weekend. Tony said that they didn't make them anymore, but when we were in the dollar store buying beef jerky yesterday, there they were! I bought a bag just for fun, and have been enjoying their dark chocolaty goodness in the little candy shell ever since.

Two: You know what? That whole sentence about buying beef jerky in the dollar store makes us sound like total rednecks, doesn't it? The truth is that a few years ago, I wouldn't have given a dollar store a passing thought. I mean, if it was only a dollar, it had to be junk, right? Not anymore. I wandered in there by accident about six months ago, and I was really shocked at all the name brand, quality stuff in there. I mean, I had just purchased shampoo at wal-mart the day before for $3-4, and here was the EXACT same shampoo for a $1! (Which made me really mad at Wal-mart for scalping me like that...low low prices my rear end!) Anyway, we don't do a ton of shopping in the Dollar Store, but we do swing by there for some specific things, such as beef jerky, which is really quite tasty, and the $1 bag would cost me $4 at Wal-mart. Tony also buys Dad's Root beer there, which is apparently something that he drank as a kid, and was excited to find again since it isn't sold anywhere else.

Three: As much as I hate hate HATE having to get up an hour earlier on this whole Daylight's Savings Time thing, I must admit that I do enjoy having an extra hour of light when I get off work in the afternoons. Plus, the weather is supposed to be sunny and mid-60s the whole rest of the week, which is soooo nice. Hooray for spring!

Four: In fact, I'm taking one of my sacred vacation days tomorrow to spend the whole day playing in the yard. I'm going to start by picking up a truckload of mulch and mulching the new flower bed that I made, and then I'm going continue project Stepping Stone, and then I'm going put down some grass fertilizer, and then I'm going to make an arbor for my grape vine. Or as much of that as possible anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Five: Speaking of my little grape vine, I'm eating the best grapes right now! (I just thought you guys should know). I really wanted some chocolate after talking about the Sixlets, but in an effort to eat better, I reached for the grapes instead. I brought a fruit basket to work a few weeks ago and set it on my desk right where I could see it. I keep a couple of apples, my bananas for my Cheerios, and a bunch or two of red seedless grapes. Anyway, these grapes are fabulous! And huge! They're like, the size of small plums, and so sweet and juicy! I hope my grape vine that I'm planting will end up with fruit this good. (Probably not, since these grapes came from Chile, but I can dream...and eat these grapes in the mean time).

Six: Speaking of Chile, according to my Spanish word of the day email from Dictionary.com, today's word is mediado, which means halfway through...which is fitting because we're now over halfway through the 10 for Tuesday. See? 10 on Tuesdays are both fun AND educational!

Seven: For those of you who care, I'm starting the regression analysis on my thesis now. My hope is that one of my six independent variables (x) will prove to be statistically significant in influencing my dependent variable (y), which is namely, forecasting variations between initial forecasts and actual shipping volume over a period of eight months. I'd like to have at least 3 variables that influence forecast accuracy, but after a precursory look at the scatter plots, I'm not so sure that will happen. Hey! Hey! Wake up! You're drooling on your keyboard...

Eight: Remember the 400 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets that I picked up at the home show? Well, I picked up another set this past weekend. (I also picked up two sets for you Stepher). I guess the word is out on these sheets now, because it was an absolute madhouse around the booth! I had to karate-chop two old ladies and full body tackle a third in order to get the king size. It was worth it though if my sweetie-pie can sleep his way through satiny soft goodness.

Nine: Well, the cat tree has been a huge success, except for one tiny flaw. It seems that Mason can climb up the cat tree, but hasn't quite mastered climbing back down the cat tree. If he's low enough, he'll jump from the cat tree down to my bench. If he's not low enough, he'll just sit on the cat tree and yell until Tony or myself rescues him. Dixon has so far decided to keep all four kitty paws planted on terra firma. I keep meaning to post the cat tree step-by-step guide, but I have to upload the pictures first. Next post, I promise!

Ten: Looking back over the post, it occurs to me that some of you may not be familiar with Captain Planet, (and thus missing my witty witty joke up there at the beginning). Captain Planet and the Planeteers was an extremely cheesy cartoon that ran in the early 90s, when I was roughly 10 years old. It had a fascinating little theme song that went "Captain Planet! He's our hero! Gonna bring pollution down to zero!" He was a blue-skinned superhero with a green mullet, and he ran around with 5 suspiciously diverse children who each had a ring that represented an earth element- Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and Heart. Whenever the kids came across the polluting super-villains (who enjoyed dumping toxic sludge into the river just for fun), they would point their rings together to summon Captain Planet, who would, with much seizure-inducing light flashes, appear and yell, "By your powers combined...I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!" Then he would use his numerous super-powers to beat up the polluting super-villains and teach an important lesson about how to recycle. Unfortunately, this kind of exposure explains a whole lot about who I am today.

Okay all you Interpeeps, we've learned about Captain Planet, my thesis topic, the Spanish word of the day, and that Sixlets still exist at the Dollar Store. I suppose that'll just about wrap things up for today! If you're here from the blog party, welcome and nice to meetcha'. If you leave a comment, I'll look you up and return the favor. For the non-party readers, show the newbies how the comment thing works here on Quirky.