Things to do if you're bored...

• Scare Stephen King
• Give your cat a Mohawk
  
• Run around in squares
• Think of quadruple entendres
• Speak in acronyms
• Exorcise a ghost
• Exercise a ghost
• Be a monk for a day
• Make up words that start with ex
• Go to a bar and ask for a Molotov cocktail
• Translate Shakespeare into English
  

Directions? I don't need no stinking directions....

In March of 2007 I posted my first blog...today the count was at 307 posts...this is No. 308...that's about 77 per year and I'm proud of that...did you know my daughter Julie has probably posted ten times that amount?

My birthday was a few weeks ago and the family threw a party for me and about 100 of my closest friends and relatives...yeah, I even have relatives who are friends...it was a happy day and one I'll remember forever...I saw almost all the people I care about and all the people who care about me were there...

I received tons of gifts including gift cards to some of my favorite restaurants as well as to Barnes & Noble and Amazon which came in very handy as I was gifted a Kindle e-book from my daughters...it was something I had hoped to receive...I'd been thinking about buying one for several months especially after spending time cleaning out bookshelves taking books to the library and Goodwill...

The neat thing about Kindle is that books are available for about 1/3 the price of hard copies, including N.Y. Times best sellers...books range from a few bucks up to around $12...on top of all that there are I think 12,000 books available for free...yup, for free...books like Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe, the Holy Bible, all of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, all the old classics, like, bunches of books...

When I tried to register the Kindle I had a little trouble and called my grand daughter Allison, who is a genius with computers and also owns a Kindle... she came over and helped me set it up...she made it look easy and before I knew it I was reading a few hours after purchasing a new Clive Cussler novel for myself and a Mary Higgins Clark for Mrs.D. ..I also picked up a free Count of Monte Cristo that I read when I was 12 years old...

I love the options on the device enabling me to kick up the font size and even the word spacing on a page...I did that a few times until I found the combinations I liked...and, it automatically bookmarks where you stop reading...a few times I switched from Cussler to Alexander Dumas' Count just to see if I could do it and it worked like magic...it's a piece of cake to operate and I can't wait to read, read, read...the Kindle is about the size of a pocket book, weighs less than a real book and is much easier to hold...turning pages forward or backward is simple...it's even possible to write notes in the margins like a real book but I don't care to find out how to do it...

I originally thought I now could sit in our TV room with Mrs. D. to read in the semi-darkness but no...surprisingly there is no light emitted from the pages...I would need to sit near a lamp to read...this afternoon I picked up Sunny at school and while I waited in my car I noticed I could read the e-book with sunlight reflecting directly on it...just like the commercials...it really is the coolest thing...

With the three or four Barnes and Noble gift cards we took a trip there today and I bought a hard copy of Mary Higgins' book so Mrs. D. can start reading it...it'll be a long time before she can borrow my birthday gift to read it on the Kindle...in the next few days I'm going to look at the 'free' list again and set up my library in it...I don't know how many books it can hold but I'm going to find out...can I delete the books after reading them? I don't know...I think I can pass the books on to other Kindle readers...it's probably time I read the directions ...but then I'll have to stop reading my books and I don't want to stop...it's way too much fun...
Thanks Julie, Gina, Debby, Leesa and Sarah...

Whooping it up for a week...

For the entire past week my family and friends have kept on celebrating my birthday with more dinners, more gifts and a baseball game...all these made turning the big 7-0 a lot easier to take than a 'normal' birthday...

I mean, I had birthday cakes, birthday wines, birthday Stolichnaya vodkas and birthday restaurant gift cards and birthday Amazon and Barnes and Nobel Kindle gift cards...
I am so tired today after having been driven and dined in San Diego while watching the Dodgers get beaten by the Padres, which we'll have to get used to as 2011 Dodger fans have little hope of finishing better than maybe third place in the Western Division of the National League...

But what a great day yesterday was...the weatherpeople predicted a coldish day but it was 65 to 70 degrees and sunny and warm all day in the circular confines of Petco Park...it makes Dodger Stadium look like a slum...it is a FANtastic park easy to get around, plenty of restrooms for old guys, hot dogs twice as large and better tasting than Dodger dogs and elevators going up and down from the street...
Beside driving there, my daughter Julie procured some outrageous seats almost behind home plate slightly on the first base side and about 15 rows up from the field...
The game had no Dodger highlights only Padre happy moments...good for them...the fans around our seats, and we had Dodger hats and gear on, applauded me when my name appeared on the scoreboard announcing 'happy 70th birthday to Pete Di Lallo' when my two daughters and grand daughter started clapping and yelling happy birthday Dad and Papa...
On our way into the park I semi-jokingly asked a few ushers if we were safe in our Dodger gear as they patted me on the back saying these were Padre fans and not like the fans who almost killed a Giant fan last week in Los Angeles...