My Gamertag is Colts420.Over 33,000 and going up.KmF clan member.

This morning we were discussing whether we should begin dieting after Thanksgiving or just till after New Year's.

I personally think we should just start fresh after New Year's because we still have Christmas dinner to wworry about plus the many other little other holiday parties you go in between. What do you think? Should we throw any diet rules out the window during the holidays?

 

 

After a bit of a break, our good friend Marea is back to drawing up wonderful comics of Moon & Staci. Here is the December comic:

You can also visit Marea's website to see her other work!

Thank you Marea!

A letter in SatDT from Lord Monson points out that under Thatcher almost 800 new criminal offences were created over 11 years and there was some 'disquiet at the figures'. He goes on to point out that NuLab has created 3,609 in a similar period. Another letter from David Outterside, a young barrister, on the 22nd, commented on the prefix to his 2009 edition of criminal law text which said, '..there is far too much criminal legislation. The willingness of the Labour government to continue the practice of legislating by trial and error has shown no sign of abating even in its 11th. year of office.. the state of the criminal statute book is a disgrace....The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 is the usual hotchpotch...much amendment is by way of undoing the Government's earlier legislation.' He concludes that 'the fashion of legislating is to grab headlines..having a devastating effect on justice'. But why is this? Is it because there are so many new types of crime? Is it because the government wants to interfere in too many areas of our lives and doesn't have the confidence in existing law? Perhaps many things, but in my opinion it is because of incompetence in handling modern day problems, but mainly the abuse of party power to legislate without sufficient debate across parties and time and expertise being given to drafting. A hidden motivation? Always possible.

ESTE VIERNES 5 DE DICIEMBRE EN EL KNIGHT CENTER DE LA CIUDAD DE MIAMI A LAS 7:30 PM -PRIMA ESTARA ALLI Y DESPUES ESTARA EN EL AFTER PARTY DE LOS PREMIOS EN BONGOS CAFE..LOS ESPERAMOS ..NO TE OLVIDES!!

 

Well my comment about Birmingham being below par as a 2nd city provoked some debate. Brummies are apparently the salt of the earth and what counts are leafy  glades not exciting cities. But I don’t think anyone tried to put it on a par with Barcelona, Milan, Lyon etc. Nobody anyway convinced me to reschedule my holidays and visit the Midlands next summer, that's for sure.

A quick glance at  history gives us the reason for the dullness of the UK’s cities. England has been throughout its history a minor remote nation of little importance. A late copier of trends created elsewhere . A poor copier at that . But for a brief period it suddenly became a major player. It found an easy way to exploit other nations. It  imported cheap food, extradited its peasants and created a mass industry. The cheap food lead the depraved and promisuous stock of peasants to breed rapidly and the population grew by leaps and bounds. The industrial shanty towns grew with their dismal terraces, now replaced by the equally dismal housing estates. This is why the UK has so many dire towns and cities.

But the rapid obtention of industrial power was just as  quickly lost. For it was built on sand. The Continental Europeans with their  trained and disciplined work forces were better suited to the production of quality value added products and services. Ever since the Brits have sought a solution to their problem. What to do with so many people who have so little talent? For you don’t create the craftmanship of Germany, nor the organisation and sense of nationhood of the French. Let alone the creativity and sense of beauty of the Italians. Either you have it or you don’t. Britain started off on the wrong foot and will never be able to change.For what can the Brits do ? What are their strengths ? Exploit foreigners ? Make cheap shoddy products ? Ah yes, be bankers but there is no need for 60 million bankers, besides they are not very good at it. And as time goes on things will get worse, a need for quality products and services will become paramount.

So what to do with the dismal towns of England ? Obviously the only solution is that they disappear from the map.  They are  a sad accident of history.  There needs to be strict population control and the country should be rolled back to some 20 million people. The size it should have been but for the anomaly of the industrial revolution.

I'm not sure whether to laugh out loud or to just feel sorry for this dog and his owners. I'll just let you decide which is the best response...

 

The Killers. You know these four guys from Las Vegas with their powerful indie rock songs having a partiality for British 80's Pop.

They convinced me with their debut "Hot Fuss" and "Sam's Town", so I had high expectations for their new project. Finally I could get hold of their new LP "Day & Age" for low 12 €, let's see if it can knock my socks off.

 

The cover is colorful and has a glance, it looks interesting. The back displays the tracklist:

01 Losing Touch

02 Human

03 Spaceman

04 Joy Ride

05 A Dustland Fairytale

06 This Is Your Life

07 I Can't Stay

08 Neon Tiger

09 The World We Live In

10 Goodnight, Travel Well

 

Ten songs. Not much, but that's not unusual these days.

When you listen to them, you'll notice immediately the difference to The Killers' past albums. Discobeats, synthesizers and harmonys were added to their sound. Even saxophones! It's Pop Music! Where's the Rock?

You'll find highlights pretty much as lowlights. Their hit single "Human" is one of the good things, I love this song. But there are better ones. I fell in love with "Spaceman" and "Losing Touch" which are some catchy tunes. 

"Neon Tiger" is a song which sounds a little boring. There's nothing special about this song like the songs used to be. "Day & Age" has some songs you don't expect to hear of them like "Joy Ride". It sounds like a typical song of the Black Kids, not of the Killers.

The rusults of their work are different tunes, different Killers. I guess we have some new Killers here, they stepped into musical new territory. If you like Pop Music you will love it. If you're more into Rock, you won't unless you are going to enlarge your musical horizon. It can't measure up to "Hot Fuss" or "Sam's Town", but it's nice to see that The Killers aren't stuck in only one genre.

To me The Killers' "Day & Age" is good, but not surprassing. Go and listen for yourself!

 

 

 

 

NO FUN

 

I think we were probably both in shock. I can't come up with any other explanation for the fact that, on stumbling across such an alien, unearthly view, we just stared at it for a few minutes like bored holidaymakers before turning to walk back down the passageway. In fact, I'm sure we were in shock, because for the fifteen minutes or so that it took us to travel back to the mist cloud, I talked non-stop about golf without making a single sarcastic remark.

      Andy seemed to be in a trance, answering my questions about record scores and favourite courses automatically. Personally, I think I was probably trying to submerge a rising panic by concentrating on the boringly mundane, for an unpleasant thought had surfaced and was clamouring for attention. If this subterranean passage was some indeed form of gateway to at least two alien worlds, as my senses appeared to be telling me, then was there any guarantee that travelling back through it would return us to our own world?

      I know that, as we neared the mist cloud, the panic came close to overwhelming me. I can remember trying to force myself not to run, whilst babbling all sorts of deranged nonsense about wanting to buy a set of golf clubs and take the game up seriously. In fact, I think I must have been close to the edge as I distinctly remember offering to play Andy at squash, as well. And then, when we were just feet away from the first drifting grey tendrils, panic swamped me and I bolted.

      The opaque cloud swallowed me and I winced, half-expecting to run full tilt into the solid brick wall at any moment, but then I burst out of the mist like a racehorse leaving the starting stalls to find that I was once again in the familiar sewer.

      I hurtled along it with Andy at my heels, the torch beam bouncing uncontrollably from wall to wall ahead of us, and then we were scrambling up through the rectangular manhole together to stand gasping and shivering in the cold, damp air of the canal wharf-side. In the distance I could hear an ambulance siren slowly receding, and at the every-day normality of the sound I could feel myself going week with relief.

      In unison, we turned towards the towpath and began to walk silently along it, both of us locked in our own thoughts. It was only as we scrambled through the gap in the hedge that Andy suddenly muttered something almost inaudible.

      "What was that?" I asked.

      "I said, hallucination. It's gotta be."

      "Oh, come on, Andy!"

      "Can't be anything else. That gas must be a powerful hallucinogen."

      "How many moons did you see?"

      "Three."

      "And what colour where they?"

      "Two yellow, one purple."

      "So you tell me which drug gives two people exactly the same hallucination."

      Andy frowned.

      "Maybe we're telepathic," he muttered. "I mean, you can often tell what I'm thinking. And you always seemed to know when I had a good hand at cards."

      "But that was because you were so bloody awful at keeping a poker face," I told him. "Everybody knew when you had a good hand. Even Stevie Wonder would have been able to tell."

      He shook his head.

      "Telepathy. Got to be."

      I didn't bother arguing. My own theories about what had happened to us made no more sense than Andy's. The only thing I knew for sure was that something very strange was happening in that little section of the town.

      We trudged back to the car in silence. Over by the gatehouse of Wheatfield foods a police car was parked, but the whole place looked deserted. I slung the torch onto the back seat and started the engine, and as I drove off Andy aimed an admonishing finger at me.

      "Not a word about this whole business to Trudy," he warned me. "She'd be convinced that we'd taken something illegal."

      "Okay," I promised him. And then I drove him home.

 

Andy opened the front door and we entered the hall to be greeted by the sight of Dave sitting on the bottom of the stairs with his head in his hands, looking like the rep of the Hesperus. To judge by the revolting pullover and trousers he was wearing, he too had dressed for golf, but the moment he lifted his head you could tell that all was not well. His face was the colour of week-old milk, and he looked as though he'd been washed up on a beach after six months in the sea.

      "God! Are you alright?" asked Andy.

      Dave nodded extremely gently, obviously worried that the top of his head might be about to come off.

      "I've been better," he replied, stating the obvious. "It's nothing that a little fresh air wouldn't cure. Are we still playing golf?"

      "We've missed it, mate," Andy told him. "We were due on the first tee at eleven forty-five."

      "We can still make it, can't we?" said Dave, squinting painfully at his watch. "It's only twenty-five past."

      "No, it's..." Andy consulted his Baum and Mercier. "... three minutes past twelve."

      Automatically, I glanced at my own watch. Andy appeared to be right; according to Mickey Mouse's hands it was just past noon. Yet Andy's hall clock, an ultra-modern fusion of marble and gleaming chrome that glinted threateningly from the wall opposite the front door, was also pointing to twenty-five past eleven.

      Without quite knowing why, I was suddenly certain that Dave's watch and the hall clock were correct.

      "Yep, it's twenty-five past," I told Andy, glancing at my watch again.

      He was about to argue, but then he too caught sight of the hall clock, and an almost comical expression of disbelief crossed his face. He glowered at the Baum and Mercier and tapped it with one finger, as though expecting the hands to swing round to the correct time.

      "All that money for a watch and it isn't even accurate," I told him, gleefully. "I'd take it back."

      "Must be a duff battery," he scowled. "Are you sure yours hasn't just stopped?"

      I was saved from having to reply by Baby Quentin, who at that moment came crawling happily down the hall, chortling with glee at finding his father home again. He was accompanied by a distinctive and overpowering smell reminiscent of cold, overcooked broccoli, which I knew from bitter experience meant that he had recently been extremely busy in the nappy area.

      "Hello, Quentin," I said.

      "Who's done a poo, then?" said Andy.

      "Hurp!" said Dave, as the smell reached him. Staggering to his feet, he tottered into the downstairs washroom and closed the door behind him.

      Andy reached down, scooped Baby Quentin up into his arms, and turned to me with a thoughtful frown.

      "I'd better be off," I said quickly, to forestall any suggestions of nappy-changing or baby-sitting that he might have been preparing to throw at me. "I've got a busy day ahead."

      "Okay, then," Andy replied. He paused for a moment, as though searching for the right words, then shook his head, obviously unable to find them. "I think we need to talk about this morning," he ventured. "Some time when we've had a chance to think about it. Over a pint, maybe."

      "Right," I told him. "Give me a ring." And after calling a farewell to Dave through the washroom door, I left.

 

The day had become even gloomier and a thin drizzle was drifting reluctantly down. I started the car's engine, switched on the sidelights and the windscreen wipers, and my eyes flickered automatically to the dashboard clock. It read eleven thirty, and all at once I understood how I'd known that it was my and Dave's watches which were out of step. I must have instinctively checked the clock on the way back from the Canalside Industrial Estate.

      I started off down the road in a bit of a daze. Something very strange had happened, something for which there was no logical explanation. Maybe it was coincidence that our two watches were nearly forty minutes ahead of everyone else's, but I didn't think so. And if I was right, the implications were frightening.

      I was thinking so much about the morning's weird events as I drove home that I wasn't paying enough attention to my driving and nearly ran a red light, causing a sweet little old lady in a Ka to swerve sharply and mouth something furiously at me. I hope I'm no good at lip-reading, because if she mouthed what I though she did, little old ladies aren't as sweet as they used to be.

      By the time I got back to the flat, I was no nearer understanding things. However, over the years I've developed a strategy that seems to work exceedingly well whenever something untoward occurs; ignore it and it will probably go away. And so, as I climbed the stairs to the first floor, I switched my mind to thinking about what to do with the weekend.

      I was just digging my keys out of my pocket, having decided to start with a cup of tea and the football preview program on TV, when the phone started to ring inside the flat. For some reason, being separated from a ringing phone by a locked front door always seems to induce mild panic in the average person, and I'm no exception. It's one of the modern world's phobias - the fear of not getting to the phone in time before the caller hangs up. There ought to be a long word for it.

      I dropped my keys, picked them up, tried to shove the wrong one into the lock, fumbled the right one into place, turned it (somehow trapping my finger painfully between the key and the door-jamb), and burst into the hall, swearing. The phone was still patiently trilling away, and I snatched up the receiver.

      "Hello!" I gasped.

      "Mike! There you are!"

      Sadly, the voice on the other end didn't belong to Jennifer Lopez but to my boss, and I realised with a sinking feeling that I'd been so side-tracked by events I'd completely forgotten why I went to Wheatfield foods in the first place. While I was messing around with Andy, Trevor would have been sitting at home waiting for me to phone him with details of what the problem was at the factory and what I'd done to deal with it.

      "Trevor! I was just about to ring you," I lied.

      "Have you been back to Wheatfield foods?" Trevor sounded worried. Even more worried than usual.

      "Yes, I've just got back."

      "Did you find any signs of rats?"

      I paused for a moment, trying to think how I could describe the creatures I'd seen without sounding like a complete lunatic.

      "Well, there's something down there, coming up from near the canal. But they sure as hell aren't rats, they're far too big."

      "You sure? Because the security guard who was on duty this morning says that they were."

      "You mean John? I spoke to him before. He hasn't actually seen them, he's only heard what..."

      "I'm afraid he has seen them. About an hour ago. He opened the door of the gatehouse and two of them attacked him. Giant rats, he said they were."

      All at once I remembered the sight of John leaping around inside the gatehouse as Andy and I drove past.

      "I'd better have a word with him," I said. "Maybe he can..."

      "You won't be able to," Trevor cut in. "He's in hospital. They'll be operating on him soon. His legs were cut to shreds, and he's lost a lot of blood. He's lucky to be alive..."

 

As I drove up to the factory gatehouse for the fourth time in twenty-four hours, I was finding it difficult to forgive myself. Although it was hard to see what I could have done differently, given the peculiar circumstances, I still had a gut feeling that perhaps I could have prevented the creatures from mauling John. I was also feeling a bit shaky, for I was well aware that blundering around in the dark the previous night, I could have been the one attacked.

      Two police cars were blocking the gateway, and next to them were a Mercedes and Trevor's battered Vauxhall. I parked at the end of the row of cars and climbed out. A policewoman was standing near the gatehouse, muttering something into her radio, a finger jammed into one ear. At the side of the factory, a cordon of three policemen were pacing slowly along, their eyes on the ground, presumably looking for evidence of the creatures. They were obviously taking matters seriously; they looked as though they were walking on eggshells and each of them was clutching a truncheon in his right hand.

      Inside the gatehouse, I could see Trevor talking to a casually dressed man who I suddenly realised was Jimmy Allen, Wheatfield's Head of Quality Control. I nearly didn't recognise him without the customary white lab-coat and hat that hygiene regulations dictated were his usual attire.

      Trevor lifted a hand in greeting and beckoned me inside. I walked across and pushed open the door, and the sight that met my eyes brought it home to me just how lucky I'd been. The place looked as though a couple of grizzly bears had been wrestling in it, and there seemed to be more blood splashed about than in the entire film of Gladiator.

      "Jeez! Poor John!" I muttered. "Is he going to be alright?"

      "I think so," Allen told me. "He was lucky. The rats severed an artery in his ankle, but he was able to drive them away and get a tourniquet on it."

      "Brave of him. How did he drive them off?

      "Apparently he was just making a cup of tea, so he emptied the entire kettle of boiling water over them. But never mind that. Did you find anything when you were here before? Have you any idea where the rats are coming from?"

      He looked worried sick, and so did my boss. I could understand why. A rat infestation could be enough to have a food factory temporarily closed down, even without some of the "rats" attacking an employee and putting him in hospital. A quality control manager who allowed that to happen wouldn't last long, and neither would the contract of the pest control company concerned.

      "Yes," I told him. "They've been using the waste ground next door as cover, but they're coming from an old sewer down by the canal. Only they're not..."

      "That's great, Mikey," cut in Trevor. "The rat isn't born that can fool this guy," he added, grinning at Allen and clapping me on the back.

      It's compliments like that which make me wonder if I'm really in the right line of business.

      "But they're not..." I began.

      "So let's go and deal with them," Trevor said brightly, placing his hand on my back and shoving me towards the exit. "I just want to discuss a few technical details with Mike," he added to Allen over his shoulder as he steered me through the door. "I'll be back in a minute."

      "Trev, they're not rats!" I told him, as soon as we were outside. "They're far too bloody big! And they look more like a coypu that's been doing body-building."

      "I don't care if they look like bloody werewolves!" he hissed. "As far as we're concerned, they're rats!"

      I knew why he was taking this line. The Wheatfield Foods contract was one of our biggest, and if it fell through it would affect the business hugely. Since his wife had run off, the business had become Trevor's life, and so he was in denial. These were going to be rats and I was going to get rid of them for him, as any alternative was too worrying to deal with.

      "Okay, Trev," I conceded. "I'll go and get rid of the rats."

      I walked across to my car, unlocked the boot, and hauled out the twenty kilo bag of rat-bait that I had taken from our storage lock-up twenty minutes before. Dumping it on the ground, I took out my torch and a nice, solid baseball bat that I'd borrowed from the landlord of my local on the way here, and then I hefted the bag onto my shoulder and set off across the wasteland.

      Reaching the mound of pallets, I squatted down, baseball bat at the ready, and shone the torch into the recesses inside. Once again the lair was deserted, but that was what I had expected. Somehow I was sure that the creatures would have gone back down the sewer from whence they had come. Injured creatures tend to run for home, and anything that had had a kettle of boiling water emptied over it would not be feeling in the best of health.

      Standing, I waded through the soaking vegetation towards the hedge, then pushed my way through the gap and slithered down the slope to the towpath. It was eerily silent down here, almost as though I had slipped back to the quietness of an earlier age, and the occasional cars zipping past on the distant ring road felt like a single tenuous link to the modern world.

      I trudged along the path, scowling ahead towards the abandoned warehouse buildings. The childish excitement which had gripped me when I first discovered them had vanished without trace, to be replaced by apprehension. The whole place seemed sinister and threatening, and I was unpleasantly aware of the decaying stench that drifted up from the filthy canal waters.

      My shoulder was aching by the time I reached the manhole. Dropping my burden, I crouched and shone my torch down into the sewer, but there was no sign of the creatures. Still, I was sure they were down there somewhere. From the darkness of this tunnel they had emerged and had nearly caused the death of a man. Now I had followed them back here, bringing death by the sack-load.

      Pulling my penknife from my pocket, I ran it along the top of the sack. The translucent plastic parted, and the rich, moist cereal smell of the poison-infused grain wafted up to greet me. Normally, I would have put small amounts of the bait into little plastic dishes, which would have been left at intervals along the sewer. However, I was dealing with something different here, something far more dangerous than the average rodent, and so I simply up-ended the sack and poured the bait through the manhole in a steady blue-green torrent, only stopping when the sack was empty.

      Over by the end wall of the warehouse was a mound of debris; rusting bits of machinery, broken shelving, rotting lengths of rope and splintered, fragmented wooden crates. In the midst of this was a heavy, round piece of metal, about three feet in diameter, which looked like it had once been the door of an old coal-fired boiler.

      Taking hold of this, I hauled it out from amongst the other debris and dragged it slowly across towards the open manhole. It felt as though it had been manufactured from solid lead, and as it scraped across the cobble-stones of the dockside it made a piercing, high-pitched screeching noise that reverberated from the wall to wall across the dock, sounding like the death-agonies of some hideous, mythical creature.

      Reaching the manhole, I dragged the piece of metal across the void and then let go. It dropped into place over the hole with a loud clang, and I wiped my hands on my jeans and stood back to inspect my handiwork.

      The boiler door fitted against the stone rim so snugly that even an anorexic mouse would have been unable to find a gap big enough to wriggle through. And it was far too heavy for the creatures to move. If they came back down the tunnel they would find their way out blocked, but there would be an inviting mound of poisoned grain for them to eat, and that would be the end of them.

      Wheatfield Foods should have no further problems. I'd done all that I could. Now it was time to leave work behind and enjoy what remained of the weekend.

 

In a fit of outrageous optimism, I had left Saturday night free to go out with Laura, should she have proven to be exactly the girl I was looking for. As she hadn't even been approximate, let alone a soul mate, I was left with two choices. I could have a quiet night at home, or I could wander down to my local pub.

      Usually, I'm quite happy with my own company. What with my books, magazines, music, computer, videos, and television, plus a wine box and an Indian take-away, a quiet night in just flashes by. But the events of the past twenty-four hours seemed to have got to me. I felt uneasy and found it difficult to concentrate on any one thing. As darkness fell, the flat was beginning to seem cold and unfriendly. I kept getting the eerie feeling that I was being watched, which is quite unsettling, especially when you're on the toilet. After half an hour in which I read the same page of a Terry Pratchett book seven times without taking it in, I gave up and headed off to the pub.

      Quite a few of the regulars were there. The ones I'm friendly with all tend to take the Orwellian view to beer (four pints good, two pints bad), and so it was a fairly boozy night. After several games of pool and an abortive attempt to break the bank of the quiz machine, I staggered home somewhat the worse for wear and fell asleep on the couch whilst watching the football highlights.

      For the second night running I was plagued with vivid dreams, and I awoke with a start in the small hours of the morning, once again convinced that someone had called my name. For a moment I lay there in the darkness, stiff-necked and chilled, listening intently. But the flat was silent, and I dragged myself off the couch and went to bed.

      In the morning I found that I couldn't remember a single detail of any of the dreams. The eerie feeling had vanished too, chased away by the brilliant sunshine that my thin, fading curtains completely failed to shut out from the bedroom. For some reason I felt full of optimism and energy, so much so that as soon as I'd finished breakfast, I set to work on cleaning and tidying the flat.

      It took me all day, and in the process I found four pounds and thirty-six pence in loose change, seven biros, two unopened bottles of beer, five odd socks that made matching pairs with the odd socks in my top drawer, my Hives CD that I'd accused Dave of not returning, Dave's Moby CD that he'd accused me of not returning and I'd sworn blind that I had, and a black bra (no, I don't know how it got there).

      By evening time you wouldn't have recognised the place. It was clean, tidy and organised. Four bin-liners of rubbish were nestling beside the dustbin outside, and my muscles were aching from unaccustomed usage. But now it was me that looked dirty and neglected, and so I ran a bath and lay soaking in the hot water for a while, thinking about the weekend.

      By the time I climbed out of the bath, I'd come to three conclusions. Firstly, it was pointless worrying about the strange events down the sewer, as I'd never be able to explain them. Secondly, Dave was a complete idiot for letting a girl like Jan get away. And thirdly, that was the last time I was going to let Trudy try and set me up with another of her blind dates.

      But as I lay in bed that night, on the verge of sleep, the biggest mystery of the whole weekend refused to stop pestering me.

      Where the hell had that black bra come from?

 

I woke up on the Monday with the strange conviction that there had been more trouble at Wheatfield Foods. I had an urge to get straight down there, but Trevor had booked me in to give a talk to the local Farmers' Union about insect pests of stored grain, and it was mid-afternoon before I managed to get away. I drove straight down to the Canalside Industrial Estate, half-expecting to hear that more of the creatures had been rampaging around the factory car park. But I needn't have worried. The gateman on duty told me that nothing further had been seen or heard. Then Jimmy Allen appeared, beaming with relief, and told me that the police were satisfied the incident had been caused by nothing more than a couple of large rats. He congratulated me fulsomely on a job well done, and to keep him happy I spent half an hour inspecting the factory perimeter and checking out the adjacent wasteland, but there were no further signs.

      Just to put my mind at rest, I pushed through the hedge and wandered along the now-familiar towpath as far as the canal dock. It was another fine day, and the whole place had taken on a different aspect. The walls of the warehouses glowed in the afternoon sunshine and the water of the canal glinted, seeming merely muddy rather than foul. A gentle breeze rippled the surface and brought a background of distant birdsong from the screen of hawthorn that lined the base of the railway embankment on the other side of the canal.

      I could tell immediately that the circular metal cover was unmoved. Taking a deep breath, I grasped it by one edge and hefted it up, then shone my torch down through the resulting gap. The beam played across the mound of rat bait, and I could tell from the myriad white flecks on the blue-dyed grain that something had been feeding there. It looked very much as though the mysterious creatures weren't long for this world - or for any other world, come to that.

      Smiling with satisfaction, I let the cover fall back into place. Then I took one final look around. I could see the potential that Andy had spotted in this quiet backwater. It wouldn't be very long before some enterprising builder bought the place, landscaped the canal, turned the warehouses into luxury apartments for Yuppies, and made a vast profit. I could just visualise a narrow boat moored against the dock and converted into a wine-bar or bistro. The attack on poor John the security guard would become an urban myth, occasionally trotted out in local pubs to scare new residents. And as for the mysterious creatures, well, I was pretty sure that they would never be seen again.

      Of course, I was completely and utterly wrong.

 

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Let's get this straight Texas BEAT Oklahoma on a neutral field by 10 points. Texas lost on the last play of the game at Texas Tech 39-33. Texas won all of their other games. Oklahoma got beat by Texas by 10 on a neutral field and beat Texas Tech at home 65-21. So the BCS ratings have Oklahoma at #2 and Texas at #3 behind an undefeated(for now) Alabama team. Texas and Oklahoma each have one loss and Texas beat Oklahoma by 10 on a neutral field and Oklahoma is ranked higher than Texas, the team who beat them by 10 points. HMMMMMMMM!! Does this make any sense to anyone in the free world??? PLAYOFFS??? DON'T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? PLAYOFFS?????

 

Today's Topic: My weekend Wrap Up

Well what a nice long weekend we had right!  I did a little bit of shopping but mainly a lot of eating... haha.  Thanksgiving was spent at my parent's house in Orange County... I love my family especially the little ones, my nephews and niece.  I spent most of the weekend at my sister's house in Carmel Valley though.   Omg we played Nintendo Wii the entire weekend my body is so sore from that thing.

I hope you had a good weekend too... yooooo did you watch the MTV Britney Special last night?  Sooo good huh? I felt so bad for her and how hard it is for her to have a normal life.  I'm sure MTV will re-air it over and over again in case you missed it.  I really think you should check it out.  Welp, that's pretty much it. . . check out my video from Thanksgiving at my house. Gotta love la familia:)

Xoxo,

Sisanie

1No te enojes por causa de los malvados,

Ni sientas envidia de los malhechores,

2Pues pronto se secan como el heno;

¡Se marchitan como la hierba!

 

3Confía en el Señor y haz lo bueno,

Vive en la tierra y mantente fiel. 

4Ama al Señor con ternura,

Y el cumplirá tus deseos mas profundos.

 

5Pon tu vida en las manos del Señor;

Confía en el, el vendrá en tu ayuda.

6Hará brillar tu rectitud y tu justicia

Como brilla el sol de mediodía.

 

7Guarda silencio ante el Señor;

Espera con paciencia a que el te ayude.

No te irrites por el que triunfa en la vida,

Por el que hace planes malvados.

 

8Deja el enojo, abandona el furor;

No te enojes, porque eso empeora las cosas.

9Pues los malvados serán arrojados del país,

Pero los que confían en el Señor tomaran posesión de el.

 

23 El Señor dirige los pasos del hombre

y lo pone en el camino que a el le agrada;

24aun cuando caiga, no qued