Sandy Collier – The Funny Side of the Street

AKA Dale Taco

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Sandy Collier Posted in A day in my life, Humor, Latest episode of my ongoing sitcom .

I wait in the car, embarrassed, once again! We are at Del Taco and Dale has 16 Free Combination Meal Coupons that he has to use up by tomorrow. Mind you, he’s had these for over a month to use, but that wouldn’t be his way. We must always wait until the absolute last minute for everything.

These coupons clearly read one coupon per visit, but the cashier is willing to let us use all of them. Dale can hardly contain his excitement.

So now we have 2 Del Taco combo meals and 14 Fish combo meals. Now do the math, 16 meals times 2 tacos per meal. Yeah, that’s a shit load of tacos.

He just came out with his first four bags with a big old grin on his face. First batch he says and then shouts, “score” and raises his hand in Victory!

He has always had this excitement when he thinks he’s getting something for free or one over on the man. At least I was able to talk him out of 16 large sodas.

I sigh and pull out my notepad and begin writing at a furious pace. When inspiration hits me for a new episode I have to write it down while its fresh. Welcome to my world.

Duck..Duck…Gone

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Sandy Collier Posted in A day in my life .

I was driving to work recently, racing as usual, the freeway traffic moving at its normal brisk pace. Imagine my surprise when I see a bit of debris on the side of the freeway and a small brown baby duck looking right at me, shaking and looking terrified. We made eye contact, my blue eyes seeing his scared brown eyes as I sped by.

At this point I’m running late for work and there is no way I can stop. What the hell would I do with a baby duck in my car? When I arrive at work, I’m like crazy upset! What kind of asshole would leave a baby duck on the side of the freeway, what kind of cold blooded person would do something like this.?

I call the Bird Sanctuary in my town and tell the receptionist what happened, I can tell she’s skeptical. My story does seem a little crazy and I can feel her frustration with me. She tells me for the third time that it’s not duck season right now and she has no one who can go check it out. I hang up heartbroken, the poor little guy is probably road kill at this point!

I leave my husband a quick text message and tell him what happened. He’s my Super Hero when it comes to any animal in danger or hurt.

He immediately grabs his Superhero Cape, jumps into his car and flies off to save the day. He begins driving up and down the freeway blowing up my phone with text messages. ” Where exactly did you see it,” Which wall was it next to?” He must have driven back and forth between three exits for about a hour. Soon the tone of the text messages changes. Are you sure you saw a duck, he writes? Of course, his sad eyes brown eyes looked right at me, I write.

But as I start to think about it, did I really see a baby duck while traveling at 65 m.p.h.? Did I just convince myself it was a duck? Why on earth would a baby duck be sitting on the side of the freeway? How much sleep did I get last night?

My husband tells me all he saw was a bit of debris that looked like a piece of brown carpet and some fuzzy, cottony material. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this was in fact my Donald Duck, exactly where I said he was.

Lesson, go to bed earlier at night so the hallucinations are kept at bay!

Happy Hanukkah

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Sandy Collier Posted in Uncategorized .

I will preface that if I offend anyone for my ignorance I apologize in advance –

I was doing some business at my bank recently, right around Christmas. I was sitting in one of those office/cubicles with one of the Bank Associates. I noticed he had an opened cardboard box with a Menorah picture on the front of it. I could see his Menorah on the top of his cubicle with all the lights on except one. So idiot that I am I said, “Gosh, that’s a drag that one of the light bulbs is burned out, I hate when that happens.” He informed me that there is still one day left of Hanukah. Just call me I-D-I-O-T!

Dale knows me too well because as soon as I told him one of the lights was burnt out he knew where this story was going.

City of Las Vegas caters to residents 50 years and older…

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Sandy Collier Posted in Humor .

I thought about my Dad as I was passing by the slot machines at the grocery store tonight. I know he never minded stopping at the store with my Mom when they were in Vegas because of this one “special feature” we had. That man couldn’t walk by a slot machine without trying his luck. So I took a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and decided to try my luck, thinking maybe Heaven could spare him for a few minutes and he was sitting beside me. I played for awhile, had my ups and downs and in the end I walked out of the Grocery Store twenty dollars lighter. What can I say except, “I am my fathers daughteR!” He would have been 80 years old this Tuesday – R.I.P Dad…

It seems so crazy how fast life seems to fly by as you get older. I saw a headline in the local paper this week that said, “City of Las Vegas caters to residents 50 years and older!” My first thought was Jesus H. Christ, that’s me! How the hell did that happen? How is a young girl like me even in this category. There must be a mistake! Someone stole my identity! Didn’t I just get my braces off, start my period and get my first pair of Levi’s. I put on my glasses this morning and they had become bifocals. There are all kinds of prescription bottles on the bathroom counters, Hemorrhoid cream in the medicine cabinet and Activia yogurt in the fridge. What the hell is a probiotic anyway? What is going on around here?

Oh I jest, honestly, I don’t mind getting older, well at least at fifty-one this is how I feel. I don’t really envy young people because I look at them and think, “if I had to work another 50 – 60 years I’d kill myself!” I like the skin I’ve grown into, it might be a little flabby, maybe in need of a shave, a few grey hairs are creeping in, I might pee my pants if I laugh too hard, but, it’s all good. It’s comfortable, it’s me and it’s my “home sweet home”.

What are some things you’ve learned along your journey? Come on, it’s fun to share. Don’t they say “wisdom comes with age”?

Feng Shui in the Bathroom

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in Feng Shui, Uncategorized .

What Is Feng Shui?

Feng Shui (or Wind and Water) is the practice of arranging your environment so that energy or “chi” flows gently and smoothly through your home or business environment.

Alright, so many years ago someone at work told me about the whole Feng Shui thing. My typical response when I get jazzed up about something new is I research it to death and read everything I can on the subject. There are many dusty books scattered throughout my house on the many “things” I’ve become a bit obsessed with over the years. I knew my new home was in the correct alignment for positive “chi” in our lives. I think we even put coins in red satchels at various “correct” locations throughout our house so the money would flow our way (well, that didn’t work).

Fast forward fourteen years later and my husband is obsessed with always leaving the toilet seat cover down after he uses it. This is the only thing he even vaguely remembers about “Feng Shui” because if you don’t close the toilet seat cover after using it your “Chi” can literally go down the drain. God forbid, who wants their Chi flushed away! I am constantly
yelling at him because our cat likes to drink out of the toilet and he keeps insisting he left the lid up. I secretly videotaped this footage as proof and emailed it to him. I could hear him laughing across the house, “very funny buster”! What can I say we are so easily amused around here.

African Safari – The Animals

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in African Elephants, African Safari, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I can remember the sense of wonder I felt when we encountered our first group of elephants. All the exhaustion I felt from the multiple flights and lack of sleep just flew out the window, I think we all felt that way. I wanted to pinch myself so I knew I wasn’t dreaming. Going on an African Safari was definitely something on my bucket list and I knew this was also true for my mother-in-law Betty aka BiBi (her African name). I posted this elephant video I made on Facebook but I know some of you are not on my Facebook page so here it is again. I’m really enjoying playing around on that damn YouTube making slide shows and posting videos.

This next slideshow I did on my computer in a program called I-Movie and then uploaded it to YouTube, thats why it looks a bit different. I really enjoyed playing photographer on my vacation, I secretly envisioned I was on assignment with National Geographic. This is just a montage of some of the animals I saw and snapped pictures of. The slide show was twice as long originally but I had to whittle it down so you would not get too bored.

(Don’t forget to just hit the (X) if you see any Ads pop up in my videos)

African Safari – Our Accommodations

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in African Safari, Sopa Lodges, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I’m sorry that I have been such a “slacker” with writing and showing more photos of my recent Safari Trip, sometimes that damn thing called “life” just sucks up the hours in a day.

We, my group of six, traveled “forever,” well at times it felt like that. Our flight departed Tampa, Florida to JFK, New York to Istanbul, Turkey to Kilmanjaro, Africa. The total time including layovers was 36 hours, can you even begin to imagine that. My God, we were exhausted. We took a van from Kilmanjaro to a hotel in Arusha, Africa (about an hour and a half drive by car), it was the middle of night and I remember the sky was so dark. I could tell we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

We traveled over 800 miles in our Safari Vehicle, stayed at roughly 4 – 5 different hotels, toured 4 different parks and had some really delicious cuisine. Breakfast at each hotel was buffet style, I really miss those little baby bananas and that fresh squeezed passion fruit juice.

Our main hotels were Sopa Lodges (a chain) which blended so well with the natural surroundings. Most were located in the Parks or very near to them. One of the things that was really fun occurred at dinner each night. The restaurant staff would sing and dance throughout the dining room as we were finishing up dinner. Dale’s Mom Betty was so damn cute clapping her hands with a big grin ear to ear. Bi Bi is a nickname for grandmother and she was called that at every place we stayed. We stayed in a Tented Lodge on our last night in Tanzania. It was very rustic but we actually did have electricity. Our tent made me feel like I was on the set of the old TV show Mash, any moment I kept expecting to see Hawkeye or Klinger.

I tried to add some of the music from the CD I brought home from the Sopa Lodge but YouTube wouldn’t let me add it (that whole damn copyright thing). So this is as close as I could find within YouTube’s library, just try to ignore the ad’s (that’s why it’s free to users). Just click on the (X) when you see an Ad pop up.

This video just shows some of the places we stayed. Enjoy…

African Sunsets

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in African Safari, Tanzania, Uncategorized .

I’ve finally received all of our combined pictures that we took in Tanzania, so I guess I better get busy blogging.

I’m pretty new at trying to maneuver around on Youtube so bear with me. Here is my first slide show that I’ve created showing all the beautiful sunsets we saw. I’m still trying to figure out how to put some of the African Music that I brought home on CD to future slide shows. What can I say? I’m a work in progress

Enjoy…

Thank you Africa…

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in Uncategorized .

I sit here staring at my computer screen searching for the right word for how I’ve been feeling since I arrived back in Vegas. I was really feeling it this morning as I pulled out of my three car garage, drove past all the fairly large houses in my neighborhood, pulled onto the four lane freeway and drove past more businesses than I could count. Cruising down the Las Vegas Blvd in all its grandiose and over indulgence when only a week before I was in a third world country where people are really struggling.

I’ve never really thought about how lucky I was to have running water and not have to walk a half a mile or more to get water from a dirty looking pond. I don’t think I’ll run my washing machine without thinking of the woman washing their clothes in the river, or turn my stove on and not think of the woman gathering sticks so they can cook their food. In Africa, the woman work and work and then work some more.

Sometimes when I’m watching the news I’m not “really watching” the news. The injustices that are happening all over the world just seem so far away and I feel so far removed from them. I think we all sort of feel like that way. We’re all so busy just living our lives in a sort of isolated cocoon, well at least I feel that way sometimes.

Thank you Africa for broadening my mind, making me more appreciative for all I have and opening my mind to some of the injustices that happen everyday around the world. I’m not sure how I can help but maybe just spreading the word and starting a conversation is a start.

Maasai People

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Sandy Collier Posted in Uncategorized .

I couldn’t help but being fascinated by the Maasai people that we saw spread across the many miles we covered in Tanzania. It was amazing to see how this tradition and culture has remained intact even as modern day life swirls beside it. It almost brought a feeling of how it would be if our Ancestors had been a little kinder to our Native American Indians and their way of life. But as we continued on our trip I did find out more about some of the practices and beliefs of the Maasai and a few I’m still really struggling with. The lack of women’s rights and safety still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

A Few Facts:

• They can be recognised by the special red cloth they wear which
is called a Shuka.
• Maasai people live a nomadic life, which means they move from
place to place with their animals.
• They rely on their animals for food (including milk, meat and
animal blood) and walk for many miles with their animals to find fresh food and water. They get all the other foods they need by trading (swapping) with other Maasai people.
• Maasai men herd cattle and carry spears to protect their cattle from wild animals such as lions.
• The Maasai women are responsible for cooking, collecting sticks for the fire and building the home.