Daylight Savings Time

Tonight we have to move our clocks around again.. Whats up with that......? Can anyone explain to Billy, why DST is a good thing?

Sports Flash

Iowa Buckeyes 28
Southeastern 17

Billy's Residence

Billy lives in the building that used to be the high school that I attended. It has long since been converted to a four plex. Will it be long before it goes condo?

Its great that the Crippe family could find a place with reasonable rent when they moved here from Milwaukee but it really sucks that they are on the 2nd floor. My friend Wally is their landlord. They really couldn't ask for a better landlord. They have been living at the old school house building for the past 10 years and I don't believe he has ever raised the rent. He also comes out at all hours to do emergency repairs and has even done some jury-rigging on the lung.

Wally can do about anything mechanical. He even spent the better half of a Saturday recently cutting a hole in the header above the closet in Billy's room so a TV set could be installed for Billy to watch without the mirrors.

Wally belongs to the 'Tool of the Month' club at Mernard's. Every month he gets a new piece of equipment delivered to his door. His shop is so full of equipment and tools, he can barely turn around in it. But, when you need something, Wally has it. Wally is also VIP - Platinum Life member at Mernard's. This gives him valet parking at the store among other perks like special sales and free doors for life.

Wally's youngest son is Gormo and he is following in his dads footsteps. He can completely disassemble a Dodge Intrepid and put it back together again in one day and not have any parts left over. I can only hope that some of those Chrysler spare parts that he finds at various salvage yards can help out if necessary with the lung.

When the building was a schoolhouse, there was the local grocery store across the street and all the boys would gather behind the store building and burn fags during the lunch hour. Some of the more addicted ones even stopped behind the store before the school day started. At that time there was no warning on the side of the pack and no huge taxes. I guess we thought it was all right.

One time one of the upperclass guys took a Pall Mall unfiltered fag and stuck a cherry bomb on the end of it and carefully placed it on the study hall window ledge, having it timed so it would explode during the principals after lunch announcements. It worked beautifully...but our smoking/store privileges were suspended because of that. He would later flush a cherry bomb down the school toilet causing severe damage to the plumbing... God rest his soul!

Halloweens of past

I went to the 5:01 club and met The Puzzler for a quaff or two.

We always get smarter after imbibing a couple and we started reminiscing about the Halloweens of our youth. I mentioned that at the Amana store, the ladies behind the counter stopped selling eggs to any teenage boy a day or two before Halloween in an effort to curb the rampant vandalism. I, of course, would not do the egg gig anyway. Water balloons was the weapon of my choice.

He mentioned that his favorite trick was to fill a paper sack with manure and then light it on the porch of someone you particularly didn't like and ring the door bell and run like hell. I think this was limited to Waverly.

To go along with the bag he always had toilet paper to put in someone's tree.

In the old days, Detroit would burn for days...things are getting softer and gentler now.

That's a good thing.

Halloween Flight

We flew home yesterday, and it being Halloween, I thought it would be smart to be in the Col. Sanders persona. Originally I had planned to be all decked out in the white suit et al.

However, the thought of sitting 4 plus hours in the cabin and schlepping along my cane, not to mention the TSA hassle, reduced the charade to the Colonel's signature eyeglasses. We had some fun at the Chick Fillet store at the Tampa airport, bantering back and forth about who had the better chicken.

Sometime during the flight, when I was returning from the head in the rear of the plane, we struck up a conversation with the couple directly in front of us, ...I think I made some comment about how our tickets for the next leg fell into the toilet as I was lifting the lid to do my thing. They found that amusing and turned around in their seats for some comments about the Colonel. Well this gentleman should have availed himself of the services of a qualified orthodontist, and me being in partial costume, assumed he was too. I think I made some comment about his mouthpiece being cute for the holiday when much to my chagrin, he informed me they were his actual teeth.

Talk about inserting ones foot into someone else's mouth.....grrrrr....I guess he won't be a customer at KFC anymore.

News Flashes

We get the news down here and need to mention "bloggies" in the News! Gary, Billy's favorite humorist and his favorite pizza supplier made the Gazette Saturday. Welcome Marcos Pizza to Cedar Rapids.

The Wine Lizard is in today's Gazette. We had hoped that they would have put a picture of Billy in the Gazette since he was in the center of the room and the photographer had to work around him most of the time.

Of course, there was the Puzzler...but he is always buried on the back page in the lower right corner. I think they put him there because he is a raconteur.
The Puzzler is Billy's Godfather and he usually leaves a message in code form.

Colonel Sanders in the news...He placed 5th out of 1200 oddly costumed revelers last night. Next year he will be back with an updated version. We did get the peoples choice award though, as everyone at breakfast this morning is dumbfounded that it wasn't 1st or 2nd place. Maybe it was our accent that they didn't understand.

The Colonel Pops In

We hit the road and decide it might be a good idea to pop in on one of my stores. We randomly pick the store on SR54 in Land O lakes, FL. I've always had a passion for surprise visits. My employees all like me and always welcome a visit from "the Colonel".

We try to sneak in unnoticed and pretend to be a customer, but these employees saw right through the ruse. As we are placing out order for Original Recipe Chicken dinner, we are recognized and the whole staff wants a piece of me...also original. I pick out the best of them and have them come around the counter for some celebrity shots.

We do a cursory inspection of the kitchen area and verify its "finger lickin good". We sign some autographs and leave as quickly as we arrive. The employees all realize that I put the "U" in KFC. A few actually thought I had died. The Colonel lives.

The next stop would be difficult, as our camera crew would not be allowed to take photos. But rest assured, "The Colonel" was a hit.