I’ll risk damn near anything if unlimited egg rolls are involved.

In this post: Dense fog, giant pies. 

Here’s some breaking news on Saturday afternoon from your friends at Howdygram headquarters! We’ve just decided NOT to drive all over town looking at Christmas lights tonight because it’s too cold and damp outside and also because Sam wants to spend some quality time with the gigantic apple pie he bought this afternoon at Tom Thumb. So I won’t feel left out I purchased the following essentials today from a variety of my favorite Internet retailers. I ordered 100 insulin pen needles from Wayfair.com, a foamy soap dispenser thing from Amazon and McCormick Brown Gravy on eBay.

Exciting crap for the week ahead.

In this post: Deliveries, dough, refunds, frozen fog.

Here’s the exciting crap that’s coming up this week at Howdygram headquarters!

DELIVERIES. On Tuesday and Wednesday we’re expecting: 1) Shirataki noodles, spicy sauces, canned straw mushrooms and a box of tofu from Asian Food Grocer; 2) Jimmy Dean Country Gravy mix, a shower cap, toilet paper, butt wipes and a bottle of DaVinci vanilla syrup from Wal-Mart; 3) my lovely new ecru bedspread from Brylane Home; 4) underpants for Sam from Amazon; 5) four nice glass stacking canisters from Anchor Hocking; and 6) fluffy memory foam slippers from FootSmart. All of these purchases were illustrated for you in earlier posts, but in case you don’t remember them please click here, here, here and here. Thank you.

Groceries from unlikely websites.

In this post: A Howdygram face lift, sleetless in Mesquite, unlikely groceries.

Holy crap. Can we talk? Once again — for at least the bazillionth time — those lying sacks of poo at Weather.com got it TOTALLY, COMPLETELY AND ABSOLUTELY WRONG. After three days’ advance warning of a life-threatening winter storm in the Dallas metro area with “substantial ice,” “up to two inches of sleet” and “trecherous conditions” — all forecast to get underway by 1 p.m. on Saturday — the only precipitation we’ve had all weekend was light rain that started about two hours ago. The red star on the map below indicates Howdygram headquarters in Mesquite. As you can see, the pink icy crap is nowhere near us.

I’m finally done with my now-former deadbeat client from hell.

In this post: Divorcing a client, re-sheeting a bed, throwing pillows.

As I write this post Sam is at the post office mailing a large, joyously evil envelope to my now-former deadbeat client from hell in California. Her elusive “overnight check” — the one that missed four deadlines since October 1, got lost in the mail twice and took five weeks to get here — finally arrived yesterday via UPS and is on its way back to her today. Unopened.

She doesn’t know it yet, but WE’RE DONE. And I’m one giant leap closer to retirement!

I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich if you’ll screw in a light bulb for me.

In this post: Slave labor, fashion and fragrance, living in the dark.

Sam just called to tell me he’s working late tonight. In official “Samspeak,” however, this means he’ll be in the office ALL NIGHT LONG (and all by himself) until first shift comes in at 7 a.m. To drown my disappointment I decided to buy the following cute charcoal gray wool poncho because my birthday is Friday and I’m figuring ... what the hell, why not?

A savings of $5.54 is nothing to sneeze at, people.

In this post: A low-carb shopping spree, cheapo TicTacs, here comes Sam.

To celebrate Sam coming home from California today I decided to treat myself to a bunch of wonderful crapola from Netrition.com. This includes two boxes of CarbQuik baking mix, four packages of very tasty low-carb ready-to-eat beef chili with beans, a jar of Go-Lo low-carb sugar-free chocolate hazelnut spread (i.e., mock Nutella) and two bags of Great American Low Carb Bread Company “everything” bagels. I’m especially excited about those bagels. Only two carbs each! Not pictured: a bag of low-carb hamburger buns (from same company that makes the low-carb bagels) and two squeezy bottles of Mt. Olive sugar-free sweet relish. I’ve included all the links in case you want to go shopping. Yum-yum, y’all.

Perfume is definitely a lot more fun than diabetes test strips or yeast.

So here we are, another blistering hot August afternoon in Texas. It’s 105° outside with a heat/humidity index of 110°, which means I’m not leaving the house for any reason whatsoever and spent most of the day buying a wonderful assortment of crapola online. Today’s purchases included: 1) a really large bottle of Estée Lauder’s Beautiful perfume at an amazing price with no tax and free shipping; 2) 150 Freestyle Lite diabetes test strips; 3) two squeezy bottles of Dawn dishwashing liquid in their exciting New Zealand Springs fragrance, whatever the hell that is; 4) Fleischmann’s bread machine yeast; and 5) a gigantic jar of Lipton unsweetened instant tea.

If you care, I ordered items 1 and 2 on eBay; 3 through 5 are from Wal-Mart. While I’m excited about all of these, perfume is definitely a lot more fun than diabetes test strips or yeast. I’m just saying.

And now for something completely different, the Howdygram would like to recommend the following films for the rest of the week on TCM’s Summer Under the Stars. Thank you.

• FRED MacMURRAY, 8/7. I’ve always loved Fred MacMurray. If you’re not familiar with his movies please check out: Too Many Husbands (1940) with Jean Arthur and Melvyn Douglas; The Lady is Willing (1942) a peculiar comedy/drama with Marlene Dietrich that’s worth watching at least one time; Callaway Went Thataway with Howard Keel and Dorothy McGuire; and Dive Bomber (1941) with Errol Flynn. These are all really swell. 
• RAMON NOVARRO, 8/8. If you’re into silent movies I hope you won’t miss: The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) with Lewis Stone; Across to Singapore (1928) with Joan Crawford; and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) with Francis X. Bushman. There are also a couple of talkies worth seeing: Mata Hari (1931) with Greta Garbo and The Night Is Young (1935) with Una Murkel.
• STEVE McQUEEN, 8/9. I’m not a Steve McQueen fan. I can’t help it, I just never thought he had any talent or appeal. In my view the only Steve McQueen movie worth seeing on August 9 is The Blob (1958) because his co-star is Aneta Corsaut, the future Helen Crump on “The Andy Griffith Show.” 
• LANA TURNER, 8/10. I guess I’m not much of a Lana Turner fan, either, when you get right down to it, although she’s unforgettable in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with John Garfield. I also recommend Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Peyton Place (1957), but primarily for the performances of her talented co-stars. 
• HENRY FONDA, 8/11. My picks include: The Male Animal (1942) with Jack Carson and Olivia de Havilland; Advise & Consent (1962) with Charles Laughton and Don Murray; Fail-Safe (1964) with Walter Matthau; and Mister Roberts (1955) with James Cagney and Jack Lemmon. Buy yourself a cheesecake and sit in front of the TV with a spoon and a quart of milk. 

Incidentally, on August 11 TCM is also showing Henry Fonda’s most iconic performance in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), if you can stomach the most wretchedly depressing movie ever made. It’s the story of the Joad family, flat broke and starving, who get kicked off their land in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years and scratch their way to great jobs in California earning 25¢ a day picking fruit. It’s a real knee-slapper. (I refuse to watch it.)

At the risk of being considered a racist, which I’m not, I’d like to share the following photo of the ten finalists for 2013 Miss South Korea. You’re not imagining things, people ... THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE because South Korea is a country obsessed with plastic surgery. One in five women go under the knife, all requesting the same shape eyes, the same shape nose and the same pointed chin. Is this frightening, or what? A blogger on Reddit commented: “Korea’s plastic surgery mayhem has finally converged on the same face.” It’s true. These are ten different women, and you can’t tell them apart!

I got a scam email today. This was supposed to look official with the MoneyGram logo on top, but it didn’t take long to figure out it was fiction written by a foreign dimwit with no understanding of English or sentence construction. Take a look:

Dear customer!

You are receiving my notification because of you have been received the payment. It may take a some time for this transaction to appear in the Recent Activity list on your account page.

Pay-ment details:

Transaction sum: 8520 USD
Transaction date: 2013/08/03

The details of this transaction attached to the letter. Please follow our link to confirm the necessary by your account.

Thank you for using MoneyGram!

Frankly, you’d think by now these clods from the Ukraine would find a less obvious way to weasle money from Americans. Holy crap.

And now I have to eat dinner because my stomach is making so much noise it’s drowning out the neighbor’s lawn mower. I wouldn’t joke about this. Tonight’s feast will be grilled cheese on low-carb bread with a side order of green olives. Don’t be jealous, okay?

Sausages, eBay deals and God bless Tammy Duckworth.

Let’s discuss thrilling developments for a minute, okay? I just placed a couple of spur-of-the-moment online orders that make me so damn excited I might explode!

First: HOT & SPICY SAUSAGES. A severe and uncontrollable craving sent me back to FoodyDirect.com for a big ol’ shipment of jalapeño sausage from Kreuz Market for delivery on July 3. Kreuz’s sausage is the bomb, people! A full-color portrait appears below plus a shot of the famous sign that hangs above the register in the restaurant.

Second: DIABETES SUPPLIES. I mentioned a few days ago that I’d been browsing around on eBay trying to buy some cheapo FreeStyle Lite diabetes test strips. I entered an auction and eventually scored a box of 100 for $40 (a whole lot less than you’d pay for the same thing on Amazon) but eBay’s bidding crapola gets on my nerves so I pretty much gave up after that and watched TV. Tonight, however, I struck gold. I found an eBay seller unloading several boxes of 100 FreeStyle Lite test strips at an unheard-of “buy now” price — no stupid bidding! — at $19.99 each, so I bought three boxes. That’s THREE HUNDRED TEST STRIPS for $59.97. Holy crap!

Just so you know how amazingly cheap this really is, Amazon sells 100 FreeStyle Lite test strips for $58 ... and that’s 60% less than the Blue Cross co-payment at a pharmacy. (No sane person with Internet access would EVER buy these from a pharmacy.)

One more thing. In case you thought the Howdygram could finally go a whole day without some kind of progressive political commentary, I’ve got breaking news tonight from our Mazel Tov, Tammy Ripped This Jerk A New One department. Braulio Castillo, CEO of Strong Castle, Inc., has been defrauding the Veterans Administration for 27 years using a bogus “service-related disability” to qualify for special deals and government contracts and then gamed the system by weasling favors from a friend at the IRS. During Castillo’s grilling earlier today in a Congressional hearing, Representative Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), a decorated war hero who lost both legs and the use of one arm as a helicopter pilot in Iraq, ripped this jerk a new one. Castillo’s injury? He twisted his foot playing football in prep school back in 1984 and then paid a series of doctors to submit documents to the VA so he’d be eligible to label his company a “service-disabled, veteran-owned small business.”

To help him secure government contracts, Castillo wrote to the Veterans Administration: “These are crosses that I bear due to my service to our great country and I would do it again.” After Duckworth read Castillo’s letter out loud, she added, “I’m so glad that you would be willing to play football in prep school again to protect this great country. Shame on you, Mr. Castillo. Shame on you!” The full video clip appears below for your possible interest. Please be prepared to stand up and cheer afterwards, okay?

And now I’m ready for a nice shower and additional food because I don’t think I ate enough for dinner. If you have any menu suggestions please send an email as soon as possible. Thank you.

Tide Pods make me feel a lot like Jane Jetson.

As I write this post it’s already evident that Wednesday will be a certifiable madhouse here at Howdygram headquarters. So far our scheduled visitors include:

• A truck from the American Kidney Fund between 8 and 6 to pick up two dozen sacks of highly valuable donations — i.e., quilts, sheets, comforters, clothes, stunning shoes, videotapes and picture frames that I forgot to dust — which are currently piled three-deep in the front foyer.
• Our handyman at 10 to replace the cracked bay window in our master bedroom.
• Landscapers at 10:30 to mow, trim and whack the front the back yards.
• A notary from Wells Fargo at 11 so we can sign our refi paperwork.
• Schwan’s at 11:30 to deliver our biweekly haul of tasty frozen whatnots, including Krunchie Potato Wedges, Pot Roast with Gravy, Hot & Spicy Chicken Boobies and Mozzarella Sticks, pictured below in an effort to make you really hungry.

Incidentally, if you’d like to try Schwan’s home delivery for yourself just pay a visit to their website and check out all the pretty food. Thank you.

This afternoon I’ve been busy on eBay bidding for FreeStyle Lite diabetes test strips. And you thought I never had any fun! I’ve figured out that eBay has the best prices if you’re willing to screw around with all that auction baloney. In a pinch I can always buy them on Amazon at $28 (or thereabouts) for a box of 50, but on eBay it’s usually possible to snag 100 for less than $40 if you’re really fast and exceptionally motivated.

As you might expect, I’m really fast AND exceptionally motivated. At the moment I’m high bidder at $33 for 100 test strips from a seller in Holland, Michigan ... and the auction ends in 14 minutes. Holy crap!

To stay busy between bids I’m also doing laundry, a routine household project that became a lot more entertaining after I started using adorable Tide Pods. Not only are they cute, squishy and fragrant, but they make me feel a lot like Jane Jetson, who’d be proud to know that even a senior citizen like moi can become a housewife-of-the-future. Plus there’s no liquid detergent dripping all over the shelf in the laundry room any more.

Nice of you to stop by. I have to fold a bunch of underwear now.

Sarah Palin, the unpopular mean girl who didn’t get invited to the cool kids’ party.

And now for something completely different! As I write this post I’m also bidding on eBay in an effort to snag myself some cheap boxes of glucose test strips. They’re about $58 on Amazon.com but I just discovered them on eBay for a whole lot less. I won an auction about half an hour ago and bought a box of 100 for $41.95 with free shipping, and now I’m bidding on another box of 100 from a different seller. My current high bid is $32 and the auction closes in about 25 minutes. This is cutting into my nap time but what the hell, it’s worth the trouble if I can save some dough on these stupid things. I test my blood glucose four times a day, which means a box of 100 test strips lasts about three weeks.

In my opinion glucose test strips are the Diabetesland version of inkjet printer cartridges. You can buy a name-brand printer dirt cheap but it’s the ink that’ll bankrupt you. Well, diabetics are in the same boat with all their testing crapola. You can find glucose meters on Amazon for less than ten bucks — or even get one FREE from your doctor — but the test strips cost a fortune and (no surprise) they’re also an essential part of a diabetic’s daily routine. With a prescription the insurance co-pay is about $65 for 50 strips, and on Amazon (as I mentioned earlier) you’ll pay about $58 for 100. That’s why this eBay auction is such a big stinking hoo-hah. I always thought Amazon was cheap but my current bid on eBay is $26 less than Amazon’s lowest price. I’m so excited I might need pickles & biscuits for dinner.

Here’s our latest Putz of the Week award! This time the Howdygram is honoring crab-ass Sarah Palin, the half-term loser from Alaska, for her snotty, unsolicited remarks about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a couple of days ago. Palin wrote on her Facebook page: “Yuk it up, media and pols. While America is buried in taxes and a fight for our rights, the permanent political class in DC dresses up and has a prom to make fun of themselves. No need for that, we get the real joke.” And on Twitter, she wrote: “That White House Correspondents’ Dinner was pathetic. The rest of America is out there working our asses off while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom.”

Isn’t this exactly what we’d expect from the unpopular mean girl who didn’t get invited to the cool kids’ party? Stay classy, Sarah. Maybe next year you’ll be asked to deliver the keynote address at the National Bowhunters’ Conference. They meet in the back room of a Waffle House in Anchorage.

Yesterday online I saw a photo of Sean Connery taken a few days ago while he was strolling around Manhattan. I thought he looked not too decrepit at 82 years old but didn’t actually realize how much he’d aged until I Googled a photo of Sean in a bodybuilding competition from the mid-1950s. Oy, people, I’m speechless. James Bond is a GEEZER!

I think I’ll gnaw on a couple of Slim Jims now and watch today’s episode of “People’s Court.” Thank you for reading this. Seriously.