Possumblog

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

REDIRECT ALERT! (Scroll down past this mess if you're trying to read an archived post. Thanks. No, really, thanks.)

Due to my inability to control my temper and complacently accept continued silliness with not-quite-as-reliable-as-it-ought-to-be Blogger/Blogspot, your beloved Possumblog will now waddle across the Information Dirt Road and park its prehensile tail at http://possumblog.mu.nu.

This site will remain in place as a backup in case Munuvia gets hit by a bus or something, but I don't think they have as much trouble with this as some places do. ::cough::blogspot::cough:: So click here and adjust your links. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's one of those things.

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

No blogging tomorrow morning due to my regular bi-weekly bureaucratic meeting to insure that our good citizens are protected from the horrors of bootleg Coke signs and icky fluorescent yellow awnings. But after I get through with that mess, I can come back in here and create another mess with adverbs and pronouns and stuff!

Now, however, it's off to the house, and then on to take Oldest to her clarinet lesson, and then back to the house to help get the kids ready to go back to school tomorrow. Backpacks and snacks and coats and clean clothes and a good scrubbing for them all! I remember when I was little that I thought Christmas vacation was way too short, but they've been out a long time and I think they're ready to get back and see their friends and compare Santa notes.

posted by Terry at 4:58:00 PM

So, you think possums are stupid, eh?

Welllll, not so fast there, Sparky. Janis Gore of Gone South fame just sent me a link to an article by John Kelso of the Austin-American Statesman, and I must say it's one of the most encouraging things I've ever read for those of us in the Marsupial-American community--

Animal lover gives critters full support

The baby possums are easier to put up with in your brassiere than the baby squirrels, says Allison Adams of Round Rock.

"The hardest to deal with in my bra are the squirrels," said Allison, 23. "The possums are actually the easiest. They're adorable, beautiful little animals, and since they're used to being in a pouch with their mom, they're used to the feeling. The squirrels, they're not used to it. They're moving around, and every once in a while you hear them squeaking."

FINALLY! A woman who truly understands what us possums want!

Seriously, the animal rescue worker really does load baby animals into her bra to warm them up as part of her work for Wildlife Rescue of Austin. Let's say someone hits a mother possum by the side of the road, and the babies are brought to Allison to be saved. If they're cold, pop, there they go, straight into Allison's bra.

"Just whenever the babies come in, it's the easiest way to warm them up," she said.

So true, so true. It just makes me wish I was a baby possum again, it does. Well, maybe not that part about Mom and the Kenworth, but you know what I mean.

So what's the record number of baby animals in her bra at one time? "The most I've had at one time was 12," Allison said, speaking of a passel of young possums. "I was living in Killeen at the time, so it was for about an hour and a half, two hours."

Yep, Killeen. Had to be two hours, at least.

Allison, who works at the Northwest Animal Clinic in Georgetown, puts baby animals in her bra regularly. She figures over the past six years she's stuck baby possums, squirrels, kittens or cottontail rabbits in her bra a total of 75 times.

AND THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, SO YOU CAN JUST SHUT UP! Come on, admit it! YOU'VE done it, too!

Doesn't this itch? "No," she said, "they get grabby, and sometimes it's a little much. 'Cause when they're on their mom, they have to get grabby. It's instinct. So you just kind of write it off as the thing that's going to happen every now and then." I'll bet that would cause a stir over at Lakeline Mall.

Yeah, every now and then. It's really nothing personal.

A tip for those who want to put baby animals in their underwear: Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, Allison suggests. Put some on one side, some on the other. Otherwise you're going to be out of plumb.

Safety is very important.

Incidentally, Allison says she can go for quite some time with animals in her bra. Maybe one day one of them will play possum in there and refuse to leave.

Well, she IS quite the looker, judging by the photo with the article, and if there's some spare room in there, what's wrong with hanging around for a while, you know?

"I can walk around all day long with them in there," she said. "When we're going somewhere, I mean, it's unrealistic to keep them in the car in a carrier for four or five hours. They get cold."

AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! Man, this girl is like the greatest American to ever live!

You mean you can drive with animals in your bra? You betcha. Sometimes when Allison is driving her GMC, she has animals in her front end, so to speak.

So to speak...

"It probably looks pretty funny," she admitted. "A tail hanging out here, a tail hanging out there." But she's been lucky. So far she has yet to be pulled over by the police with critters in her duds. Imagine that little conversation: "Hey, lady, step away from the possum."

By the way, Allison is engaged. So how does her fiancé feel about it? "Everybody has to ask that," she said. "Well, it's kind of a stunner when I come home and he goes to hug me, and he can't, because I have hissing possums. But I guess you get used to that."

Yeah, Bub, so take a hike! No room for you, Buster, just me and the girls! Hisssss!

(Good grief, this girl has some issues, don'tcha think?)

posted by Terry at 3:29:00 PM

And speaking of iron...

Via The Birmingham Business Journal, congratulations to American Cast Iron Pipe Company, who have made it onto Forbes' 100 Best Companies to Work For, for the seventh consecutive year--this year they've moved up to Number 6!

posted by Terry at 2:14:00 PM

Cornbread

Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Just received a nice e-mail from a young lady named Sarah Miers, who comes to the furry, somewhat smelly Possum Lair via that bread-hatin' Yourish gal--

Saw your reference to Dreamland ribs and my mouth started watering and my vision got all blurry -- that is my idea of heaven right there. WOW do I miss the South (lived in TN 4 years, New Orleans for 3 years). Then I saw your bit about cornbread and things got even worse as I started remembering my friend Tom's cornbread -- he made it for me every Friday morning in a great big iron skillet. Oh my.

Thanks for writing, Miss Sarah! Your Tom guy had it right. The first ingrediment to fine cornbread is a well-seasoned black iron skillet. Interestingly enough, there is a fellow named Tom who has his own webpage devoted to plain old cornbread. In a perfect world, this would be the same Tom, but I really doubt it is. On the other hand, the man has figured out the secret, and gladly shares it with us all, along with the necessary tips for the proper care and feeding of your cooking iron (pronounced "arn," and next to your shooting iron, the most important tool to own). I won't quote Tom the Cornbread guy here--you'll have to go over there and read his stuff (in addition to being able to make bread, he writes a bit).

As for me, I got a new set of skillets for Christmas, and have been giving the big one a workout trying to get it good and black. Made a pone of bread in it over the weekend, and although a bit of it stuck in the middle (still not quite there with the seasoning) it is hard to describe how good it was.

posted by Terry at 1:47:00 PM

Via J. Bowen, Axis of Weevil Minister of Nucularity over at No Watermelons Allowed, this link to the first photo of the cloned Raelian baby! Eeeek!

posted by Terry at 1:23:00 PM

Bread

Meryl Yourish has done gone and got something started--something about nobody liking bread:

[...] We make kaiser rolls and Portugese rolls and Italian rolls and dozens of other rolls—most of which are to put stuff on. Dinner rolls are generally slathered with butter or butter-like substances. And I could go on and on with more examples, but, like, I'm starting to bore myself, and I'm thinking about those Pillsbury dinner rolls that Heidi made with Christmas dinner, and realizing that I have no bread to go with my own dinner tonight, and damn, I'm not going out just for bread. It's raining out. Plus, well, one of the things I really miss about New Jersey is the various great bakeries within a short driving distance. Richmond doesn't do bread well. Uh, hello, Southerners? There's more to bread than biscuits and cornbread. Just an FYI there. And no, hush puppies don't count. I don't care how good they are, they don't count.

I think I'd better stop here before I get the entire Axis of Weevil on my case.

Then she gives us an update, and we find out some more from the panephobe camp:

[...] Actually, my favorite bread breakfast is really cheap, store-brand white bread toast and butter. With a huge glass of chocolate milk. Next to that would be biscuits. The really good ones. With butter, not gravy. Sorry, Terry, I guess I'm still a Yankee at heart.) Although I wouldn't say no to a fresh Italian bread from Gencarelli's, warmed in the overn and slathered with butter... [sigh]

Come out of the closet, breadheads. Admit that you really dislike bread. It's the other stuff that goes with it that you really like. Banana bread, indeed.

Now, I'm not gonna be the one to weigh in (no, that's not a pun, and I'll sit on you if you don't stop snickering) on this on one side or t'other, except to say that I think everyone around here knows there is more than just biscuits and cornbread--Birmingham has some pretty darned great bakeries (Continental Bakery is the one mentioned in this article), so Richmond might just be a bad example. As for those biscuits, you're not a sinful Yankee to pile on the butter--gravy is, well, gravy.

Cornbread, however, is one of those things that can only be done correctly one way, and if you start trying to make it different with abominations such as sugar, it just doesn't work. Cornbread is one of those things to which things are not applied or added to make it taste better, it is added to other things to make them taste better. There is nothing quite like a having a big plate of turnip greens and a piece of cornbread to sop up the pot likker, or crumbling a hunk of hot cornbread up into a bowl of Brunswick stew on a cold day. It's not for everything, but when you need it, there is nothing else which will do.

posted by Terry at 11:45:00 AM

Frightening and Disturbing

Sometimes, you wonder.

From the referrer logs today, we have someone searching for clarence free blog. Hey, if Clarence wants to come in here, I'm not gonna stop him. In fact, we might just have to have a blogger Clarence Day to make sure that no blog is Clarence-free.

Then there's hot dog sauce gephardt-- "Dick Gephardt will fight to insure that every American is able to enhance the taste of all meat by-product-based sausage or frankfurter products with a comprehensive selection of condiments, including hot dog sauce. It is up to us all to resist the attempts by this Republican administration to callously deny the benefits of additional flavor to the working poor, minorities, women, and our friends in the international community."

Next up, someone searching Yahoo for dothan whores. Looking through the Dothan, Alabama Chamber of Commerce site doesn't show any likely businesses which might be of help, although in the section on Workforce Development, it does say this: "Our workforce development staff member, workforce development committee, and education committee, work closely with area school systems, post-secondary education institutions, service agencies, state agencies, and business and industry, in order to identify community needs, and coordinate effective solutions, tailored to locally identified problems." Sounds like they would be interested in helping out to fill an obvious void in the local economy.

Next, yet another lonely soul searching for yet another Patricia Heaton body part, this time Patricia Heaton toes. They're real, and they're spectacular! But that's about all I know about them.

In one of those very rare instances, we have a search that goes awry, but actually leads to something new (to me) and kinda interesting--the search string was Goofus carnation bowl, which sounds like a really horrible third rate, post-season football bowl game in Jimmy's Craw, Nevada, but in actuality, there really is something called Goofus glass. From the Antique Resources website, here is an article written by David Ballentine which tells a bit about it:

It is accepted by most perhaps starting as early as 1897 and during a period possibly not exceeding 20 years, that there were multitudes of different glass objects which were produced with various molded patterns and then decorated crudely using early paint spray devices using predominantly gold paint. Designs were accentuated frequently with red, however I have seen less commonly many jars and vases done in other colors. Plates, bowls, saucers were painted on the underside. Vases, jars, lamps, powder boxes, decanters, etc. painted on the outside. All the objects produced were intended for cheap, mass markets and sold in assortments by the dozen, packed in straw and frequently contained in wooden barrels by various wholesale distributors. Some of our most revealing sources are old Butler Brothers and Baltimore Bargain House catalogs. Production after 1918 was described as "slight". Other far more popular lines such as the iridescent "Carnival" glass and opalescent glass appearing along the same period of time as "Goofus" certainly didn't have the obvious shortcomings of leaving deposits of the design in ones hand or on the table where they sat. Washing was probably quickly regretted. [...]

Whaddya know--learn something new every day.

Finally then, to something the world really needs: german storefront mosques. Make your own jokes about that one.

posted by Terry at 11:06:00 AM

Why the United States of America is the greatest nation on the face of the earth...Dodge Offers 500-Hp Concept Motorcycle

DETROIT (Reuters) - The Detroit auto show has seen a lot of concept cars over the decades, but a four-wheel motorcycle powered by a 500-horsepower V-10 engine is a first.

And it may turn out to be more than a concept.

DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler arm on Monday unveiled the Dodge Tomahawk -- essentially the 8.3 liter engine from a Dodge Viper mated to a motorcycle frame. [...]

The 1,500-pound Tomahawk can reach 60 miles an hour in about 2.5 seconds, and has a theoretical top speed of 300 mph.[...]

There now, that should shut everyone up about gas-guzzling SUVs.

In other automotive related news, blogger Ron Bailey and needs-to-be-a-blogger Nate McCord both sent me photos of the new Mustang for 2005, and I also got my Automobile magazine yesterday, in which it was prominently featured.

It's sorta interesting from a styling point of view, I guess, but at least in the pictures in the magazine and online, it seems a bit too thick and blocky. And the decision to use the DEW98 platform (which underpins the Lincoln LS, Jaguar S-Type, and Thunderbird) might not be the best. It's a great chassis, but maybe too great for what the Mustang has always been--a gussied up Falcon. That's not said as a knock against it, by the way--I happen to think a gussied up Falcon was, and is, a good idea.

One of the things that contributed to the downfall of the GM F-body was the last iteration's use of an admittedly sophisticated and capable, but expensive, chassis, and one that was not shared with any other line. The Camaro/Firebird ended life as cars which were superior to the Mustang (and even the Corvette) in so many ways, but which were beyond the means of their intended market.

The original Mustang was economical to produce and to operate because of its plebian underpinnings. To me, the real genius of the Mustang, along with the Barracuda (built on the Valiant chassis) and the Camaro/Firebird (built on the Chevy II chassis) was not the style or excitement, but that their mundane, econo-car guts were so versatile, and so amenable to massive doses of horsepower. In my mind, it's just amazing that Granny's slant-6 four-door Valiant sedan was under every Hemi 'Cuda, and the bones of every Ram Air IV Trans Am were the same as any puttering 4 cylinder Nova.

Yes, the current "Fox" chassis under the Mustang is dated and unsophisticated, having debuted on the 1978 Fairmont and subsequently held up a variety of Ford offerings over the past 25 years. But the basic soundness of the platform, despite its weaknesses and drawbacks, made Ford's recovery during the early and mid-1980s possible. The 5.0 Mustangs of the era are still potent, and one of the reasons that the Mustang name is still alive and popular, (especially in light of the horrendous Mustang II which immediately preceded them.)

Time do change, though, and it may have caught up with the Mustang, just like it did with the F-body. Economy cars are front drivers now, and the dynamics that make the Mustang desirable from a driving and performance point of view are difficult to do without rear drive and cubic inches. There have been a good many front wheel drive, econobox-derived sporty coupes (even the Ford Probe, which at one time was tapped to be the replacement for the rear drive Mustang), but none seemed to be able to recreate the fire the original Mustang lit. The Fast and Furious crowd seem to like their rolling woofer enclosures with hand grenade engines, which is fine, I suppose. Going back to that original formula just doesn't seem to be in the cards--the only small, rear drive sedan I can think of comes from BMW now, and it costs $25K. (Oops--forgot about the Merc C-class, but it'll set you back a comparable stack of piasters.) Maybe the industry is at the point of technical sophistication where they could replicate the goodness of the BMW 3-Series in an inexpensive package--a wholly new, small, rear driver with a variety of engines and transmissions, and a neat 2+2 coupe, too--but I don't think anyone would even want to try.

Maybe the DEW98 platform is the answer, and at least it is shared with several other cars in order to help keep costs down.

But, it's still not quite right.

posted by Terry at 10:00:00 AM

PETA Launching Boycott of KFC

Well, bless their hearts. Thanks guys, that saves more for me.

It also reminds me that orders for the Corn-atee (breaded and deep-fried manatee on a stick) and the Corn-guin (breaded and deep-fried emperor penguin on a stick) are exceeding all expectations. Thanks for your continued support!

posted by Terry at 8:08:00 AM

Monday, January 06, 2003

Well, it's almost time to go and I didn't get to share all of my wonderful weekend with you! Yes, yes, I know you are all very upset and hurt, but maybe tomorrow, if I manage to get my stupid drawing done and manage to stay out of trouble, I will get a chance for exercising the patented Possumblog Long Windedness.

As a preview, there was the purchasing of a DVD player; the purchase of ANOTHER DVD player that will actually work on our TV; explaining to well-meaning children that due to the perverse sense of humor among the Boys from Redmond, you can't just hit the power button, but have to shut down the magic talking box by clicking on "Start;" the return of a DVD player neatly repackaged to look as though no one has been into it; the taking of budget-priced family photographs ("It's okay...her head doesn't cover up your mouth"); searching for Rubbermaid products; why I hate Bennigan's (Slainte THIS!); being forced to begin the dreaded reprogramming of foul tempered twelve year old girl at MIDNIGHT; church; kung pao chicken; still in search of Rubbermaid products; church; and "what in the world is all that noise outside?" as told to me by longsuffering Trussville cop last night at about 11 p.m. When it was very cold. See? Even the mindless intro is longwinded! We'll get around to it tomorrow, then.

posted by Terry at 4:38:00 PM

Who says crime doesn't pay...

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my deputy big boss got a promotion and moved to another department, so his office on this floor was left unattended with all of its goodies begging to be given the old five-finger requisition, which is how I came to be the owner of a nice little set of harman/kardon computer speakers. And today, I have finally gotten to listen to my Christmas booty of music on my very own workstation! Sooo 20th Century!

Anyway, today's selection has included Classic Mountain Songs and Classic Bluegrass from Smithsonian Folkways, Bluegrass Mountain Style and Alison "She's Just So Darned Cute I Can't Stand It" Krauss + Union Station Live from Rounder Records.

Imagine--playing hillbilly music on a computer...I can't quite figure out if that's a Good Thing, or Not.

But the liberated speakers work just fine.

posted by Terry at 4:07:00 PM

You want Insight?

Wonderful post from Miss B over at Indigo's Insights on growing up in a different time:

[...] Some of my memories of the FDR years of WWII are as vivid today as if they were the Clinton years. Those were my growing up years, and the ones with the most impact in forming what would be me.

Patriotism and love of country was not expounded upon, dissected, or discussed, per se, at our family dinner table. They were just there, palpable in the room. Dinner talk was either about the status of the war or a subject pertaining to the War Effort. On Sundays, Mother's talk was frequently another apology for there being no dessert! "But we all know who is getting our sugar: our fighting men. And they deserve it much more than we do.", she'd say. That was War Effort conversation. Other than shortages of pre-war "luxuries" (not complaints, just reminiscences of "remember when we had . . ."), Daddy's Victory Garden was another topic. He had not had his hands in the soil since he left the farm and joined the army at age 17. College was not an option with eleven brothers and sisters. Furthermore, the army had to be better than hard farm life. Or so he thought. At any rate, he was already married and aged out of the draft when the war began. He was quite proud of his Victory Garden. When Americans were asked to plant gardens to supplement the food supply, most people started digging in their back yards the next day. Innate patriotism. When it was suggested to American children that collecting scrap metal for melting down to make battleships, and saving pennies until there was a dime to buy a Victory Stamp, would help our nation win the war, we children went to work. Inherent love of country. [...]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks walking around today who think such small sacrifices on the home front were meaningless during the war--all the rubber drives and scrap drives and saving your old bacon grease were just insignificant blips. They weren't. To my father and men like him, there was no such thing as meaningless or insignificant. I know he was grateful, and were he still alive, I know he would say "thank you, Barbara."

posted by Terry at 3:13:00 PM

And speaking of the Axis of Weevil...

In amongst all the other stuff l left undone last week, I am greatly remiss in failing to welcome a brand new member into the fold! Over on the gangblog Silent Running is a contributor code-named Wind Rider, who grew up here in the Magic City, and is currently living in the Old Dominion and serving in the Air Force (hence the nom de guerre). A good fellow, and his particular service to his country allows me the opportunity to once again say that No Time for Sergeants is still one of the finest movies ever made--

Maj. Demming: I think that I would rather live in the rottenest pigsty in Tennessee or Alabama than the fanciest mansion in all of Georgia. How about that?
Will Stockdale: Well, sir...I think where you wanna live is your business.

and based upon his words in the blog, I think we can safely say that Mr. Rider meets or exceeds all the qualifications for inclusion into our cumbersome and motley lot.

SO THEN, by the power vested in me by Todd in the sign shop at the State of Alabama Department of Transportation, District 2 Maintenance Garage, it is with great pleasure that the Alabama Blogging and Canning Society LLC do hereby confer and bestow upon one Wind "Brad" Rider full and complete membership in the Axis of Weevil, with all of the rights, privileges, pain, nausea, and depression pertaining thereto.

With many hurrahs, we welcome Wind to the group, and as with all new inductees, we have loaded the company vehicle and sent it on its way to Virginny with the world famous Axis of Weevil Gift Pack, consisting of Dreamland ribs, a gallon jug of Milo's sweet tea; a G-Lox Wedgee gun rack from Mark's Outdoor Sports for his pickup truck; a package of Bubba's Beef Jerky (according to Dr. Weevil, this is homemade and is available only at the gas station at the end of Highway 82 in Bibb County); a three piece, 24 ounce box of Priester's Pecan Logs; a box of Jim Dandy grits; a 16 ounce bottle of Dale's Steak Sauce; and in recognition of Wind Rider's active duty status, a 5% discount coupon to Ned's Military Surplus Store. Use them all in good health! And everyone go say hello!

posted by Terry at 2:47:00 PM

Art::Alabama--Not Mutually Exclusive!

Just received a message from fellow Axis of Weevil member Andy over at World Wide Rant, who rises to the defense of the fair Yellowhammer State against one of the running dog lackeys of the Fourth Estate who believes Alabama lacks in the artsy-fartsy category:

This past week, Colorado achieved yet another dubious distinction as the worst state in America for public support of the arts. We spend 26 cents a year per capita on the arts. And that's before the legislature meets to hack another $80 million from the overall budget.

We also rank near the bottom in support for higher education, elementary and secondary education, libraries, indigent health care, mental health programs and a whole range of public institutions.

As a state, we aim low. Then we start cutting.

But not all of Colorado has been so miserly. For 15 years, voters in the Denver area have consistently supported public investment to enhance our quality of life, improve the state's economy and attract private investment.

Without us, Colorado would be a much different place. Picture Alabama with snow. [...]

Andy does a fine job of repudiating Ms. Carman's cruel jape by running down a nice list of some of the artliest things here in the state, and even manages to throw in a few mean-spirited jabs at Mississippi. (Delta Entente Members--he's just joking!)

To her credit, Ms. Carman did take the time to respond to Andy's e-mail, joking that she would have picked on Wyoming instead, but was afraid of getting shot. I cannot vouch for the trigger-happiness of Equality Staters, but if that was her criterion, picking on Alabama was probably an even worse thing to do. Fortunately for her, none of us know how to drive in the snow, so the armed convoy would probably get no further north than Memphis.

posted by Terry at 2:05:00 PM

The Pleasures of the Flesh

From Irene Adler, who is a girl--

[...] I can't recall the last time my skin was so soft and clean. [...]

Ferrocyanide does that.

(I wonder how well it works on soft marsupial fur?)

posted by Terry at 12:14:00 PM

Whew! 'Nother by the wayside, and I managed to survive. Unfortunately, this morning is filled with a goodly amount of stuff to do (staff meeting, finishing a drawing of the old Kress building I blogged about a while ago, hiding, etc.), so you will all have to wait until later on this afternoon for all the frightening details of the past days.

For everyone who's dropping by from Miss Meryl's shack, please accept my apologies for the fact that one of the links she posted only goes to the top of the page here--stupid, STUPID Blogger has a bad habit of not taking you to the actual post, but rather plops you in the general area (if you're lucky). If you are looking for the stuff she referenced, you're just gonna have to scroll down.

So then, it's time for me to grab my richly bound calendar and my City Council agenda and my ennui and head for the conference room for yet another exciting and productive meeting! See you in a bit.

posted by Terry at 8:28:00 AM

Friday, January 03, 2003

Wow, that was a quick week.

Already time for another weekend—what will it hold in store?

Well, for one thing, it has turned off darned cold outside! Right now it’s about 34 real degrees (as opposed to those made-up metric units) and the wind is coming out of the northwest at about 10 knots, and we even had a few piddly snowflakes at lunchtime. Now I realize that for a certain reader out in Utah, or you there up in Northern Minnesota, this is laughably warm, and means that it’s toasty enough to get out and wash the car in shorts and a tee-shirt. For those of us normal folks, though, it’s just cold.

In other things, today is the grand homecoming of Oldest Girl, who has been spending the past week across town with her other set of grandparents. Five short days, yet it will take five weeks to complete the process of restoring some sense of order and grudging compliance with parental control. ::sigh:: Just have to keep repeating “it’s only a phase.” Along with “never negotiate with terrorists.” Occasional Frank Costanza-esque outbursts of “SERENITY NOW!!!” do seem to help sometimes, too.

There is the normal stuff associated with insuring the proper functioning of Casa de Possum—laundry, toilet scrubbing, polishing the silverware, sorting ammo—you know, same old, same old.

As I type at the moment, I am also speaking to Reba on the car phone, and from what I can glean from betwixt the sound of static and my constant typing, she is telling me that tonight will be a family fun night devoted to working on Middle Girl’s scrapbook that she’s doing for church.

This always entails all of us sitting around cutting stuff out with tiny dull scissors, while simultaneously having the fun that can only come from finger cramps.

I always have to gouge my tongue a couple of times with the scissors in order to make sure that I offer no suggestions as to commonly accepted rules of artistic composition. Having made such suggestions in the past has taught me that having a degree in architecture and a firm grasp of art and art history is a mere trifle when faced with an icy stare and the words, “What, you don’t like it?” They are always followed by, “Here then, you do it.”

Sunday will be Sunday school and church. It’s the first Sunday of the new quarter in classes, which is sure to be cause for much panic and dyspepsia among the pedagogues. ::sigh:: ”Maybe if you people would come to the teacher’s meetings you’d know what’s goin’ on!” he says in a very quiet voice deep in his head.

Ah, well. Makes for interesting blog chatter, I suppose. Anyway, time to hit the door—all of you have a great weekend, and I’ll see if I can make it back here Monday with more gripping tales from the ‘burbs!

posted by Terry at 5:01:00 PM

Diana Ross Said She Was Lost When Arrested For DUI

Diana Ross claims she had gotten lost on her way to a video store on Monday (December 30) in Tucson, Arizona, when she was stopped and then arrested for suspicion of drunk driving.

Ross was stopped early on the morning of December 30, after someone reported a vehicle driving south in the northbound lanes of a street in northeastern Tucson. The singer had pulled into a handicapped parking space in front of a Blockbuster video store, when she was approached by a Tucson police officer. She denied twice that she'd been drinking and told the officer she had been lost and was "trying to get here to rent a video."

According to the officer's report, the former Supremes singer consented to a field sobriety test, but fell down and laughed while trying to stand on one leg and count to 10. In another test, Ross skipped some letters and doubled others when asked to write the alphabet. Breath tests showed Ross's blood-alcohol level of at least 0.20 percent, more than twice Arizona's legal limit of 0.08.[...]

Well, it IS easy to get lost when you're hammered.

posted by Terry at 3:31:00 PM

Alabama based military unit report for duty

(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) January 3 - Members of a National Guard unit based in Homewood report for active duty Friday.

About 300 members of Detachment One of the 200th Materiel Management Center will leave Sunday from Birmingham en route to Germany to support U.S. troops in Europe. The deployment could last at least one year.

The unit provides support for ammunition, supply and petroleum operations in the theater. Almost 3,000 Alabama Army and Air Guard members have been called to active duty since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Alabama has the nation's fifth largest Army and Air Force National Guard force with 15,500 troops.

Last night after our midweek Bible study, we had a small send-off for one of these guys. For all the 'concerned,' 'compassionate,' people out there, he is not a scared, unemployed, retarded, 18 year old minority who enlisted out of despair or stupidity. He is not a lunatic killer with a thirst for blood or glory. He is not full of blind hate or rage.

He is a capable, mature, professional man, leaving behind a good wife and a sweet little girl, and his friends and his job.

He serves his country proudly, and he enlisted in the Guard with the full knowledge that a day like this might come, when we might call him away and send him across the globe. He goes willingly, and does not begrudge those of us who he leaves behind for our relative safety and comfort. The peace and prosperity of his loved ones is his gift to us, and the gift of all who have served and sacrificed for our country in troubled times. It is called duty, and honor.

A cake and some chips and a few decorations are not much to offer a man like that.

We offer what we can--our humblest prayers for peace, and for his safety.

Godspeed, Joel. Hurry home.

posted by Terry at 3:12:00 PM

Florida reporter suspended for e-mail criticizing Arabs

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
The Associated Press
1/3/03 12:58 PM

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The Tallahassee Democrat has suspended a reporter for an e-mail he sent to a reader referring to Arabs squatting "around a camel-dung fire" and putting "their bottoms in the air five times a day" in prayer.

Bill Cotterell, a political writer and columnist, was replying to an e-mail from a reader angry over a political cartoon that asked, "What would Mohammed Drive?" and depicted a Middle Eastern-looking man driving a Ryder truck with a nuclear bomb in the back.

The e-mail exchange evolved into a discussion of Israel. Cotterell wrote that Arab nations have had 54 years to accept Israel. "They choose not to. OK, they can squat around the camel-dung fire and grumble about it, or they can put their bottoms in the air five times a day and pray for deliverance; that's their business."

Democrat Executive Editor John Winn Miller suspended Cotterell starting Friday for one week without pay following complaints about the e-mail from a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group.

Miller said Cotterell, who has worked for the paper nearly 20 years, immediately regretted the remarks after sending the message on his company e-mail account and apologized to his colleagues.

"They absolutely do not represent the views and sensitivities of this newspaper. Worse, they run counter to many of the values we hold dearest, among them tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness," Miller said.

Miller said the reader had e-mailed several people at the paper after the Council on American-Islamic Relations alerted its members about the cartoon, drawn by Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Doug Marlette.

The cartoon appeared on the Democrat's Web site Dec. 22 but was pulled after the paper received numerous complaints and was not published in the paper. Marlette's cartoons were automatically posted to the Web site as they were distributed by Tribune Media Services, a feature that has since been disabled, Miller said.

The cartoon was published in other papers, Marlette said, including The Charlotte Observer and The Providence Journal.

Council spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said Cotterell's suspension was fair.

"It will send a positive message to the Muslim community in Florida that this kind of bigotry will not be tolerated," he said.

No word from the Tallahassee Democrat on whether it will accept future editing by miffed readers who object to political cartoons, nor if it intends to let the various victim-propagation programs vett future editorials to insure they aren't promoting bigotry. Something tells me that if the punchline was "What Would Moses Drive," the outcome would have been different.

The Democrat has received about 9,000 e-mail complaints about the cartoon. Marlette said he has received e-mails threatening death or mutilation.

"We live in a really dimwitted age of political correctness," he said. "It's hard for institutions to deal with this kind of organized guilt tripping. It's bad for free speech."

Yeah. It sorta reminds me of a song...

posted by Terry at 2:32:00 PM

How to Write

As those of you who have been regular readers of Possumblog for some time can attest, I am not a Writer.

What you see here, and in the regularly-destroyed-and-reloaded archives, are stories that I tell you as you sit over there in the chair by my office door. You are the friend who comes and hangs around to shoot the breeze, who’s waiting for lunch, or for time to go home, who likes to hear what all I managed to mess up.

You are here because all of the people who actually used to come and hang out have gone on to other employment, and doggone it, some of this stuff just has to get told. There’s also a lot that really doesn’t need to be told, but the great thing about writing it like this is that I don’t catch a glimpse of you looking at your watch or nervously tapping your foot—I think I have a completely enthralled and captivated captive audience. One of the drawbacks of the format, however, is that you don’t get to hear me grunting like a pig, or see me wildly swinging my arms around, or marvel at the odd way I have of pitching my voice ever higher the angrier I get.

What you wind up getting is not really Writing, but something more like storytelling, with the exception that in-person stories keep getting better every time you tell them—you can turn the lights down low when it’s scary, or talk in the voices of the characters, or fine tune the tale to the audience.

Alas, Possumblog doesn’t get any better upon subsequent readings.

It also has no real “style.” It’s just me yammering blissfully away about kids and Fermat’s Last Pizza Order and morality and justice and rocks and art and stupidity and cars and Alabama and women and stuff like that. Not that I don’t try to make it work right—I really do try to make sure the words are spelled correctly (nothing kills me quicker than seeing a particularly stupid Google search with a misspelled word, then finding that I really DID spell it wrong, and there’s NO way to correct it—it just sits out there mocking me) and whenever I use bad grammar, I’m usually just doing it for silly effect (again, however, there are multitudes of honkers in here that defy all attempts at translation).

For the new year, I make no promises that anything herein will be any better.

But my little writing-desk book will do its best to help out, and I intend to throw a few good paragraphs into the blog every once in a while during the year that I think would be helpful in making it better. That is, if I decided to follow the advice.

So then, an excerpt, from page 1:

The first condition toward effective writing is that the ideas to be communicated be distinct and clear in the mind of the writer. No writer has any right to expect his thought to improve on its passage from his own mind to his reader’s. Inadequate expression is first inadequate conception.

Let, therefore, the writer first make sure that the ideas he has to express are distinct and definite in his own head. Before writing he ought to consider first what to say, and next how to say it.

The nearer in touch with the rest of the writer’s life are the matter and occasion of his writing, the easier it will be for the writing to take the shape proper to it. Consequently, that writing is best, also in form, which is most the pure and idiomatic expression of the writer’s character and life. It is hard to say a fitting word about anything in which one has no real (but only pretended) interest. It is “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”—and pen writeth. The imperishable books of the world—the writings of the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Faust, etc.—are the purest records of men who lived and wrote only their sincerest convictions. The extent, quality, and duration of the influence of any writing is always the exact measure of the value of life the writing records.

posted by Terry at 1:27:00 PM

Everybody's Writing-Desk Book

As I mentioned the other day, my lovely wife got me a neat little antique book for Christmas, and it has been an interesting read and too good to not share. The link in the title above takes you to a description of the book from some out-of-print dealers selling through Barnes and Noble--it looks like they are all the original 1896 edition, while mine is the edition of 1901 (edited and revised by James Baldwin, Ph.D.) Googling around doesn't give me any clues as to the editor or the writers (Charles Nisbet and Don Lemon), but no matter, it's still a nifty gem.

Before delving into some of the good bits about writing, it's also mighty interesting to see the list of Harper & Brother's books in the back for the modern American at the beginning of the last century (as well as wonder at the marvel of the technology of the end of the same century that allows us to sit at the comfort of our desks and look up the same titles on a magical electric machine and place an order for them, all without benefit of ink or quill or a messenger boy):

THE TECHNIQUE OF REST. By Anna C. Brackett

I could use this one, although it is a bit odd to think that this would require a book-length discourse. Probably full of all sorts of buzzwords like "sanitary" and "wholesome."

THE HOUSE COMFORTABLE. by Agnes Bailey Ormsbee

Not found in the B&N datebase, but certainly part of a series including The House Contented, The House Relaxed, The House Sanitary and Comfortable, and The New Century Compendium of Comfortable Houses, Including Those of Modern Convenience and Sanitation.

WHAT TO EAT -- HOW TO SERVE IT. by Christine Terhune Herrick

Apparently a well-known cookbook and general household scold of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries, with a name that desperately belongs to a high society dinner party hostess in a Three Stooges movie. Looking at her copious list of titles on B&N, it's hard to believe that they are missing some of her other fine works published by Harper's, which are listed as House-Keeping Made Easy and Cradle and Nursery. Bet those are some corkers, alright.

Then there's something for all of you young ladies out there in blogdom, Juliet Corson's fascinating FAMILY LIVING ON $500.00 A YEAR A Daily Reference-Book for Young and Inexperienced Housewives.

Of course, nowadays it would probably be a book on how young and inexperienced housewives can make $500 an hour in the adult entertainment industry.

THE EXPERT WAITRESS. by Anne Frances Springsteed

Somehow, I think Anne Frances Springsteed was not the sort to be found ladling clam bisque out of the tureen. I can imagine the tone being something akin to "Do not recoil from the deserved stern thrashing that comes to the sluggardly waitress."

HOW TO GET STRONG AND HOW TO STAY SO. by William Blaikie

One quickly imagines pasty-thighed pomaded swells with bowlers and waxy moustaches juggling Indian clubs and throwing a medicine ball. One of the booksellers, George Robert Minkoff, Inc., includes a bit of biographical information on Mr. Blaikie:

Blaikie was a lawyer, an athlete, and an important early proponent of physical education. It is said he could lift a weight of 1019 pounds when he was 17 years old. He was the captain of a winning football team at the Boston Latin School, and a member of the crew team at Harvard. One of the most important American 19th century marathon walkers, he held the American record for the 225-mile walk between Boston and New York for a decade. The present volume is his first book. It is considered something of a classic as a proponent of physical education. Although the book was first published in 1879, it was in print until the early 20th century.

So there!

Then there is this one, of which the Possumblog Reference Department is sorely in need--EVERYBODY'S POCKET CYCLOPAEDIA of Things Worth Knowing, Things Difficult to Remember, and Tables of Reference

With this, I could rule the world. (Of course, it's 63 bucks, which is kinda steep.)

Then finally, there is MAN AND HIS MALADIES; Or, the Way to Health. A Popular Handbook of Physiology and Domestic Medicine. by A. E. Bridger, B.A., M.D.

There's nothing like old medical books to simultaneously entertain and nauseate a person. I have a repro copy of a slim 1776 medical treatise geared toward military surgeons--the part on gunshot wounds and amputations is particularly colorful.

Anyway, those are the books Harper & Brothers thought we all might be educated and made more better by reading.

Next up: How to Write.

posted by Terry at 10:48:00 AM

Busy-ness

Well, today looks like it's gonna be just as busy with mindless diddlery as the other days of this week, so there will be 27% less free stale bread--I'm sure you both will not mind.

IN OTHER MATTERS, Possumblog once again serves as THE information place for stories of international scandal and intrigue, especially for the sad, odd person searching Google for castro's a shiny, sexy kitty.

Didn't we all just know that?

Although some will say this ranks right up there with the myth of J. Edgar Hoover's transvestitism, The Possumblog Intelligence Service reports that in private Uncle Fidel does indeed refer to himself as "el Gato," and parades around in a spandex catsuit while watching old episodes of Batman featuring Eartha Kitt.

posted by Terry at 8:42:00 AM

Thursday, January 02, 2003

Lileks Puts on the Karnak Turban

One of the drawbacks about spending a Wednesday at home is the slim likelihood of getting to sit in front of a computer other than one being used for Yu-Gi-Oh's Ingrown Toenail Battle or such claptrap, meaning that I completely missed the Lileks' Newhouse column of yesterday, in which our hero travels into the future to let us in on what the year holds for us:

[...] Feb. 4: The Iraq war began. Dan Rather announced with his trademark folksy enthusiasm that "the Iraqi army is collapsing like a cheap ironing board." Viewers were concerned, since a cheap ironing board is difficult to fold -- it's the expensive, high-quality ironing boards that are noted for the ease with which they collapse. Everyone assumed that the war is going poorly. The next morning commentators warned of the quagmire that would follow if the war wasn't over by the fabled Iraqi early mid-spring, when the weather would be "almost as humid as Vietnam." CBS taped a sequence with Walter Cronkite in which he declared the war lost, but they decided to wait a few days before using it.

Feb. 7: The Iraqi government collapsed. The large number of Saddam impersonators meant that every neighborhood in Baghdad had its own to string up and spit on. That afternoon on "All Things Considered," NPR began a series of reports called "Winning the War, Losing the Peace," in which reporters interviewed Saddam's portrait painter, his chief architect, his tailor and other Iraqis unhappy with the American occupiers. "With the country facing an uncertain future," the reporter said, "there is already nostalgia for the days of Saddam, a golden age of stability whose draw is no less powerful for having ended less than 17 hours ago." [...]

posted by Terry at 11:25:00 AM

Not satisfied with merely changing her blog template on an hourly basis, Andrea Harris has now moved the entire nation of Spleenville over to a new home over at http://spleenville.com/journal/. Go and drop off some cookies and give her a nice compliment (and tell her to please reconsider the use of the photo of Elijah Wood in bed (ick) and use something like this instead.)

posted by Terry at 10:43:00 AM

13-9!

Hard to believe it, but Penn State didn't score a single touchdown! Yesterday's game wasn't one of Auburn's best--too many brain cloud-type penalties, too little offense, way too much needless heart-pounding excitement there in the last few minutes, but thankfully it was a victory, and it even matched my predicted 4 point spread. I sure thought there would be a bit more scoring, though. Also, a double loss for the Lions, in that despite having garnered a whopping 29% of the online poll results for the Capitol One National Mascot of the Year voting, in a surprising move, Monte the Grizzly of the University of Montana was awarded the coveted prize with only 9% of the votes. This 9% equalled not only that of Albert the Gator of Florida (which is just fine if they lose) and Miami's Sebastian the Ibis (dork), but was exceeded not only by Br'er Nittany but also by the 11% pulled in by Georgia Tech's Buzz the Yellow Jacket! Is there some sort of behind-the-scenes judging scandal going on like at the Winter Olympics? Looks fishy to me, even without the presence of any French judges and Russian mobsters (that I know of).

One thing that Penn State did manage to do was come up with an absolute screamer of a promotional spot. I'm sure they've used it all year, but yesterday was the first time I had seen it, and it is a peach. Not that Auburn's spot highlighting the National Center for Asphalt Technologies isn't very nice, but Penn's is a cut above. The spot opens with a shot of a baby in a diaper, playing with blocks--a title in lower case letters flashes up, "architect." Then another baby, waving a feather duster--"air traffic controller," then another little girl baby who is wailing then suddenly stops and smiles--"actress." Oh, I get it--this is what they'll be when they grow up and graduate from Penn State...cute premise. Then there are some more babies and titles, then there's a shot of two babies on the floor. The baby to the left gently picks up the arm of the other unsuspecting baby. He deftly brings it up to his mouth and clamps down on it--title pops up, "management." Good one, guys!

In other excitement, the Tree of 1,876 Tips was gently stowed in its box for next year, along with the ornaments and lights and wreaths and Santas and poinsettias and wire hooks and Santa mugs. I always have a terrible twinge when taking down the Christmas stuff, and not just from the physical effort. It's just sort of melancholy.

But I made up for it by rearranging the den furniture to make room for the kids to have their computer downstairs (it had been in Oldest Girl's room, making for more than one full scale brawl) and I even fixed it so it doesn't keep crashing. Funny thing--the entire time I had it, it never gave me a bit of problem, but the moment it was tranferred to the care of Oldest, it began suffering a continual string of glitches and failures, once even requiring the use of a boot disk to bring it back. Now part of the problems were caused by a spent CMOS battery, which I replaced yesterday, and the large clots of dust inside, which I carefully blew out into my eyes, but part of the problem is her insistence that she knows everything without reading the instructions. If something didn't do as she thought it should, she would just start mashing all the buttons or repeatedly turning it on and off. Golly, Windows looooves that trick. And I think part of the problem was the Barbie Riding Club CD which mysteriously disappeared.

She blamed this loss on everyone in the family, even though she was the last one to use it. Interestingly, when I opened the case to change the battery, what should be found sliding around down in the bottom of the cabinet? Yep, a Barbie Riding Club CD. Now how it got to the very bottom of the cabinet I cannot begin to figure out, unless she somehow managed to slide it over the top of the CD tray and then closed the tray, pushing the disc back inside the machine where it fell to the bottom like an envelope behind a drawer. I am sure that she will not recall a single detail of this. But, in any event, it now works like a charm again, sans dust and trapped CD and dead battery.

And on neutral ground.

posted by Terry at 9:28:00 AM

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Nearly quitting time...

So, after surfing around a bit, I find that an entire universe of stuff has been said and done in the few days I was incommunibloggo. I can't begin to link to everyone (well, that's a bald-faced lie--I could, but I am very lazy) who posted pithy bits of wisdom. Hopefully, anyone who lands here is also already very familiar with everyone up there in the blogroll, so you probably already have a good idea of the fine stuff to be found there.

Tomorrow is another holiday for Possumblog, and another day without bloggery on my part, but I intend to put it to good use by trying to sleep late, and watching football, and then going outside at midnight and letting loose a few blank charges from my Bess while screaming about the tyranny of King George. Keeps the neighbors on their toes, don't you know.

Anyway, Lord willing I will see you all again on Thursday, and you have my hopes that the next twelve months will be kind to each of you.

posted by Terry at 4:53:00 PM

Wow, where does the time go?

Oh yeah, work.

Anyway, the stack of stuff left undone has grown smaller now, leaving me a bit of time for some housekeeping chores here at Possumblog...

Fred Firstly, all of you need to reset your permalinks for Fragments from Floyd to reflect the new URL. It appears fair Fred has finally fixed his foul and flippantly flummoxed (for some reason, I can never link to Fred without going on an "F" alliteration riff--my apologies) server/host problems and has gradumicated up to his own domain name at http://fragmentsfromfloyd.com/. GO! READ!

Second, we just had a visitor to Possumblog via Google searching for redneck terms stove-up. It may help you to remember that "stove" in this case is the past tense of "stiffen," not "stiffened" as you were probably taught in school. It is used to describe a particular malady in which the body's musculature is sore and movement is difficult due to duress or hard physical labor, vis.: "Yes, Jonelle, I of a certainty am stove up from throwing those sacks of cement yesterday, and I am very much down in my back." In addition, a modifier may be added, "all," indicating a more complete loss of motor function, vis.: "It is such a shame that Miss Jimmie is all stove up from being hit by the mail truck. I fear she will not be able to compete in the log toss."

The Possumblog Linguistics Department is happy to be of assistance in these matters.

Thirdly, an international visitor from Chile searching el Google for unconventional ant killer. Isn't this the way it always it? Everyone wants to get rid of the unconventional--'the nail that sticks up is hammered down' indeed--doggone it all, why not leave those poor unconventional ants alone and let them go their own way! They aren't hurting you, and there's like a billion or so who actually are pillaging your food--one or two unconventional sorts aren't gonna make a difference! Maybe they will become the next big ant poets, or invent the ant polio vaccine, or...hmm?

What? You sure? Ohhhh.

Never mind.

Item D. I haven't said a single thing about this for two whole weeks, but tomorrow in Orlando there is going to be a football game between Coke Bottle Joe's Nittany Lions (9-3, ranked #10) and the Auburn Tigers (8-4, ranked #19). I have not mentioned this before simply because I am worried. First of all, the stupid Nittany Lion won the Capitol One Mascot Vote (and don't those results look just a little suspicious to anyone?). And second, look at what we are up against! And there's not just them, but these ones, too! Not only that, they have Coach Paterno!

Gonna be a tough fight, for sure. Possumblog Sports Center's competent and hard-working statistician Ipsa Dixie is still on holiday vacation in Harpersville, but she left a note on my desk suggesting, after the angry part about another lawsuit if the dirty limerick about her is not removed from the men's room wall, that Possumblog readers visit the Tiger's website to get an idea of the disparity in the matchup--Penn State leads in every major category, including being nearest to the Latrobe Brewery.

As always however, despite all signs to the contrary, I cannot be called upon to predict failure for my team. Possumpick of the Day--Auburn 21, PSU 17.

posted by Terry at 2:29:00 PM

As you were warned...

The story of the rest of my Christmas time off. RUN! RUN AWAY!

There now. As I mentioned yesterday, the rest of my time this past week was just as busy as the first day, but without as much heavy lifting. Sunday was church, lunch with Ashley's other set of grandparents and exchanging gifts with them (and bringing home a rather large cast resin angel for the yard), then back to church (and I was finally able to lead singing for once without coughing or loosing my place). Monday, up early (of course), did stuff all day and went to visit and exchange gifts with some of Ashley's other relatives and her other grandparents AGAIN (less said, the better), Tuesday was spent preparing the house for Santa Claus.

This involved convincing several small children to take their toys from the den and up to their room so Santa would not trip and sue us. This took all day. "Kids, get to work! Santa..." "Yes, Daddy, we know. We don't want Santa to fall and kill himself in our den floor." I did my final gift wrapping for Reba and got all of the kids to sign her Christmas cards, we had supper and gifts with Reba's mom and dad, which is where the earthworm part of the saga comes in. I took Catherine to the van to leave, and we saw a long redworm wriggling across the sidewalk. She watched it intently for a long time (it takes forever to get away from some places, you know) and talked to Mr. Earthworm about birds and Santa. As everyone finally got to the door, Cat screamed back (several times) that she had found an earthworm. Each kid came by and looked at it and got in, except for Rebecca who came running to the van oblivious to the continued Tiny Girl Earthworm Commentary. "Hey, SLOW DOWN! STOP RUn..." Right down on top of it. Which freaked Rebecca out and she started crying about killing Catherine's Mr. Earthworm. (ahhh, holidays!) She finally calmed down when she saw Mr. Earthworm wriggling again. (I dared not tell her he was in agony, only that he was just looking for the grass. It seemed to help.)

Got back home and bundled the kids all off to bed to await the arrival of the guy who keeps trying to send me to the poor house every year. Reba and I decided we better watch a movie for a couple of hours to make sure they were all truly asleep, so we popped in Ocean's 11. We hadn't seen this one before--good fun, lots of cool scenery, suspenseful, deft comedy. We liked it. And by the time it was over, the kids WERE asleep. And I just about was.

But, it was time for digging the hidden treasures out from our closet and sneaking them downstairs. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but for some reason, Reba was in full chatter mode and then Rebecca got out of bed and was stumbling around upstairs and I had to go get her back in the bed. "Why's Mama downstairs? What's going on?" "Nothing, sugar, she's just checking to see if Santa's come yet." "Why?" "Look, just go back to sleep and don't get up or he ain't EVER gonna get here!" "Okay."

Went back and finished arranging stuff and messing up a plate with a piece of cake and a glass with some milk, which was artfully left on the table for inspection by the crew in the morning. The final piece was the annual Toilet Papering of the Stair Landing. This is done to foil our oldest child, who since she was only seven or eight has been a real [expletive deleted--and boy is it a good one] about trying to sneak in and find out what everyone got before anyone else got up. The tissue is fragile enough to immediately indicate a breach of security, yet easily cleaned up and reused. And it drives Oldest batty. The other kids think it's great fun to tear it down, but she has taken to looking at it as a sign that we don't trust her. Which we don't, of course. The reasons for which will become apparent shortly.

I finish the papering, and Reba and I hit the bed exhausted as usual. I sleep the sleep of the dead until suddenly I hear the unmistakeable chatter of children. For a moment I can't think, then my eyes slam open. Our room is dark, it's dark outside, and yet there is light in the hallway. I look at the clock--3:15 a.-stinking-m. Immediate action--up out of bed in a flash, stormed down the hall to see Oldest lounging in her bed reading from a stack of books strewn about and Middle Girl sitting at the foot of the bed with her Gameboy, happily oblivious. It seems that Rebecca had gone to the bathroom (again) a short time earlier before I was awakened, noticed that Ashley's light was on and became engaged with her in the attempt to see when Santa arrives. "Yeah, Ashley said she had been up since 1!" Anger, hissed threats of harm and mayhem, apoplexy, books put away, game turned off, everyone back in bed with Dad's not too subtle suggestion that this little episode will never EVER be repeated upon pain of permanent placement on the naughtly list. Had the intended effect on Middle Girl--Oldest just kept shooting Middle Girl dirty looks as if it were her fault. ::sigh::

Three hours later, the kids are all up again, ready to go, except for Ashley who is still playing the sullen victim card (ahhh, the holidays!) but she did manage to grace us with her presence as we all saw what Santa brought. This year Catherine was very concerned about making sure Santa had eaten, and was delighted to see he had fixed himself some cake and milk and had gotten some raisins for Rudolph. The kids got most of what they had asked for (which wasn't a lot--they really aren't the greedy sorts, thankfully)--the big things were for Jonathan a guitar, Catherine a Barbie cash register, Rebecca a Password Journal (easily defeated by mere prying, by the way), and Ashley her own Gameboy.

I did manage to get Reba something other than a washing machine--she has been angling for a new electric blanket for years and I finally got her one, which she was tickled about. She got me the Band of Brothers tape set, which I watched in its entirety over the next couple of days. What an incredible production! I think it's the best World War II feature ever made. Just incredible. She also got me something that I think I will treasure for a long time.

As I have mentioned before, she does not know that I write this silly blog, nor does anyone else in my immediate family or my circle of physical acquaintances. I've just never felt the need to tell anyone, I guess because they would rightly think it's pretty dumb. Yet, in a bit of odd synchony, Reba gave me a small, pocket-sized antique book from 1901--we both like antiques, and antique books especially, but this one was interesting in that it was a book on writing--a concise little styleguide with spelling and grammar rules and forms of address that she found at a small decorating shop in town. It has a wonderful section on composition--basically, write what you know. Write with economy. Write to be understood. A more wonderful gift she could not have given me.

Thursday and Friday Reba had to go back to work, so those two days were spent playing with the kids' toys and trying to find sufficient batteries to make sure everything squeaked and peeped and blipped properly, and part of Friday was spent chasing around town picking up our paychecks and going to the bank and going for Rebecca's annual physical. Strep throat! (ahhh, holidays!)

Saturday, we finally did Christmas with my mom and sister, which thankfully did not require me to kill any house wrens. Nice dinner, after which the kids suddenly decided to let the various symptoms of cabin fever loose upon us all, requiring that Dad call a halt to the whole thing and haul them all out to the van and go home.

Sunday rolled back around and I spent morning and afternoon redoing the teacher roll for the millionth time. Grr. And then finally, made it back here.

The entire time I was off was spent away from the television and the computer--no blogging, no e-mail (sorry for the late replies, folks), no Googlewhacking, not even any Lileks--just a constant whirl of life. The last two days I have felt like Rip Van Winkle when I cruise back by and see my old virtual friends and what all they did while I was "gone." But, it sure will be nice when it comes around again. Like, say, tomorrow! Yep, tomorrow will be spent away from the computer, too, as my family and I drag a new year into being. I am not one for resolutions every year, but I think mine will be to start using "twenty." I am kinda tired of "two thousand." and I think it's high time we all started saying "twenty-o-three" instead of "two thousand and three."

So there.

posted by Terry at 11:12:00 AM

Reader Mail!!

One of the many millio...tiny closely knit community of Possumblog readers reacts to my washer woes--from the sunny warmth of Da Range in Northern Minnesota, one Toni Albani writes:

Dear Waterlogged

Terry - you need to get a wet/dry shop vac!! Don't need no stinkin testosterone to know that! [...]

Toni also went on to compliment your host for his witty ramblings, stating that they are a useful tool for learning how to be from the South, for which I offer my thanks to Toni, and my humble apologies to all of Toni's neighbors who now must put up with the products of this education, the most annoying being Toni constantly requesting sweet tea at the restaurant.

Anyway, as to the question of the shop vac. As I told Toni, I have managed to do without a shop vac for all these years, but for a reason. Like nature, I abhor vacuums. Vacuuming was my chore at home (the vacuum cleaner was even called "Terry's vacuum") and although I am probably...who am I kidding, I AM the world's best vacuumer, I cannot stand having to do it. Let's face it, vacuuming sucks.

I thought when I got married that this would be one of those loathsome duties I could ditch, but I am still the only one who will get the vacuum out and clean the floors. The vacuum is now "Daddy's vacuum." Aargh. I will confess that I did buy a Dustbuster a couple of years ago that uses the same batteries as my cordless drill and screwdriver, but it was in a moment of weakness. I still hate vacuuming. The shop vac does have the advantage of being manly, but in the end, I just don't want another vacuum. Ever.

HOWEVER, if anyone wants to come over and vacuum for me, shop vac or whatever, please, PLEASE feel free!

posted by Terry at 8:53:00 AM

Monday, December 30, 2002

Okay, so where was I?

Oh yeah! The Further Adventures of Life Along the Pinchgut, in which we find out that our hero is a Pathetic, Whipped, Knuckle-Dragging Moron, AGAIN! With other rude and disgusting stories of Earthworms, Turkey, Large Resin Angels, Tools, Rubber Hoses, The Infinite Variety of Cornbread Dressings, Ohhh Boy—You Rook at Deese Buttahns, Coal and Switches, Kris Kringle Survives—Despite Best Efforts of One Rude Twelve Year Old, Stomach Distress, and That’s Not Something You See Everyday. Our saga begins…

Saturday, December 21. It is warm. My eyes are closed but I can feel the sun high overhead. The waves are quiet and I can hear a few bathers a good distance down the beach. I have never been to the beach in the off season—this is incredible. I drift off to sleep again, then…bumpTHUMPcreak “The kids say something stinks downstairs and I smell it too—it smells like something overheating like wires or something—can you smell it up here?” I jerked up in bed and felt the sharp jab of every stiff muscle in my body, “OWW I MEANT TO GET UP WHEN YOU DID AND HELP YOU GET THE CLOTHES DOWN BUT I WENT BACK TO SLEEP WHAT’S WRONG LET ME GET DRESSED OW!!”

My eyes felt like I had slept face down in iron filings. “It’s okay, you don’t have to get up yet, but the washing machine just stopped, and I can’t get it going again.” I tried to breathe, but the entire left side of my head was clogged with sickly humours. I hacked and rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. 7:05. Why yes, it’s much too late for anyone but lazy slugabeds! And yes, I’m quite sure that I did not have to get up then, just because a wife type person came in and woke me from a dead sleep.

I got my glasses and stood up and shuffled my way to the bathroom, where I was met by a horrifyingly grizzled drifter with wild standup hair and my underwear on. Reminded self not to look in mirror in mornings. Got ankle and knee and sinuses working, brushed teeth, shaved, got dressed and went downstairs to the laundry room.

Stench of the burnt flesh of Reddy Kilowatt. Tub full of water and blue jeans. 15 year old Kenmore. You do the math.

“Well, Reba, guess what’s for Christmas?” She guessed right. It had been leaking water intermittently for a while, along with a bit of oil. Finally decided to give up after many years of good hard service. AND GAVE UP ON STINKIN’ CHRISTMAS VACATION! STUPID RASACRASMAL*&&%$#. And all that. But at least I could act heroic and manly.

After a few minutes of study and butt scratching, the day’s sequence of events congealed in my head—drain water, remove door to laundry room, get washer out with hand trucks, move to driveway via garage for the charity appliance picker-uppers, take truck to store, buy gleaming monument to the genius that is America, drive back, crush self to death getting said appliance off of truck, find that death would be too easy, spatula self from under washer like Wile E. Coyote and walk around bobbing and squeaking like a concertina, roll new hole in bank account back into house, hook up hoses, complete laundry, congratulate self for having both an X and a Y chromosome, then hide.

A noble plan, indeed.

Well then, the water. Being the scientific genius I am, I realized that merely bailing the water out of the tub was much too base, and called for an elegant Heroic solution, namely the magic of the siphon. I rummaged around in my garage full of crap and came up short in the hose department. There were the abundant lengths of garden hoses, but they were all dirty and outside and probably full of slugs.

TO THE HARDWARE STORE! To buy hose. Franklin the Truck sputtered and hammered and flamed to life and coasted down to the foot of the hill, where we found that the local hardware store had no flexible tubing. (I guess because it’s not hard or something.) Next best thing? Why, washing machine hoses, bucko! They’ll be just long enough, or I could even hook them end to end!

(At this point, I will jump into the future of the story and remind both you and myself that washing machine hoses have two female ends, and are thus incapable of being joined together without a male-male coupling. I knew that one time a long time ago, but forgot it until the moment came when I opened the bag of hoses, at which point I sorta smacked myself in the forehead, like this *!*.)

OH, yeah, and I needed some hand trucks. Remember this—when you plan, make sure you plan based on the stuff you already have. Finally found a set which the hardware folks had been using around the store—20 bucks. A deal for sure. Oh, yeah, and a hinge. Why? Well, you see, when we moved in, the middle hinge of the laundry room door didn’t have a hinge pin, so I force-fit a slightly too big one in and the door had been slightly bound up too tight ever since. Of course, the best thing would be a hinge pin, but the hardware store was also devoid of these, too. I don’t know why. SO, I bought a hinge, with the idea that I would get its pin and be all better. Because I’m real stupid that way.

Got back, decided to go ahead and take door off, and found that brand new hinge and pin were the exact same slightly too big thing that I had tried to use five years ago. Crap. Oh well, probably won’t be the only trip to the hardware store today, he said with incredible prescience.

On to the water. Take out jeans and wring into tub. Prepare hose.

Slurp, two gallons into bucket, dump into toilet.
Slurp, two gallons into bucket, dump into toilet.
Slurp, two gallons into bucket, dump into toilet.
Slurp, two gallons into bucket, dump into toilet.
Slurp, two gallons into bucket, dump into toilet.

Continue about five more times. Include two slurps which lasted about a half second too long, resulting in getting a nice mouthful of cold, soapy, indigo stained water. Also give yourself a pain in your sternum to replicate that of having to physically hold the ends of hose down into both tub and bucket as water slowly drained. Watch about 45 minutes drift away from your otherwise rich and rewarding life. Finally, get out hated plastic dipper to get remaining water out of tub unreachable by end of hose and curse the very idea of having to soil the purity of the operation by bailing. Also take a moment to wonder why it was that in your first trip to the hardware store that you did not just purchase a small $5 electric pump. Finally, get several beach towels off of shelf and finish sopping up remaining water. Curse.

That done it was time to move some things and unhook hoses and cords and tubes. Hand trucks are used for a very crucial five minutes in order to swing old dead machine through doorway then into kitchen to the bewildered gaze of small children who suddenly felt the urge to gambol underneath Daddy while he was working. Silly, silly children. Go, children. Go, Go! Before Daddy has a coronary.

Get it placed just so outside so that it is not in full view of everyone and come back inside. “Guess what?” Aw crap. “What?” came my timid query. “The dryer vent has a split in it.” Whew. I was half expecting she had found Jimmy Hoffa or something. And that explains a lot about all the lint in the laundry room. In any case, dryer vent hoses are no problem for manly he-men repair guys like me, and provided an excuse for yet another trip to the hardware store. But this time, it was not just a hardware store, but the evil, crushing big-box brute known as Home Depot, which actually has appliances and hardware and stuff you would expect to find in a hardware store!

Franklin and I hit the road again and reached the strip mall which houses both Home Depot and a Super Target and about a half jillion other stores busting at the seams with Christmas shoppers. Resisting the urge to make better time by employing my revving engine/exploding muffler gag I finally got to the Promised Land and went inside.

Looking for good and cheap. Not too cheap, but not something for the Fortress of Solitude, either. Hmmm. $1,000 front load Maytag, eh. I got your lonely, mister. Finally found the Admiral toploads for more reasonable amounts of arms and legs and was met by a pleasant clerk who told me she should would be right back.

(Another break in the action here—please remember that I have not had breakfast yet, and am already in a swoon due to being in a giant hardware store, and this girl was a redhead.)

She came back and asked what I was looking for. Not too cheap, but not too expensive. We looked at the Admiral and found out it was not in stock. She really knew her machinery, though, and we looked at some Maytags and compared and contrasted. She said she loved the one her husband had bought for her. But doggone it, I told her, the same features of the Maytag could be had on that Admiral model for a hundred less bucks. She looked again and the Admiral couldn’t be delivered until after Christmas. Sigh. “Well, I guess I’ll run over to Sears and see what they’ve got.”

I hated to leave because she had been so nice. It’s hard to find clerks in big stores who actually know what they’re doing—they’re mostly kids with the social skills of a rock, and slightly less intelligence. And she just looked so darned cute in her scruffy, grubby, too-big gray jacket with the ends of the sleeves rolled up and her hair pulled back in a big clip and with her green eyes just a’looking at the computer. I guess she was my age or older, but she could have been a lot older, there was no way of telling without looking at her birth certificate. She had the signs of a life cleanly lived—no drinking or smoking or staying out too late or hanging with the wrong crowd and reading Cosmo and stuff—no wrinkles, just a couple of gray hairs, no makeup but didn’t need it anyway.

“Did you see the ones over on the other side of the aisle?” “You mean there’s MORE!” Hey, maybe I didn’t have to leave! There was a whole line of GEs over there, and she thought I had seen them. I walked over and started checking prices and features and then was hit by a sudden attack of the old fart. “But this has a plastic tub. I don’t think I want a plastic tub. Doesn’t the Admiral (that’s not in stock, remember) have a metal tub? Gee, plastic…”

Next thing you know, I would have started singing the praises of back when I had to use rocks. I guess I sounded like some clod who had just showed up at the computer store to upgrade from DOS—‘Oh, I don’t know about that Internet thing.’

She leaned on the one next to the one I was examining, “I really don’t think the tub should be a big concern—these are molded so that there are no snags like the older plastic tubs, and the material is a much more durable kind than they used even a couple of years ago. You’ll probably wear out the machine before you do the tub.” I raised back up out of the depths of the washer and turned toward her. Wow, she was good. Did I mention that she had deep chestnut red hair? And big green eyes?

SNAP OUT OF IT, MAN!

Too late. I was just a big squishy bucket of goo. She wrote up the ticket and I hunkered over the counter admiring her short little fingers with the rough nails and that darned chestnut hair pulled back just so and the great big golf shirt she had on under the grubby gray jacket, and as I stood there handing over all of the Christmas money, I noticed that her shop apron had a wire loop full of little embroidered patches—must have been twenty or thirty. Each one saying “Employee of the Month.” In addition she had five or six more little metal pins across the top of the apron “Top Producer,” “Service Award,” stuff like that. NO BLEEDIN’ WONDER! Some poor sap wanders in looking for hinge pins and she sells him a $10,000 Generac.

HINGE PINS! Ooh, almost forgot that! And dryer vent hose! Yikes. Luckily, they had both, so even more Christmas money got spent on those items.

I went out to get the truck and wait for the washer to come from the back and mull over how it was that I got to be so pathetic when she motioned me back inside. Oh crap. Something bad. “You know I told you we had that one in stock? Guess what…” I was crestfallen, and it must have shown. “No, wait now. Come over here. That one was out of stock, but I got you the next model up for the same price. Is that okay?”

Hmmm.

Well, of course it is!

Not to be outdone, she even laughed when I warned her not to let the loading guy scratch the bed of the truck (which is mostly rust held together by dirt and will power).

Got home and gingerly slid the machine out of the truck bed with no drama or death and got it right in and held Reba in thrall with the story of how it came to be ours. (Sans the rhapsodic paean to petite, softly-constructed, doe-eyed, mind-control-wave-generating sales clerks—this was distilled to “She was very sweet and helpful and she gave me a good deal.” No use pushing my Christmas luck.)

The dryer vent was replaced, the floor was scrubbed of accumulated motor oil and dirt, and the new machine was wrestled into place, the hoses hooked up (with the siphoning set to be held in reserve as replacements) and the plug shoved into the outlet. Success! And the hinge pin fit perfectly! Success! Sorta.

Just as I was putting the door back in place, the BOTTOM hinge half pulled its screws right out of the soft core of the door. CURSE WORD! The little short screws had stripped the holes long ago, and since the door was so hard to close, I had forgotten about it. Needed longer screws. TO THE HARDWARE STORE!

Slightly after noon, and I now am making the third trip to a hardware store. I grabbed the hinge that didn’t work before and went back to the bottom of the hill and exchanged it and got some longer screws. Home again, hinge half back on, all pins set, door swings like Barry Bonds now. Success!

But again, since I’m stupid, and since the morning had progressed without me killing myself with a major appliance, I started to think.

This is always bad.

You see, our microwave oven/range hood burnt out almost a year ago. I have gotten near weekly updates about how nice it would be to have a microwave that worked in the kitchen. I have just shot a huge hole in our account for a washing machine. But, we were going to have to replace it anyway, sometime. Right? Why not now? It’s Christmas, Reba has already decided large home appliances do make a pretty nice gift, I had a helpful person at the store, and I was in full testosterone, truck driving, beating and banging and destruction mode.

“Hey Reba. I was thinking…” “You want to replace the microwave, too?”

Good grief. In the Great Game of the Sexes, I am Chutes and Ladders. Yes, that’s what I wanted to do, so one more time, a’hunting and gathering I went. First stop—to look for Superwoman. Bad news. Shift change had caused my helpful young woman to evaporate into nothingness, replaced with dull-eyed dudes and this really stringy looking woman who had the misfortune to be walking by. “Do you have any of these in stock?” A simple question which led to much hand-wringing, two-way radio chatter with some other slack-brained yayhoo, much looking upward at the rows of boxes above, moving of ladders and some guy to lift and tote. Yes, they had exactly one of the kind I wanted. The guy she called climbed up and got it onto the floor and left to go smoke a joint. The box had a tremendous hole in one corner, and looked like it had been hastily retaped. I looked around in vain for anything else that would do, and finally asked if I could open the box to make sure it was not damaged. She tugged and pulled trying to get the tape off as I zipped it open with my pocketknife. (I bet Connie would have had a box cutter—a special gold-plated one with “Number One Employee” on it.)

Open the box, pull the microwave, and just as I suspected, it looked like it had taken a direct hit from a grenade. The whole side was dented in and the back was buckled. “Wow, it sure does look like it mighta got damaged! I bet if you’da tried to put that in, it probly wouldn’ta fit!” Thank you, Nancy Drew, for the stunning insight. I left her there with the pile of microwave parts and headed out for the other big box down the street, Lowe’s.

Lowe’s was a distinct contrast—huge rows of bright appliances (including the washer I had bought earlier—looks like I saved around $75 or so!) and two whole rows of over the range microwaves. I was standing there looking at a GE and a Frigidaire and suddenly I was swept up by a very nattily dressed, gray haired, bespectacled, and slightly effeminate sexagenarian Japanese sales clerk. “Oh, dis one vary good, and dis one vary good. You use dis thahmamotere to check the tempachu of tha food—verrrrry niiiiicce. And oh boy!, looka tha buttahns on here with popacor and baka pototu and bewarage. Verrrrrry nice. Not so much price as this one, but this have two rack for the cook food and it have---ohhhh, boy, looka that Niccce! You not go wrong either one vary nice and cook good. You like eat, yes? Of course you do!”

I wound up getting the Frigidaire, mainly because it did have the very cool thermometer probe. “Marry Creesmas—Happy New Year!” Good thing he didn’t have red hair, I suppose.

Anyway, got THAT home and proceeded to yank the old one and install the new. Which is much harder than it sounds and involves drilling holes into the cabinets which already had holes in them for the other microwave, and trying to make sure the new one doesn’t carom off my knee and fall into the floor and much euphemistic swearing and bad thoughts. Oh, and one more trip to the hardware store for something that I can’t even remember now.

Finally, along about five o’clock, it was done. And so was I. Then it was child cleaning time. Then it was time for me to collapse onto the bed.

And that was just the Saturday before Christmas. Each succeeding day until now was similarly full of stuff to do, but since it is now the end of my work day, I now must leave and go home and do more such superhuman tasks. And tomorrow, you will get to hear about some of the other promised tales and stories.

And yes, that is a warning.

posted by Terry at 4:59:00 PM

Hello!

Yes, I did manage to survive the holidays, and am now happily back at work so that I may get some well-earned sleep. But before that happens, I have an entire aircraft carrier-sized deck to swab of stuff that has built up over the past week and, of course, our Monday morning staff meeting to attend right now. I will be back. And yes, that is a warning.

posted by Terry at 8:28:00 AM

Friday, December 20, 2002

It's about that time

All next week will be spent with the chilluns, so there will be little in the way of scrumptious possumy goodness for a while. I know you will all make it just fine. I do want to correct a misstatement I made earlier, however, when I said I had a long, navel-gazing post prepared. For the record, as a non-placental mammal, possums technically have no navel into which to gaze. I hope I have not caused any confusion.

In other matters, I would like to take a moment and thank all the folks who have visited Possumblog over the past twelve months. Some of you have become virtual old friends, and I greatly appreciate having made your acquaintance. May you, and all of the other ones of you who stumble in here searching for Norah O'Donnell naked, Jodi Applegate legs, the price of goat jelly in Malta, Patricia Heaton's clavicle, corporal tunnal sindroam, handguns, Underoos, what does finger smell like, possum fur, is Scotland fake, Brittiny Spiers, steakhouse Edina Minnesota, Lewitt-Him, moistened bint, Trent Lott in cheerleader outfit, nucular, liars, Hillary big ankles, Jim Dandy grits, rules of architecture, Alabama bloggers, James Lileks Newhouse, screaming fits, why does this hurt, and Mrs. Hanji Sal, likewise have a very merry Christmas.

Please keep dropping by, the door is always open.

See you all on the 30th.

posted by Terry at 3:55:00 PM

Hey, someone else had a birthday!

Congrats to Mac Thomason for completing his first year of blogatory yesterday.

posted by Terry at 2:36:00 PM

THAT was fun!

Except for trying to cross Highway 280 at lunchtime, and trying to find a place to park in a lot with about 53% too few parking spaces. We aren't going back there--too much peoples, too crappy tiny foods.

Anyway, good conversation as usual. Topics included:

1. Former girl coworkers--I saw one at Target the other day, but I dared not speak to her since I had Screaming Tiny Child with me. She still looks REALLY nice, and she has FINALLY put on a few. Considering the way she used to eat (and still does, I guess), it's incredible beyond belief that she doesn't weigh 3,000 pounds. Good grief, she can pack the vittles away! The other former coworker, Big Tall Blond Marketing Girl, has gone and started another baby with her husband, which is okay, but she didn't check with us first. Sheesh. Some people, eh? I miss her a lot--after she got married a few years back she and hubby moved back up to their old hometown, so My Friend Jeff™ and I don't get to pal around with her anymore.

Of course, it could be the continued humilation of being around us that drove her away. Whenever we used to go out and have lunch with her, I would stand on the curb and make her stand in the gutter before I hugged her so I would be approximately the same height as her. She alway screamed with laughter, but somehow, now that she's gone, I think maybe I was being insensitive.

Nah.

2. Christmas--families are the weirdest things known to man.

3. His brother-in-law's '58 Buick Super--in pieces all across his sister's house. Plans are to paint it red. AAAAAGGGHHH! MFJ™ even went to the trouble of buying a '58 Buick paint chart off of e-Bay (man, you can get anything on the Internet) for him to encourage painting it back the way it was--aqua and white. This advice was studiously ignored.

4. Presents--MFJeff™ made his wife a ceramic cannister set, and bought her a neat piece of handmade jewelry from some woman here in town named Kevin. Yes...Kevin. Just roll your eyes and get it over with.

5. Other assorted coworkers who now have other businesses and I best not speak about due to legal concerns.

6. Iron skillets--proper care and seasoning thereof. I think I mentioned a while ago that I got myself a set for Christmas to replace one that became rusted because someone left water in it. I will not say who, so as not to damage my chances for a little Christmas cheer.

7. Vehicles--he still has a jones on for a new vehicle, and now even Mrs. My Friend Jeff™ is wanting something bigger to haul around their two tikes and their playgroup frenz. He wants something with three rows of seats that is not a minivan and not a big SUV. The one that he really wants is a Honda Pilot, except for not quite so many grickles. I suggested something like this.

8. Other stuff--soup du jour, napkins, morons, sphincters, skateboarders, tipping, glassblowing, Louisiana, a bad case of the stomach nerves, mullets, Velveeta, valises, hubcaps, and spam.

All in all, a lunch well spent. Even if I did only get two magazines.

posted by Terry at 2:15:00 PM

Know what time it is?

Why, it's time for another exciting lunch with My Friend Jeff™! Got a big stack of car magazines to swap with him today, and as usual, I will only get two in return. Piddling little CHEAPSKATE! That's why I like him, though.

Be back after while with manly stories of decorating tips and shoes.

posted by Terry at 11:15:00 AM

Hey, hey, hey, goodbye...

Sen. Lott to Step Down As GOP Leader

WASHINGTON - Sen. Trent Lott will step down as Senate Republican leader, a senior GOP aide close to the Mississippian said Friday, two weeks after Lott's endorsement of Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential bid touched off a national uproar.

posted by Terry at 10:01:00 AM

Well, I’ll be.

This stupid pile of crap is a year old! At 11:29:35, Thursday, December 20, 2001, I started writing this thing. A lot sure does happen in a year. Luckily, one constant has been stupid Blogger server problems.

Actually, it’s not really a surprise (my blogbirthday, not stupid, STUPID Blogger)—I’ve been anticipating the day for a while, and had come up with a overly long and tedious, contemplative, navel-gazing, sort of post talking about my thoughts about what I have been trying to do with this blog.

Maybe another time.

Seeing as I will be at home next week (and I really, REALLY doubt that I will have even five seconds free next week to post), I thought that instead of yakking on and on about my piddly concerns it might be good to remember that there are many hundreds of thousands of men and women this year who will not be complaining about the traffic and the jerk at Target, who will not be bemoaning the fact that Christmas is too secular, or too religious, who will not eat too much pecan pie, who will not tell their kids to calm down and be quiet, who will not worry about taking back the weird sweater, who will not dread going over to the Joneses, who will not wish Uncle Julio would shut up, who will not go to sleep halfway through the first quarter.

They keep watch and allow us to live our lives. They don’t do it simply for the money or the snappy looking free clothes. Their lot in life is a tough one, and dangerous. Yet, despite the danger, they stand there at the fenceline. Some folks hate them, hate what they represent—even some of the same people who thrive under their protection. Yet, there they stand.

It’s called duty, and honor.

I’m sure there are some of the stylish and sophisticated sorts out there who would be willing to argue the paint off a wall to the contrary. Fine. Whatever. Believe what you will, but as for me, life is too short to bother arguing with idiots.

Duty and honor mean something, otherwise, we would not exist as a nation.

So then, to the men and women who stand guard along the ramparts, thank you. May God grant you peace and strength.

Also, a special prayer of thanks for the men aboard SSBN 731, which proudly carries the name Alabama around the world. (This is the one instance in which it is very easy for this Tiger to say "Roll Tide!")

UPDATE--For some reason, the link to the USS ALABAMA website has been taken over within the last few hours by another Navy website for CREDO Pacific Northwest. I'm sure that someone will eventually get this fixed, but until then, you might want to check out this private site devoted to the ALABAMA.

posted by Terry at 9:36:00 AM

Thursday, December 19, 2002

My Internet connection went down this morning after a few furtive moments clicking around on my morning blogwalk, explaining, in part, the lack of activity here at Possumblog. It’s odd not being able to know what’s happening on Internet time—surely I’m missing something. Or not.

Anyway, right now it’s about 9 a.m. Sometime in the future, I’m sure that the computer boys will have hooked the hose back up and this will be posted, but for the moment, let me tell you something…

You know, nothing says “office Christmas party” quite like a big pot of collard greens!

Not only does it give the table a touch of festive greenery, it smells just like Grandma’s house (after the toilet backs up, but right before she takes a big dip of snuff). Not only is it pretty and odorlicious, it is one of those holiday finger foods that you just can’t get enough of!

Why, why, WHY did someone bring a seven gallon stockpot of collards? All the rest of the stuff is normal holiday fare such as a meat and cheese tray, crudite, desserts, chips and dip, sandwich fixings…do we really need a mess of greens? Is this really someone’s idea of light finger food?

Now I love turnip and mustard greens and collards just like anyone else. But friends, at the office Christmas party they are just out of place, like a tur…well, I better not use that example or one will surely find its way into the punchbowl.

You think people are weird? Try working with a herd of bureaucrats.

In related news, it is now about 9:30, and I just went downstairs to get the first of many 20 ounce Diet Cokes I will consume today, only to find that the snack bar had been brightly decorated and posted with a sign saying it was closed so that the Finance Department could have their Christmas party in there.

Which would be just fine, except in their exuberant decorating frenzy, they completely covered up all of the vending machines with pretty red plastic sheeting! The door was open, so I went in and went to my beloved Coke machine. Completely covered. Coin slot, buttons, and product bin. Sealed for your protection.

Grrrrrr. Whadda bunch of inconsiderate bean-counting maroons!

Luckily, I am a real man and had at my disposal the means of liberating these poor oppressed vending machines—the terrifying one and a half inches of cheap folding serrated Japanese stainless steel quickly sprang from my pocket and sliiiiiiiiced across the top of the bin…snipsnipsnipped at the coin slot…and ::poked:: a button hole. In went my coins, out came my caffeine fix.

I imagine sometime today we will go into lockdown as the culprit is searched for.

Oh good lord, it’s getting worse. 10:15 a.m.

I just went to rid myself of about 8 ounces of that Diet Coke I bought 45 minutes ago, and found one of our little straw-boss drones in the men’s room, washing vegetables in the sink. I made a joke about him being like Kramer preparing a whole meal in the shower, but of course, since he works in an asylum and has no concept of popular cultural references, he just went right on washing his little baby carrots and cherry tomatoes and bits of cauliflower.

I don’t know about you, but I ain’t eatin’ ‘em.

11:15. The official start of our noontide repast, except there are no forks. Gosh, you think people who are PLANNERS would have thought that out a bit.

Sink-Washing Martinet Guy got to lead the prayer by virtue of his awesome authority—“’kay, let’s pray so we can eat!” With such heartfelt faith and piety, I’m surprised he didn’t say “in Jebus’s name” at the end of it.

Tim the Cheese Seller dude I wrote about last week brought a nice selection of runny French stuff. I know one was Brie, and there was another one beside it that I got a gooey wad of. I don’t know what it is (and don’t really care) but it has an interesting flavor of butter and pecan sawdust and Clorox. Those French!

I found out who brought the Pot o’Collards, and I’m not surprised. He could pass for a member of some conspiracy group (Left or Right—he has a real ecumenical spirit), except he’s just a bit too insane. Five minutes alone with him, and even Lyndon LaRouche would shake his head and let out a low whistle. Of course, I may have gotten on his bad side by opening the pot and loudly asking, “Hey, who cooked a Christmas tree!?”

My contribution to the whole shebang was sandwich bread. This happened because I made a concerted effort to hide from the list-bearer, but I was finally found and could not escape. So, sandwich bread. BUT, not just any sandwich bread—“exotic” sandwich bread. This is the term dreamed up by our psychotic administrative support specialist to describe anything not square and white. So my “exotic” selection consisted of Jewish rye, pumpernickel, and sourdough, all purchased from that well-known purveyor of all such exotic foodstuffs, the Food World grocery store in Trussville.

11:40. Just went back for seconds and in order to keep from coming across like such a total cheese rube (as if you care), I asked Tim what the variety was that I had gotten earlier. Sounded something like “Geaumlahflahmlah.” Again, those French, and that wacky language of theirs! So if any of you want any cheese that tastes like swimming pool chemicals, be sure to ask for it by name.

I got a few more little knickknacks and doohickies and Tim was holding forth to someone about the various cheeses, and I heard one little gem fly out, “blahblahblah…yeah, it’s a real popular cheese with people because it doesn’t offer a big challenge…blahblahblah.”

Well, gee-stinkin’-whiz, excuse ME! Don’t I have enough challenges in life without some derned bacteria-laden milk concoction making it worse! I DON’T WANT CHALLENGING CHEESE! I want cheese in a pressurized can, cheese whose ass I can whip, cheese that sits there quietly and takes orders from ME! HEY, you want challenging cheese, be my guest, but go all the way! How about some nice Gouda with blowfish poison sprinkles, huh!? There’s you a challenge! How about a nice U238/Camembert blend, feta with ricin, or a sultry Reggiano Parmigiano with the clap. I got yer challenging cheese RIGHT HERE, bub!

Anyway, the Internet connection is still not back up as of noon, so I am going to copy this to a floppy, go over to the library and post it (Lord willing and Blogger has not had another server disaster) and try to answer all the huge stacks of Nigerian e-mail.

12:30. SAYYYY, not so fast there, Fat Boy! I just walked over and was met with a sign stating that all Birmingham City Libraries are closed today for inventory. Must be getting ready for that last big push before Christmas or something.

And, it started raining.

Blech.

So, I’m back here again.

FINALLY!!! 3:00 o'clock and it's working again. And nearly time to pack up my bread and go home.

Oh well.

posted by Terry at 3:02:00 PM

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

From my mole at Hill AFB, some sad news about a particular Holiday--Religious, Christian (Protestant), Christmas--Mark II, version Twelve Day...

Twelve Days of Christmas, DoD Style

The President has authorized the Department of Defense to assist Santa with the Twelve Days of Christmas. Status of acquisitions follows:

Day 1- Partridge in a pear tree: The Army and Air Force are in the process of deciding whose area of responsibility Day 1 falls under. Since the partridge is a bird, the Air Force believes it should have the lead. The Army, however, feels trees are part of the land component command's area of responsibility. After three months of discussion and repeated OpsDeps tank sessions, a $1M study has been commissioned to decide who should lead this joint program.

Day 2 - Two turtle doves: Since doves are birds, the Air Force claims responsibility. However, turtles are amphibious, so the Navy-Marine Corps team feels it should take the lead. Initial studies have shown that turtles and doves may have interoperability problems. Terms of refererence are being coordinated for a four-year, $10M DARPA study.

Day 3 - Three French Hens: At State Department instigation, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has blocked off-shore purchase of hens, from the French or anyone else. A $6M program is being developed to find an acceptable domestic alternative.

Day 4 - Four Calling Birds: Source selection has been completed, with the contract awarded to AT&T. However, the award is being challenged by a small disadvantaged business.

Day 5 - Five Golden Rings: No available rings meet MILSPEC for gold plating. A three-year, $5M accelerated development program has been initiated.

Day 6 - Six Geese a-Laying: The six geese have been acquired. However, the shells of their eggs seem to be very fragile. It might have been a mistake to build the production facility on a nuclear waste dump at former Air Force base that was closed under BRAC.

Day 7 - Seven Swans a-Swimming: Fourteen swans have been killed trying to get through the Navy SEAL training program. The program has been put on hold while the training procedures are reviewed to determine why the washout rate is so high.

Day 8 - Eight Maids a-Milking: The entire class of maids a-milking training program at Aberdeen is involved in a sexual harassment suit against the Army. The program has been put on hold pending resolution of the lawsuit.

Day 9 - Nine Ladies Dancing: Recruitment of the ladies dancing has been halted by a lawsuit from the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Association." Members claim they have a right to dance and wear women's clothing as long as they're off duty.

Day 10 - Ten Lords a-Leaping: The ten lords have been abducted by terrorists. Congress has approved $2M in funding to conduct a rescue operation. Army Special Forces and a USMC MEU(SOC) are conducting a "NEO-off" competition for the right to rescue.

Day 11 - Eleven Pipers Piping: The pipe contractor delivered the pipes on time. However, he thought DoD wanted smoking pipes. DoD lost the claim due to defective specifications. A $22M dollar retrofit program is in process to bring the pipes into spec.

Day 12 - Twelve Drummers Drumming: Due to cutbacks only six billets are available for drumming drummers. DoD is in the process of coordinating an RFP to obtain the six additional drummers by outsourcing; however, funds will not be available until FY 05.

As a result of the above-mentioned programmatic delays, and due to a high OPTEMPO that requires diversion of modernization funds to support current readiness, Christmas is hereby postponed until further notice.

That is all.

posted by Terry at 4:33:00 PM

Congratulations to Axis of Weevil Ministress for Venture Capitalism Elizabeth Spiers on the launching of her new collaborative effort with Jason Kottke and Nick Denton known to the world as GAWKER, which promises radical Manhattanism in the form of "a live review of city news, and by news we mean, among other things, urban dating rituals, no-ropes social climbing, Condé Nastiness, downwardly-mobile i-bankers, real estate porn -- the serious stuff."

Heaven help us all.

posted by Terry at 3:41:00 PM

Keeping and Bearing

Man shoots would-be carjacker; second suspect escapes

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- A U.S. Marine sergeant shot and killed a would-be carjacker in an exchange of gunfire in the drive-thru lane of a fast-food restaurant near a military base, police said Wednesday.

Lt. Huey Thornton, a police spokesman, said the fatal shooting was viewed by investigators as a case of self-defense and no charges were filed.

The Marine suffered a gunshot wound to the face but it was not believed to be life-threatening. Thornton said the Marine, identified as Sgt. James Lowery of Havelock, N.C., was hospitalized and expected to make a full recovery.

Thornton identified the dead man as Thaddeus Antone, 19, of Montgomery.

He was killed when he allegedly tried to commandeer Lowery's Chevrolet Suburban in the drive-thru lane of a McDonald's restaurant about 9:40 p.m. Tuesday near the entrance to the Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base. [...]

Semper Fire

posted by Terry at 3:14:00 PM

As I have noted before, I am probably in the top 2- to 3,000 smartest Marsupial-Americans in the entire state of Alabama who have their own blog. I don't say this out of false pride or anything, but simply to show that there is a reason that the whole world turns to Possumblog for important information and facts. Like this nice person who just Googled his way in here searching for List of Heights and weights of German Politicians. I bet William F. Buckley, Jr. doesn't get questions like that. That's because he don't know SQUAT about such things.

ON the other hand, the Possumblog Statistical Research Council is quite happy to oblige!

We have just completed a survey of Bundestag members for the last ten years, with age, weight, sex (if determinable), height, political party, and shoe size, tabulated and bound in 48 volumes, each one produced using the most modern environmentally sensitive production processes, using recycled lint and soy ink. A companion Statistical Abstract with analysis of the raw data is also available, bound into a set of 63 volumes. An Executive Version can be procured, richly covered in non-petrochemically derived leatherlike material, in either brown or buff, with the spine and cover imprints embossed in gold leaf. A Standard Yearly Update Atlas is just now being printed, which includes Fold Out Maps, Pronunciation Chart, SI-English Conversion Data, Errata, Deletions, and Additions. The Update is handsomely printed in two colors, and is a handy 6,500 page single volume, made even more convenient by the addition of two handles. The entire set of materials is only USD25,000,000 (EUR24.357.387,42; DEM47.637.819,87 plus applicable customs duties or VAT). Send your order today, and you will receive a FREE poster of David Hasselhoff!

posted by Terry at 2:48:00 PM

Iraq Ready to Use Scorched-Earth Tactics in War, American Officials Say

Unless we beat them to it.

posted by Terry at 1:55:00 PM

The other day, reader Garland Stewart (oops--not Smith, and I KNOW better--sorry Garland) sent me a note to ask that you all vote for Big Al as the Capital One Mascot of the Year. Although it hurt really, REALLY bad to encourage such behavior, I do understand that it would be even worse for someone outside of our fair state to take home the big prize.

So does Miss Lee Ann over at Spinsters.com, who has taken the time to detail the foul and horrifying drawbacks of all the other mascots, thus making your decision even easier:

[...] Buzz the Yellow Jacket (Georgia Tech) – A bee? A killer bee? Sure, he wants you to think he’s a harmless mascot, until he turns on you and harpoons you with his poison-filled stinger! That’s biological warfare. Smooth move, Saddumb. Voting for Buzz would just be letting the terrorists win.[...]

posted by Terry at 10:46:00 AM

You know, if the Travelling Shoe fits...

Excellent post from well-known hotdog connoisseur and smart guy H.D. Miller:

It's not often I get taken to task for something I wrote nearly eight months ago, and it's even less often it happens in a foreign language. But, that's exactly what the writer at this Spanish site does. Here's an excerpt for those of you who read the Español.

Un ex-soldado del Ejército de los Estados Unidos no tuvo mejor cosa que hacer que pasearse por las páginas del diario El País y leer una noticia acerca de la muerte de un bebé palestino prematuro, debida a la tardanza de una ambulancia que fue detenida en un control israelí. El susodicho ex-soldado, ataca en su weblog al periódico español, tildándolo poco menos que de fascistoide y antisemita.

What's sad about this rant is that the writer, a typically sactimonious Euro-twit, gives away the game in the opening sentence by identifying me only as an "ex-soldier of the American army," neglecting to mention that I've been out of the Army (after a very brief career) for nearly 15 years. (I might now best be described as a rather undistinguished assistant professor of history, although I'm sure that doesn't fit his needs.) It's clear what he is trying to do; the intent is to tar me with the broad brush of wicked American militarism rather than to address the issues I raised in my original post. [...]

Tip for Euro-twits: Assuming all Americans are simple and dull can be very embarrassing for you.

But, then again, it is a quite satisfying read as Mr. Miller does a nice multi-lingual job of tearing our poor Spaniard a new one.

posted by Terry at 10:37:00 AM

Former child star Adam Rich of "Eight is Enough" arrested for alleged DUI

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- One-time child actor Adam Rich, who starred in the 1970s TV show "Eight Is Enough," was arrested early Wednesday after he drove onto a closed highway lane and nearly struck a California Highway Patrol car, authorities said.

Rich, 34, who played Nicholas on the series, was booked for investigation of driving under the influence, CHP Officer Francisco Villalobos said.

Rich was driving on Interstate 10 when he almost struck a CHP patrol car parked in a lane that was closed for maintenance, authorities said. [...]

I suppose eight really is enough when your hammering back adult beverages containing the fruity bouquet of ethanol.

posted by Terry at 10:22:00 AM

Lott vows to stand and fight to keep his job as Republican majority leader

Wow. He really IS sorta slow on the uptake. I guess it's all part of that learning process he keeps saying he has gone through over time, huh. Maybe in 30 or 40 years, he might be able to figure out that he's fighting the wrong fight.

posted by Terry at 10:15:00 AM

I love pot stickers. Tender, flavorful, and apparently slightly hallucinogenic when purchased from the grocery store.

Reba got some the other day and we steamed them up last night.

Not without high drama, as is normal around our house. In her distracted state of preparation, she inadvertently let all the water boil out of the double boiler and nearly set a good Revereware saucepan on fire. She was fussing and fuming and the pot had gotten to that ominous black color that signifies the start of Something Bad, so I managed to wrestle it away from her and quench it in the sink. It took several minutes to finally cool off (it's one of those with the extra thick bottom. HEY! No jokes about me!) Just as that crisis was abated, one of the kids said something about it.

Kids. So young, so full of curiosity. So oblivious to danger.

After a good dose of verbal guiltlashing, they remained remarkably quiet for the rest of the meal. Hey, they CAN learn! If Mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy--learn it, live it. Anyway, the pot stickers were great even though those last few had an...odd flavor. And they were accompanied by nice crunchy spring rolls, and I ate too many of both. Which led me to my discovery of their odd power.

Sometime after going to bed last night, I started dreaming about work. I was looking at some old aerial views of Birmingham, and there were all these cool buildings that have never existed except in this particular dream. I saw one that was really neat, and it appeared to be just across the street from City Hall. In the aerial, it was huge and had two low wings on each side of a gigantic dome or something. I thought how cool it would be to go through it, and then I was no longer at my desk, but walking down the street. (As with all my dreams, part of the time I was not really walking, but drifting along while laying on something, sometimes stopping for a quick nap along the way)

Suddenly, I got to where the building in the picture was supposed to be, and HEY! It's still here! The storefront was all covered up with huge sheets of glass and wood framing, but you could look up and see the tall part which was not a dome, but a tower like the prow of a ship, sort of like the Flatiron Building, except razor sharp, with no windows or decoration. I walked around to the side and there was a large construction fence and a job trailer and some folks milling around with hard hats. Hey, lucky me, I had one on, too! (One of my obscure Rules of Architecture is that someone with a hard hat and a clipboard can get in anyplace in the world)

I asked some woman what was going on and she said they were doing a safety inspection and they all started climbing through a small hole in the fence. No one stopped me, so I tagged along and found myself inside of a dark old building with all sorts of beams and scaffolding and junk all over the place. (Think Piranesi.) We walked and climbed over stuff, and finally got to a stair lobby, which looked like something in an old Sears store--crappy panelling, mod fixtures, battleship linoleum. There was a ladder going up, and the idea was that you climbed up a bit, and then grabbed onto something like a rolling swing that took you around to another part of the building. I decided just to walk.

We were then all in a tiny little dark kitchen, which looked like it had not been cleaned in ages. I said something to some guy beside me about those cookies sure looking good, because there was this plate of cookies sitting on an old stove and I thought I was joking. I then looked, and the cookies actually DID look pretty good and then it dawned on me that someone had been cooking, as if someone was living in the place. Weird! And boy, some food sounded good right about then. We walked on through a door, and came to a bright open room with a fireplace and nice furniture. We couldn't figure out what was going on, and figured that the building must have a caretaker of some sort who lived there. And then, right there on top of the TV was a picture of my son! HEY! These people are RELATED to ME! I started trying to go through all the relatives I had sent pictures to who lived in abandoned buildings, and couldn't think of a one. Continuing our tour, the rooms were scattered all over the place, and there were these cool flat screen TVs everywhere, playing short loops of family pictures, sort of like the paintings in Harry Potter. Big ones, little picture frame sized ones, ones above the mantle, one used as a table. The place was huge and the more we walked around, the more "glamorous" it became, in that Lileksian Interior Desecrator's mode--like something out of a mid-'70s Architectural Digest.

We looked out of a window, and there was a gigantic park behind the building so I walked out on the roof. (Of course. It WAS a dream, after all). There was no trace of the city, or even of the odd tower thing--it just looked like a nice old mansion on nicely kept grounds. I went back inside, and met up with some of the other people in the group, and we came to a surprising conclusion. It seems that DONALD TRUMP owned the building, and was, in fact, LIVING IN IT! I was about to go ask him how he got one of our family pictures when I heard a strange shoooosh...

shoooosh...

shooooosh sound.

Shooooosh.

Shooosh.

I opened my eyes and heard it again...shoooosh.

I dazedly figured out it was Tiny Girl, scooting along the floor of our bedroom on her butt, trying to sneak into bed with us. Raspy whisper, "Catherine!"

No answer.

Another low, hoarse, try-not-to-wake-wife call, "CATH-ER-INE!" (Shades of Pete--"DO. NOT. SEEK. THE. TREAS-URE!")

I was hanging my head off the side of the bed, and she jumped up right in my face. Yes, it is scary when that happens. I whispered and asked her if she had wet the bed. No answer, which can be bad news. I asked again, and she shook her head "No," which is usually good news, if she is actually telling the truth. I figured I would send her right back to bed, and then...

The alarm clock went off.

Crap.

I hoisted the dense little sack of wet cement up into the bed and turned on the news, and after a minute or two, she was back out again, happily snoring and kicking me in the groin. And giggling her head off in her sleep. The pot stickers must have had a good effect on her, too.

(And I also found out this morning that the combination of spring rolls and pot stickers are not only hallucinogenic, but greatly flatulegenic, too, but I won't bore you with lurid tales of the Thunder From Down Under)

ANYway, I have work to do, so I will see you this afternoon sometime.

posted by Terry at 9:48:00 AM

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

It's getting to be about that time...

...and I have to be here extra early tomorrow morning so as to protect the good citizenry from the perils of bad color schemes, and then I will need to do a intensive writing job on the minutes of that meeting in order to get the rest of my stuff done for the week, so I can have a nice Christmas break and not worry about things here at the office. (Shyeah, right!)

So then, if I don't get to come out and play very much tomorrow, rest assured that I have an excuse.

posted by Terry at 4:18:00 PM

Seminoles' QB Rix Declared Ineligible

By BRENT KALLESTAD, Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida State quarterback Chris Rix must miss the Sugar Bowl against Georgia because he overslept and failed to take a final exam.

Rix was declared ineligible Tuesday, leaving the Seminoles without their top two quarterbacks as they prepare to play the Southeastern Conference champion Bulldogs on Jan. 1.

Backup Adrian McPherson was kicked off the team last month for his involvement in a check-writing scam.

Rix slept through a religion exam, an automatic suspension under a rule established after former Seminoles' star Deion Sanders played in the '89 Sugar Bowl despite not taking any final exams.

"It's an academic decision, there's no chance for him to play in the Sugar Bowl," coach Bobby Bowden said. [...]

Bummer, dude.

posted by Terry at 3:56:00 PM

Most have never used new dollar coin despite three-year campaign, survey says

By DAVID HO
The Associated Press
12/17/02 3:35 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose replacing the dollar bill with a coin, but many change their minds when told the switch could save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, a poll commissioned by Congress finds.

Despite a three-year, $67.1 million marketing campaign by the U.S. Mint, people remain attached to their greenbacks and show little interest in filling their pockets with golden dollar coins, the General Accounting Office said Tuesday.

While 70 percent of people have heard of the new coins, only 5 percent have plunked one down at a cash register and fewer than 2 percent have used them to operate vending machines, toll booths or for mass transit, according to the GAO-sponsored Gallup survey on how people feel about U.S. coins.

It is the second time in recent decades a dollar coin has failed to catch on; the silvery Susan B. Anthony coin, often mistaken for the quarter, was minted in 1979-81, rereleased around the turn of the century and has largely disappeared. Addressing the problem, Congress in 1997 required the new dollar coin to be golden in color. [...]

As long as the bill remains in circulation, there will never be mass appeal of a dollar coin. It would also help if the dollar coin didn't look like a Chuckie Cheese token; "golden" in this case being more along the lines of "creme" filling. The color does not age gracefully--the stacks I got for the kids looked fine when they came out of the drawer at Wal-Mart (remember when they were the distribution point to foist these off on people?), but even just sitting unused in my change bowl, they quickly looked worn. Not patinaed like copper, or satiny like nickel, just faded like a cheap giveaway prize out of a gumball machine. The Mint says they are made of manganese-brass, but whatever it is, it sure looks cheap. I don't guess it matters one way or the other since they have stopped making them.

posted by Terry at 3:36:00 PM

In Honor of Two Guys from Dayton

posted by Terry at 1:42:00 PM

Yasser Arafat says he accepts U.S. peace roadmap in principle

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat said Tuesday, after several months delay, that he has in principle accepted the United States-proposed roadmap for peace in the region. [...]

Wow. I feel all better.

posted by Terry at 1:34:00 PM

Stranger returns cash found at gas pumps

OPELIKA, Ala. (AP) -- Thanks to a good Samaritan, Christmas will be merry for a woman who thought she had lost her holiday cash.

The good Samaritan, Richard Coffey, found an envelope containing $600 near the pumps of a gas station in front of an Opelika Wal-Mart store Sunday evening.

Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said that Coffey never considered being a grinch and pocketing the money, but instead turned it in to authorities.

The envelope belonged to Sheree Finley, who came to the station Monday looking for her missing money. Station employees told her to call the sheriff. [...]

You know, it's a bit of a sad commentary when someone doing the right thing is considered newsworthy.

posted by Terry at 1:20:00 PM

The Rednecks Take Over America

[...] Though Redneck Nation is smart-mouthed and light-hearted (you will not be surprised to learn that [author Michael] Graham once worked as a stand-up comic), and it doesn't pretend to be a serious political book, its author does make some sober points between the riffs and jibes. On the subject of race, he says that today's left-wing neo-segregationists are morally worse than the white Jim Crow supporters, like his grandmother. ''But she didn't grow up with the memory of a martyred Martin Luther King, Jr., and she couldn't benefit from forty years of intense public struggle over the ridiculousness of racial obsession. You and I have,'' he writes.

Take Sen. Trent Lott (R., Yoknapatawpha County), who was inadvertently making Graham's case the other day when he said that America would've been better off if it had voted for Segregationist Strom for president in 1948. Well, that did it. Now Lott is being instructed in righteousness by the Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane of black America. I refer, or course, to Jesse Jackson and his not-so-bright disciple Al Sharpton, the most notorious racialist hornswogglers north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. Few media people seem to find this objectionable, or even particularly funny, because hey y'all, we're all rednecks now.'' [...]

posted by Terry at 11:29:00 AM

Oh good grief

First it was the "Brutal Afghan Summer" (or Winter--take yer pick), and now we have the Brutal Iraqi Summer...U.S. Could Fight Iraq in Summer Heat-British Source

By Howard Goller

LONDON (Reuters) - A British defense source said on Tuesday that searing desert heat would not prevent the United States from leading a war against Iraq in summer, defying conventional wisdom the weather would stand in Washington's way.

"It is a factor that has to be considered but it's not a crucial factor in the sense that it would stop anything happening," the source said. [...]

Conventional wisdom, eh? Now I realize that Iraq has a lot of desert, but for the record, Baghdad is at latitude 33 degrees, 20 minutes north--while that wonderful town of Tuscon, Arizona where little old people go for the nice dry hot weather sits even further south, coming in at latitude 32 degrees, 08 minutes north.

Yeah, it's searing heat alright. But it's a dry searing heat.

(And by the way, my hometown is at 33 degrees, 37 minutes north)

posted by Terry at 10:28:00 AM

As you all know...

I am a very deep thinker. Just the other day, I thought how much better this world would be if someone would come up with better single-site catalysts based on caged diimide ligands. And then in my morning blogstroll, I note that someone did!

Congratulations, Greg! (And glad to hear Miss Possum is bouncy again.)

posted by Terry at 9:33:00 AM

Monday, December 16, 2002

I post this under extreme duress...

This just in from long-time reader Garland Stewart:

Dear Friends,

Big AL, the University of Alabama's mascot, needs your help!! Even if you're not from Alabama, how could you not be for Big Al?

Big Al is in the top 12, for All-American Capital One Mascot Team. At present he has only 6% of the vote. Tennessee, Penn State, Miami and the Air Force are whoopin' him so far. Even if you're a War Eagle, don't you want our state to win?! Let's put Alabama on the Mascot Map!

We only have until December 20, to turn this thing around for Big Al. So, click below and vote. Remember, only one vote is allowed per person. And please don't forget to forward this to every Southerner you know.

Roll Ride!

Vote for Big AL - Alabama's Mascot http://www.capitalonebowl.com/mascot_vote.php

Whew!

Hhmmmmmmh.

whoooh.

Hold on a minute. MMMMMmmmph.

Urrrghhhuhhh.

::grunt::

Errrrrrrrgh.

::sigh::

Must. Not. Curse.

The Possumblog Editorial Staff ask that you please support Big Al in his bid to become America's favorite mascot.

Hhhhhmmmmmmmmmm. ::heavy sigh::

Man, that hurt.

posted by Terry at 4:53:00 PM

Have a cuppa, luv...

[...] It was now evening, and I immediately dressed myself in the costume of an Indian, equipped with a small hatchet, which I and my associates denominated the tomahawk, with which, and a club, after having painted my face and hands with coal dust in the shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to Griffin's wharf, where the ships lay that contained the tea. When I first appeared in the street after being thus disguised, I fell in with many who were dressed, equipped and painted as I was, and who fell in with me and marched in order to the place of our destination. [...]

Via America's Homepage at the Georgia Institute of Technology, an account written by George Hewes, a participant in the Boston Tea Party, which occurred this night 229 years ago.

Thanks from us all, Mr. Hewes.

posted by Terry at 3:42:00 PM

Bellicose Women Update

Ohio Teen Girl Tackles, Hogties Intruder

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - A petite 17-year-old girl awakened by intruders sprinted from her house barefoot in pajamas and tackled one trespasser, pinning and hogtying him for police.

Melissa Alexander said her experience training horses and playing soccer and softball helped her as she took down the taller and heavier 18-year-old man. Two others were arrested later, and police were looking for a fourth suspect.

"I still don't know what came over me," Alexander said Thursday. "I wasn't thinking at first, then he started making me mad."

Her mother marveled at the feat.

"She had it all under control," Vickie Stanley said of the 5-foot-3, 110-pound daughter she described as "a little bitty thing."

Police said the man Alexander tackled — Jason Burkett, of Brookville — is 5-foot-10 and 140 pounds. [...]

Heh heh.

posted by Terry at 2:24:00 PM

Adventures in Headline Writing

Shelby to continue hunt for terrorists in new banking post

...and how they got in my new banking post I'll NEVER know!

posted by Terry at 2:16:00 PM

Lieberman leans toward White House run

And all I can think about is this.

posted by Terry at 2:09:00 PM

Fragmentary Fred First of Floyd Flees Flummoxed Fileserver, Failsafes to Friends Flat For Fortnight (or so)

It appears fellow Weevilite Fred First has been having some troubles with the host of his blog, so is hanging out in Ron Bailey's bloghouse until matters are settled. Be sure to keep a lookout for when Fred gets his new domain mastered, and until then, Fragments from Floyd can be found here.

posted by Terry at 1:45:00 PM

Buhm-buhm BUUUUUUUHMMMM!!!

LOOK! Across the pond! It's a pest! It's a misguided moron! IT'S CAPTAIN EURO!!!! Via Mac Thomason, the next installment of our wondrously non-heroic nanny stater, as Captain Euro takes on...

THE NIGERIANS!!

[...] EURO: Citoyens, what seems to be the trouble?

RIOTER: A European! Get him! [Throws a rock at EURO. It hits him in the head.]

EURO: Ow. Please, gentlemen, let us discuss this like rational men. [The RIOTERS throw more rocks, eventually bringing EURO to his knees.] Please, ow, don -- OW!

[As the RIOTERS approach, EURO is dragged away by a golden lasso.]

WONDER WOMAN: What were you trying to do there? You can't just stand there and let them hit you with rocks. [A rock sails towards them, but WW deflects it with her bracelet and it harmlessly falls on EURO's head.]

EURO: Ow. Cover yourself, woman!

WW: What?

EURO: No wonder they're rioting, what with your scandalous attire!

WW: I just got here. They're rioting because someone made a joke, I think. [She drags EURO out of the path of the riot.]

EURO: Well, you certainly shouldn't encourage them. There's a shop near here where you can get an abaya. [...]

Mmmm. Wonder Woman.

posted by Terry at 1:39:00 PM

On the Twelve Days of Christmas, Charles Austin gave to me...

So stinkin' many Scourges of Richard Cohen that my comprehension of Roman numeral has been exhausted--they are LXVII, LXVIII, and LXIX, which I believe translates to 100, 143, and 96. Maybe not. Anyway, entertaining as shooting fish in a barrel can be!

posted by Terry at 11:16:00 AM

Hello!

Well, that certainly was an entertaining weekend.

Did I mention that I got an e-mail from Denise McClug...oh, yeah I did, didn't I. Many thanks to Bill Quick over at the Daily Pundit for sharing in my glee and sending a bunch of folks over this way on Saturday. I'm just sorry I didn't spruce up a bit more, but as usual, I never expect anyone to drop by except the regulars who have grown accustomed to the mess around here. In any event, thanks to Bill, and also thanks to fellow blogger and fan of Larry Shinoda Ron Bailey who wonders what Harley Earl would think of a Pontiac Aztek. I imagine he would think it was a very interesting dumpster, but might complain that the lift gate is a bit too high to comfortably empty a garbage can into. Then again, he might just set it on fire. Or pee on it. Good thing he's dead. One thing Ron mentioned is that he once bumped into Automobile Magazine's Jean Jennings (nee Lindamood) at the Mall of America--I look forward to hearing the exact details of that one. (Lindamood's another cool gearhead/gun nut chick I wouldn't mind driving cross country with.)

Speaking of my inelegantly named official list of "Old Broads I Would Really Like To Meet and....Well, You Know," reader Bet Mulligan from down in Inverness, Florida, wrote in with her thoughts on the New Beetle v. Real Beetle, and congratulated me on getting such a nice Christmas present from Miss Denise:

Congrats on getting that neat email from the car columnist! As an aspiring Old Broad myself, I smiled a mile wide when you sighed over her :)

For those who would take offense at the term "old broad," rest assured you are NOT on my list. And won't be on it. Ever.

For the rest of you, I think by now you know me well enough to know the qualities I ascribe to such women--self-sufficient, confident, mentally agile, brave, wise, full of life and humor, enjoys being around guys--even when they act like guys. And yes, you need to have some age on you. This doesn't mean that you young ladies can't shoot for old broad status--keep working at it, but a lot of the magic comes from perservering and fighting and building up some battle damage over the years. If you can still manage to crack a smile or still get all goosey when you get dressed up to go out, even when life has been unkind, you've managed to do something. Or, if you have finally overcome that muzzle blast induced trigger flinch. Or figured out how to heel-and-toe.

ANYWAY, the weekend was a blur of children and shopping for Mama. Target, Books-A-Million, Michael's, Target, Wal-Mart, Hallmark, Wal-Mart, CVS Pharmacy, Target, Wal-Mart. I still have difficulty getting the kids to concentrate on gifts for Mom rather than cool stuff they want Mom to have so they can play with it. SO, among other more Mom-appropriate items, Catherine got her a little stuffed Clydesdale, and Lil' Boy got her a Bedtime Care Bear with a lullaby video. I can't really complain, though. Several years ago after noticing how many times she asked me to cut something with my pocketknife, I got a cool little thumb-opener with a light on the end so you could see your door lock and gave it to her. She was somewhat less than thrilled, so I told her I would be glad to carry it for her. Still carry it to this day. And still tell her it's hers.

Honestly, I really can't remember much else--just lots of "Don't touch!" and trips to the restroom, which I believe will last for only another 12 years or so.

And today, and the rest of the week for that matter, will be spent trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible so that I can be on vacation next week. The whole week will be spent nestled into the bosom of my family, and I'm sure that I will only be slightly more insane after the end of it.

Or not.

So then, to work!

posted by Terry at 10:57:00 AM

Saturday, December 14, 2002

Life is Sweet

A few months ago in September, I wrote a post about Buick's new ad campaign using some thumb-faced mook in a fedora claiming to be Harley Earl--in part, it read like this:

"What's that strange whirring sound? Why, it's none other than Harley Earl, spinning in his vault at about 8,000 RPM, that's what! Only got to see the last part of the Emmy Awards last night, but enough to be assaulted with some greasy, fedora-clad shmoo trying to convince me that he was Harley Earl and that he would actually be caught (even dead) within 50 feet of a Buick Rendezvous, much less that he would claim that it would represent his vision of the future! I have not seen these particular ads before, and hope I don't have to see them again. I have posted before about how the Cadillac "Break Through" ad campaign with the spot using the '59 Caddy is dumb, and about how GM seems incapable of appealing to the people who actually remember when they made desirable cars, and how they seem so incredibly inept when mining their own design past (i.e. the new "Impala" has four big ugly round tailights, which to those-who-know means "cheap-ass Biscayne," and all the Buick show cars have rediscovered Ventiports, yet the designers seem not to know that three per side says "cheap-ass Special"), and now these piles of crap advertisements.

The one with all the reporters was especially horrid, in that despite the fact that men used to wear hats, they also had the common sense to take them off INDOORS. Ah, but hats have that certain post-ironic iconography about them, I suppose. Anyway, if Buick really wanted to mine the past, why not skip Earl completely and go for Billy Mitchell, whose sublime '63 Riviera is a certified milestone and really set the tone for the whole Buick line during the '60s and '70s."

So imagine my supreme pleasure in when I got home last night, seeing that I had received my AutoWeek last night, and turning to Denise McCluggage's column:

I'll bet Harley Earl is doing 7500 rpm in his grave. It's that Buick ad campaign with the tag, "My name is Harley Earl and I've come back to build you a great car." More correctly: "to witness the desecration of my image."

Before Harley Earl, automotive stylists did not exist; he invented the genre. First with fanciful coachwork on bare chassis for Hollywood starts, then by heading the Art and Color (later Style) Department at General Motors, the first ever in the business. That was 1927. [...]

Harley Earl in his day (he died in 1969 at age 75) had greater influence over what more people drove than any other stylist. He even had a reverse influence. I, for instance, fled from his "longer, lower, wider" to "smaller, simpler, plainer" and opted for MG-TCs and a Jaguar XK140 MC.

Harley Earl's vision was not for me; nonetheless, I knew him and respected his flamboyant visions.

Thus I cringe when admen plunk a snap-brim fedora on a face better suited to cadging drinks in an Irish bar, have it rave about "minivans" and "SUVs" (longer, lower, wider?) and simply embarrass the hell out of anyone with any regard at all for GM history. [...]

Any of you out there who are amateur writers know that there is absolutely NOTHING like having a pro print something that validates your view of something. For those of you who are motorheads, there is nothing like reading the snappy prose of Ms. McCluggage, a giant in the industry who has been at her game for the whole history of the sports car movement in the United States, as both a writer, a photographer, and a driver (and is on my official list of "Old Broads I Would Really Like To Meet and....Well, You Know"). So surely you must know how I felt when I saw that she had the same thoughts about this as I did. I could barely contain my glee, and had to send her a note to let her know I thought she was dead on. I included the bit I wrote, and wished her well, not expecting ever to hear back. She is sorta busy after all. Then I woke up and checked my e-mail this morning:

Hey, great minds rev in the same RPM range! Your piece is terrific.

I got one dissenting letter out of a large response. That was from a Buick dealer who liked seeing GM use its heritage for a change. (I wrote to him that I agreed, except they let the know-nothing ad boys misuse it.)

And I agree that Bill Mitchell would have been a better choice, anyway. Can you imagine what they will do with the Lutz character down the line? If they miscast as badly he might look like Shrek.

All the best, and thanks for your note.

Denise

I now need no Christmas presents. For about the next forty years.

posted by Terry at 10:51:00 AM

Friday, December 13, 2002

Well, I thought I was through blogging for the week, but I just saw this: History prize rescinded for controversial book about guns in the United States

By HILLEL ITALIE
The Associated Press
12/13/02 4:49 PM

NEW YORK (AP) -- Severe doubts about a book on guns in the United States has led Columbia University to rescind the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history.

"Arming America," by Michael Bellesiles, had received the award in 2001.

In a statement released Friday, Columbia said that the school's trustees had concluded "his book had not and does not meet the standards ... established for the Bancroft Prize." Columbia has asked Bellesiles to return the prize money, $4,000.

It was the first time in the 54-year history of the Bancroft award that Columbia has taken such actions. Phone and e-mail messages left by The Associated Press with Bellesiles were not immediately returned.

Bellesiles resigned in October as a professor at Emory University, after an independent panel of scholars strongly criticized his research. In May, the National Endowment for the Humanities withdrew its name -- although not its funding -- from a fellowship given to Bellesiles. (pronounced Bell-EEL).

Bellesiles has acknowledged some errors, but defends his book as fundamentally sound. "I have never fabricated evidence of any kind nor knowingly evaded my responsibilities as a scholar," he said after announcing his resignation. [...]

"The Bancroft judges operate on a basis of trust," said Eric Foner, a past winner and a history professor at Columbia who has served as a prize judge, although not in 2001. "We assume a book published by a reputable press has gone through a process where people have checked the facts. Members of prize committees cannot be responsible for that."

Knopf said in a statement Friday it regretted "the circumstances that prompted Columbia University to rescind the Bancroft," but respected the committee's decision. [...]

Wow.

But just think, if he had simply filmed a documentary instead of writing a book, it would have gotten an award from the International Documentary Association for being the bestest, most greatestest in the whole universe--obviously the standard of truth for documentaries is much, MUCH lower.

posted by Terry at 4:50:00 PM

So where have I been today?

Working. I do occasionally have to do that. And then there was the sub rosa requisition of some new (well, new to me, at least) hardware and office furnishings.

Our deputy director got appointed to be the director of another department. He cleaned his office out (mostly) last week of all of his ephemera and files and junk, leaving some interesting bits of stuff for the rest of us to plunder through. Although it may shock some of you, this is the way things work on this floor. We're sort of the cast-off forgotten idiot relative kept locked in the attic, and always get the butt end of budget requests. There really is no such thing as any of us lower level sorts ever being able to get anything new requisitioned, so everything I have in my office is cast-offs from other folks who have left over the years. The day after someone's departure, the vultures swoop in to pick up not-completely-broken tape dispensers and staplers which are only five years old, as opposed to twenty. As I look around me, I see a bookcase, a drafting table, a drafting stool, two guest chairs, and a speed dial phone that all came from someone else's office.

The phone has an interesting history. I originally had a plain phone with twelve buttons and no way to put anyone on hold or transfer calls--this museum piece was quickly relocated to the conference room in exchange for one with all sorts of buttony glory and the wonder of speed dial. I made this switch only after putting in a requisition for a real phone with the Communications Department, expecting to swap out with them when they got to my request. A couple of years later, my newly requisitioned telephone crapped out, but by this time, the conference room had gotten another button phone after someone figured out they couldn't transfer calls or put anyone on hold with my old one. Since my plan worked well before, I took my old new old phone and swapped it for the one in the conference room AGAIN, and it has happily worked just fine ever since.

Of course, there was a big stink when someone tried to use the conference room phone and IT didn't work AGAIN, but they got it switched. Anyway, four years after I got here, and I was on my third phone, I got a call from a buddy in Communications, "Hey! We got you a phone!" Huh? "Yeah, your phone...you put in a requisition for one with speed dial." I hated to tell him that this problem had already been resolved to my satisfaction, but I did tell him, and noted to him that the request had been made four years ago, half expecting that he would be down in a minute to yank it out of the wall. "Well, would you look at that!" In the end, he was just glad to be able to file the requisition as "Done."

Everything is old stuff, except for the computer. That's relatively new. It even had a one of those highly advanced Microsoft scroll meeces when I first got it. The mouse eventually broke, and the MIS guys downstairs wouldn't even give me a used one! I had to go back to a regular mouse, which I hated. And the way we have things set up around here, even though the computer came preloaded with a Windows Media player and all sorts of other junk, this was disabled before they turned it over to me. It does have a CD drive with a separate headphone jack, but again, it is doubtful this actually works.

Luckily, with the departure of our demiboss, a wondrous world of crap lay just beyond my wall. Yesterday, I carefully (and very quietly) relocated a four drawer file cabinet (I have had a standing requisition for another file cabinet for seven years). We have a very nosy secretary, so this work had to be done in the utmost secrecy. Which is difficult, as any of you who have ever slid an empty file cabinet across carpet can attest. Not much else is left that I really need, except...today I liberated a nice set of harman/kardon speakers and a scroll mouse. The mouse works fine and it sure is nice to have the scroll feature back. The speakers will have to wait until I can get the MIS guy to loosen up the lock on the Media Player, but at least I HAVE them.

Possession is 9/10 of the law, you know.

Anyway, I have been busy, and the weekend looks to be similiarly arrayed with more selections from the Endless Buffet of Things To Fix and Do, Except for Sleep. I fully intend to fill you all in Monday morning, but for now, I must get back to pilfer...working.

See you Monday!

posted by Terry at 3:04:00 PM

Our Birthday

Via the Alabama Legislature website:

RESOLUTION FOR ADMISSION OF ALABAMA INTO THE UNION

Resolution Declaring The Admission Of The State Of Alabama Into The Union.

Whereas in pursuance to an act of Congress, passed on the second day of March, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen, entitled "An act to enable the people of the Alabama Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original States", the people of the said Territory did, on the second day of August, in the present year, by a Convention called for that purpose, form for themselves a Constitution and State government, which Constitution and State government so formed is republican, and in conformity to the principles of the articles of Compact, between the original States, and the people and States in the Territory North West of the river Ohio, passed on the thirteenth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, so far as the same have been extended to the said Territory by the articles of agreement between the United States and the State of Georgia:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the State of Alabama shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever.

H. CLAY, Speaker of the House of Representatives
Ja. BARBOUR, President of the Senate, pro tempore

December 14, 1819
Approved, James Monroe

I certify that this Resolution did originate in the Senate.

ATTEST:

Charles Cutts, Secretary

Tomorrow marks the 183rd anniversary of Alabama's admission to the United States of America.

From the Avalon Project, here is an online version of our first Constitution. It is an interesting study to examine its correspondence with the Federal Constitution, along with the ways in which it differs. The first Article contains 30 sections enumerating various rights of the citizens, with five of the first seven speaking directly about religious freedom:

SEC. 3. No person within this state shall, upon any pretence, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in the manner most agreeable to his own conscience; nor be compelled to attend any place of worship, nor shall any one ever be obliged to pay any tythes, taxes, or other rate, for the building or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry.

SEC. 4. No human authority ought, in any case whatever, to control or interfere with the rights of conscience.

SEC. 5. No person shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his religious profession, sentiments, or persuasion, provided he does not disturb others in their religious worship.

SEC. 6. The civil rights, privileges, or capacities of any citizen, shall in no way be diminished, or enlarged, on account of his religious principles.

SEC. 7. There shall be no establishment of religion by law; no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; and no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state.

To this day there are people who can't quite grasp the full meaning of establishing a religion by law. If it helps any, the Prime Minister of Great Britain selects the leaders of the Church of England, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (along with all the other diocesan bishops), and the Queen nominates his selection to the College of Canons. THAT is an establishment of religion by the state. Some colonial charters (such as the Delaware Charter of 1701)expressly stated that to be a member of the legislative delegation, a member had to swear allegiance to a particular religion. THAT is an establishment of religion by the state.

The next Section is interesting in that the Federal "freedom of the press" was seen as an individual right:

SEC 8. Every citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.

Every citizen. Not simply established outlets of media. For those today who believe that the freedom to publish and disseminate information lies only with the vaunted members of the Fourth Estate, and not with lowly morons with a computer and a blog, it might be good to go back and look at this.

Sections 9 through 22 track closely with the language of the U.S. Constitution on the subjects of unreasonable search and seizure, trial by jury, double jeopardy, the right of habeus corpus, the right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances, etc. When we get to the 23rd Section, we are again faced with something that further expands on the meaning of something found within the United States Constitution:

SEC. 23. Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defence of himself and the State.

Every citizen. An individual right. Period.

One thing that should be of interest to those who think govermnent supported public education is a relatively new thing, education is given a mention within its own section in the General Provisions:

Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged in this State; and the General Assembly shall take measures to preserve, from unnecessary waste or damage, such lands as are or hereafter may be granted by the United States for the use of schools within each township in this State, and apply the funds, which may be raised from such lands; in strict conformity to the object of such grant. The General Assembly shall take like measures for the improvement of such lands as have been or may be hereafter granted by the United States to this State, for the support of a Seminary of learning, and the moneys which may be raised from such lands, by rent, lease, or sale, or from any other quarter, for the purpose, aforesaid, shall be and remain a fund for the exclusive support of a State University, for the promotion of the arts, literature, and the sciences: and it shall be the duty of the General Assembly, as early as may be, to provide effectual means for the improvement and permanent security of the funds and endowments of such institution.

Pretty progressive, eh? Of course, our progress was impeded by a heavy anchor:

SLAVES.

SEC. 1. The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves, without the consent of their owners, or without paying their owners, previous to such emancipation, a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to this State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State: Provided, that such person or slave be the bona fide property of such emigrants; and provided, also, that laws may be passed to prohibit the introduction into this State of slaves, who have committed high crimes in other States or Territories. They shall have power to pass laws to permit the owners of slaves to emancipate them, saving the rights of creditors, and preventing them from becoming a public charge. They shall have full power to prevent slaves from being brought into this State as merchandize, and also to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for them necessary food and clothing, to abstain from all injuries to them extending to life or limb, and, in case of their neglect, or refusal to comply with the directions of such laws, to have such slave or slaves sold for the benefit of the owner or owners.

SEC. 2. In the prosecution of slaves for crimes, of a higher grade than petit larceny, the General Assembly shall have no power to deprive them of an impartial trial by a petit jury.

SEC. 3. Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof; except in case of insurrection of such slave.

A sad chapter, indeed. But not one that should limit our future. One of the neighborhood presidents here in town said something in a recent meeting that has hung with me: "A place is in trouble when the people can remember more than they can imagine."

posted by Terry at 8:39:00 AM

Thursday, December 12, 2002

Apollo's Cernan proposes teens in orbit

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- An old moon walker has a new idea -- teens in space.

Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17 and the last person to walk on the moon in 1972, proposed the idea of sending youths into orbit during a stop Wednesday at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

"We need to give the kids, the teenagers, a piece of the action," said Cernan, 68.

Cernan and Apollo 17 lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt are traveling the country to mark the 30th anniversary of their moon landing, the last mission of the Apollo program. Their journey began Dec. 11, 1972.

Getting teenagers involved in the space program would help create the same kind of interest that was generated worldwide during the space race, Cernan said.

"What's to keep us from sending a teenager up in space?" he asked. [...]

Well, I tell you what...he'll be up there taggin' the Space Station and stickin' his butt up to the glass and moonin' people and trying to sneak beer and a chick on board and the whole place will smell like that horrible Tommy cologne and feet and dirty bong water.

posted by Terry at 3:16:00 PM

'Patch' Adams Looks for Humor in Mideast

By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Wearing huge floppy shoes, a duck hat and a honking red nose, Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams and his gang of zany clowns charmed a swarm of Palestinian children Thursday.

The physician, activist and clown from Arlington, Va. was on a weeklong visit to hospitals and schools in the region, trying to bring laughter to a place of pain. It's another stop during years of touring that has taken Adams to refugee camps and war-torn cities in the Balkans, Africa, Afghanistan and Russia.

On Thursday, his funny-faced troupe, playing carnival music and handing out balloons, flowers and smiley face stickers got lots of laughs and a few shocked looks in Gaza, starting with bewildered Israeli soldiers they bear-hugged and showered with balloons at the Gaza-Israel crossing. [...]

Noting the ease with which Dr. Adams was able to gather a crowd of children, Palestinian activists asked the mirthful comic if his costume was large enough to conceal a bomb belt.

posted by Terry at 2:51:00 PM

The Apocalypse is Nigh.

posted by Terry at 2:44:00 PM

A Gift from Francesca Watson

[...] So on this particular Saturday, I wasn't paying much attention to the beauty of the place I call home. Silly me. As I made the turn into our drive, a large buck broke out of a small stand of trees on the corner of the neighbor's property at the end of the drive, and ran directly in front of my car. I didn't even have time to hit the brakes before he slowed to a trot, pacing my car down the expanse of lawn between me and the trees. He was big, with racks of at least seven points, and he exuded good health and raw power. If I had thought to open my window and stick out an arm, I could have touched him.

He paced the car all the way to my house, and darted into the trees only as I reached my own driveway. I stopped the car before completing the turn, and watched him standing just inside the tree line, looking back at me over his shoulder. Neither one of us moved for a long moment. Then he turned and began picking his way through the trees, daintily, head high, taking his time. [...]

posted by Terry at 2:25:00 PM

Occasionally, believe it or not, people searching the Internet mistakenly wind up at Possumblog searching for something else. Such as this request from the Bloomfield, New Jersey school system: whata the temperature of the space shuttle.

How sweet! Obviously a little fan of the hit HBO series, The Sopranos. Luckily for our intrepid young science researcher, Possumblog is well known to have a vast storehouse of highly scientific and technical information, and we even have Dr. Weevil's brother Steevil on retainer at NASA to let us in on exciting new finds.

According to my sources, the temperature of the Space Shuttle varies, depending on its surroundings and various things like loud sound and bad thoughts. Usually, it goes from like around 12 to maybe a 40 or something. I don't really know...does 40 seem too high? Let's just say a nice average is around about 32. Hope that helps you out, little fellow!

posted by Terry at 1:37:00 PM

Extending Alabama's Cultural Hegemony, One Blog at a Time

Belated congratulations to Larry Anderson of Kudzu Acres for helping to birth a blog written by famed North Alabama barbecue chef, William Joseph Roberts, aka Billy Joe Bob, who lives quite near (some would say suspiciously so) to the good Mr. Anderson, and who also has occasional blogging help from his running buddy Cletus.

Billy Joe Bob and Cletus hold forth on a variety of world events, using small words, but big ideas. Lest any of you think that Mr. Roberts is merely a sock-puppet for a better known blogger, let me just say that I am offended that you would dare suggest such a thing about my first grand-blogchild! Why, if you keep that up, I won't show you all my pictures of him! In every aspect, our sweet BJB fulfills all requirements for inclusion in the Axis of Weevil, especially if the Calvinball rules are invoked heavily.

SO THEN, as is common practice, by the power vested in my by the State of Alabama Department of Agriculture (Weights and Measures Bureau) and the small, quiet voices in my head, it is with GREAT HONOR AND CHARITY that we, the Alabama Recoil and Chamber Music Society do hereby extend to Billy Joe Bob and his good friend Cletus, full and forcible membership within the mighty and powerful Axis of Weevil, granting him fully all the wondrous rights, benefits, and plausible deniability such status holds.

As with all new members of the Axis of Weevil, Billy Joe Bob will be sent the world-famous Axis of Weevil Gift Pack, consisting of Dreamland ribs, a gallon jug of Milo's sweet tea; a G-Lox Wedgee gun rack from Mark's Outdoor Sports for his pickup truck; a package of Bubba's Beef Jerky (according to Dr. Weevil, this is homemade and is available only at the gas station at the end of Highway 82 in Bibb County); a three piece, 24 ounce box of Priester's Pecan Logs; a box of Jim Dandy grits; a 16 ounce bottle of dale's Steak Sauce; and the best gift of all, a coupon for free Kool Seal for the top of his trailer roof, done by Jimmy from next door! (His condition does flare up now and again, so it would be best not to park too close to the trailer or some of the Kool Seal might slop over the edge and land on the roof of your truck.)

The management regrets to inform us that we must limit our Gift Packs to one per blog, meaning Billy Joe Bob and Cletus will have to come up with an equitable scheme for distributing their loot. We apologize for the inconvenience, but even Axes have budgets, and I have to get a new Aeron chair for my office, but that's neither here nor there.

ANYWAY, be sure to visit with Billy and Cletus, who are telling also telling possum stories this morning, right along with Meryl, and be sure and go see what BJB has to say about Hotty Toddy Lotty.

posted by Terry at 1:01:00 PM

Iraq Denies Giving al-Qaida Nerve Agent

[...] "This is really a ridiculous assumption from the American administration," Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin told a news conference. "They know very well we have no prohibited substances." [...]

'Is the milks for babies a prohibited substances? Of course not! This is the only things we have give them--only the baby milks, because mercy demands that our brothers must be able to feed the babies.'

posted by Terry at 12:28:00 PM

I just got off the...finished...stopped...well, you know what? There's really no good, elegant way of saying that you have just concluded sending a series of e-mails back and forth to someone. I didn't hang up, or get off the phone, so it wouldn't work to say "I hung up the e-mail." I didn't say "over and out," and any other broadcastish term just doesn't sound homey enough--everything's too jargony, although I suppose we could use 10-code like Broderick Crawford--"I just did a 10-3 with..."--nah. I didn't really just get through talking to someone, I was writing them, even if it is nearly instant, like passing notes in class.

There needs to be something for this phenomenon. Something distinct and catchy and all 21st Century and something that will catch on with young people in France and give their language minders fits as they try to coin a suitable official Frankish version that everyone can ignore. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I have just "concluded sending a series of e-mails back and forth" to the Vidalia Homemaker of the Year, Janis Gore of Gone South fame, who initially sent a message full of good cheer, which eventually made its way through several backs-and-forths to a point where she allowed that she was going to be having company tomorrow, and has had precious little time for blogging. Curious about the vittles, I foolishly asked what she and Lyman were a'preparing:

Shrimp cocktail, seafood gumbo, a lovely green salad, Oysters Bienville, Oysters Rockefeller, garlic bread and chocolate mousse. My charming other half will do most of the cooking. I will do most of the cleaning up. Which includes handwashing about 60 pieces of his grandmother's Havilland china (Apple Blossom) and Fostoria crystal because it was made before dishwashers were common.

I am SO STINKING HUNGRY! And this is for LUNCH tomorrow!

posted by Terry at 12:11:00 PM

Defiant North Korea says it will reactivate nuclear reactor that was frozen under 1994 deal

North Korean civilians hail move, say radioactive waste will make great dietary supplement to grass and sticks.

posted by Terry at 11:34:00 AM

Crack found in plumbing of shuttle Discovery, NASA checking rest of fleet

SWAT team members gained entry to the shuttle by using a battering ram on the front door as other officers covered the back door. "Yeah, they usually try to flush the stuff, but we usually catch 'em," said lead officer John Ramirez. Officers found several engineers inside who were led away in handcuffs. One shirt sleeve and polyester slacks-clad man complained about brutality as officers forcibly removed his pocket protector, knocking his glasses off in the process. "Say, this is just "whack," you "dudes." My brainy "homies" and I were simply "chilling" in our "crib."" Officers also found large amounts of cash and several stacks of Scientific American magazines.

posted by Terry at 11:31:00 AM

COOOL! By sheer power of persuasion, I was able to convince an unsuspecting blogger to participate in my evil plan for the takeover of your puny Earth by marsupials! BWAAAAAHAHAHAHA! I WILL HAVE YOU ALL WEARING FUR AND HANGING FROM TREES IN NO TIME!!!

ahem...In any event, go see what Meryl Yourish has to say about possums.

(I sure hope she takes my other advice and posts more stuff about guns. And food.)

posted by Terry at 11:24:00 AM

Now this is a pretty cool story...

Savoring cheese along with a loaf of crusty bread and a bottle of wine has long been a favorite way to spend lunch, an afternoon or an evening for the French.

Don't look now, but that habit has been catching on stateside in the last decade or so.

Americans like the combination, they enjoy the conviviality that goes along with it and they are learning more and more about the cheeses that come from remote areas of France. The more they taste and learn, the more they experiment and enjoy.

It was through this interest by more Americans in cheeses of France (call them boutique cheeses, if you like) that prompted Tim Gambrel to take on a second career as a purveyor of cheeses from France, as well as Italy, Spain and England. French cheeses, however, have been his main focus due to the popularity with consumers.

Actually, Gambrel, who is a city planner, had worked in several restaurants in the area and saw the need for a more efficient way to get imported cheeses from small farms and small companies that produce cheese with the same care as a farmer does. [...]

The actual article in the paper last night was much longer, and goes on to list all of the different brands favored by surrender monkeys Mr. Gambrel has taken to importing, along with some neat information about cheeses in general. Unfortunately, this all got edited out of the online edition, but I post this mainly because if you notice, Tim is a city planner. And he just happens to work right down the hall from me! (Guess what he's bringing to our office Christmas party.) Here is a link to his business address.

posted by Terry at 10:54:00 AM

John Adams commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to compose opera about atom bomb

Maybe it's just me, or the time when I was born, or the things I was exposed to as a child, but doggone it, all I can think about is what a great opera this would be with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

posted by Terry at 10:41:00 AM

New York never sleeps my great hairy rump!

HEY! I got news for you people--I can do the same thing down here! And all that hoohah about being able to get anything anytime you want it ain't such a big deal!

Why, just last night, when we got home at 9 o'clock from church, and after 3/4 of the kids were bathed and put to bed about an hour and a half later, I was right in the middle of redoing my schedule of teachers and typing up a letter to e-mail to the church secretary this morning and was informed by the last un-sleeped child that she was supposed to get information off the Internet about the Creek Indians for class tomorrow, then only a few minutes later, I was informed by my good wife that her car needed precious, sweet Iraqi OOOOIIIILLLL, and that her mom wanted her to go to the bakery and get a coconut cake for her (something to eat for the constant stream of guests who come to stare at her in her post-operative state), and then I noticed that if some particular Middle Girl child wanted to take a paper copy of her assignment about Creek Indians with her tomorrow, she would need her daddy to pick up a pack of printer paper.

SO, along about 11, I was left to finish my work as everyone else did the sensible thing and went to bed. I finished part of my letter, redid my schedule, sent them to myself here at work so I could put the final polish on them this morning. I even managed to chat a bit with Mr. Schranck on the covered bridge thing, and I found a bunch of websites devoted to Muscogee history. It was time to print, and with no paper, it was time to embark on my sojourn, my quest to find out what all can be bought after midnight in the tiny village of Trussville.

A WHOLE HEAPING WAD, that's what! I dropped down to the foot of the hill and first went to see if Target might be open. You know, it being Christmastime, you would figure it would be open 24 hours, at least temporarily. Nope. The only thing open was Books-A-Million, and I came this close (imagine my fingers about an inch apart) to going in and shopping a bit. But I had to go fill up with gasoline, so on over to the RaceTrac for some good, cheap $1.289 gasoline to feed my profligate hunger for petrochemicals.

Having done that, I stopped by that beacon of get-everythingness, Winn-Dixie. Printer paper? Check! Coconut cake? Check! (although I will probably lose style points with the mominlaw since it didn't come from Marsh's Bakery). Take THAT! big city dwellers! Then it was back home to finish printing, and I was snug in bed by 0030. And up a 0455. Boy, am I sleepy.

The worst part of the whole deal was being aurally assaulted by quite possibly the world's worst rendition of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Driving along, listening to the all-Christmas-music station, and suddenly I hear Bing Crosby start up with a pseudo-swingy, scat-like (in both the musical sense and in the sheer dreckiness of it) version that made me pull over and slam my head in the car door repeatedly. Imagine Bill Murray doing his lounge singer schtick with a dose of William Shatner after he has rummaged through the medicine cabinet. Feed that to a goose, then follow it around until it comes back out, then press it onto vinyl.

Yes, that bad.

"YEAH! You know Dash!er and Dancerrrrrrr, And that Com!et and Cupidddddd, but HEY! do you cats recalllll, THE! MOST! FAM! OUS! REINDEEEEEER OFffffaaaaLLLLLLLLLL?!" (Yes, I realize that the last word could be misinterpreted as "offal.")

Bingola sings Crapola. Bbuhbuhbuh-barf.

Oh well. At least I could sleep soundly knowing that I can go out at midnight and get anything I want around here, just like them big city folks.

As long as it's cake and paper and gas.

posted by Terry at 9:02:00 AM

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Larry Anderson at Kudzu Acres notes the post below about the Boll Weevil Monument, and takes a moment to reflect on its greater meaning:

In my little North Alabama neighborhood, farmers continued to plant cotton long after they ceased to have a chance of turning a profit. One man continued to plant into the '90s, but didn't pick his acre. When asked about it, he said that his daddy, granddaddy and great-granddaddy all planted cotton and so would he as long as he farmed.

Trent Lott's recent comments about Strom Thurmond reminded me of the old farmer. It seems that some people are incapable of recognizing when something has outlived any usefulness it may have ever had. There was a time when Jim Crow was useful to the South's politicians in that it allowed them to play the different non-powerful peoples against each other for political gain. Never think that any of it was about anything but power. Lott doesn't seem to have the intelligence to realize that the days are gone when the majority of Southern whites perk up at comments about how good the old days were. Pockets of ignorance remain, but on the whole, Southerners have realized that keeping a portion of the population down harms us all. We do not longingly look back at the days of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor and others of that ilk. We are happy with the new South and are ready for politicans such as Trent Lott to move on so that the rest of us can build a society where every person can reach for their potential without idiots imposing unnatural barriers.

I can stand up from where I'm sitting right now, look out my window, and see the exact spot where the Dixiecrats held their convention in 1948. I can walk downstairs, go outside, and see the inscription on the time capsule in the foundation of the building listing the city commissioners in 1950, including that of Eugene Conner. And I can turn around, look toward the park across the street and see people walking and talking and acting perfectly...normal. People--people from all walks of life, from all races, and even from across the world--just being people.

If there is hope and peace in this place, never let it be said that there can be no hope or peace elsewhere.

posted by Terry at 2:09:00 PM

Well, here is is! For all of you who keep stumbling into the warm, toasty fur of Possumblog by Googling for newhouse lileks lott, here is the article in question from Al Roker's newest buddy: GOP Should Tell Lott to Step Down and Clam Up

[...] Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.

But among whom? Republicans are a little defensive when their enemies prod them to dine on the flesh of their fellow elephants. Conservatives who reject their party's tenets are often described as having "grown," just as you'd describe a child who no longer believes in the Tooth Fairy.

Internecine sniping at Lott would give comfort to the enemy; you can see Jim Carville steepling fingers like Mr. Burns on "The Simpsons" and muttering "excellent" under his breath.

All true. So? For months we've heard calls for moderate Islamic scholars and mullahs to denounce the excesses of their co-religionists -- well, this is much like that. Not that Lott's comments were anywhere near the ravings that flow from mosques in the Middle East; he didn't call for Thurmondism to sweep the world at swordpoint. But it's the same idea. You can stay silent and hope it'll blow over, or disagree for the sake of your party's soul.

Just because your opponents are making hay over the issue shouldn't keep people of integrity from speaking up. Doesn't mean you call CNN and offer to unfurl your outrage for six minutes of face time, but please: If the subject comes up, don't flick it away like an outhouse fly.

Censure? No. Step down from his Senate seat? If he's caught having sex with an intern from the Iraqi United Nations delegation, then we talk expulsion.

Step down as Senate majority leader, lest this remark cause the GOP to lose the trust of its 3,247 black supporters? That's probably the best route. No one looks to Lott for leadership and inspiration. He's a haircut and a grin. [...]

...But darned fine looking in a cheerleading sweater. Always helps to have something to fall back on, don't you know.

posted by Terry at 12:30:00 PM

A Great and Auspicious Day It Is...

Via the Library of Congress:

On December 11, 1919, the citizens of Enterprise, Alabama erected a monument to the boll weevil, the pest that devastated their fields but forced residents to end their dependence on cotton and to pursue mixed farming and manufacturing. A beetle measuring an average length of six millimeters, the insect entered the United States via Mexico in the 1890s and reached southeastern Alabama in 1915. It remains the most destructive cotton pest in North America.

The infestation led to the introduction of the peanut--an alternative crop popularized by the Tuskegee Institute's George Washington Carver. Peanut cultivation not only returned vital nutrients to soils depleted by cotton cultivation, but also proved a successful cash crop for local farmers. By mid-1921, the boll weevil had entered South Carolina. In a 1939 interview for the Federal Writers' Project, South Carolina native Mose Austin recalled that his employer was adamant "he don't want nothin' but cotton planted on de place; dat he in debt and hafter raise cotton to git de money to pay wid." Austin let out a long guffaw before recounting, "De boll weevil come . . . and, bless yo' life, dat bug sho' romped on things dat fall." Austin remembered that the following spring, his employer insisted on planting cotton in spite of warnings from his wife, his employees, and government agricultural experts:

De cotton come up and started to growin', and, suh, befo' de middle of May I looks down one day and sees de boll weevil settin' up dere in de top of dem little cotton stalks waitin' for de squares to fo'm. So all dat gewano us hauled and put down in 1922 made nuttin' but a crop of boll weevils.

"Always Agin It,"
Place Chapin, South Carolina,
John L. Dove, interviewer,
January 24, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

The next year, Austin's employer tried the same ill-fated experiment. Ultimately, the man lost his farm and moved with his disgruntled wife to California.

The boll weevil contributed to the economic woes of Southern farmers during the 1920s--a situation exacerbated by the Great Depression. As late as 1939, Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post Wolcott, on assignment in Wake County, noted the destructive presence of the pest in the fields of North Carolina.

So there. And here's you a link to a photograph of the dedication back in 1919, along with a pretty interesting history. (Note that the original was a fountain--the bug was added later.)

posted by Terry at 11:41:00 AM

It being the Christmas season, I believe it is quite the time to post this--everyone, please sing along...

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley'garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly welly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Duck us all in bowls of barley,
Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!

Thank you, I Go Pogo!

posted by Terry at 11:00:00 AM

Whew!

Had to take Little Boy back to the dentist today for his other filling. I don't think I've ever seen someone who likes going and getting his head drilled as much as this kid. Must be all the knobs and lights and tools and Mr. Slurpy.

Anyway, it seems like the post I did yesterday on my wonderful wood seminar struck a nerve with some of you. Fritz Schranck of Sneaking Suspicions sent me a nice e-mail with a link to a Delaware Department of Transportation project for the construction of a new covered bridge to replace a much older single lane covered bridge. Great shots of the progress during construction. Click here to go see it. There is also an online photo album done by the folks in Centreville, Delaware that offers some additional shots. Not to be outdone, here is a link to a University of Alabama site documenting Alabama's covered bridges.

Next, Nate McCord asks the following:

Hmm, sitting on my table right now is an 18" Flexible Stainless Steel Ruler. Sold by Fiskars. I know its a ruler because it says so, permanently photo-etched on its face. And since it is sold by Fiskars, the famous scissor selling folks, it must be useable for cutting too... Don't ya think? Made in China to BTW... Bought with your tax dollar by the US gummamint from the land of "reeducation through labor" camps. Grrr!

Yes, indeedy-do, Nate, that is a genuine ruler, or to some of us a "metal straightedge." There is such a fear among us old-timers of improperly calling something a ruler, that even when it IS a ruler, we have to come up with another name for it. And yes, a metal straightedge is perfect to use as a guide for your trusty X-Acto Number 11. Just remember, measure twice, cut once. And never try to catch a falling knife.

As for the country of manufacture for this piece of equipment, I think it's a bit of an unfortunate stereotype to suppose that simply because it was made in China that it had to have been manufactured by political prisoners. I mean, come on, they have lots of kids working in factories, too.

Now then, I have a load of garbage to finish up for today, so I must, well, go finish up my load of garbage! I'll check on all of you later. Please feel free to make yourself a sandwich.

posted by Terry at 10:05:00 AM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Thank goodness televisions have an off switch--Whoopi Goldberg to Produce, Star in New NBC Series.

You know, it's not that I don't like her, it's just, just...aww, who am I kidding.

posted by Terry at 3:45:00 PM

Frank Lloyd Wright lamp brings record price at auction

NEW YORK (AP) -- A leaded glass lamp designed by Frank Lloyd Wright has been sold for just under $2 million, a record for a Wright piece at auction, Christie's auction house said.

The lamp, created around 1903 for the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, Ill., was acquired Tuesday for $1,989,500 by a telephone bidder who wished to remain anonymous.

The pre-sale estimate for the lamp was $1.2 million to $1.8 million.

The double-pedestal lamp, designed in shades of green, yellow and amber, was one of a pair of lamps that stood in the library of the house, which was also designed by Wright. [...]

Wow. That's one 'spensive lamp.

Here is a link to the Dana-Thomas House, and here is a link to the Christie's brochure with a picture of the doodad.

(I sorta like this one.)

posted by Terry at 3:22:00 PM

Ahhh, college lit. And those annoying writing assignments! Which apparently led one lazybones to Possumblog searching for Free essay of Forrest Gump Written by Groom, Winston. Dang it all, can't even get dressed and go rent the movie! 150,000 Google hits for just plain old "forrest gump," with probably a good two or three thousand online essays written by college attendees just like (well, kinda like) you, and you wind up here, you poor soul!

Well, let me be of help.

Forrest Gump says, "Stupid is as stupid does." There now, go flesh that out a bit.

posted by Terry at 2:48:00 PM

What an interesting article--Top Europe Scientists Want Funds to End Brain Drain

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's leading scientists criticized the European Union's science policies Tuesday, calling for reforms and more funding to curb further brain drain to the United States.

"It is important to realize that the United States is dramatically more successful than the EU in attracting young talents at the post-doc (post-doctoral) level from all parts of the world," the presidents of 10 European science academies said in a letter to the European Council of EU leaders. [...]

"Government budgets will have to be raised (or in some cases continue to be raised) at a pace commensurable to what we have seen in the United States and Japan," the letter said.

The United States spent 2.7 percent of its 2000 budget on research and development and Japan 3.0 percent, while EU nations have lagged behind since the mid-1990s, according to OECD data.

The U.S. government also plans to increase spending by more than 20 percent over the 2001-03 period, and Japan's budget has also been expanded, the letter said, adding, "No corresponding dynamism is visible generally throughout Europe, although there are exceptions like the United Kingdom."

The EU should copy the U.S. university system and become more open, efficient and flexible, letting government spending focus on basic research and leaving the business sector to take care of development and applied research, it said. [...]

Simplisme, indeed.

posted by Terry at 2:25:00 PM

More Adventures in Headline Writing--Thousands of Screws Prompt Flats in Ky.

By the way, did you know that K-Y was first trademarked in 1906? It was originally made by a New York suture and medical products firm named Van Horn and Sawtell, which was purchased by Johnson & Johnson in 1919.

posted by Terry at 1:56:00 PM

Uh-oh. Someone at CBS News has been watching too many old gangster movies...Giant Satellite Sleeps With Fishes.

Baddabing.

posted by Terry at 1:21:00 PM

U.N. Teams Inspect Iraqi Uranium Mine

Give It A Glowing Report

(Sorry)

posted by Terry at 1:11:00 PM

Iraq on his mind, Bush courts Turkish leader

I really think he's going to pick Helene, though.

posted by Terry at 1:09:00 PM

Jimmah

[...] "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." [...]

Hmm. Well, I'm sure someone has already posted something similar, but there is a quote from another guy (although not a Nobel winner) who might differ with Brer Jimmah...

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

posted by Terry at 12:40:00 PM

Hey, congratulations fellers--'Rick & Bubba' among top 20 syndicated a.m. shows

(Although I think their slogan about being "the two sexiest fat men alive" is inaccurate, seeing as how they have never met me. But congratulations anyway.)

posted by Terry at 12:05:00 PM

Notable Quotes

"My right ear, which encounters my own edgy guitar and the machinegun strokes of the drums, has suffered badly. I've no idea what I can do about this."

--The Who guitarist PETE TOWNSHEND, in London's Sun.

Possibly not using terms like "my own edgy guitar and the machinegun strokes of the drums" would be a good start. Just say, "I'm bloody deaf."

And then there's this from a wonderful philosopher--

"The sea holds a large amount of water, but what is important is each droplet that makes up the body of water."

--YOKO ONO, on how individuals can make the world a better place.

But what about those poor forgotten atoms of hydrogen and oxygen?! Don't they count, too? Without them, the droplets would not exist, nor the ocean, and then we could all walk to Europe. Is that really what we want?

posted by Terry at 11:56:00 AM

Riley upset Siegelman administration pursuing DPS radio deal

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Gov.-elect Bob Riley is upset that Gov. Don Siegelman's administration is spending $8.3 million on a communications network for law enforcement shortly before leaving office.

The deal is too large for an administration to complete in its closing days, particularly with the state's mounting financial problems, Riley spokesman David Azbell said Tuesday.

Siegelman said his administration has worked on the communications plan for two years, and an official bid award was made to Motorola on Nov. 26.

"It looks like a good contract and all systems are go. So we'll get this thing started and it will be the next administration that gets to really cut the ribbon for the statewide communications system," he told The Birmingham News. [...]

Work on the communications system has drawn public attention before.

In November 2001, Siegelman canceled a $15 million communications contract he had signed in March after The Birmingham News reported that his staff and Public Safety had arranged for SmartCop of Pensacola to get the contract without seeking bids or proposals from other companies. [...]

According to a disclosure form filed by Motorola, it used the law firm of Maynard, Cooper and Gale as a consultant in seeking the state business. The governor's former legal adviser and close friend Boots Gale is a partner in the firm. Gale also served on the legal team that Siegelman assembled during the 13 days he was disputing the outcome of the general election.

In addition to the Motorola deal, the Department of Public Safety has a pending three-year contract worth up to $1.8 million for Max Machuta, the consultant it used during the bid process, to manage the installation of the network.

That contract has been submitted to the Legislature's Contract Review Committee for approval. Machuta is a former Motorola employee, but Simon said he was unbiased and that both Motorola and M/A-Com complained about Machuta during the bid process.

Yep, move along folks, nothing fishy here. All legal and above board, it is. Favors?! Oh no, that wouldn't be at all the right thing to do.

posted by Terry at 11:44:00 AM

The Fascinating World of Engineered Lumber!

Look, if I have to sit through it, you have to, too!

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to attend a seminar about laminated lumber to help fulfill my architectural licensing requirements. Here in Alabama, we have to do twelve hours annually of such stuff, and this class knocked out two hours of that. It also provided much content for my inner curmudgeon to rant and rave about.

First, the product itself is best described by their website, which is here. Basically, engineered lumber is made from bits and pieces of trees pressed together with adhesive. Doesn't sound particularly interesting, but actually the stuff is pretty amazing, and allows a much greater utilization of a tree which might normally get thrown away as waste material. It also allows the use of younger, faster growing farmed trees instead of old growth timber, and the controlled method of manufacture helps to negate the effects of soft wood, knots, and other defects, and means that less desireable species of wood can be used without a loss of strength. It gives a product that is straighter, truer, and less prone to warpage and cupping than sawn lumber. In general, pretty neat material. Although sorta expensive.

Now then, having dispensed with that, the seminar itself was certainly an...experience.

I skipped lunch so I could go to the bank and not have to ask for too much time off, so when I got to the lovely Mountain Brook Inn, I decided to head for their restaurant. The waitress gave me a takeout box and I proceeded to fill it with some really disappointing and mundane food from the buffet. I really was expecting...I don't know, something more in keeping with the high class reputation of the place, but it was just lukewarm junk that would get thrown out of a chain like Piccadilly's or Golden Corral. Good to see that the quality didn't prevent them from pretending it was good--the mess set me back ten bucks! But, it was lunch, and I was hungry.

I took it back to the seminar room and figured I would get in the very far back by the wall so I wouldn't distract people and spread out a bit so no one would sit by me. There was a whole room full of tables in front of me, and lots of open chairs, which meant that the two old codgers who came in a few minutes later really had to think hard to be able to decide to come and sit down right by me. ::sigh::

I moved my free product information binder and my free doodle pad and my free coffee mug with the handle in the shape of an elephant's head (part of their old ad campaign that shows an elephant standing on a floor made from their products), and my food over so they could grab a couple of chairs. Gosh, first bad food, and now the bracing aromas of Old Spice and Camel Unfiltereds. They were definitely Old School guys and rambled on like Statler and Waldorf on the Muppets. Except not funny. They got to talking about pens, because one of the giveaways was a wood-barreled ballpoint, and were going on about those Mount Blank ballpoint pens [sic--I know it's Mont Blanc, pronounced in a suitably Frogophilic fashion, but to these fellows it was Mount Blank] that are the best in the world, and then they got on a tear about those Rolex watches that are the best in the world, and how to tell a fake Rolex from a real one (which is really an outdated bit of lore, as there are now Swiss makers knocking off Rolexes using a sweep-second ETA 2824-2 Automatic movement, which is similar to the ones used in the Tudor line until pretty recently, and they are actually pretty nice looking watches--I resisted the urge to hold forth on this, however--no one likes a smarty pants.) They managed to keep up a low raspy chatter the entire class, about not much in particular. It was pretty funny when they picked up part of the sales-guy/presenter's patter about "what we do is take the tree apart and put it back together," which got repeated about a thousand times. They managed to grab one of the samples making its way around the room, and one said with great authority, "You know, what they've done here really is just take the tree apart and put it back together." Yes. Very true, indeed.

Of course, my own old-fartitude showed through near the start of class when the sales guy was passing out his schwag. One of the items was an 18 inch long scale, and one of the young computer savvy duuuuudes down at the other end of the table said something about really wanting one of those "rulers." AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! Scale, SCALE, SCALE! It's a stinkin' SCALE! To the general public, a long plastic and wood stick thing with equally spaced numbers on it looks like a ruler, but for those who went to architecture school, a scale is a measuring device used for making scale drawings, NOT for measuring the curtains or drawing lines in your Power Puff Girls notebook. And definitely not for cutting! This used to be the first thing they taught you in school, and those who insisted on calling it a "ruler" where publicly humiliated and forced to endure horrible punishments. Hmmph! Not anymore, I see! "Ruler!" Sheesh! Kids today. (Then again, he might have gotten out of architectural school without ever having picked up a lead holder--I hear tell they use them there "computers" to draw with.)

Anyway, the class itself was a marvel of confusion. The guy teaching the class was not an engineer, but a salesman. So he spent most of the time making lame jokes and trying to act like he was an engineer. In general, sizing structural members is relatively straightforward, and he gave us a huge stack of product binders and load tables which tell you everything. This didn't stop him from insisting on acting like he was teaching us how to properly size stuff, in a peculiar, rapid-fire chatter that made me forget everything I knew. He also was apparently enamored of Socrates, and used a variation on his pedagogical method. I say variation, because although he tried to lead the discussion by asking questions, the questions themselves had absolutely no relation to the subject at hand, and it was impossible to tell what point he was trying to make--

"Okay, let's say that you've got a building, and it's Tuesday. What are you thinking?" Huh?

"Okay, so you've got a snow load, and you're in Madison, Wisconsin, and the load chart tells you that there are fifteen different sizes that could be used. What is the contractor's shoe size?" WTF?

"Okay, is is hot in here? If I dim the lights, will y'all go to sleep? Okay, these joists come from our factory a little ways north of here in Canada...That's really not a short way away, is it? NO, it's a long way! Almost 600 miles north of Detroit!" Wha?

"Okay, you've got your L/360, and L equals what? Length, right, so then where should you stand?" Please, stop, mister. Chatterchatterchatter. It became painfully obvious that his technical knowledge was limited to repeating various jargon, so the whole thing was an exercise in not being rude and shouting at him, at least for me.

He also had an interesting way of abusing the English language. Now I realize I do a lot of that in this blog, but it is usually done knowingly to pump up the silliness factor. However, when I am out having to do my actual job, proper usage and grammar are very important--something misstated or unclear can have some pretty dire consequences. When I'm around people in the trade, I make a point of using the proper terms properly. In a seminar like this, I sorta expect a similar courtesy from the presenters. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the past tense of "span" is not "spanned," but "spun"! As in, "Okay, we had a project and we had a 40 foot long joist that spun over two walls." I couldn't figure out WHAT he was talking about until it finally occurred to me that he was just a silly putz. Then there was a question from the audience about how much bearing area did the end of a particular truss need. (The bearing area is where a beam or joist sits on top of a wall or other member--in general, heavier loads require a larger area to properly transfer the load down) He expressed this area as a "circumference." "Okay, you've got a lot of material on both sides and that makes that load circumference better." Then there was his use of the word "masonary." "Masonary" does not exist. There is such a thing as masonry, however, and people who do what this fellow does for a living ought to know that. Then again, most everyone should know that if you want someone to contact you "via e-mail," that you do not say, "Okay, you can contact me V-I-A e-mail." What did he think VIA stood for? Probably something French, like RSVP. Or C.O.D. And did I mention that he started every sentence with "okay?"

What makes it worse is that he got his business degree the same place I got my architecture degree. ::sigh:: At least when I went there, they made a point of telling us if we screwed something up to say we graduated from Georgia Tech.

posted by Terry at 10:33:00 AM

Monday, December 09, 2002

Oh, my, now THAT was a good weekend! Fascinating suburban tales of holiday cheer!

And it started off good--we decided to go have supper Friday evening at the Local Chinese Restaurant With Two Inexplicably Anglo Waitresses, and we got the good one who is always on the ball. The other girl, for some reason, seems always to be in perpetual training, always having to be cued to wipe the tables or bring a chair or whatever. Anyway, it was fanstinkintastic, which is pretty rare on a weeknight. (The Sunday buffet is usually much better.)

Saturday was the real workhorse day, and I managed to get just about everything done that I wanted to do, and managed to avoid some other things pretty handily. Like being able to sleep in. 6:30 in the a. of m. ...creeeeaaak...pad, pad, pad, pad, pad...pause...padpadpadWHUMP...::sawmill whisper:: "HEY MAMA, I DIDN'T WET THE BED!" "Mmelphmmebu. MOrhoomsl." Translated as 'Mama sleeps on the other side of the bed, first, and second, if you keep coming in here and waking Daddy up early on Saturday mornings he will personally make sure that Santa Claus leaves you a lump of coal. And crappy high-sulfur soft coal, too. Or maybe even peat.' Boy, I sure would like to sleep late one morning. "CAN I WATCH CARTOONS?!" "Yes, please quit talking quite so loud, though, because I'm not deaf and you're right beside my ear." "But I was awhisperin', Daddy." "Maybe on the Planet Hearing Impaired, but not right now." "Okay, can I watch the cartoons now?" She scrambled up into the covers as Mom got up and started getting ready to start the day. "Catherine?" "Yes, Daddy?" "You do realize that with you in bed, it makes it very difficult to convince Mommy to get back under the covers so I can snuggle with her, don't you?" "We gonna watch cartoons." ::sigh:: I got up and started getting ready, too.

Laundry was bundled up and taken downstairs, and then it was the beginning of the first project--changing the shower lightbulb. I have avoided this one for a while, to the point that Reba gave up prompting me with small verbal asides about how dark it was in the shower. I get a bulb and the step ladder and head upstairs. Hmmm. Can't reach it with ladder outside of shower, ladder won't go all the way IN shower, meaning ladder must be half in, half out. SUCCESS! Barely reach cover, pop it off, change the bulb (thus answering the question, 'How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but all he can think about is what a great blog entry it would make.') and gather all the stuff and take it all back downstairs. Although I did not make a big deal out of it, neither did I make this repair in secret. There was an awful lot of rattling of ladder parts and asking where the light bulb was, yet it was not until Sunday morning that Mrs. Oglesby took notice of my efforts. She was somewhat pleased. I'll take what I can get.

Then it was time to take Oldest Girl over to the church building so she could study with her friends for Bible Bowl. I decided to take Franklin since it has been over a month since he was exercised. Good thing I did--real slow to crank, and everything felt creaky and cranky and sluggish. But after a few miles, he was back to normal, or at least normal for 255K miles on the clock. Dropped off Girl, stopped and got gas, and two really cool STP keyrings, which were on the two bottles of STP Fuel System Glop That Might Work As a Placebo for Various Engine Ills. But it had keyrings, so I had to get it. Back to the house, and it was time to put back the errant shutter that has lain on the ground for several weeks, awaiting my magical fixative abilities.

These things are lightly held on with little plastic anchors, which somehow manage to sprout little legs and run away, leaving the shutter to explore the effects of wind and gravity. I have tried in vain to find these at the hardware store, which always leads to an interesting conversation with some mop-haired slacker or two. "Uhhhh...no, I don't think we have anything like that." Great. But, you know what? I'm an OPTIMIST, so I figured I would take ANOTHER trip to the Marvin's at the bottom of the hill and just see once more how little they can help me. Or just get some bright shiny expansion screws and washers. I just wanted the shutter back up. To the Possummobile! Franklin was finally getting into the mood of working again, and he fired right up and off we went.

The place was packed. Mainly it was folks getting those messy old real Christmas trees, but also full of people seemingly just wandering around the parking lot or blocking my way with their vehicles. I started to do the engine racing backfire bit, but hey, it's Christmastime. FINALLY got parked and went inside. Lots of Christmas decorations and a guy in a Santa suit, all of which just looks odd in a hardware store, and then I saw it...a WHOLE AISLE full of shutters, just like the ones on my house! And there was a non-mopheaded clerk, RIGHT THERE! It was a Christmas MIRACLE! Or not. He was having a conversation with an old timer about the shutters..."Naw, I don't want 'em if'n they're plastic. I need them vinyl ones."

"Well, vinyl and plastic are about the same thing."

"I don't know...I got me vinyl sidin', and that plastic stuff just won't hold up."

They looked intently at the box. I looked at the stock tag--"56INCH VYNIL SHTR LOUV"

"Maybe these are ABS."

"Whut's ABS?"

"Ahhhh, it's...ABS? Umm, it's another type of plastic...that's...ummm, durable."

Oops. Shouldn't be working without a net, there, Chief. "Durable plastic? I don't know, I got vinyl sidin'."

After a minute or two, the older fellow decided he would look around town some more and walked on off, a bit disappointed. The clerk turned to me and I showed him my one remaining plastic fastener from the shutter. "Have any of these?" "No, I don't think so, but I can call the factory and see if they can send some extra." Fair enough, I supposed. "Hey, I guess you didn't see it, but your stock tag here on the rack says that these shutters ARE vinyl...see?" I pointed at the tag and he took a moment to process this epiphany. "HEY, they are! You should have said something!" I really suppose it wouldn't have hurt to have pointed it out while we were all standing there together, but it just felt so...intrusive. He was almost beside himself with the pain of a lost customer when a split second later the old fellow walked back by, "SIR! These ARE vinyl! Says here on the stock tag!" And there was much joy.

He took my name and number and asked how many I wanted of the fasteners. Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six. "Oh, whatever comes in their bulk pack. Probably 20 or 50 or whatever I have to get." He promised to call back today. I can hardly wait. After getting this all squared away, there was still the question of how to get the shutter back up in the mean time, so I walked over to the Various Metal Bolts and Anchors Thingies aisle and got a box of tiny expansion bolts and went to the cashier. Cute fleshy blonde girl from the high school, and behind her in the checkout corral was another much more petite young thing. I put my stuff on the counter and as my cashier rang it up, I must confess that I could not quit looking behind her at the behind of the girl behind her. Petite Girl had on a pair of the ubiquitous soft jersey sweat pants and a top that didn't quite hit the waistband, just like what all the hip young things wear nowadays, and those soft pants just laid right there on her backside with that little bit of nekkid lower back peeking through under her shirt and her light brown hair bobbed side to side and then she turned around and put money in the cash register and AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! UNIBROW!!!! WOW, if eyebrows and wooly caterpillars work the same way, it looks like we're in for a really hard winter. All those pliers, all those hedge clippers, all those putty scrapers, all those chemicals, and yet, she had not managed to avail herself of all the heavy duty brow thinning toolery and technology around her. I would say that she probably made up for it in other ways, like being all brainy, but when I had to come back to get more anchor bolts because the ones I was buying were too big, she was not at her register when she should have been, and had to be paged, and she sort of wandered back from some hidden part of the store, and when she arrived, her fellow cashier who just happened to be waiting on me again gave a big, exasperated eye-roll as if to say, "What a clod." Of course, I am one to talk--as I said, I DID have to come back and get something that would actually work. Reba said that's what I get for looking at her butt. Fair enough.

Anyway, when I went back home the first time, not only did I attempt to fix the shutter, but also cleaned the accumulated brake dust off of our cars, requiring much scrubbing and playing in ice cold water, AND installed a new seat cover in the truck, requiring much tugging and pulling and inhaled huge quantities of dryrotted manmade fibers which I sure hope are non-carcinogenic, AND removed the pumpkins and pumpkin guts which had been slowly decomposing in the front flower bed since Halloween, AND then finally managed to get something to hold the shutter in place after a second trip to the hardware store, AND then, for the centerpiece of the Oglesby weekend there was...

THE HAULING OF THE TREE AND DECORATIONS FROM THE ATTIC!

I have this down to a science now. There are only three things to remember--Do not fall through the hole where the pull-down stair is (potentially fatal), do not grab onto the furnace flue (definitely painful), do not step on anything except the plywood (potentially painful or fatal). Tree box, light boxes, and ornament boxes were all carefully brought down and thrown gracefully into the floor of the den, managing to avoid hitting anything or anyone. And then I had to stop everything and go back and get Oldest from church.

"Daddy, are you not going to put up our tree?"

"Yes, Catherine, but I have to go get Ashley."

"Is it in that big box?"

"Yes..."

"Can I get it out and put it up?"

"NO, Daddy will do it."

"When?"

"When I get back."

"What's in the box?"

"THE TREE!"

"Can I see it?"

"When I get back."

"Not now?" ::sigh::

"Why don't I just go ahead and put it up and we'll decorate it when I get back." "YEA! We're gonna put up the TWEEEE-eeee!"

Luckily, this part is down to a science, too, and it was up in just a few minutes (although the 1,876 tips were not fully fluffed out--that's for later). Went and got Oldest, got back and set in to fluff and decorate. Always nerve wracking due to huge amounts of breakable, tear-upable, bend-out-of-shapeable stuff, which, along with the potential for getting electricuted by all the wattage from various twinkly stuff make decoration something not for the faint of heart. But it sure looks nice now.

The rest of the evening was spent scrubbing kids and folding laundry, and by bedtime, I just about dead. Or nearbouts whupped, as some would say. But, to make a good day even better, the mail had brought the newest Autoweek, Automobile, and National Geographic, all on the same day! Hardly gets any better than that. So I collapsed across the bed with my magazines and promptly started snoring.

Sunday was another good day. The kids did good in their competition, and I got to see one of my cousins and her husband and son, and I even managed to read the giant newspaper, and then got to lead singing Sunday night and totally messed up only one song. (You know, having a five note range is not really optimal for this assignment.) Then, to home, supper, and to bed. And now, here I am again.

And away I go again. I have a continuing education seminar to attend this afternoon on the glories of engineered lumber, so today is already shot for me. So in lieu of my continued rambling, be sure to check out the folks up in the header and see what all they have to say, and check back in tomorrow when there might be something else here.

posted by Terry at 10:49:00 AM

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