Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Good morning crew,

It is either pure luck or some secret, innate ability I have, but I managed to plan our move down to the last square foot and the last spare minute.

Based purely on guesswork I rented an 18-foot truck. Since the closing was last Friday the wife and I both took two days off and we went to pick up the truck Thursday morning.

The two of us started loading that sucker at 8:30 a.m. and we didn't collapse from exhaustion until 9:30 p.m. with what appeared to be about half of our belongings still in the condo.

Having to be at the closing on the condo at nine o'clock Friday, we got up at 5:30 the next morning to continue packing and loading. We filled up the entire moving truck, floor-to-roof, and both of our trucks with the back seats folded down, including the passenger seats. Toward the end I was climbing a sheer wall of boxes and bags and chair backs and ironing boards that was bulging out of the back of the moving truck to wedge miscellaneous items into any empty nook or cranny.

Even my father-in-law who showed up Thursday evening to offer moral support and constructive criticism took one look at the pile of material in the garage and the space on the truck and said, "You are never going to fit all of that in there!"

But we did, with no small effort and at the very last minute. We had to be at the closing at 9:00 and at 8:35 the wife was still running items down the stairs for me to stuff into cracks.

I consider it a personal victory that we only rolled up to the closing 5 minutes late.

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
"The FBI debuted its new facial recognition software which will archive the faces of tens of millions of Americans every day. This groundbreaking, amazing new software is called Facebook." -Conan O'Brien

***
"In L.A. it's over 100 degrees. Heat warnings remain in effect. The National Weather Service is advising residents of Southern California to strongly consider living somewhere else." -Jimmy Kimmel

***
"The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus received 4 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours. Meanwhile, the new Blackberry keeps driving by your house to see if you're home." -Seth Meyers

***
[I know I've printed these excerpts from 6th grade history tests before, but they are so hilarious I can't resist running them again.]


1. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couple.

2. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

3. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were to 2 singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backward and declared, "a horse divided against itself can not stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

4. Abraham Lincoln was America's greatest precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation . On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in the moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a suposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

5. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.

6. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this.


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
We were eating at one of the trendier restaurants in town when my friend pointed to the menu and told the waitress, "I'll have the 24."

"Uh, Jim," I whispered, "that's the price, not the meal number."

"Oh," he said. "In that case give me the 12."