Black Friday

A friend and I went to good old Wal-Mart around midnight when Black Friday was just getting started. We didn't plan on going originally but we were out cruising around so it just sorta happened. Needless to say, it was crowded and people were parking in spots that weren't even parking spots. Nothing exciting happened, sorry if you were expecting a funny story. We just walked around the place a few times, trying to move through the hordes of consumers and spot something interesting.

There was a telescope for around $40 but we didn't really know how good it was and we didn't want to wait in any of the long lines, so we just left empty-handed.

This post's purpose is to express my disdain for the type of people you hear about on the news that assault or pepper spray others on Black Friday to try and claim items for themselves. They're fighting over junk, and it's barbaric and shameful. Keep your garbage that you fought over you Black Friday zombies, your bargains suck as well as you.

:)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Luckily I was able to snap a photo of a turkey.

One thing to look forward to about Thanksgiving is the great food. I can't even remember a Thanksgiving where plenty of turkey, stuffing (or dressing), mashed potatoes, corn, green beans and all sorts of other stuff I'm failing to mention wasn't readily available, and I'm thankful for that!

Unfortunately, Christmas really overshadows this holiday. If you've been looking around in stores or listening to the radio then you'll know exactly what I mean. Seems like Christmas starts getting celebrated much earlier than it comes around... what an attention hog. For that, it gets an ugly strike-through in this blog post.

Remember to be thankful for what you have, if you're reading this then you are probably lucky in ways that many others are not. That being said, I hope you eat some tasty food and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

What are you doing up there, cat?

Meet the Family

Brix (don't ask)

Alex (note the battle scars)

Sleepy Leo

Kirby

Zoey

No official name but I'll call him Sylvester (pretty sure it's a male)

No official name but I call her C.C.

Skeletor (you wish your cat's name was half as awesome)

Ruthie

Chili Conundrum

This is the most artful I have ever been with my food.

     If you thought my post about Jolly Ranchers was the most boring thing you've ever read, wait until you read this. I'm about to break my own record in the "most lackluster blog post ever written" competition. After this, you're gonna see why the word 'Entertainment' being in my blog's header is deserving of an irony award. Maybe I'll change that sometime to something more fitting...like "Text Rightfully Assigned Special Help" or T.R.A.S.H. for short. Enough of the self-deprecating humor, if you're ready to start snoring then I'm ready to get started.
    
     You're looking at a picture of something I ate a few nights ago. It's a bowl of chili and tortilla chips (and a few crackers) for all my blind readers out there. This would be a picture of just chili and crackers if we had an adequate number of crackers in stock at my time of eating this. Actually to be honest I doubt I would've posted a picture of just chili and crackers, that's not nearly as artful as my chili modded with tortilla chips. A rose is almost as beautiful as the picture you see above. I had to express my strong disapproval of said picture being put on show in a museum of art, as it would have made everything else look terrible.

     Oddly enough I don't care for chili by itself. I need an entire pack of crackers just for one bowl, or a healthy dose of tortilla chips. I often wonder if I'm eating chili and crackers because I wanted chili with crackers, or because I wanted crackers covered in chili. It's a philosophical conundrum that I should really rid my brain of, lest it explode. I also eat said meal with a fork, not a spoon. Not sure why, guess I'm just more of a fork guy. Except when it comes to cereal, eating cereal with a fork would be really awkward.

     Anyway, if you like chili then I would recommend trying out Hormel's Homestyle chili with beans if it's available where you live. I can't describe why it's good, but it is nonetheless. Other people seem to like it here too, it's often out of stock in the stores. Tell me what kind of chili you like in the comments if you have a favorite brand, and as always thanks for reading.

You can wake up now by the way, the blog post is over.

I WILL END YOU.

I WILL END YOU.

Wise Cat

Here's a picture I would like to share of a friend's cat. He looks very wise.

Autumn Appreciation

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Room Progress (5)

I'm finally back with another update about the new room. There's a huge difference between this and the last update post; as you can see, progress is really being made now. This much completion has been done for a while; I could have updated earlier, but I had other things to talk about. Now the outside isn't completely finished, there's still a few more things to do. Those steps were thrown together by my father as a temporary solution (before you had to step on bricks), and I'm not sure how the final steps are going to look.

As for the inside, there's still much to be done. Maybe I'll show some of those pictures once more work is completed. This is taking longer than the initial estimation to complete, but oh well not really a big deal. That's all for now, possibly more updates in the future and as always thanks for reading.

Brothers in Paws

Leo and Alex

Kirby and Alex

Oh Alex, you so photogenic.

It's raining outside, so I went out onto the porch to view what scenery there is around my house. The rain makes it so much easier to appreciate the beauty in things for me. My cats were hungry and crowding around me, so it was very easy to take pictures. Luckily I snapped a few good ones.

We have 9 cats in total, so there's a third of them pictured. I am a cat fanatic if you haven't guessed by now. We also have 6 dogs and a rabbit, it's pretty much a zoo around here. I don't like having so many animals around but my mother works at an animal care place, so they just end up here sometimes.

Well that wraps up this post, hope you enjoy the pictures. Anyone else think that one leaf in the third picture is shaped like a heart?

(Cheers to you if you can think of the popular lead movie characters Leo and Alex got their names from.)

Geico - Friend or Foe?

     Well, it's the beginning of a new month; I hope all of my readers had fun on Halloween. But now it's time to discuss something a bit more serious, the topic of insurance. Well, insurance in general is too broad of a topic so we'll just narrow it down to car insurance for this post. Is it worth it? In the U.S. it's illegal to go without car insurance, so you're pretty much forced to have some form or another. I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but if you're in the U.S. chances are you've already picked your poison.

     We see different car insurance commercials all the time, you should probably be able to name a few different companies off the top of your head. Let's take a look at Geico. Their mascot is the Gecko, a friendly and charming character who we've seen in many different commercials. When the Gecko is in the commercial, the focus is usually more centered around him and not how much money you could save. In commercials where there is no Gecko present, the commercial is entertaining and often humorous; again taking away most of the focus from how much money could be saved. Why is this?

     Some of you probably already realize, it's to make you (the viewer) fond of the company. So fond, in fact, that for many people the issue of saving money gets placed to the side and instead insurance is purchased for the sole purpose of supporting that which entertains them. A mighty convenient placement for the insurance company, to be sure, for how much less would their troubles become if they didn't have to worry about competing in the arena of prices?

     Different companies have different ways of drawing in customers, but enough about that. Why is this worth talking about in the first place? Well, consider the amount of money you pay to these companies. It's completely possible that you could pay a car insurance company for 30 years without ever getting into an automobile accident. That's a LOT of money built up over time, and for what? They never gave anything in return, other than documentation keeping you out of trouble. Sounds like a rip-off, doesn't it? Maybe that example is a bit extreme, it's more likely a person gets into at least one accident.

     Still, you're paying these companies only for them to hand that money (or much less!) right back to you, and there's no guarantee they'll even do that much! Look online and chances are you'll be able to find horror stories regarding any insurance company. Now I know you can't please everyone, there's probably not a company out there that can exist without a complaint to their name. This post's purpose isn't to demonize insurance companies; although admittedly I don't see them in any honorable light. Instead I hope to spark some thought into how your money is spent and for what reason.

     So what's your view on the matter? Are insurance companies respectable, or are they not working in the customer's best interest? I want to hear what you think, spill it in the comments. Thanks for reading.