Jasper Jones

All the kids want to get together and buy one big present for my dad this year for Father’s Day. That’s fine with me - sure makes it easy for all of us. My brother will collect the money from each of us and go buy the present. All I have to do is buy a card and sign it.

My brother thinks that buying my dad a grandfather clock will be the perfect Father’s Day gift. I thought they were a little more expensive than what we could afford, even if we all pool our money together. But maybe not. I want to check it out and see what is involved in buying a grandfather clock - does it come already assembled? How much does it cost to ship grandfather clocks? Can we get it delivered in time for the Father Day dinner that my mom is fixing?

There’s a great web site called 1-800-4clocks that has all kinds of clocks, and they specialize in grandfather clocks. I liked several of the different models that they sell, and I never realized there were so many things to know about buying the right clock. But I was right about one thing, a grandfather clock is a large investment and with our gift budget we’ll be better off buying a nice mantle clock for dad.

One of my buddies at work was talking about his girlfriend’s cats and how they really like the new house they’ve rented because their is a huge backyard with trees, lots of birds, squirrels and rabbits. They moved here with 2 cats and just recently adopted a new kitten from the shelter.

This time of year there are always a lot of kittens and puppies at the shelter from the spring birthings, but there are also a lot of adult cats and dogs being surrendered by owners and many are abandoned or dropped off because of the economy. People are being evicted and having their homes foreclosed and have no way to take care of the pets any more.

This really bothers me - I just don’t see how anyone in good conscience can abandon a pet. What kind of person leaves an animal locked in an empty house and drives off? What kind of person can drive down a road and just toss kittens out of the window into  a stranger’s driveway? People who do that and people who beat their dogs or otherwise abuse their animals should be arrested and put into jail.

If you have a shelter in your community, next time you have the urge to take on a pet, I hope you will go to the shelter and adopt an animal from the shelter. And if you have anything you can donate to the shelter, here’s a list of desired items that can be dropped off and will be put into good use:

• Clean, old newspapers to be used for litter and lining cages
• Toilet seat covers (cats love to lie on them in their cages)
• Any type of cat or dog toy (plastic or washable)
• Old bath towels and blankets
• Canned cat food, any brand
• Bagged, dry dog food (particularly desired is Science Diet but other brands accepted)
• Laundry soap
• Bleach
• Heavy ceramic food and water bowls
• Antibacterial hand soap
• Candles - citrus or spice
• Paper towels

Shelters also need volunteers to come and walk dogs and play with the animals for short periods to give them exercise and socialization skills. If you have a good heart, please help the animals in your local shelter.

How can the most popular coffee shops in the world be having money problems? I mean, they are charging primo bucks for a cup of coffee and there are always lines of cars waiting to go through the drive through and buy their high dollar caffeine fix. The crew in San Fran call it “Five Bucks Coffee” instead of “Star Bucks.” I know one real estate agent who drink 4-5 cups of Starbucks every day. So how can they be having money trouble?

On the cover of the Yahoo news is an article about how Starbucks is going to close up to 600 stores this year and lay off a lot of people - over 12,000 jobs will be lost. What are all those highly trained barristas going to do for work now? I mean, come ON!

Over at my girl’s house we had some time to chat about this and that before the movie. She’s been working at a promotional products company this summer as a sales assistant so she can learn about sales and marketing. She hopes to move into a full time sales position with the company after graduation next May.

She was polite about not answering her cell phone while I was over there, but it rang quite a bit. I’m sure she’s got a lot of friends, she’s really nice. Pretty, too. She left the cell phone out on the coffee table and finally I had to say something about her phone. She has the new blackberry pearl phone - pink, of course. Seems like all the girls are carrying pink phones now. But I wanted to know how she could use the keypad on the blackberry when she has such long fingernails.

I do like some things about the blackberry and I’m sure that with her job and all her friends that the texting and the keypad are important features for her. She says she uses a stylus and that it was the best phone she could find out of the Alltel phones on the service that her parents have for their plan. She gets to take advantage of being on their plan and she saves a lot of money that way.

But my plan is with AT&T and I like the looks of the newrazr phone and I’ve been checking out the razr deals at some of the local phone stores. The clerk at the last store told me that for the best deals I need to get online and shop for a phone on the internet.

Besides the phone company’s store and web site, there’s some good web sites that have good deals on all the top phones. I already looked there and gave some serious thought to all the top free phones, but i think I’m going to hold out for the razr and I can’t find any free offers on that one.

My dad has the iPhone and he loves it but that’s too much phone for what I need. All those extra charges for using an iPhone come as a rude shock in the bill every month. After all, I’m still on a student’s budget. But that’s no reason to not be stylin’ and I’m fine with the razr if that’s one of the models included with the at&t cell phones. I still have a year to go on my current plan but i can upgrade to a new phone this month.

Went over to a friends house and she had a bowl of pistachio nuts on the coffee table. Whoa! Do you know how addicting those little green nuts can be? I mean, I’m sitting there watching the movie and talking with her and I grab a few pistachios and eat them, and then immediately reach back into the bowl for more. I couldn’t stop myself! They are much better than popcorn for sharing during a movie!

I’ll be on the lookout for a bag of pistachios next time I’m out shopping. That’s not often while I’m home on break, but you know when I get back to school next month I’ll be fending for myself again.

Oh yeah, the movie was pretty good, too. It was 3:10 to Yuma and I don’t know why I missed it in the theaters but I’m glad I had the chance to watch it. Even better, I watched with my girl and she was totally into the movie, too. Not even close to a chick flick, but we both liked it a lot.

Had the chance to try a new drink last night after work. New to me, anyways. The wait for a table at Longhorns was crazy long so we stood around the bar for a while waiting for our table ready beeper to light up. I didn’t really feel like drinking a beer right before a big steak dinner, so I asked the bartender for a suggestion and she came up with the mojito. Let me tell you - this is a great drink!

I watched her make it. She took a tall glass and dropped a couple lime wedges in the bottom. Then she sprinkled a couple teaspoons or so of sugar into the glass. Then she sprinkled some mint leaves in the glass and took a little stick-type bar tool and smashed the stuff in the bottom of the glass to mix it up. (Found out later that the tool was a “muddler.” Who knew there was a tool for this?) The lime juice melted the sugar into a thick syrup and mashing the mint leaves spreads the mint flavor through the syrup.

Then she fills the glass with ice cubes and pours a couple shots of white rum over the ice. Fill the glass the rest of the way with club soda, and stir. Now, that’s nice! Great for a hot summer day.

Now I need a muddler for my home bar and I’m ready to try this at home.

This weekend pretty much wraps up the month of June, which means my summer is already half over. I have the month of July to work as much as I can to save up my money and squeeze in a little fun, then I head back to school in August. At least this is my last year of school and I’m SOOO ready for it to be over.

I set up a large trunk to start gathering up stuff to take back to school with me and I’m planning out my budget to see if there is anywhere I can save money on all those pesky expenses that manage to pop up during the year. It seems like everything is going up in price just as fast as the price of gasoline.

One thing my mom suggested is to stock up on some things while I have the time and money to shop smart. She said to make a list of the important things and check them off as I go.

So I’m starting with my most important assets - my body and my brain. Got to take care of those.

Found out that prescriptions for contact lenses are only good for 6 months. So if I run out of my supply of contacts while at school I have to go to an eye doctor for another exam ($90) just to get another prescription for contacts. I’m sure by then they will have gone up in price, too. So I’m planning to buy an extra 6 month supply using my current prescription and that will get me through the whole year.

I’m wearing the new acuvue oasys lenses because they have a special formula for people like me who sometimes have a problem with dry, irritated eyes. I buy them online from LENS.com because I save so much money over the local sources like my eye doctor - the most expensive place to buy them - and even the discount shopping clubs. Trust me, if you can buy a 6 or 8 month supply online from LENS.com, you’ll save the most money.

Did you hear the drama about Kane West’s show at Bonaroo? It was a comedy of errors and a lot of people were really pissed off at him. Not only because of the gawd-awful delays in his show, but because of his arrogance and indifference to the fans. Here’s a clue, Kanye - without fans, you’ve got nothing.

Here’s another clue, Kanye. You don’t have a show scheduled for 8:15 pm that doesn’t even start until 4:25 am and ignore the fans who’ve been WAITING OVER 8 HOURS FOR YOU. The very least you could have doen was thank the fans for waiting and apologize for the delays. Don’t come out railing against the people putting on Bonaroo. These people have been doing this for YEARS without you and your prima donna ways and they do know what they are doing. YOU ARE THE DUMMY HERE.

Here’s a quote from the front page of Yahoo this morning. Unbelievable arrogance.

NEW YORK (AP) — Kanye West defended himself from criticism over his delayed performance at Bonnaroo, saying on his blog that the flak he’s taken has left him “the most offended I’ve ever been.”

West’s performance at the Tennessee festival was scheduled for 2:45 a.m. in the early morning of June 15. West didn’t take the stage until 4:25 a.m., angering much of the crowd who had stayed up late to see the rapper perform.

The delay was caused by problems setting up West’s elaborate stage set, which included an interplanetary landscape of a wavy black platform and a video screen above. Pearl Jam, who had performed on the main stage earlier that evening, also went an hour over its scheduled time. While waiting for West’s concert to begin, many in the crowd pelted the stage with glow sticks and beer.

To be honest I’ve never looked at any of the online dating sites. My social life has been pretty full, although a lot of the dates turn out to be just once and then the realization that I don’t really want to call that person again just we just don’t seem to click. But I try to make the dates more than the typical dinner and a movie. I like to go places and do things, like go to the aquarium for a tour or take a train ride someplace new just for the day. And there has always been someone to ask to go along.

So I guess I wasn’t much help when my buddy Jerry asked me for advice about signing up for a dating site, and then I felt bad so I invited myself over to his place after work and we got online to check it out. Turns out that there are a lot of dating sites on the web and each one is different in its own way. It was frightening, in a way, to try to figure out which ones to spend the time on. So it was good to find this one site called “Prime Dating Sites” that actually lists and reviews all the top online dating services.

They’ve made it easy to read a short profile of each dating site and get an idea of some key factors, such as whether the site focuses on casual dating, like Yahoo Personals, or on finding your soul mate, like eHarmony. To put it another way, if you are looking for lots of flirting and romance you might have better luck with a site like Friend Finder and if you are looking for a serious relationship you should probably sign up for Chemistry. And Prime Dating Sites helped my buddy figure out which way to go, which is good because I had never heard of some of these dating sites and had no idea this could be so complicated.

You may have noticed that I don’t go into a lot of details about my love life here on my blog. That’s on purpose, as I want a little privacy there and I’m sure that the person I am dating wants her privacy, too. So to everyone who’s been wondering, I’m fine, OK.

Would really like to go to the beach for a few days. It seems like all my friends are going to either Destin or Cancun and here I am at work instead of sitting on the sand watching the bikinis go by. It’s making me chafe a little, I have to admit. However, I have responsibilities and one more year of college before I can have all my finances in order and afford to take time off for fun and games.

Instead of driving 8 hours down and back to have a few hours in the sun, I’ve been making the most of the fun things that are around here. We have tons of parks and there is always the lakes and rivers. Lake beaches are not the same as ocean beaches, but they are sand and water and sun, with a few bikinis worth watching, too.