Greg's General Store

The Weather Channel is calling for a “wintery mix” on Tuesday night. Here in Charleston SC? I know what you are thinking; I thought the same thing. I thought; "no way" and I stood there with that deer in the headlight look. See I wasn’t kidding about the deer. This photo was taken a block from my house as I headed to work. At first glance I only saw one but the camera flash revealed more in the back ground. (click on the photo to see for yourself)Anywhoo, yes it’s true, we may get another snow here in Charleston making it the first time ever (well since I have been here) that it has snowed twice in one year. As you can see, our cat, Mr. T was all excited about the news. His initial reaction was; Hey, can’t a cat get some rest around this place? But after the excitement wore off he went back to sleep. I doubt if we get as much as we did last time or even any at all but they are predicting it. This is what it looked like the last time it snowed here. It seems like it was jus...

As is the tradition here in the South, I started out my New Years with a generous portion of Hoppin Johns and Collard Greens. For anyone unfamiliar with the theory behind this traditional meal, let me fill you in. The hoppin Johns bring you luck and the Collards bring you money. (two things that I could really use right about now) Anywhoo, Hoppin Johns are black eyed peas or field peas along with rice. And Collard are; well just Collard greens. I actually never ate them until I was an adult because I couldn’t get past the smell of them cooking but now I love them. Well this year I had them twice on New Year’s Day and then once more the next day. “Why tempt fate” as the saying goes. Or “I would rather be lucky than good.” I don’t know if either of those sayings apply but “Whatever.” And now the rest of the story; So around Christmas time, I had a few extra dollars in my pocket and someone asked me if I wanted to be in a football pool. I don’t usually enter many of those things because...

My world is coming to an end. I thought yesterday’s news was bad but now this: “Lucci eliminated from 'Dancing” Sorry wrong Lucy. Try this Lucci: Oh horrors of horrors. What will we do now? In less than 24 hours, the headlines went from presidential elections to Dancing with the stars trauma. Actually I really am relieved to see us put things back in perspective. I mean Lucci has been on All my Children since.....well since I was a “children” and she deserves to make headlines. In other late breaking news, I am making chili today for the people in our office. And since our office is as split on this issue as it was on the election, I made two kinds. I made a pot of mild chili and a pot of “fire engine red” chili. I prefer the hot stuff but a few wimps whined and asked for mild so I caved in. Now for those brave enough to try the hot stuff I recommend having some ice water handy to put out the fire. This stuff is guaranteed to bring ...

I told in my last post about my most recent sermon and how at the time, I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it. This is about another sermon where I got more than I bargained for. This is a bit long and let me add a disclaimer in case anyone is offended. If you are then all I can say is; you had to be there. This is true in its entirety. I didn’t make this up. The names were changed to protect the innocent. I have a confession. I am not a big fan of funerals. I guess no one really is a "fan" of them. I have never liked them. It’s much deeper than “not like”. I put funerals right up there with spiders. I hate them. If there were a way not to attend my own funeral, I would do it. I hate the sadness and sorrow but mostly I hate “the body.” I don’t need to see the body to have closure. Some people do but not me. Ok in some cases it is an urn full of ashes but you get the picture. And then someone always has to make the statement; He looks so peaceful, or doesn’t she look goo...

I just finished my last tag and got that behind me and now I have been tagged again. This one is a doosey though. My parents always used that word “doosey” but you know this is the first time I have tried to spell it so let’s hope spell check can work some magic and fix it if it is wrong. This one came from Patrice . Patrice by the way is the one who redesigned my blog and I think she did a great job although I kind of wanted to see a mermaid in the water. :) She offered a blog make over in her blog as a prize and I won. The challenge is to list 4 things that you hate to admit about yourself. Well here goes nothing 1. I prefer the company of women over men. I hate sports for the most part unless it is a team that I like. Going to a bar with a bunch of guys and talking sports is boring to me (fishing excluded of course). When I was young and my parents would take me to picnics or parties, I would hang close to the women instead of the men. I had a crush on one of my mom's best frien...

A radio station I listen to on the way to work always starts a topic of conversation every morning. Usually I listen to something else because their conversations are usually mindless dribble. This week they have had been talking about the economy so I listened in. Yes the topics were interesting but the conversations were the same old dribble. Monday it took less than a minute to find out that they didn’t know what they were talking about. The topic was 401k’s. They all three have 401k’s with the radio station where they now work. Let me stop for a second and tell you that the radio show is called “Two girls and a guy” and that is what there is. So the first girl says that she doesn’t know how much is in hers. She then admits that she puts money in it every payday but has never looked at it. Next the guy pipes up and says that he has looked at his and knows how much is in there but has never done anything with it. This is when the third person who is always a “know it all”, speaks up ...

You know we are in trouble when congressmen and women actually show up for a congressional meeting. What is this world coming to? The truth is there is little the average person can do to help the situation other than not panicking. The best thing we can do at this time is to sit back and do nothing. Well except to voice our opinion and tell our Congressmen and Senators how we feel and what we want them to do. In the mean time, I give you my: Top 10 signs we might be in a financial crisis. # 10. Disney World ticket prices may drop below 100.00 a ticket this year. Yea I may be able to go now. #9. Martha Stewart is thinking about going back “in” where it is safe (and free). #8. There is talk of selling Alaska to Russia since “they are so close you can see right across the border.” #7. McDonald's has a new jingle for the big Mack that goes like this; Special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onion on a day old bun. (read my lips, no more meat) #6. The 12 days of Christmas has been reduced ...

Ok you probably think that it just boils down to jealousy but I do have other reasons for not watching the Olympics. I could go into the usual reasons like politics, boycotts, steroid use, waste, or child competition but I won’t. In my opinion those are reasons enough but I feel that they only mask the true reason I don’t like the Olympics. Although I have many reasons I also have many solutions. Like I tell people that work for me. Don’t come to me with a problem unless you also have a solution. Let me cover the problems first. They are way too competitive. I mean what happened to the “games” part? Aren’t they supposed to be Olympic “Games”? Games are supposed to be fun. Look it up, you will see that fun is in the definition. Here it is. Game: An activity that people participate in, together or on their own, for fun. I see that they have added some other definitions that left out the word “fun”. I am not surprised. The Olympics are no more fun that T-ball is to a little kid. It is all...

Is anyone else tired of all these stories about seeing Jesus in everything from chicken noodle soup to hairdos? I guess anything is possible but really, enough is enough…………OR IS IT. Warning The following post is intended for mature audiences and is meant to be humorous. If you are easily offended, then read no further. Don’t quit in the middle either. That would be like watching half of "It's a Wonderful Life. I saved the best for last. First it was the amazing vision of Jesus on the cross in an ultra sound. Now it seems that someone found a likeness of Jesus in a Cheetos bag. I really can’t put much stock in either story for several reasons. First off both of these “images” were created by manmade machines. Machines can be programmed to make any image desired so finding a “Devine” image like those isn’t really a Miracle. Secondly, the truth is that neither of these items really looked like Jesus to ...

Many of you may not know about it so I will let the cat out of the bag for your protection. There is a blog curse. It is very deadly and destructive. It is worse than any internet virus and so simple, yet it can affect anyone. Here is how it works. If you blog about it, it will happen. It’s kind of like” If you build it, they will come” but different. If you write about something on your blog, you can expect something similar to happen. Well at least that is how it appears this morning. I recently blogged about not having AC when I was growing up and yesterday, without warning and for no good reason, our AC went on the blink. It just has to be the blog curse. I am thinking about giving up blogging altogether because it is just way to dangerous. I mean what else could cause a perfectly good AC unit to fail. It has been working just fine for the 20 years it has been installed. The cooling fins were only a little bit dirty. The temperature has only been in the 90’s so far this year. It’s...

I know you have heard that song line: “It’s all about the Benjamin ba-by” but I am here to tell you that it just isn’t true. For those that are not “Hip” like me, Benjamin refers to the hundred dollar bill. Ok I just gave away my not-with-it-ness by using the word Hip. I don’t even know what term they use these days for being "hip" but you know what I meant. The point is, that it really is all about the attitude ba-by. These days, I sometimes look for a good attitude and customer service more than I do the actual product itself. I avoid some establishments and go out of my way to others based solely on the service that I receive. Some of it has to do with lack of job satisfaction but I truly believe that some people would be miserable no matter where they work. I work with some of these people and sometimes I just have to bite my lip because I really want to say something. Every once in a while I do slip when it is just too much to take. If I feel I am getting close to sayi...

This morning on my way into work, I was happy to see that my coffee store was back open. Yea!!! They were however having trouble with the new computers so it was taking a while to check out. The manager announced; “Anyone who has just coffee, can have it for free” Several people left with their free coffee. Usually that would have included me but I needed gas today so I waited patiently. Several other people stormed off angry because they didn’t want to wait. Several miles up the road, I stopped at a traffic light. In the intersection ahead there lay two large suitcases. They must have just fallen off of someone’s car. I put on my flashers, ran and got them and placed them on the side of the road in hopes that the owner would discover them missing and return. As I ran back to my car, a lady pulled into the other lane to go around my car, cursing at me as she passed. (by her hand signal she may have been telling me I was #1) I didn’t let it bother me because I not only saved the lugg...

You probably never heard of me before this blog but I made some interesting discoveries myself. As a child, I was always curious about things and this curiosity led me to many interesting discoveries. They weren’t earth shattering like finding America or discovering gravity but they were never less discoveries. Did you know that tweezers fit perfectly into an electrical outlet? Even at my young age, I noticed the similarities and performed an experiment to prove my theory. They fit in easily enough and aside from some burnt fingers, a damaged outlet, melted tweezers and a blown fuse, I would have to say the experiment was a success. Did you know that those vines that Tarzan used to swing from are really ropes? I didn’t believe it myself so I climbed a really big oak tree and found a nice solid grape vine that looked sturdy enough. After chopping it off, I tugged on it a little before giving it a try. It held up quite nicely as I was going down but after I hit the bottom of the arc and ...

My mother loved liver. She fixed it all the time and made us eat it. She said it was good for us. The truth of the matter is that it was really bad for us. These days if a parent did something like that it would be considered child abuse. These days with the help of a good lawyer, I would be very wealthy from being forced to eat it and the law suit that would follow. The real truth about Liver: I know you have heard the expression “you are what you eat”. Well I am here to tell you that expression is false. The expression should be “your liver is what you eat”. The reason being is that a liver is nothing more than a very efficient filter. It filters out all the bad stuff because the rest of your body can’t handle it. And it’s not just our livers that do this, it is all livers. This being said, I know there are some liver lovers out there and that is your choice. So let me tell you what to do with it. How to prepare liver: I fancy myself as a chef but I really don’t have a good recipe...

I know this is long but I assure you, you will learn a lot if you stay with me. People are usually divided into two groups, Cat people or Dog people. We are Cat people. We have had a few dogs through the years but have always come back to cats. Even when we did own dogs we had cats and the dogs knew who was boss. There are big differences between these two animals so it stands to reason that most people like one or the other. Dog people like to say that dogs are faithful because they usually are attracted to one person the most. It is said that they are “man’s” best friend but most of the time they are “one man’s” best friend. They will be friendly and faithful to one or maybe two people but everyone else beware. A dog may be faithful to his or her master but will often turn on other people without warning. To me this isn’t being “friendly”, its taking sides . I think Cats are neat and in my opinion, man’s best friend. There I said it, “Cats are man’s best friend”. Cats are straight fo...

I think I am going to devote Tuesday to silly things. I will call it "Looney Tunes Tuesday." I am going to try to put some structure into my blog and this will be the first day with a theme. It stands to reason that I start out with Looney Tunes Tuesday because my DW thinks I am off my rocker for blogging and my kids always wonder about my sanity. Favorite cartoon: My favorite character is Foghorn Leghorn. I often quote lines from his cartoons and use them in real life. "I say, I say son, I'm not a chicken. That's a chicken." (pointing to the sleeping dog with a fake comb on his head) I guess the reason I like him is that he tends to be so sarcastic and I am the same way. I also love his southern accent which I can relate to. I consider myself southern even though I don't have an accent. Anyway, it amuses my sons when I imitate him so I keep doing it. "one of these days I'm gonna smack that boy." The Weather Channel is wrong: They were wron...

Gobble-De-Goo: That’s Turkey talk for Eat My Stuffing. Today I was thinking about Thanksgiving and realized there is a lot about it I don’t know. I really have a lot of questions about the entire holiday. I mean I can cook a great turkey and dressing with all the trimmings but some other things baffle me. For starters, do American Indians celebrate Thanksgiving? I seriously would like to hear from a Native American because I really don’t know the answer to this one. I mean the whole concept is kind of weird to me. It is like celebrating the beginning of the end. I mean this was sort of the kick off meeting before the Pilgrim Executives took over the new world. Several years ago I worked for an American chemical company that was taken over by an English company(sound familiar?). It all started with a big meeting/meal with everyone happy and friendly and then they took over our company. I don’t celebrate that now though. Question #2. And I am really serious about this, but were there onl...

“The case of the evil refrigerator” For months I have been dealing with a refrigerator that from time to time decided to ruin everything in it by slipping into a deep freeze mode. I have had to throw away tons of lettuce, tomatoes cucumbers and many other vegetables, not to mention other foods that just no longer looked appealing after being frozen by this evil machine. I was unable to figure this case out myself so I knew I needed to do something drastic. I decided to assume the identity of the greatest detective that ever lived. As a child I loved watching him on TV and knew he could get to the bottom of this case. I am now Charlie Chan. Chan: Greetings kind people. #1 Son: Look like open and shut case to me Pop. Just a faulty refrigerator. Chan: Not so hasty #1. Why would refrigerator deliberately ruin food? End up in trash heap. Perhaps we start with suspects. They are: Wife, #2 son, Mother in Law, Trusted neighbor Ann, Kitty cat #1 Son: Ok Pop. Lets throw the book at Mom. She prob...

This is it. As of this morning I am officially on my new diet. I have actually been on it for a week and lost 4 lbs. but it wasn't official until this morning. My reasoning is this. It is kind of like politicians start out. First of all they toy around with the thought of running for office and let it slip out just to see if they have any support. Then once they know they can get some support and won't make a total fool our of themselves they make the big announcement that they are running. I did the same thing. I tested this new diet for a week to make sure it worked for me and now I am ready to let everyone know I am dieting. I would hate to say I am on a diet and in a few weeks when someone asked how I was doing, have to say "not so good". It would be sort of an admitting I failed and that aint going to happen. Seriously though this is a great diet. It was invented for people with diabetes and it involves eating small meals throughout the day and keeping an even ke...