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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. Friday, March 26, 2004
WEEEE-kend!
Going to be a long one. Although that's no big news. Going to take us all out tonight for Oldest's birthday dinner and shopping--she's going to be turning 14 tomorrow. Hard to believe. We let her choose the place, so we'll be dining at the ultra-spiffy Palace Chinese Restaurant high atop Chalkville Mountain. Or, rather, what's left of it after they cut it down to put in the Wal-Mart. I'm not sure where we'll go shopping, but I imagine it will be a most wonderfully fun experience with the three younger ones all wanting to get in on the act. (Gotta remember to make sure Reba has some Rolaids with her.) Then tomorrow there is more youth stuff at church that we won't have to stay long for, because Boy has a soccer game down in Shelby County. Then we come back and I have a meeting at church with next quarter's teachers, most of whom are probably going to be out of town for Spring Break. But I'm a'going to have a meeting anyway. They can just breathe a prayer of thanks that I'm not gonna use PowerPoint. And there's finally some yardwork to start doing. The dandelions are coming up pretty quick, and I'm trying to fend off the mass infestation that has covered our neighbor's yard two doors up. His entire yard is a carpet of yellow dandelions. Someone suggested that a crack commando team be despatched one night to saturate the area with Round-Up, but that's probably not a real good option. Yet. Anyway, I have my own weeds to contend with. As well as a wife who decided that the white van did such an exceptional job of rock hauling that it could be used to haul even MORE rocks to extend our existing flower beds on either side of the house. "You always have such a hard time cutting up against the house with the lawn mower, you know." Gee, thanks, sugar, but somehow, I think I could manage to do just fine as long as I am not forced to make the job easier by working like a chain-gang convict to correct this rather minor deficiency. (That was said in my head, not out loud.) I sorta grunted, which is my version of the Japanese word hai, which can mean lots of things, occasionally even "yes." Or not. SO, all of you have a good weekend and I'll see you again Monday.
Noo Joisey to Clumbianner
Good to see Susanna Cornett is all bedded down in her new home down in the county seat.
Kerry promises to create 10 million jobs
In addition, JFKLitetm promises: 1) A free lifetime supply of Heinz ketchup in handy single-serve pouches for every American. 2) To capture Osama bin Laden, try him, convict him, and send him to a nice halfway house in Boston where he can talk to other maniacal nihilists and convince them of the error of their ways. 3) To repeal gravity so Secret Service agents will quit falling on him as he skis, thus insuring he will not be forced to use Executive Potty Mouth Privilege. 4) To finally admit that he indeed did serve in Viet Nam. 5) To fight to insure that all Americans have a butler. And an AMERICAN butler, too! None of those offshore, outsourced ones! 6) To once more make the world love America, just like it did...well, never, but that's beside the point. We'll be the most popular kids in school! Germany and France will be clamoring to dance with us at the party, and all those weird swarthy kids will quit calling us names! It'll be kewl! 7) To be gracious in defeat should he lose in November. (Yeah, I know--that's obviously made up.)
If you haven't read H.D. Miller's work over at Travelling Shoes...
You should. In fact, there are several folks up there in the blogroll who have been putting out tremendously informative writing that you just don't see in what passes as mainstream journalism. I think the biggest thing I have come to understand in the past three years or so is that what makes that mainstream so maddening is not the addle-pated inability of the professionals to admit even the teensiest bit of bias; nor is it the astounding lack of general, everyday knowledge, coupled with an almost psychotic level of self-importance. What most annoys me is the conceit that journalistic "balance" demands that all events be treated as if they were the same. Like a bowling ball and a feather falling at the same velocity in a vacuum, I keep finding examples where two mightily disparate events or characters are treated as if they were two sides of a fair coin. In the vacuum of journalism, even the most bizarre, obscure, theory, if it is contradictory to someone else's view, is taken as being equivalent. For every story about an abundant good being done, the press seems hell-bent to find a counter-poise that refutes it. Regardless of how inane, or superficial, or ill-reasoned, or partisan, or idiotic it might be. In a vacuum, they both fall at the same rate. Thus, what gets pushed off onto the newsracks and satellite feed is a legitimization of the marginal, as well as a deligitimization of common sense. It seems that for every story about the value of a democratic Middle East, we must be given a reminder that George Washington was a slave-holder. For every story about the use of military power, we must paralyze it with references to Viet Nam. For every reference to Semtex-clad teenagers, we must remember the Crusades. In the vacuum-free real world, we may know that under some circumstances such comparisons make sense, but we also know we would rather stand under a falling feather than a falling bowling ball. Obviously, this isn't a startlingly original revelation, but it is one of the reasons why I put so little stock in what the Fourth Establishment pumps out. Maybe they've trained me a little too well--although I realize that the vast majority of people who work in the newsgathering business are smart and serious about their work, I counter that with the images of folks like the dissembling Jayson Blair and the vainglorious Howell Raines. In the vacuum, the good and the bad fall at the same rate. As for the folks you read who cogitate and commentate online, at least you can tell the bowling balls from the feathers.
Chet the E-Mail Boy Gets a Thorough Lashing
Yesterday afternoon, Nate McCord sent me a very interesting .pdf presentation of an account (with photographic documentation) of a low-speed ground collision between two fully armed F-16s on a taxiway at Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar. The planes weren't really torn up too badly, but the collision did spark a fire on an AIM9 missile on one plane that could have produced a Charlie Foxtrot of spectacular proportions. Thanks to the efforts of alert groundcrew, the fire was brought under control and a calamity averted. HOWEVER, another calamity befell us here at the swanky and plush Editorial Office of Possumblog. I came in this morning and saw that the Editorial E-Mail Account at Yahoo! was at 120% of its 6Mb capacity. The culprit being the 1.614Mb .pdf file Nate had sent. Meaning that if any of you tried to contact the Editorial Office electronically between about 4 CST and now, your e-mail probably bounced back to you. OBVIOUSLY, had Chet the E-Mail Boy been paying attention to his appointed tasks, this particular missive could have been shunted over to one of the many secretive, anonymous Yahoo accounts that we keep for just such exigencies. I brought him in just now and read him the riot act. While it is uncomfortable to see a grown man cry, especially an elderly one, Chet the E-Mail Boy does see the error of his actions and kindly asks that anyone who got a bounced message to please resend them where they will processed and delivered with the utmost speed and efficiency.
Well, first of all...
For the benefit of Mrs. Adams, this is what sort of paper boxer shorts I am required to drape myself in when I visit the quackhouse: the lovely Graham MediShorts. As you can see, they are constructed of a durable nonwoven material which provides comfort with modest coverage, and they have a latex-free sewn elastic waist band to ensure a secure fit. They come in an attractive navy blue color, and offer a fit reminiscent of a pair of 19th Century Zouave pantaloons. They are used by my physician as an alternative to the normal exam gown, or as an alternative to having me wander about the exam room naked. All in all, it was one of my less horrifying exams. For those of you who have come upon Possumblog recently, and haven't had the intestinal fortitude to explore the archives to see what you have missed, my annual physicals and various semi-annual rechecks and drop-ins to the doctor have long formed a base for much blogging merriment, as well as pushing forward the boundaries of medical science. You also got to learn about great art, such as that produced by the Lewitt-Him partnership or by famous wood mosaicist De Groot. My former doctor retired a couple of years ago--he was a very good old-school sort of fellow, thorough, with a wonderful dry wit and a less-than-wonderful gloved hand technique that felt more like he was trying to chop timber. He handed over (no pun intended) part of his patients, including me, to a replacement doctor, who just happens to be very female. Which I really didn't mind at the time--I don't get freaked out by women doctors (my sister's one) and I figured, rightly, that her fingers would be of an exponentially smaller diameter. After having gotten to know her, I can say she knows her stuff and I feel like she's concerned and involved in my care, and also has a wicked sense of humor. Got to the office and saw that there had been some kind of turnover since my last visit--the receptionist was different, and was NOT the crone with the voice box full of gravel, but was a nice-looking young lady in scrubs. I was hoping this was a trend, because the last time I was in for a follow-up visit in November, I was seen by yet another a very burly George Clooney. Oh well. Amazingly, for such a large man, Burly was very light on his feet. We went to the scale, where I found I had lost no weight, but then again, had gained none. "My shoes weigh 15 pounds, you know." Burly almost laughed, raised his eyebrow, and then cheated me a pound or two off. "I have some of those heavy shoes, too," he said. Back to the exam room and it was thankfully one WITHOUT a picture of cast-off wood bits. It had a print of the old Birmingham Terminal Station by local artist Carl Salter. Much nicer. Pulse, BP. Normal on both. Wait. Read oldish copy of USNews and World Report, talking about the powerhouse Howard Dean campaign, and wondering if anyone could stop his momentum. Their best guess was genial game-show host John Edwards, who was set forth as a spoiler. Also noted John Kerry, whom the article noted served in Viet Nam. Who knew?! (I think his campaign needs to let people know that.) Doc came in and we chatted for a while--all my bloodwork was more or less normal, although I think I'm going to have to not sneak anymore steak, egg and cheese breakfast burritos from Sonic. At least for a while. Time then for the fun paper panties, and she turned to step out and let me change. As she reached for the door, I pleaded, "I just need to check and see, but is there any way I can just tell you everything's okay up inside there?" She paused and thoughtfully looked up, "Mmmm...no." ::sigh:: Got nekkid and into my paper, then she came back in. Looked deep into my head holes, listened to my heart and lungs, felt my innards, and then it was time. She stepped to the door and asked Burly to stand in for a minute while she did the final check. It was bad enough the first time there had to be a witness in the room, back when it was her first nurse who looked a bit like a young Lulu Roman. But now, I think I was much less comfortable with said witness being someone whom (I imagined to myself) enjoyed this sort of activity recreationally away from work. Oh well. As Burly came in, Doc allowed that she does have several patients who flatly refuse to be examined, and said that her women patients were worse about it than the men. "Well, I guess I don't mind incredibly much--I mean, you ARE a doctor a..." "No I'm not." Told you she had a wicked sense of humor. Anyway, no untoward lumps or knots or other horrors, and I was ready to go. After I got my clothes on, of course. And, Marc, I was able to walk out of there without doing the Silly Walk. And now you know more than you ever wanted to about me. Thursday, March 25, 2004
Getting close to that time...
I have some work stuff to clear off my desk, and then a bit later today have my appointment to be a finger-puppet for my doctor, as it is ONCE AGAIN time for the bodily humiliation known as my annual physical. WHY, O WHY is it that I can't just tell her I don't have a hernia? Why can't I just tell her I have no swelling in my "special place" there beside the back door? Is it really all that necessary to go grabbing and probing around my naughty bits? And why make it worse with silly paper boxer shorts? The only consolation is that she's probably asking herself why she has to be the one to do it. So, maybe it all evens out. Anyway, see you all tomorrow--I imagine I will have a story or two to relate.
Possumblog--Refuge for the Illiterate
Or, for Those Who Spell Phonetically. Whatever. Anyway, just had a visitor tumble in looking for something about: dukes a hashed "car" Ah, yes...I remember the show well--there was Boh, and al-Uke, and Uncle Jeh'see and, of course, Cousin Dehzeemae.
First it was David Lee Roth, and now this: Frankie Valli joins hit men on 'Sopranos'
Golly, what's next? Fonzie on skis?
Iceberg Off Western Greenland Painted Red By JAN M. OLSEN, Associated Press Writer
Reminds me of the old Stephen Wright line--"I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep them scattered on all the beaches of the world."
Mo-ron
Man with stolen check leaves license The Associated Press
What price honesty?
(Or carelessness?) Well, in my case it runs about 84 bucks. The lady whose borrowed truck's taillight I smashed on Saturday called Tuesday and left a message on the machine detailing the prices she had gotten for a Nissan RT-RR taillamp assembly, ranging from $84.24 up to $120-something. Yikes. That sure was an expensive load of rock. Anyway, I forgot all about calling her yesterday until after I got home, so she probably thought I had ditched her, but I left a message on her voice mail yesterday, along with my work number. Just got off the phone with her after figuring out where to send the check. Turns out it was her dad's truck, and he's going to replace the light himself. "I didn't want you to think I was getting prices for installation, too," she said. It would have been okay if she did--it was, after all, my own inattention that made it happen. (Obviously, Litigious-Americans would have found a way to blame ANYone else: the shopping center--for not making the parking lot level; Home Depot--for not having a trained attendant escort to safely guide my purchases to the vehicle; the cart maker--for not having brakes on their trundles, and for building something that was prone to unintended gravitational acceleration; Nissan--for making substandard taillight lenses; and the woman herself--for contributory negligence in parking where she would be most likely to be damaged by gravity.) Anyway, I suppose 84 dollars ain't so bad.
I'm not sure what's worse...
Richard Simmons Cited for Slapping Man PHOENIX - Exercise guru Richard Simmons allegedly slapped a man who made a sarcastic remark about one of his videos, police said.
You sure don't see THAT every day...
...at least around here. Was driving in this morning and had to make a detour up to the main post office to drop off a bill (I drop urgent stuff at the main office because it gets picked up every hour, as opposed to sometimeish) and as I made the turn onto 3rd Avenue from 22nd Street, I noticed a bum standing on the opposite corner outside of the Magic City Dining Room. For some reason, he giving the "crazy guy stare" at the big white Chevy 3500 Crew Cab Dooley making the turn in front of me. Couldn't figure out what could have been so interesting until I pulled up alongside the truck. It had a white fiberglass camper shell on it, and neatly letter on the front corner was "British Broadcasting Corp." with the New York bureau address. Cool! Welcome to town, guys! (Unless you're here to do some sort of hatchet job, in which case you can sod off.) Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Girl dog.
You know, in amongst all the garbage I'm doing today and all the other stuff I have to keep up with, my mind keeps wandering back to one particular subject. Monday, I stopped off at the school to pick up the kids (who aren't in school this week, but are out for spring break, but who still have to go to the school gym for daycare anyway because their parents are trying to save up their vacation time for summer) and as I parked the van I noticed there was a dog beside the building, calmly lying between two shrubs. White and black piebald, short of hair, long of tail, medium-sized, lean almost to the point of being neglected, collarless, with a most elegant head. Long, intelligent, with alert, pointed ears. It stood up as I brought the van to a halt, tilting its head at the odd sound the brakes made. I turned off the engine and walked around, and saw that "it" was a "she," and she stood there beside the van, looking at me as if she had already made my acquaintance. I didn't try to pet her, but made the soft kissing sound you make to dogs. She just looked at me. Went in and got the kids rounded up, and Jonathan was first out and into the van. I had left the door open, and the dog decided to see what all she could smell in there. Probably a lot. She quietly stepped over to the door sill and poked her head in, then walked back to the side of the building. Cat and Rebecca came on out and the dog loped on off down the sidewalk, where she was surrounded by another group of kids and their dad, who were quite agitated about the DOG!!! The dad said he thought the dog was a stray, and was probably part husky. Husky!? Whatever--some people are just real smart, and it's best not to tell them anything. Got in the van and saw the other kids in the rear-view mirror crowded around the dog, who was now down in the passive, ears back, tail tucked, head-and-forelegs down pose that says someone had not been good to her. Poor girl. Of course, this started the conversation in our van, "Dad, when can we get a fence?!" For you see, we can't very well have a dog until we have a fence. So first things first. We've been through this with them before, but they all want a dog so bad they could bust. But, say Mom and Dad, it's REALLY expensive to put up a fence. And who would take care of a dog? Mom and Dad. Who seem to have their plates full of human children. "If we had a fence, we could get a Spitz and call her Wendy!" said Catherine. Wendy was my dog, and she was a Spitz. Lived to be about 14 or so, and never died. I know she did, but I never saw her. The little bratty kid who lived next door to us when we lived in Irondale let her out of the yard, and she ran away, never to be seen again. But we have pictures, and video, and to Catherine, that's almost as good as a real dog. Almost. I dropped the kids off yesterday morning, and for some reason really hoped to see that dog. Sure enough, she came trotting around the fence from over by where the cafeteria is, and quietly padded up the sidewalk to see what was going on. She stood back and watched the kids go inside, looked over at me, and loped on around the driveway. Yesterday afternoon, I figured I would go pick up the kids--I hadn't heard from Reba if she had left Shelby County on time, and if she doesn't call, it usually means she's late, and there's no use leaving the kids over there any longer than necessary. I pulled up to the curb again and went in, not seeing the dog anywhere. Oh well. I peeked in the door of the gym and saw that the kids had already been gotten by Mom, so I turned around to go get in the van. Walked around the back, and there she was. Just looking around. "Hey, girl." She cocked her head a bit, and looked over her shoulder at something, then back. I asked her if she was a stray or if she had anybody to feed her, and she blinked and sniffed the air. I clicked my tongue and bent down to see if she would let me pet her. No. Too much. Head down, ears back, tail tucked firmly, sidled off. I told her 'bye and got in the van and headed home. She was the topic of much dinner conversation--Catherine noting that she did not bite the other children, and Rebecca complaining that all the other kids pester Miss Tanya to feed her scraps, and Jonathan saying that one mean boy keeps trying to get one of the little kids mess with it, and that it probably belongs to someone, or not, and how if we had a fence, we could have a dog, and it could be a Spitz, and its name could be Wendy. Or Kelli. Or Keekee. If we had a fence. I have waited in vain for the past five years hoping that our side neighbors and rear neighbor would put up a fence so we would be spared having to foot the bill for the whole thing. I don't know how much longer I can wait.
Meeting Hints
Well, first of all, if you decide you're hungry it's probably better not to stop at Sonic on the way to your meeting and get one of their new Steak, Egg, and Cheese breakfast burritos. Despite the fact that they are hot, and wonderfully tasty, they also contain grilled onions. Grilled onions smell really nice when you catch a whiff of them outside at a ballpark or fairground. HOWEVER, after consumption, and when the consumer is later required to stay in a smallish room with other humans the grilled onion aroma, which now clings to his clothing and hair and especially his inner mouth region, becomes rather offensive, smelling much like a weird locker room odor. And bumming a Hall's cough drop from a co-worker doesn't really help that much. Actually, not any. So, my apologies to anyone who had to be within fifty feet of me. And apologies for smelling like fifty feet. SECOND, if you DO decide life cannot be lived without first stopping at Sonic and loading up on salt, fat, and starch, it might be good to be a less-than-messy eater. Especially if you have on a nice light blue dress shirt. Because gravity, as we all know by now, is a particularly stern taskmaster, notably when it comes to the various liquids, gravies and/or sauces contained within Sonic Steak, Egg, and Cheese breakfast burritos. OH, you might think that having a tie across your middle chest and abdominal region and a light jacket wrapped around you might be a large enough safety net to keep fluidic contamination from soiling your nice light blue dress shirt, but you would be wrong. THIRD, if you still feel somehow compelled to break the above two rules, it would behoove you to first check the condition of your clothing prior to walking around where polite society can see the results of your earlier run-in with the law of gravity. A large, slightly brown, greasy stain just below your right pectoralis major on your nice light blue dress shirt does not tend to make you appear to be a professional person, nor does suddenly realizing you have said stain, and running to the restroom to fruitlessly dash water on it. In such an instance, it is probably better to conceal the stain underneath the lapel of your grilled-onion-stench-infused jacket. LUCKILY FOR ME, even though the small tube of toothpaste I keep in my desk drawer is empty and my oral cavity still smells like Osama's hideout, I at least have a large box of Stanback powdered analgesic. For you see, the best way to remove a grease stain is to place a small amount of absorbent powder, such as talcum, corn starch, or 882mg of aspirin and caffeine, onto the spot and gently rub it until the grease is absorbed, then brush away the powder. Sure, it might look like you spilled cocaine all over your shirt, but that's okay. You know you didn't. Now, having dispensed with all of that, I have some intense typing to do to in order to get ahead a bit on my meeting minutes. I will probably ramble back through this afternoon, though, although I will still smell oniony fresh. You might wish to open a window. Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Parroty Parody
If you decide to take a blogging break and then sneak back off of hiatus, this is the way to do it.
Dumb old work.
I just remembered I was supposed to edit something for someone, and I also have to get ready for our twice-monthly bureaucratic make-busy session tomorrow morning, so I suppose I should put away my toy and get something productive done.
A Day Late and...
Ad Age's Bob Garfield dissects yet another car ad campaign--this time an online film for the Volvo S40: [...] Yes, aged and calcified though we may be, we understand that soon the Internet will rule. We're inclined to think most Internet advertising won't be markedly different than the stuff we now see on TV and magazines. But we begrudge nobody a little experimentation, and if marketers want to play around with various viral forms, good for them.
Be sure to click over and read the horrible, horrible last sentence.
Mom-In-Law Update
Despite the fact that she would be horrified to know she was a frequent subject of posts herein, I am happy to report that my wife's mother did fine on her angiogram yesterday, and is supposed to come back home today sometime. If she knew all of you were out there wishing her well, she would say thank you, and then would tell me to quit embarrassing her with details of her personal life.
Orders of Architecture
Last week, regular contributor and fellow blogger Jim Smith asked what the deal was with all those different types of columns and stuff in Classical architecture. Well, the Greeks, being real smart and all, and having a lot of time on their hand as well as skilled slave labor, really got into the whole decorative post business in a big way. This is a link is to a brochure put out by Timeless Architectural Reproductions, a company in Cumming, Georgia who make modern fiberglass versions of the Greek originals. (Which were not made of fiberglass, but of stone. See? I listened in class.) Anyway, the reason I link to it is because it offers a nice and concise explanation of the various orders of columns, including all their bits and pieces. Although they might all look like a bunch of posts, the Classical orders of architecture were a sophisticated, thoroughly thought-out system of proportion and ornament that were easy to replicate in a wide variety of locations and local materials. The system of orders was a way that the power of the Greek states could physically manifest itself, regardless of what shore it found itself on. In a way, the reliance on a set proportional pattern prefigures modern usage of prefabricated parts, or the use of prototypical building designs by national chain stores. No matter where you go, Wal-Marts all look pretty similar;likewise, Greek architecture was, and is, instantly recognizable. The Greeks were a bit more interested in just building boxes, though. They were incredibly advanced in thinking of a building as sculpture, and as a coherent whole, rather than an assemblage of stuff. If you look at the columns, you note they have a graceful taper. It's not a straight taper, though, but subtly curved inward in a precise mathematically determined ratio called "entasis." Doing this does several things--straight columns tend to look as though the middle is concave, so a gentle curve towards the top counteracts this visual illusion, as well as accentuates the illusion of height. And not only is this curvature found in the shaft, but entire buildings, such as the Parthenon, use a similar scheme so that the columns are not concentric, but lean every so slightly to the center of the building, and the entablature and base both rise upward in the middle with yet another slight curve that keeps the horizontal lines from appearing to sag. Now, what about them there Romans? Well, they were inveterate adapters and innovators, and as with so many of their other cultural particulars, they adopted the Greek methods of building as their own. They did add their own simple version of the Doric order to the vocabulary, known as the Tuscan, and introduced what is known as the Composite order, which is, as it sounds like, a mixture of features from several sources. The one thing that was a true innovation by the Romans was the arch, and its spiffier descendant, the dome, as well as a novel building material--concrete. No longer bound by the short spans necessitated by unreinforced stone beams, buildings could encompass great open spaces with a relatively light weight enclosure. Again, having an easily reproducible system of measurement, proportion, and design allowed Rome to continue the expansion and exportation of visible reminders of its culture, as well as that of its Greek forebear. So, Jim--there you go. (OH, and by the way--my favorite Greek architectural word is xenodochion, which is a hotel room and means literally "a container for strangers." I've stayed in places like that before.)
The Republicans have their John McCain...
and the Democrats have Zell Miller--Miller slams Kerry, renews offer to Bush Georgia Democrat says he’s willing to help ‘any way I can’ Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), who has been his party’s most loyal supporter of President Bush in the Senate, has delivered a blistering critique of Sen. John Kerry’s leadership while renewing his offer to campaign for Bush in the South in “any way that I can help him.”
[...] Miller has not always been so dismissive of Kerry. At the Georgia Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in 2001, he introduced Kerry as “one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.”
"Essayons!"
A nice article in this morning's Birmingham News about the Alabama National Guard's 877th Engineer Battalion work in Mosul, rebuilding a former Iraqi army headquarters facility into a new training area. [...] Members of the 877th Engineer Battalion spent about five months working at "the Castle," which is about 30 miles west of the 877th's main camp in the city of Mosul. Earlier this month, there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at which the Iraqi flag was raised, the Iraqi anthem played and the Iraqi military formally took control of the renovated building. [...]
Well, hello!
I had to get my blood drawn this morning in anticipation of my physical Thursday, which explains why I'm running a bit late with this morning's Official First Post of the Day. Which, as it turns out, is this one. Got to the office a few minutes too early, preceeded by only one tiny elderly lady. We were soon joined by a string of other elderly folks who became quite restless as the clock made its way on around to 8. The lab worker came by in a hurry to open her office, but we still had to wait to sign in at the adjacent room, which was still firmly locked. A big old gent in a cool khaki Members Only jacket decided to take matters into his own hands, and at precisely 7:55, he bravely stepped across the hall and pounded on the door with his big ham fist. BAM. BAM. BAM. That'll show 'em, chief. The lab lady stuck her head out of her doorway--"Sir, they're having a staff meeting right now--they'll open in just a moment." "WELL, they have US now. THEY shouldn't have those things when they told us to show up NOW." The lab lady apologized and asked him to be patient, and the door was unlocked at 8 on the dot. Now, I may be just making this up, but I am almost certain that their appointments were for the same time mine was--8:30. The office doesn't make appointments before 8:30. I also noted that when we got in, the four seniorly folks who jumped ahead of me to sign in jotted down 8:30 in the slot where it asked arrival time. Including Mr. Impatient. I felt better when I got to go ahead of him to the lab. Monday, March 22, 2004
Sunday--up early, watched Campbell Brown (who is just not as fun as Jodi Applegate), turned the shower on so I could make my topsy-turvy bedhead hair behave, got the kids up and helped Tiny Girl get dressed, made us all some breakfast, checked the fountain to make sure the storm from the night before had not damaged any of the components, then got us all in the van to hit the road for the church building.
Once more, the nursery teacher was a no-show (actually, just an incredibly-late-show). Grr. Where's that fire and brimstone when you need it?! Imposed on the same young lady I did last week to watch the class, then did some figuring for next quarter's teachers and classes. I make up a whole year's schedule at a time, and yet I still get folks coming up a week before the new quarter starts, wanting to complain. Oh well. Classes over, then time for worship, then time to go visit Grandmama again to see how she's doing. Same procedure as on Friday--elevator, crosswalk, pee, elevator, etc.--, and despite having now touched every single thing within the hospital, the kids still feel an odd compulsion to repeat that process, too. Piled in on top of Granny, and Grandpop's sister and her husband, lots of fidgeting by various ones, then a plea from me to see if food will calm them down again. Reba agreed and wanted to go to the cafeteria. I wanted real food from some place that didn't look like a bus station. I lost. On downstairs, first to get money from the ATM, then back to the cafeteria, which was chock full of... nothing. Oh, they had sandwich fixings, and some weak-looking salad stuff. But no hot food line open. ::sigh:: For some reason, Reba wanted to stay, so we stayed and after trying to herd four kids through a salad bar and sandwich line that didn't have any tray rails, we finally sat down. Thankfully, they all sat at their own table. They seem to do better when they aren't trying to compete with each other for our attention. They sat over there nice and quiet and polite, and I kept wondering why they can't be like that around ME!! (Because, it's all about me, you know.) We finished up and went back upstairs to bother Grandmom some more. Managed to stay for about thirty minutes before the level of misbehavior reached its previous peak, so in utter disgust I rounded everyone up and we headed home. Stopped by the store to get some groceries I forgot to get Saturday, then on back up to the church building to drop Oldest off for one of her activities, then to WAL-MART!! HOORAY! Church shoes for Cat and Middle Girl, some pants for Boy, some other stuff and things we don't need, and back to the church building for evening service. Managed to stay almost entirely awake, then cleaned up a bit and went and had supper at the Western-themed place, and didn't get a single drop of beverage spilled upon us, then headed on toward home. We had just gotten past the last service station when Rebecca said she needed to stop for nature's call. ::sigh:: I am a bad father, so I just told her to wait until we got home. It was only going to be another fifteen minutes or so. Made the turn onto White's Chapel Parkway, headed down the mountain before the Cahaba Bridge and heard the telltale BRDBRDBRDBRDBRDBRDBRDBRDBRDBRD of a tire going flat. ::sigh again, heavily:: Tried to find a place to pull off in the pitch black and after what seemed like forever found a driveway. Now then. A car full of kids and stuff from Wal-Mart. A van with a space-saver spare tire in the middle of the passenger compartment--the tire that comes off has to go in the space filled with Wal-Mart stuff. And it's dark. Thankfully, I remembered that I had put a small 12 volt compressor in the back sometime a go, so I figured I would see if I could get things pumped up enough to make it to civilization. Ten minutes later, it was slowly coming up, and then I remembered I also had a can of pressurized tire goo. Undid the compressor, screwed on the tire goo, and managed to get the thing all the way back to a roundish condition once again. On to home, where the kids all piled out and ran inside to make use of the indoor plumbing while I unloaded all the sacks of stuff. Closed the van, locked it, and was glad we had a backup vehicle to use until I could get the tire fixed. Walked in, closed the garage door, put away some stuff, and decided to see my little fountain. I walked out the back door and heard a strange buzzing sound. I looked and--AAARRRGGHHHH!! The fountain was nearly dry and the pump motor was buzzing along sucking air. AARRGGGHHHH! I jumped over the stuff and unplugged the cord, and...yep, you guessed it--::sigh:: ON to bed. No use doing anything else for this evening. Got up this morning and I think the problem was that the frog got bumped by one of the neigborhood critters or something and started spitting water outside the confines of the liner, swiftly and efficiently draining it. I filled it back up and let it start running again. I'll be interested to see how much it has in it when I get home. Which is where I am going right now. Soccer practice for Tiny Terror and Boy tonight, and since Reba was going to swing by the hospital, I was going to leave a bit early and take them on to practice. SO, I'll see you all tomorrow.
Kicking and Grunting and Sniffling
Got Boy all changed and found his cleats (“football boots” for those who don’t speak American) and scrambled around to get the chairs and sunscreen and water bottle out and into the other van, then took off for the soccer park with just enough time to get there when we were supposed to. Got down to the foot of the hill (where everything happens) and as I was waiting to turn right, I cocked my head around and said, “Hey, Bud, did you finish getting your cleats on?” “No, sir.” “Well,” I said in my best impression of Robert Young, “don’t you think you should?” “I can’t.” “And why not?” “Because I don’t have them.” At this point in our little bus excursion, I did my Ralph Kramden double-take--“What do you mean, ‘I don’t have them’?” “I don’t know--you had them and I thought you put them in here.” Oh well--so much for being on time. I recalled picking them up out of the garage and asking him if they were his, and him saying yes, and then I suppose I must have put them back down by the door figuring he would get them. Not. SO, I turned right, and made the loop across the tracks and back up to the top of the hill (where everything else happens) and dashed in the garage, found the errant shoes beside the kitchen door and ran back out. Made it to the park with minutes to spare. At least it was a good day for a game--it was pretty warm, but low humidity and clear. The game itself was not quite so great. Just like in the fall, the boys did fine in the middle of the field, but couldn’t score, or keep the other team from scoring if they got inside the 18 yard mark. Jonathan played pretty good, which never ceases to amaze me--he is never quite as good in practice, but on the field he seems to keep his wits about him. And he does much less of his odd little bunny-hop than he used to. Alas, despite less bunny-hopping and having fewer of the disruptive kids on their team from the fall, they still managed to get thwacked 3-0. Off then back to the house where it was time to start heavy construction. Jonathan got off his stinky clothes and the rest of the kids hopped out in the backyard with their bicycle helmets on again. They were truly serious about riding their bikes. I kept explaining that I would have to finish my hernia project first, then air their tires up before they could ride, which pacified them for about five seconds. No matter. Drove Moby around back and proceeded to lay things out. Had to dig up a big climbing rose and a couple of azaleas, then do a bit of leveling with the shovel, and then start dropping the blocks into place. “Watch out for my hosta!” I agreed to abide by Miss Reba’s caution regarding my work habits, although in the back of my mind, I was quite certain that if it was a question of my fingertip or toe begin crushed by a hunk of concrete, versus trampling on a bit of hosta, Little Mr. Photosynthesis was gonna just have to suck it up and not be such a crybaby. I unloaded, and hoisted, and heaved, and shoved, and placed, and nudged, and repeated the process fourteen times to get the sides made, thus making my body hate me and create all kinds of creaky sounds today. Then I laid in the gigantic sheet of vinyl. An 8x10 sheet can be unwieldy, believe it or not, so I whacked it down into something smaller with a pair of dull scissors, and then tucked it in around the edges. Water in, adjust, and then time to cap it off with the last seven blocks. Under extreme protest from my hamstrings, which were by now as tight as trapeze rigging. Perfect! Then the pump, the hose, the frog, the electricity, and Aaaahhhhhh--in less than two hours of hard labor, the soothing sound of dribbling water! Such a nice little thing, and sturdy, and simple. Cleaned up the junk, moved the van back around to the front, and was yet again assaulted by small children wanting to hurt themselves on their bikes. Got out the tiny air compressor and got everyone reflated back up to the requisite 40 psi, and then made the big step. Catherine had somehow managed to bend one of Jonathan’s training wheels backwards, so rather than fix it, I told him we were just going to take them off. Nine years old is too old for such baby stuff, although I don’t think he believed that. By the time I got his wheels off and had Rebecca and Cat’s tires aired up, he had taken off with Rebecca and she was trying to get him to ride. She’s very well meaning, but not that effective of a teacher. So, I had him coast down the driveway, which did fine, then shoved him up and down the sidewalk, then figured we’d go all out. When the street was clear, I gave him a mighty shove and he went careening off giggling or crying or something, but staying upright and pedaling almost like he knew what he was doing. He managed to stop without falling, and in a fit of pride had me launch him several more times down the street. Until. One time, he got a bit scared, and started going down in one of the yards across the street that sloped downhill. Rather than stop, he rolled on in and panicked and fell over--not hard, or fast--just over. But it scared him so he cried and sniffled and held onto his leg and said I pushed him WAY too hard. We put the bike up, since it was now close to dark, and he hobbled inside, still snubbing and coughing and holding his knobby little leg. As I got in, I heard him recount his terrifying experience to Mom, but with the added detail that he was RIDING HIS BIKE! Which he was very tickled about. After some attempts to garner sympathy from Mom by walking around holding a pillow on his knee, he gave up that ruse and decided to accept his skint knee as a mark of courage at having tamed gravity. Supper, then baths for them all, and into the bed with the lot of them. And then up early Sunday.
Saturday. OH, Saturday. I’m still paying for Saturday. Monetarily and physically.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day, though. Bright, clear, warm, day full of things to do. First thing was to get some clothes on and go down to the foot of the hill to the grocery store and get some fabric softener sheets and stain remover. I was smart and got the big, economy sized refill, and then got home to see that the squirt bottle had gone missing. Oh well. Then, Ashley’s grandparents came by to get her for her shopping and gadding about trip for her upcoming birthday, and after she hopped out the door, Miss Reba and I got outside and took stock of the yard. Wisteria’s about to bloom, and the irises are up and looking good, and everything has a look of great vigor. One bad thing about the mild winter is the amount of wasps already out--can’t stand those things. Catherine, who was wearing her bicycle helmet because she wanted to ride her bicycle, helped me put the last bits of bird seed into one of the feeders--something else that needed to be replenished--and Reba decided we needed to get out and plant some things. Sounds like it’s time for a trip to the getting-place. So, we got the kids into some better clothes than their pajamas and bicycle helmets, and took off in Moby to go somewhere. But first, I had to stop at the car parts place (conveniently located at the foot of the hill) to see if I could find some paint for Moby’s fading urethane bumper covers. They came from the factory a pleasant medium gray color, but 10 years of Alabama sun has caused portions of the pigment to go to pigment heaven, leaving several patches of highly unattractive yellow plastic. Got myself a can of bumper paint that looked about right (turns out when I experimented later that it was nowhere NEAR close in color), and then we were off to the wonderful world of Home The intent was to ONLY get a few small plants for the urn on the front porch. Nothing else. Hah. And again, Hah. We got the plants, for sure, but also remembered to get some bird seed, and a roll of masking tape to tape the bumpers with when I got ready to paint, and then, the part that really did me in. You see, we had been wanting to do a small pond in the back--just a tiny thing, using some big slabs of limestone like I made my bench out of a couple of years back. But the place that has those is closed for remodeling, and I didn’t actually want to get into THAT project until I was REALLY ready. Saturday, I wasn’t REALLY ready. BUT. (Those “buts” are killers, folks.) But, the good Home Depot folks had a little display set up with a small, rectangular fountain made up of some rectangular landscaping blocks. They were concrete, but had a nice buff color and had been tumbled to look a little less like concrete block. They were actually quite handsome and the way they were fixed was so simple…just like me. I stood there and figured that something like that would look just right in the flower bed behind my stone bench, where last year I has set up the Cast-Resin Fountain of Joyfully Exuberant Silliness. This fountain has a little pump and a fairy on top that the kids really like a lot when we first got it. I never did get it set up to flow, though--the cord was just a little too short to go all the way to the outlet, and I just never go around to fixing it. Always something else to do. Anyway, it usually had enough rainwater in it for the tiny peeper frogs to mate in, so I guess it served some purpose. Sadly, out of no fault of ours, it has also fallen on some rather hard times. “Fallen” being the operative word. The basin of the fountain perches on a very small diameter, stump-like pedestal, and when full of water is very unstable. In the time we’ve had it, it has fallen over several times, each time taking progressively larger and larger hunks out of the poor little hollow cast-resin fairy. She looks a lot like the Venus de Milo now, except hollow. And resin. Anyway, I figured we could just move this on into the yard by one of the bird feeders and use it like a birdbath. Admittedly, a rather low one. Anyway, back to the stone one--it was just the right size, so I stepped over into the display to figure out how it was made. After much lightning quick calculation and ciphering, I determined that it needed 14 blocks. And something to hold water. Off on a quest for customer assistance. I thought the liner might be molded plastic, so after asking several of the employees where to find those small rectangular liners, finally ascertained it was a sheet vinyl liner. Being rather more cheap than most folks, I thought that instead of having to bother with a sheet liner, I might be able to use a plastic mortar-mixing box--they’re rectangularish, so I went to the other side of the store, got one, then came back to where the landscaping blocks were and proceeded to lay out my masterpiece right there on the concrete. Umph. Umph. URRghpjmph. Ow. Umph. Hmm. Ahhh-hmm. Well. Hmm. Nope. Not gonna work. No amount of jiggery or pokery could make the coursing work out right, so even though I’m a tightwad, it looked like I was going to have to break down and get one of the prepackaged pond kits with a pump and liner and decorative spitting frog. Nothing says class like a decorative spitting frog, you know. Got my fourteen blocks and wheeled back to the pond liner kits, then figured out my initial round of calculations was ALL wrong. Needed 21 blocks, not 14. Back to the blocks again, with a big cart loaded down with other junk, and an occasional small child who didn’t realize if she stuck her foot under the wheel that it might get crushed into a fine child powder, yet did not take kindly to being unseated from her really cool seat on top of the blocks. ::sigh:: Got the other seven blocks and got all checked out (lot of money for not much in the way of stuff) and went out to the van to try to figure how to carefully load 750 pounds of blocks into the back without messing up the carpet. (Gotta get a trailer if this keeps up.) I parked the cart and we started moving junk and scooting the seat forward and moving the soccer park chairs and RUMBLETHUMPCRACK!tinkle. I looked around to see that Mr. Gravity had overtaken the sledge with the seven hundred fifty pounds of concrete blocks and rolled it about three feet, with the handle neatly bisecting the taillight of a beat-up Nissan pickup. Cracked it clean out. Grr, “A fine four-lettered Anglo-Saxon word for manure!” I muttered, (although shortened to the word itself). Thankfully, it did no other damage to the body, just to the flimsy plastic lens. I took down the license and went back in the store to have the owner paged. Went to the cashier--“You’ll have to go to the service desk.” ON to the desk that had a big sign over it that said “Service”--“You’ll have to go to the service desk.” “Is this not the service desk?” “No.” “Well---” Never mind. I started walking on to the next place when I heard my name being paged to come back to the garden center. Now, how it is that I could be paged from the garden center, yet was told I couldn’t page any… Never mind. Turned around and went back, met Rebecca running to tell me I had been paged, then out to the parking lot to see the same lady standing there who had been behind us when we checked out. Small world, eh?! I apologized profusely, and she said it was okay and that most people would have just driven away. Which I think is wrong--I think anyone would have done the same thing. She also said she had borrowed the truck from a friend. Remember folks, never lend your truck to ANYone. I gave her my name and phone number. Still haven’t heard from the owner. Might not. Which would be okay by me. After that was taken care of, there was still the matter of loading the blocks (as well as making sure the cart didn’t go anywhere else). I had about six loaded in when a nice young guy in an orange vest came up to help me. So I let him do the rest. By the time it was all loaded, it looked like we were popping a wheelie. The hard way. Made it home fine, though--thankfully we only had a mile to go back to the house. And got there just in time for Boy to get ready for his soccer game--the unloading and building procedure was going to have to wait a bit. NEXT: Soccer, plus the exciting unloading and building procedure.
Well, first off, Reba’s mom is doing fine, although they did keep her over the weekend as a precaution, and she’s supposed to have a a coronary angiogram this afternoon to make sure she has no blockage that could have caused her discomfort. We all went to see her Friday night after we got home, which as always, caused me no small amount of discomfort myself.
If you’ve never had the experience of taking children on a visit to the hospital, you should do that sometime. Builds character, it does. And when YOU have a psychotic episode from having to tell them for the fifty-millionth time to be quiet and to quit touching everything, you’ll be in a nice, clean, place were you can get immediate treatment. (Not that it happened to me--I only got up to the forty-nine-millionth time. If we had stayed more than a couple of hours, well, that might have been different.) Got there and got parked, refereed the fight over who got to press the elevator button, up to the main level, across the crosswalk, next elevator up, long corridor, into the main hospital, stop to pee, back down to information, back around to the emergency room, and finally a blessed respite of a waiting area with a television. They were just about to move Grandmom to another room, and the emergency room is confined and a less than kid-friendly sort of place, so I tried my best to convince the two younger kids to stay with me while Reba went back with the two older kids. I figured after they got through we could swap sets of kids. Which worked for a little while. Grandpa came out for a moment and sat with us, but being Grandpa, insisted we all come back, too. Ran the gauntlet of the ER waiting area, which, as you can imagine on a Friday evening was grwoing rather densely packed with folks, then on back to mom-in-law’s domicile. Eight people now, crammed into a emergency department exam room--WAIT! Make that ten people--an orderly showed up to transfer her to her room, and the nurse came in, too. (It was like watching clowns pile out of a tiny circus car when we left.) The room was full of interesting hoses and cables and boxes and chairs and cylinders and tubes and noises to be explored by children--none of whom seemed to have ever been around the trappings of modern civilization before, and who seemed intent on acting like a pack of meth-addicted ferrets. Then, some of the children would decide what was needed was an adult hand, and therefore decided to sternly--and loudly--castigate and tattle upon their evildoing siblings. Grr. I love my kids, but they do tend to act a little too much like they don’t know any better. Which they do. After we got Reba’s mom out, we rode up and got her settled in--in a room with all sorts of DIFFERENT hoses and beeps and et cetera the kids wanted to mess with--and after several more minutes of shushing and “DON’T TOUCH THAT”ing we decided we needed to excuse ourselves and go eat. The only thing open in the cafeteria downstairs was the McDonald’s. You know, sometimes, even when a place is slow, and expensive, and a filthy dump, and smells like dirty mopwater, and is staffed by people who are lethargic and functionally illiterate, you still decided it’s better to go ahead and order something. Which we did. The kids did a bit better after some nice grease and sodium and refined starch, and then we retraced our elevator/crosswalk/elevator journey and got back home to get ready for... Saturday!
Thank goodness I have a job.
Otherwise I'd never get any sleep. OOOOoohhh, what a weekend. An hospitalling, cargo loading, tail-light bashing, soccering, bird seeding, muscle pulling, learning to ride a bicycling, scheduling, scrubbing, sleeping, churching, hospitalling, Food Worlding, Wal-Marting, churching, flat tiring, scheduling, exhausting sort of weekend. And now, staff meeting. Blah. Anyway--back in a bit with fascinating tales of suburbia! Friday, March 19, 2004
I AM A WINNER!!
Mysterious red-capped Diet CokesTM have been sluicing out of the machine downstairs for the past few weeks, each one emblazoned with a tag on the front of the label trumpeting that "1 in 12 WINS FREE DIET COKETM !" I go through a bunch of these a day, and I can tell you that I have bought WAY more than twelve without a hit. Until just now, that is! In a fit of excitement, I was overjoyed to see that under the cap, I had finally been awarded a prize in the giant Diet CokeTM Trademark Instant Win Game. It said: "YOU WIN 1-LITER COKETM PRODUCT." ::blink::blink:: But Diet CokeTM is not marketed in the Birmingham area in 1-liter bottles. ::sigh:: Oh well. I'm STILL a winner, doggone it! As for this weekend, looks like it might be a long one. Boy has his first soccer game Saturday, and Oldest is supposed to go off shopping with her other grandparents for her birthday, and it seems that my maw-in-law has done got herself in the hospital. She had called last night and left a message while we were out galavanting around. I came and got Miss Reba to go to lunch and to the bank today (Direct Deposit my eye!), and as we were sitting in the drive-through lane, I remarked that Wife was looking particularly fetching in her black tee shirt and jeans. She got all giggly and said she dressed as she did thinking tonight might be a good time for a date for us. "SAY NO MORE, SAY NO MORE, EH, GUVNAH! The wife's a...goer, eh? A goer!? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, eh!?" I got all excited and asked if she had called her mama back from last night, and she said no, and I said she ought to, and then try to finagle a baby-sitting committment out of her. 'Cause I'm that way. SO, she whipped out her phone and dialed while I waited for the bounty from the pneumatic tube. "Hello?" ... (with consternation) "The Keys." ... "Reba." ... Something weird was going on--it sounded like she had a wrong number or something. But why have a conversation? "Wait--is this Lauren's mom? From soccer? HEY! This is Rebecca's mom!" ... HUH? What in the world is going on? How did she get Lauren's mama when she dialed a number that was preprogrammed? Weird. More conversation, then a hang-up. Well, it seems Lauren's mama was answering the phone at Rebecca's grandmama's house because Lauren's mama is a paramedic with the Trussville Fire Department. And it seems that Mom-in-Lawhad been feeling sick in the, "I Need to Call the ParamedicsTM," brand of sick. Paramedic Mama said that they were checking Mom-in-Law out and she seemed okay at the moment, but she would have to talk to Reba after while. 'After while' turned out to be a topsy-turvy couple of hours, with Reba calling their house repeatedly after she got back to work, with no one answering, then calling the fire station to find out that her mom had been transported to the emergency room. Yikes. Reba finally got in touch with her dad, who had come back home from Northport to the hospital. Seems like everything is okay for the moment, but nerve-wracking nonetheless for poor Reba--torn between wanting to go to the hospital, but knowing that everything's under control and she would just be in the way, but wanting to go anyway, but, but, but. SO, a long weekend coming up. I know everything will turn out okay, but as always, I won't turn away any of your good thoughts on Mom-in-Law's behalf. All of you have a good weekend, and Lord willing I'll see you all bright and early Monday morning.
Oh boy, here we go again.
Car in Georgia parade crash was recalled By RUSS BYNUM
"WHAT ABOUT THE AUDI 5000!?" you might yell in all caps. Well, what about it? Aside from providing fodder for those who believe "objective journalism" is an oxymoron, and aside from the CBS hatchet job nearly ruining Audi, what was found was that there was nothing to find. The NHTSA couldn't find any indication that Audis mysteriously took control of themselves like Steven King's Christine and began hurtling around despite the best efforts of valiant drivers to apply the (suddenly non-functioning) brakes (which later worked just fine). Part of that is physics--believe it or not, your car's brakes have more horsepower than your car's engine, and even if you're going as fast as you can, and keep your foot on the accelerator, if you apply the brakes (assuming the hydraulic lines haven't been cut) you'll stop. Maybe not on a dime, and maybe not twenty times in a row, but you WILL come to a stop. Pressing exclusively on the go-pedal, however, in lieu of the brake, will not make your car stop. It will make it go. Of course, no one wants to admit even for a moment when something bad happens that their brogan might have not been on the stop-pedal. Ain't no money in that for the lawyers, and it could mean some time in the Graybar Hotel for a variety of vehicular assaulty-type things for the driver. SO, physics suspends itself and magic cars take off with no help and none to be expected. NOW, this is not to say there is NOT such a thing as unintentional acceleration. It can happen, and it can be disconcerting because it is, by definition, something you didn't make happen. Same disconcerting thing can happen in reverse--sorta like unintentional deceleration--when a tire blows or you drop a load of transmission parts on the cobbles. In the case of Mr. Sheppard's Mopar, it had a recall on it because the throttle cable could bind or stick--if you've ever been in a car with a stuck accelerator, it's not particularly fun, but it can be overcome--but the recall on the Sebrings was NOT because the accelerator moved of its own volition. You might press down, and it might stay there, but it doesn't do it by itself. And it doesn't override the brakes. I am quite sure he was pressing for all he was worth on something. I don't think it was the brake, though. ANYway, if you ever get in a situation where you think you've got a runaway car, do what Tom and Ray say: shift into Neutral or push in the clutch pedal, put on the brakes, safely come to a stop, and then turn the key off. When you first shift out of gear, the engine will race since it's no longer loaded. And don't turn the key off before you stop, or you'll lose power steering and brakes.
As I've said before, it ain't the stupid people that're the problem...Saddam 'enjoying' interrogation WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein seems to think he is smarter than his captors, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Thursday.
Putz.
Remember, readers, don't try to make stink eggs in airtight containers.
Say, does this beaver tail smell right to you?
Obscure Architectural Term of the Day: WESTWORK. The west end of a Carolingian or Romanesque church, consisting of a low entrance hall and above it a room open to the nave and usually flanked or surrounded by aisles and upper galleries. The whole is crowned with one broad tower, and there are occasionally stair turrets as well. In the main upper room stood an altar as a rule. Not to be confused with Westworld, which was a movie with a gunslinging robotic King of Siam, nor West Side Story, in which Natalie Wood wore a bathing suit while fighting rival street gangs using a gigantic chain, nor The West Wing, which is a television show, believe it or not!
Well, obviously something MUST be wrong with me.
Last night was a busy one for us all. It was soccer practice night for the three youngest, with Cat's starting at FIVE PEE EM (!) at the field beside the Catholic church instead of the EASIER alternative known as the soccer park (grr), and I had our local board of zoning adustment meeting to attend, and Miss Reba was down in Columbiana. Luckily, she managed to get off work on time, which gave her time to get home early enough to get Ashley from the house, the other three kids from afterschool care, then get to the non-soccer park with time to spare. The plan was for me to swing by there, leave her the van, take her car for a fill-up and a bath, go to my meeting, then meet them all back at the house at some ungodly hour of the night. FOR ONCE, such a plan actually worked. I got to the non-soccer park and illegally parked the van beside her car in the Baptist church parking lot, which is just across the street from the field. (You have to understand that this particular area of our little town is thick with organized religion--there's the Catholic church building up at the top of the street, then the gigantic Baptist one down and across, then the Methodist one next door to it, then a tiny Church of Christ building smooshed in between the Methodists and the Baptists.) Anyway, you're not supposed to be taking up the Baptists' parking or they'll tow you away. Or give your name to the Jehovah's Witnesses, or something. But we risked it because we're just that way, so I stood there with Reba and we caught each other up on stuff and moved backpacks from one vehicle to the other and tried to keep Jonathan and his teammate (who also has a sister, who happens to be on Catherine's team) from running in the street and gave some words of encouragement to Oldest for getting good grades and watched Cat kick the ball some. She seems to be doing better now than she was during the Fall season--I'm not sure why, but it seems she figured out how to run using the technique of actually picking up her knees a bit. The old stiff-legged style wasn't very good for moving quickly, in any direction. Her practice finished up as the sun started going down, and I bade everyone good-bye and took Reba's car for its promised appointment at the gas station/car wash. Decided to go to the BP down at the foot of the hill from our house--they just installed a new, upgraded version of their old touchless carwash ("touchless" meaning it doesn't have whipping threads of nylon rope, but rather scours the paint off with high-pressure water). That, and their gas price is usually pretty reasonable. But I refuse to go into the convenience store except in extreme emergencies. The guys in there smoke like a Third World steel mill, and even after only five seconds, you smell like you've been rolling in an ashtray. So, I putter up to the pump, and notice that on the other side is a brand new black Honda S2000, top down, driven by one of the usual assortment of supermodels who inhabit Paradise by the Pinchgut. She unfolded out of the driver's seat--tall, tan, about 20, brunette hair pulled back just so, built like a Playboy bunny and poured into a white tank top and a pair of tiny gray athletic shorts. I stood there, leaning back against the fender of the Focus, and as my eye wandered across those curves, all I could thing about was getting my hands on... that thick steering wheel--you know, the car mags have faulted earlier S2000s for not having quite enough around-town pep, although they have uniformly praised its open road vigor. This year, though, there's a few more horsepower on tap, and the engine has been recalibrated a bit for more low-end torque, reportedly making it much more liveable in traffic. Oh, sure, it's not muy macho like a Vette or a GT3 or a Viper, but sometimes you just don't want quite that much drama. And it just looks right--the long hood, short deck sports car paradigm still looks fast, even after years of seeing increasingly longer length behind the seats. The way the wheels fill out their openings and the smooth transition from hood to fender to front wheel well is very well done, and the panel surfaces have just enough development to catch the light and reinforce the design, yet with none of the histrionics of recent BMWs, notably the odd-for-the-sake-of-being-odd Z4. I finished up pumping the gas, then sat down for a moment in the Focus with my sales receipt. The young lady got back in her car, hit the Start button, and as she was driving away, I looked down and...HEY! Pretty good--30.4765 miles per gallon came up on the old calculator when I punched the equal button! SWEET! I went and punched in my carwash code, and as I sat there watching the purple and green soap splatter around, it occurred to me that there was a time when I would have been much less interested in good gas mileage. Likewise, fantasizing about some hot chick's...car. And the most disturbing thing of all? Thinking hardest about the best way to get all this down in a blog post! Thursday, March 18, 2004
Gun control group sues Justice Dept. By KATA KERTESZ
O7) Are replacement parts for grandfathered semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices subject to regulation under the law?
Interestingly enough, that portion of the FAQ reads exactly the same as the FAQ included in the ATF P 5300.4 - Federal Firearms Regulations Reference Guide 2000. (With the exception that "marked" is not misspelled as "parked.") Published in January of 2000. It was produced under the signature of John Magaw. John Magaw was appointed to the directorship of the ATF by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen (D.; Knew JFK) in 1993, and he served in that capacity until he resigned in 2000. Seems like someone should have gotten all bothered by this interpretation of the law a bit sooner, seeing as how it hasn't changed since the last Administration. It almost makes the suit look as if it might be politically motivated.
Gee whiz, this is a shock.
Effort stalls to remove immunity from legislators By BOB JOHNSON
Thanks for being there for us, guys.
And speaking of children...
I think I have found something where my kids could offer some really useful advice.
Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut and people to think you a fool...
Some of you may know that Birmingham is part of a USAID-funded community development partnership with the city of Krasnodon, Ukraine. (Here's a link, but the site hasn't been updated in three years.) Every year, we host a delegation from Krasnodon who have been coming here to study how our city government functions, and develop strategies and plans for improvements back home. (Let that sink in for a bit.) Anyway, they're a big delegation and they're in town, and yesterday they all followed me into the building. We all stood patiently waiting for an elevator, which I yielded to them so they could get more folks on. About five guys got left behind, so I got on the next elevator with them, along with a couple of women from Personnel and some other young lady whom I have seen before, but I'm not sure where she works. Anyway, we all got in, and in a severe breach of elevator etiquette, The Girl doesn't turn around and stare wordlessly at the numbers and lights. She just stands there, pertly smiling at these burly guys in dark suits. (Sheesh.) I mean, she was cute and all, but some things just aren't done. Anyway, our Krasnodonski visitors quietly conversed among themselves and then got out on the second floor. After the door closed, The Girl turned around with a bewildered look and to none of us in particular said, "WOW, what sort of language was THAT they were talkin' in!?" One of the other ladies and I said almost in unison that they were from Ukraine. The girl got all serious and said, "Oh, well, um...yeah--I thought so. I could pick out a few words here and there." Mm-hm, right. The door opened and she scooted away. After it closed, I thought about asking the ladies what sort of language that there girl was talking in, but I thought it better just to be quiet.
With friends like these...
Former Malaysian leader endorses Kerry The Associated Press
[...] With the onset of the Asian economic crisis in 1997, Dr Mahathir refused to accept that his grandiose schemes were partly to blame for Malaysia's massive debt. Instead he blamed foreign currency traders, including the financier George Soros, for what he termed a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
UPDATE: Friday, March 19--Kerry Rejects Foreign Endorsement [...] Kerry "rejects any association" with Mahathir, "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable," said Kerry foreign policy adviser Rand Beers in a statement.
Well, now, THAT was an interesting call.
Sitting here trying to finish up my secretarial duties (yes, we have actual secretaries--and there is a reason why I do all my own work) when the phone rang. I answered it in my best Ted Baxter voice, "Hello, this is Terry Oglesby." "Is this Terry?" ::sigh:: What good does it do for me to talk all educated and erudite-like if it STILL confuses people!? "Yes, this is Terry Oglesby, may I help you?" A sweet-sounding young thing named Cory introduced herself and noted that I had recently brought our Honda in for service. (The brake job visit of two weekends ago.) I figured this was yet another customer service survey--they bend over backwards making sure everything was done right, which is nice. When you're not right in the middle of something. Anyway, she asked a few questions about mileage, and the condition of the van, if it ran well, if it had new tires, and if we were still satisfied with it--all of which were answered in the affirmative. "Well," she said, she knew we loved our van, BUT, her company has been having just an awful time finding any used Odysseys at auction, and they never have any kind of service history and you just never know what you're going to get. OUR van, on the other hand, had been recommended to them by the service manager as one that was minty fresh and carefully serviced. Knowing that, would we be willing to allow them to help us trade up to something newer while our vehicle still had some value, and it be MAINTENANCE FREE, for just a little bit more money? Heh. As. If. Sister. I was nice to her, though--I told her the only way we could trade was even up--we have NO disposable income, no desire for a car payment, and we just sold the most beautiful bucket of bolts the world has ever seen in order to get a runabout for my wife. "Well, let me give you my number and a reference code, just in case you decide to change your mind." Persistent little tyke, ain't she. I did copy it down, but I have NO intention of getting involved in this little scheme. That thunk you hear might be my head hitting the desk, but it's DEFINITELY not me falling off the turnip truck. 1) If Odysseys are scarce, their value will tend to remain high and stable. If I wanted to trade, I could sell it myself, at a price the market would bear. 2) A wholesaler or auction house is in business to make money. They cannot give me any more money than what the market will give them (or me, for that matter), and still be in business. 3) "Helping" me to spend more money is the function of Miss Reba. She does just fine by herself, thankyouverymuch. 4) The lure of free maintenance is a sucker bet--if it's a new Honda, for the first 30,000 miles the only scheduled maintenance that actually requires some small amount of effort is changing the oil. If you change it every 5,000 miles like it says in the owner's manual, that's six visits. They might charge you 25 bucks a pop, but the actual cost is lower. Even if you figure no profit on an oil change for the dealer, six changes at 150 dollars is chump change, and the wholesaler or auction house will most assuredly make enough to cover it. 5) There is nothing in a new van that I need more than what I already have. Yes, the DVD/Offspring Pacification and Neutralization Device is nice, but you can get those anywhere now. The new ones do have a pretty shiny Honda emblem in the center of the steering wheel, which is spiffy, but not enough so that I would get a whole new van for it. Anyway, an interesting call, nonetheless.
IT'S MAILOUT MANIA!!
Papers to fold and envelopes to stuff this morning--will be checking in later with lots of stuff. Or some stuff. Always hard to tell. Wednesday, March 17, 2004
More Architecture Questions
Jim Smith threatened me with more questions, and sure enough, he just fired this one across the bow: Oh , I forgot a question or two. Is God in the details? And is the Belgian/German guy who said that a big deal. Van something, the book is in the truck. The dummies book seems to mention him every page. Ah, yes--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. One of the giants of modern architecture, both in Europe and in the U.S., where he was revered for being European and having five names.Mies, as those of us in the trade call him, was born in 1886 in Aachen, Germany and never received any formal architectural training. He first worked in the offices of Bruno Paul, then Peter Behrens, before starting his own office in Berlin. Later, he went on to work as the director of the Bauhaus before coming to the United States in 1937, where he set up light housekeeping at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mies, along with his associate Walter Gropius, and their contemporary Le Corbusier were some of the most influential voices and talents in defining "Modern" architecture, characterized by an eschewing of past traditions of form and ornament and a fascination with the idea of a building being, as Le Corbusier put it, "a machine for living in." Some of Mies' work which had the greatest influence on the world were his 1929 Barcelona Pavilion, the Farnsworth House, the Seagram Building, and Crown Hall at IIT (Here's more comprehensive photographic encyclopedia of some of his works. As for the question about, "God in the details", that comes from Mies' famous aphorism that "Less is more, and God is in the details." Entire books have been written trying to plumb the depths of that one, but my own take on it is that it represents his ideas that detail and ornament for the sake of slapping stuff on a building is pointless, and by removing extraneous, meaningless layers of junk, you are able to get to the essence of what architecture is. The ideas of scientific precision translated into trying to create structures with a crispness and perfection in even the tiniest parts. Beauty came not from additive excrescences, but from a devotion to thought and rationality and a machine-like functionality. As he also said, "Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins." When you look deeply at the 'why' of Modern architecture, you begin to understand what the big deal was about--it truly was revolutionary in outlook and influence. Sadly, like so many revolutions, though, it tended to forget about the people it was supposed to be saving from the gargoyles and frou-frou and pendants and corbels. Although it's all well and good to say that perfection on an atomic scale should provide sufficient emotional uplift for any right-thinking person, a lot of folks find it hard to see such perfection without an electron microscope, and think they're getting shortchanged in the entertainment department. Sorta like buying tickets to a circus, only to find out when you get there it's a flea circus. Hard to undo millenia of shared experiences as to what makes a building acceptable. Adding to the confusion is that although the Barcelona Pavilion might have required just as much intensive handwork to construct as anything else that looked more traditional, its form vocabulary (simple, flat, plain surfaces) was very easy to recreate on a massive, industrial scale. Now, while this did fulfill the desire for making architecturally-stylish things more easily available, it also allowed a lot of junk to get pumped out that only mimicked the Modern style, without bothering to bring along the requisite intellectual rigor. In many ways, Modern got to be ubiquitous not because it was intellectually stimulating to a populace begging for relief from aristocratic torment, but because it could be done on the cheap. Although the old-school Ecole de Beaux Arts stuff was haughty and snooty and symbolized feudalism and all that, there wasn't really any way to fake it. (This being before the rise of Las Vegas and all.) For all of its supposed bad emotional baggage, it was familiar, and it had a sense of permanence, even its most lustily ill-thought-out examples. Anyway, that's who that Van guy is.
The Other Irishmen
The kids were in a tizzy this morning trying to find something green to wear to ward off unwanted pinches. I’m not sure what Ashley wore, but since she’s been obsessing about this for a week now, I am certain she had enough green to do the job. Rebecca doesn’t wear a lot of green, so she made-do with a pair of socks that have a green ring around the top. Jonathan had on a blue tee shirt, which he accessorized with a sleeveless green tee shirt over the top. Eww. It looked horrid, but I am to the point that I’m just happy they put on clothes, whether they match or not. Catherine had herself done up in an electric lime green tee shirt with a blue dolphin on it, somewhat ironically a souvenir from a past vacation trip to…Orange Beach. I made sure to put in an orange ponytail holder for good measure. FOR YOU SEE, gentle readers, we are descendants of that proud and despised band of reivers and Presbyterian ne’er-do-wells known as the Scot-Irish. (At least known so here in the U.S. Everywhere else they’re called the Ulster Scots.) Now, seeing as how my forebears have been here since before the Revolution, I’m not one to go around dredging up old political or territorial animosities--my great-g-g-g-g (lost track)-grandpappy left to get away from all that crap--as well as to be able to live in a country where he could wear pants instead of a skirt. Anyway, I do like for my kids to know a bit about their history and where they came from. Not that there’s a lot you can get across in the rush to go to school in the mornings, but I did give Boy a few drams of information on why he didn’t necessarily have to wear an ugly sleeveless tee shirt to school on St. Patty’s. He seemed quite interested, to the point of later holding forth to his big sister as if he were an expert. For the rest of us who don’t know quite so much, a good place for non-political information about the language and culture of the Scot Irish is the Ulster Scots Agency: The Ulster-Scots Agency, or Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch as it is known in Ullans, is a relatively new but important body that aims to promote the Ulster-Scots language and culture within the island of Ireland and beyond.
Many of those Ulstermen settled in the South, and even today the area around is salted with bits of language from there . When I am in a particularly rural mood, I will “hunker” down, clear my “craw” and start adding an “a” to the front of words like “going” and “doing” so they become “a’goin’” and “a’doin’”, and will say “afeart” for “afraid”, and call suspenders “galluses”, and tell the kids to be quiet and quit “yammering.” SO anyway, all that to say Happy Saint Pat’s to you all, erin go brah and all that. And don’t pinch me. (OH, and be sure to go wish Peg Britton a happy 53rd anniversary!)
Now, if Elwood is just a made-up character...
...does that mean he really doesn't like Possumblog? Well, that just can't BE! Therefore, obviously, Elwood and Billy Jack are, in fact, real. Just like Frank J.
ANOTHER Birthday!
Man, they come around every year! ANYway, noted librarian and liberal (which makes him a libertarian, I think) Mac Thomason is now another year (or two) older than he was this same time last year. Or something.
Hey, good buddy--you got yer ears on?
Went and picked up the whole crew from afterschool care yesterday afternoon and headed back to St. Vinny to see if we could FINALLY be rid of Cat's ear demons. At the last meeting, the tube was clear, her right ear was clear, and all that needed to be done was her hearing check. Blew in to the office like a tornado with three hyper younguns who proceeded to make the place their home by flopping in the floor to wrestle and talk loud. Cat got called back, and the Russian nurse said she would let me stay in the waiting room with Boy and Middle Girl until the audiologist was ready, which I thought was kind of nice of her. Not much of a wait until she was ready, though, and I was called back. The doc decided to drop in for a quick visit while we were there just to see Cat and see how her tube was doing--he quickly flopped down into the rollie stool and patted her knee and squinted into her right ear with his otoscope and then...frowned. "Catherine, have you had a cold since you came in the last time?!" She said no, but she has caught something in the past couple of weeks and has been sneezing and coughing up big globs of gunk. "Oh, yeah! I HAVE had a colds!" Doc looked again, then into her left ear, which was fine, then back to the right. "Well, it looks like she's got another ear infection." Well, fart. He did say it wasn't nearly as severe as the first one, and decided to go ahead and conduct a hearing test anyway. Which turned out fine--they checked her with headphones and for any nerve-related loss and her hearing is just fine (proving that she IS deliberately ignoring me!) but the goo is still there in her ear. Doc was going to prescribe her an antibiotic again then a followup in two weeks, but I told him that she's been on them for months now off and on and they didn't seem to help her left ear any at all. So, we'll go back in a couple of weeks and if her right one is still clogged up, she'll get a tube in that one. ::sigh::
Alan K. Henderson guest blogs over at Sasha Castel's joint with a story of the nefarious administrative dealings at Southern Miss. Alan says over on his own blog that he sees for himself an opportunity in all of this.
(As well as for the Axis of Weevil to complete our annexation of Mississippi (and Northwest Florida) so we can create the Republic of Alabippida. But you didn't hear that from me.) Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Well, now...
Time to take my leave for the day. Yes, it's a bit early, but I have to go get Catherine and ONCE MORE take her back to the doctor's office for her ear. Thankfully, this time is for nothing more than a hearing check, which was supposed to have been done the LAST time I was there, but the audiologist was on jury duty. SO, off again to the hinterlands, then back downtown, then back to the hinterlands. Sure would be nice if those hinterlands weren't quite so hinterly. ANYway, see you tomorrow.
Doctor Weevil is 51!?
Yes he is! Asked to explain how he managed to attain such incredible longevity, he quietly whispered, "meeeeaaaaat."
Much will be written in the next eight months, a goodly portion of it having to do with the conflict America finds itself embroiled in, and our response as a nation to this war. For those of you with an interest in an even earlier conflict than Viet Nam or an even earlier election than 1968 (yes, there actually were some!), you might want to peruse this interesting site that uses material from the old Harper's Weekly to explore the issues and personalities of times past.
Particularly of interest might be the material associated with the Election of 1864. I imagine the world would have been quite a different place had we gotten ourselves a President McClellan.
Danes raid hippie enclave; dozens held
I hope not too closely--I'm sure they have quite a funk about them.
The Great Escape
An good article on the reunion of six of the surviving members of the 1944 escape by British POWs from Stalag Luft III. Also, a link to the Imperial War Museum's commemoration of the event which will be held Saturday at the American Air Museum in Duxford.
On Architecture
I was carrying on a correspondence this past weekend with regular contributor Jim Smith, who told me he had been to the bookstore perusing some The first part is neat as it tries to explain the difference between architecture and buildings—something about function, structure and beauty. That’s one of the things that is hard to really get a grasp of--the idea that there’s a little something extra that elevates an assemblage of stuff to architecture. As I replied to Jim:Yep--it's the thing that separates a street sign from a Renoir, ballet from a grand mal seizure, or Divina Comedia from a pamphlet on canker sores.(I’m sure others have said it better than that, but probably not in a half-minute e-mail.) But, being an inquisitive sort, Jim wanted to know: But why is it not just bad architecture? Isn’t a terrible painting still art, just really bad art? It just seems a little like architecture is defined as “good”; until someone later says it’s bad. ’CAUSE I SAY SO, THAT’S…oh, sorry. Well, this is one of those questions that takes a bit longer than an e-mail, and is one that also is useful for filling up the ol’ blog, so I told Jim I would hold forth on Possumblog. (Although, admittedly, I did say I was going to do it yesterday.)Anyway, the one thing that is a bit different about architecture as one of the fine arts is that it has a much stronger utilitarian component than just about any of the other arts you can think of. Ballet is certainly beautiful, but it’s not the most efficient way to move furniture. Opera is beautiful, too, but is a poor way to explain thermodynamics. Whether you think Jackson Pollock’s work is art or not, you still have to think his process would leave a bit to be desired when it came time to paint the kitchen. Shelter from the elements is the utilitarian part of architecture, and as one of the three things necessary for survival (food and water being the other two) it is elemental to our experiences as humans. And just as poetry is the leisure-time offshoot of language, the desire to move and build and mold the environment to do more than simply shelter us was also the result of having the necessary elements of survival taken care of, to the point that we could begin to satisfy our innate human creativity. When shelter begins to satisfy an emotional need beyond security and warmth, that is when it starts to become architecture. Over the centuries, the idea of fashion and a recognizable cultural identity caused us to build ever more elaborate and sophisticated structures--for king, for country, for the gods. However, unlike poetry or dance or sculpture, which do not require strict utility in order to be enjoyed, a structure that no longer serves a physical need for its users is often simply abandoned, or replaced with more suitable construction. Through the years, the idea of “bad” architecture has often been less about the functional aspects of the structure and much more about the fashion of the day--that is, it’ll still keep you warm and dry, but it’s just so danged ugly. Then, there is the relatively recent phenomenon (last hundred years or so) in which it doesn’t really matter how well it manages to hold up, as long as it looks rilly kewl. Wright’s Guggenheim is a good example--absolutely horrid for hanging up framed artwork, and like most Wright buildings is a maintenance headache--but it's a fascinating looking object. And if it’s raining, you can go inside of it and stay dry. Mostly. On the other end of the scale are things slapped together with no intention of uplifting the human spirit--either that of the occupants or that of the person building them. Containers, serving no purpose other than that of protection, and nothing much else; basically man-made caves. On a good day, if the sun’s just right, they might almost look inviting, with familiar doodads and cues that make you remember something good. (Think of the fake shutters on the windows of house trailers.) They might provide some small amount of space where an idea might sneak around for a bit, but it’s only by accident (and if it was ever found out that it offered something more than what was contracted for, someone will try to recover the cost of having provided it.) Not to say you sometimes don’t just need a box for you and your stuff--sometimes that IS all you need. The problem comes in when you start thinking that’s all there is. Just like there’s more to the literary world than pamphlets about canker sores, and more to art than choosing between “Bone” and “Linen” for the bedroom walls, there’s a lot out there in the built environment. From an artistic point of view, some of it works, some doesn’t. But, until you know the difference, it sometimes tends to look the same. Sorta like politics. Anyway, as with anything else, if you want to figure it out, you have to study and learn the language, even if you start with a book for Dummies. And don’t feel bad for not understanding it all right away--ignorance by itself isn’t bad, only being willfully so. Trust me, there are a lot of professionals who would be well served by reading the same book. (Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention this post from yesterday by Maltagirl, another blogger person who shares Jim's fascination with building-y sorts of things. NOR IF I DID NOT MENTION the guy who enjoys architecture the way I enjoy the news.)
Scientists Find Another Huge Mini-World in Outer Solar System
Scientist also report finding a microscopic giant.
Smilies and Taters and Two-Legged Doggies, Oh My!
After several weeks of rumblings, Marc Velazquez has bravely dug up the Tater Patch and replanted it over at this new URL--http://spudv.bravejournal.com/. He has comments again, so all of you be sure and tell him how odd the dog looks. Monday, March 15, 2004
Arab Fighters Say Iraqis Sold Them Out to U.S. By Lin Noueihed
Or not.
"Do you LOVE country music? Did you ever want to be an official part of the country music industry? Well... here is your opportunity to be heard."
I always wanted people to think of me as an academic...
From Noted Blonde-Joke and Home Improvement Expert Nate McCord: Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with those expensive double-pane energy efficient kind. But this week I got a call from the contractor complaining that his work had been completed a whole year ago and I had yet to pay for them. Boy oh boy, did we go around! Just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid.
Landmark Mentone hotel gets elegant makeover
Nice article about an out-of-the-way place up in north Alabama that has attracted some national attention. Here's a picture of it.
Fun with Referrer Logs
From time to time (actually, pretty derned often) when I run out of other ideas, I go and let down a jar into the well and see what sorts of things draw visitors to the this little corner of the world. It provides an interesting look at what people search for in their lives, that’s for sure--although, for the most part, it still doesn’t answer why anyone looking for these things decides something called Possumblog would be able to answer their question. Well, anyway, here we go. First up, where can i buy cracker barrel havarti cheese. Interesting question--at first I was going to be a smarty pants and suggest Cracker Barrel, the restaurant/kuntry-stile sto’, but they don’t sell cheese, and even if they did, it would be ‘Murcan or Wisconsin cheddar, and not some stinky foreign stuff. Then I figured the querist must be talking about Kraft’s Cracker Barrel brand, but they don’t list a havarti (no, did you?!) flavor. Kraft does package havarti, but apparently they are only able to sell it to Canadians--anyone for some Hot Havarti Triscuit Toppers!? Yay!! Then we had someone come in here demanding to know: "campbell brown" shoe size. Oh man, if I had a nickel for every time that comes up in conversation! Anyway, what few of you probably realize--and this is not your fault, but due to a real scientifical thing with the way television works--is that Miss Brown is actually 6 feet, 10 1/2 inches tall. You don’t really see it, because television makes everyone look tiny. She is real tall, though, and her shoe size is proportional to that tree-like height. She wears a size 16 1/2 EE (US). At least, that’s what I’ve heard--I could be wrong, and if so, I would be glad to meet Miss Brown in person and check her size myself. I’m also not certain, but this query is probably related to the person who blew through here looking for cheerleader saddle shoes. Whoever it was must have really wanted some bad, seeing as how Possumblog was the 272ND result! Finally, we had a person come through wondering: what does a possum look like? Well, I can’t speak for all possums, but I know I see in the mirror a rather handsome blend of Raymond Burr, Roy Clark, a washtub, and Itzhak Perlman.
Dog sledding, handsome men skiing backwards, horseback riding, pioneers, crosswalk countdowns, beer-swilling parrots--it can only come from one place.
The envelope please...
And the Taggy for Achievement in Tagline Writing goes to... LITTLE AaRDVARK!! [Sound of applause] LittleA exhibited a tenacious spirit and an overwhelming commitment to quantity in last week's competition to provide for Possumblog a suitable masthead motto for this week (as well as many to come). The Possumblog Editorial Board congratulate all of our other competitors for their hard work and dedication, and as promised, each of you get to accompany Dr. James Smith on his trip to Walgreens to pick up his ointment. Since the backseat is out of the Pinto right now, you will each have to take turns. Also, you will have to slide in from the driver's side, because the lock cylinder on the passenger side is hung up right now and won't let the handle operate from the outside. As it is getting warmer outside, you might want to bring along a towel to sit on, because the vinyl and the duct tape on the seats gets kind of hot, and if all you have on is a Speedo, well, no one wants burnt thigh backs. As the winner of the contest, LittleA requested that his prize be NOT getting to ride with Jim, a request which we are happy to fulfill. Thank you all for being with us today, and have a safe trip home.
I didn’t hit a lick at a snake.
Which, for those of you who don’t speak Southren, means I was lazy as a slug this weekend. Reba and the two older girls had a thing at church all Saturday morning, then they went to the bookstore, then to various budget retailers, so it was just me and the younger two just about all day. And what did we do? It was bright and sunny and pleasant, so naturally we stayed inside piled up reading and folding clothes and wallowing on the bed watching videos. I didn’t even shave! We were quite a bunch. At least we did manage to get the den cleaned up, and Cat even cleaned the floor of her room, and we did get the laundry done, so it’s not like nothing happened. But it sure was nice to rest a bit. Reba came back in briefly around 3 to drop stuff off--while they were at the bookstore, she picked up a surprise for Other than the solar cell not being all that efficient, it worked pretty well. We were a little too late in the day getting it finished for it to roll on the ground--the sun was nearly to the tops of the trees, so the only time the motor would turn was when it was held with the cells perpendicular to the sun, which makes it difficult to roll on the ground. We hooked up an AA battery to it after that, and it provided entire minutes of fun. I’m thinking we probably need to gang a set of 9V transistor batteries together. The remainder of the afternoon was spent getting them all scrubbed down and sparkly for church the next day, which turned out to be very long. Up early and just in the middle of my putting on my pants got a call from a teacher saying she wasn’t going to be there. And the backup teacher was out of town. Got there, and not only was that classroom unattended, we had TWO MORE. ::sigh:: Managed to dragoon one of the latecomers to the young adult class to sit in on the nursery (one good reason not to be late), then got the mother of the toddler classroom teacher to cover for her daughter, and the final teacher got there only ten minutes late. Weeee! Thankfully, all the other folks were in their rooms, but this whole quarter had been a mess in the little kid classrooms. I’m not quite ready to find me the jawbone of an ass, but things could change with little warning. The rest of the morning was fine, though, and put us in a fine appetite for some lunch. We went back to the new Western-themed place up the road and were promptly seated and waited upon by a nice young guy. He brought back our drinks and promptly spilled a whole glass of water onto the table in front of Little Boy, with some of it even getting into his lap! Oh, the horror. He got his sad look turned on, with the extra special “I’m Gonna Cry”™ tremor in his voice, while our waiter waited for an enraged browbeating that never came. We kept telling him it was okay, but he seemed really scared. He ran and got a towel and cleaned the table, then everything returned to normal and we ordered our food. He came back in a bit with a different shirt. Had just spilt Dr. Pepper all over himself back in the kitchen. Sometime later, he came by after we had eaten to clear some of our plates. He got several, and then dropped them on the floor. Poor kid. Other than having a total loss of motor control, he really was a good waiter and we got our food hot and quick, so we really had nothing to complain about. He still seemed to think I was gonna scream at him or something. I figure he had enough trouble without that. Off then to the other side of the county for the kids to do their final Bible Bowl of the year--one of our senior teams came in third, and the junior team came in first, meaning they get to keep the little cloth banner for a LONG time! Not being prideful or anything… Back then to the church building, where I sat like a lump in the fellowship room and read the Sunday paper, then it was time for the evening sermon which lasted about half as long as usual (since it was delivered by our youth minister), then a stop-off at the grocery store to get some supper vittles, then home, eat, and to bed with all of us. Not quite as jam-packed with exciting action as is usual, but you know, I’m not about to complain.
A CNN Breaking News Alert--Martha Stewart resigns from board and as chief creative officer of company she founded.
Reba went shopping at K-Mart Saturday and got us a set of cotton sheets with hand knotted lace edge AND a sheet and comforter set for Ashley, BOTH for real cheap. I suppose we should have waited a day or two longer.
Notable Quotes
HAH!
Made it! Yet another weekend by the wayside, and once again I smote it sorely and vanquished it throughly! Well, maybe we reached an understanding. In any event, I have managed to make it back here just in time for our Monday morning staff meeting, which does kind of take some of the shine off things. Anyway, off to that, and back in a bit with nothing of any consequence. Friday, March 12, 2004
Oh, yesterday.
What a yesterday. It was one of those schedule-busting days that is going to one day cause all my innards to spring out of me and run off to Bermuda or someplace. Reba was down in Columbiana, and it was the Catherine’s first night of soccer practice for this season, and it started at 5:30 (What the!?) and Reba is supposed to be able to leave by 3 and then go and pick up the kids and get their stuff and get them to the park by 5:30, but she didn’t get to leave until 4:30, and had to get gas, so she wasn’t even to Trussville by 5:30, but I had decided I needed to swing by the house first to put on the new hubcaps on the old van, and just as I opened the door at 5:35 she called and said she was almost to the school and wondered if she should try to come to the house first and then go to the park--OBVIOUSLY not a good idea since I already had their junk in my hand, so we decided to meet at the park and let them dress there, and then Ashley decided she wanted to go, too, so she took her sweet time getting her gigantic clunky shoes on and trying to find her CD player. And then a guy from church called and wanted to ask a billion questions and I couldn’t get off the phone NOR remember the answers to what he wanted to know. Got to the park, having been serenaded all the way in a most uncomfortably flat and loud tone by earphone-wearing Oldest, found our other crew, dragged the bag full o’sweaty junk out and headed for the restroom. Cat finally got on the field 30 minutes late. No big deal, I suppose, although I seemed to be agitated for some reason. The other two kids ate a cheeseburger from that swingin’ joint known as the concession stand while I decompressed a bit. Cat’s practice finished up as the two other’s started, so I was able to give Wife a smooch as we crossed paths and she went back to the house. I stayed on to watch the other two, which was incredibly boring since I forgot to get any of my car books when I was at the house earlier. They finally got finished and as we were getting ready to go, Boy wandered off and managed to fall down, hard, on the concrete steps going to the upper field. He was crying and sniffling and holding himself all oddly, and I must confess that I was not as sympathetic as I usually am. Not the first time--I remember a couple of years ago he was complaining about getting bitten by an ant on his little finger. I blew it off as nothing--an ant bite?! pinky finger?!--but he kept complaining until I had finally had enough and said, “Well, let me see your little stinky baby little whiney finger!” or some other such meanness. He held up his least finger on his right hand and it had a HUGE blister the size of a chick pea on it. Nothing makes Daddy feel worse than to be caught like that. Same thing last night--I’m telling him he’s okay, and then he rolls up his sleeve to find a hide-scraped spot the size of a half-dollar quickly growing red and angry. ::sigh:: BAD Daddy. I told him I was sorry and that I didn’t know it was so bad. I then told him that since we didn’t have any bandages that the best I could do was amputate. “DAAAA-AAAAHHHHDDDD!” Then he grinned a little hurt grin and we went on home. Walked in at about 8:45 to be met with the need to: a) return to the outside portion of our domicile, get in the car and go get in-laws’ mail and newspaper, b) then go to the store for kids’ snacks and tiny bottles of water. Oh, and something for Miss Reba’s lunch. And shoelaces for Cat’s shoes. And nose-tissue to carry in the car. And adhesive bandages. Then: c) return and check Middle Girl’s math homework and write a note to her teacher that I had checked it, and finally, d) find a current event story for Oldest for her social studies class. Sighed heavily, kissed Wife, went and cranked up the car and was on my way back down the hill. Mail, paper. No problem. Then I got real smart and decided to stop by the Winn-Dixie up the street from where my in-laws live. It would be closer than going all the way to Food World, AND they have a huge selection of stuff. Reba had wanted a sandwich out of the deli to take with her for lunch today, and I figured that Winn-Dixie’s sandwiches would be even betterer than Food World’s. Walked in, got all my other junk and…not a single, pre-made delicatessen sandwich in the whole joint. Ten thousand items, forty different brands of barbecue sauce, exotic vegetables grown in the Amazonian rain forest by loincloth-clad tribesmen, ten jars of Marmite fer cryin’ out loud, yet not a single sandwich. And she LOVES those sandwiches at Food World. But I was already running low on energy, so I made my second smart move. Rather than going on to Food World, I would just get something sandwichy out of the freezer case. Dumdeedum---Oooooo. THIS looks pretty good! It was those new Michelina’s Hot Subs--they’re so new that Michelina’s doesn’t even have them listed on their website! They’re sorta like a Hot Pocket, except with an Italian bread outer covering. I looked at all the varieties--this being Winn-Dixie, every single kind was represented. Just about every single one was of a red meat variety--Sloppy Joe, Noodley Beef, Beefy Joe Steak--each one lovingly shown with dark material oozing gently from a fresh hunk of bread. To be frank, though, they all looked a little, too… Well, let’s just say they didn’t look like they would look much different going out as they had coming in. But one looked real tasty. It was the Grilled Chicken Caesar. White Chicken, Celery, Cheese and Bacon with Caesar Dressing in Oven-Baked Bread. Mmmm. So I picked up a couple of boxes, checked out, and went home. Walked in and started unloading stuff, “Did you get Catherine some shoelaces?” ::sigh:: “No, ma’am.” Bad Husband. Bad Daddy. “They didn’t have any sandwiches, either! BUT, I really think THESE looked like something you’d like!” I proudly showed her my prize, hunted-and-gathered with my own two hands. I thought she was going to puke. “What’s wrong?!” “Well, Caesar dressing…I really just don’t like that. But it’s okay.” Obviously not okay. We’ve been married almost 13 years, and in that time, I could very nearly swear I have seen her eat Caesar salad on several different occasions. The only dressing she has EVER shown even the slightest intolerance for is bleu cheese. And yet, now, this. Oh well. I brought a box for my lunch today, and they really are good, despite the less-than-flattering box art. Onward then, to find a story for Ashley. I forget this little assignment every week. This week’s discussion topic is about a high school kid who was arrested for counterfeiting a $10 bill using his home computer. He’s in big trouble, but I predict a great future for him in politics. Time then to check Rebecca’s math. They were simple word problems, and she got most of them right, but she also had a few wrong, too. At least I think they were, but in my advanced state of sleepiness, I could be wrong. I marked them, then wrote my note to the teacher, then made the long journey back upstairs and collapsed in the bed. And then woke up and came here. As for the weekend, I’m not sure what’s supposed to be happening. There are several things, I think. Maybe. Then again, maybe not. BUT, I will be glad to share them with you bright and early Monday morning. Along with the winning entry of the Steel Cage Motto Match! All of you have a great weekend.
Trussville could open own school system by fall, 2005
Jim Smith (not an alias) asked me my opinion of the content of this article published a couple of weeks ago in The Birmingham News, detailing the efforts of my hometown (known to many of my readers as "Paradise Along the Pinchgut") to start our own school system. This effort has been in the air for a while, and really picked up steam a few years back when the Jefferson County system was found to have been Many folks in town thought that we took a much harder hit than everyone else did, though, and chalked it up as another example of the long-running neglect and animosity toward Trussville by the folks in charge at the Central Office. How accurate that perception was or is I can't really say, but enough people got upset to begin the steps to break away from the county. Leeds, to the east of Trussville, did the exact same thing last year, which gave even more ammo for people to use--Leeds has a population of around 10,000 to our 12,500, and a school population of about 1400 or so, compared to the 3700 who attend Trussville schools. A consultant have been hired, as the article mentions, and his reports are available from the City of Trussville website. (Please ignore the title page of the main report that is titled "A REPORT ON FORMING AN INDPENDENT SCHOOL SYSTEM FOR THE CITY OF TRUSSVILLE, ALABAMA." I'm sure it was just a typo, and not indicative of the level of educational excellence we could be expected to achieve.) Last year, a 1% sales tax was added that was earmarked for use in an education fund, should a school system be formed. A local non-profit corporation has been set up to provide direct funding for classroom items and equipment. Given our recent rapid growth in the retail shopping centers, a good bit of money has rolled in, and as the article says, it is feasible, at least on paper, for the city to start its own system. The biggest benefit of this would be better control over how our money gets spent (though no guarantee human nature will be magically changed to prevent the possibility of additional book-cooking later on), a lower student/teacher ratio, more responsiveness to physical plant needs, and maybe better accountability of administrators (again, that thing with human nature and all). Some faults are that running a school system is expensive. Everyone wants to be like Mountain Brook or Vestavia, but few want to pay the price--one reason it has been popular so far is that the sales tax is largely coming out of the pockets of Other People. Other Peoples' MoneyTM is an intoxicating thing, but if it levels off or, heaven forbid, dries up, we'll be back debating on raising property taxes again. Vestavia and Mountain Brook both have a substantially higher millage rate than anyone around to pay for their excellent schools, and I'm not sure everyone in our little village is aware just how much they might be having to pay for the satisfaction of thumbing our noses at Jefcoed. One benefit of staying in the system is that we draw on a large, diversified tax base from everyone in the county. (When that money is not being wasted on the county commission's latest boondoggles, that is.) There is also the issue of our friends within the city limits who are within the adjoining St. Clair county. There is a proposal afoot to equalize their millage rates to equal ours, and as you read in the linked story, that is creating quite a little stink. That situation will get worked out in some way, I'm sure, but doubtful to anyone's great satisfaction. There is also the issue of those living outside the city limits who are now zoned for Trussville schools. I think the lady in the first story link is getting a little too overheated with her discrimination talk, but it is an issue that will need to be addressed. Those who live in unincorporated areas now might not be quite so desirous of attending should their millage rates have to rise, also, just for the privilege of being a Husky. In the end, I think it will happen--too much effort has already been expended, and residents are demanding better service and better instruction for their kids than they've had in the past. To the credit of all involved, the process has been thorough, so whatever is done will have a much better chance of succeeding than if it were all slapped together like a barn dance. I don't really WANT to pay more for it, but I will if I have to. I remain thoroughly unconvinced, however, that money is the best gauge or guarantor of educational attainment--children educated in poverty or in wealth learn more, regardless of their circumstances, when they have concerned parents who understand the benefits of a good education and push them to do their best. (Money sure makes it easier, though--sorta like marrying a rich guy.) Anyway, that's my two cents worth.
Let me get out my big foam #3 finger!
Alabama rates as No. 3 state for business Trade magazine Plant [sic] Sites and Parks magazine ranked Alabama as the third best state for business relocation and expansion.
Anyway, here's a link to the online version of the magazine, as well as one for the survey article itself. (Again, for our journalist friends with online versions of their publications--links are nice things.) Anyway, from that article we see a bit more detail about our placement in the the top tier: […] It’s the large number of automotive suppliers setting up in Alabama that has catapulted the state to its high ranking on the Bizsites Survey. Almost two-thirds of the projects that met the Bizsites Survey criteria were in the transportation equipment industry, and fully half of those were Hyundai suppliers. An incomplete list of automotive suppliers who made project announcements in 2003 includes: Brose, Lear, T&WA, Venture Industries, Hysco Hyundai, Samlip Industrial, Mando Corp., Sejong Industrial Co., Hwashin and HS R&A. But...Although the jury may still be out on the efficacy of gigantic incentives packages on states’ long-term economic health, there is no doubt that Alabama’s 1993 bet on Mercedes paid off. However, the state is struggling underneath terrific deficits, and voters rejected a referendum to raise taxes to pay off debts and stave off education cuts in September, so, finding the money to offer upfront may be tougher in the future. “The state’s current financial crisis could alter Alabama’s ability to compete for some of the large projects currently considering the state,” said Neal Wade, director of the Alabama Development Office. […] For the record, Alabama's government cannot operate in deficit--by law our budgets must be balanced. However, there has been such a shortfall in revenue for the immediate past year and projected for the upcoming years that either massive tax increases or massive budget cuts or a combination of both are going to be required to balance things. The reasons for this have been hashed out in other places, but our state legislators' combined venality and their unwillingness to find more stable sources of revenue than sales taxes, sin taxes, or gambling, have been the most direct reason for our current financial mess.The use of public funds as incentives for economic development can be a good thing, depending on if they work as they're supposed to as catalysts for future investment that is made without the need for those incentives. If nothing else, the automotive investment that arrived here after Mercedes came at a decreasingly lower cost than that spent on landing Mercedes in the first place. Given our current financial straits, it's good that there is sufficient capacity now to continue growth, even with less state money--had the state budget situation hit right after Mercedes landed, it might have been several years longer before anything else similar came our way. If at all.
Toilet seats are cleaner than keyboards or telephone dials: study NEW YORK (AFP) - Keyboards, computer mice and telephone dials are more infested with microbes than toilet seats, according to a University of Arizona study.
All I have to say is I don't mind how germy it is, as long as there aren't any giant flying bugs with bulging red eyes anywhere around.
Oh, the Googlewhackers are about today...
Just got a hit from someone Googling antipodean efficaciousness. Possumblog was the only returned result for this rather incongruous request, and oddly enough it was not related to the most efficacious antipode I know--namely the talented Aussie Tim Cobber Mate--but rather it was all due to a post earlier about the marvels of Blue Emu salve with the rich, flavorful goodness of 7% Pure Johnson's Emu Oil. The Internet is an interesting place.
Another such victory and I am lost...
Man cleared in cup of ice dispute, but has $4,500 legal bill The Associated Press
In any event, it does seem to have been a really stupid thing to do for the police officer to try to compel him to purchase something he didn't want, even if it was half price, and then arrest him when he refused. I also can't figure out why ice is such a valuable commodity that it's worth such bad customer feelings toward the convenience store to put up such a fight about it. I imagine this one ain't quite over with.
Auntie Meme
For all of you who have ever wondered what the deal with memes is, via your kindly Uncle Cecil at The Straight Dope. Remember-- "I think, therefore I am." -- Rene Descartes. "I yam what I yam." -- Popeye the Sailor Man. "Do what?" -- Me.
Where are the Starship Troopers when we need them!?
Swarm of Cicadas Taking Aim at U.S. By DAN LEWERENZ, Associated Press Writer
The one nice things about our annual cicadas (what we call dryflies, or July flies, or dog day cicadas, or harvest flies) you hear down here during the summer is that they generally don't bother you and fly into the side of your head, although they are pretty noisy. Here's an article from Auburn University with everything you could ever care about knowing about these awful beasts, including sound file of the nasty things, and some quotes from early settlers in New England who observed the horror of the periodic locusts: "......there was a numerous company of Flies, which were like for bigness unto Wasps or Bumble-Bees, they came out of little holes in the ground, and did eat up the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers;......" Danged yelling bugs.
Fizzy Drinks Are Major Cause of Teen Tooth Erosion LONDON (Reuters) - Fizzy drinks are the major cause of tooth erosion in British teenagers but many parents are not aware of the problem, researchers said on Friday. [...] The jokes kinda write themselves on that one. Even though the stereotype of bad English dentition is inaccurate.
Enigma of Uranus solved at last
What? How to pronounce it? (I have taken to telling my children it should be pronounced "oo-RAHN-oos". Too many silly giggles begun either by one of them talking about "Your Anus," or "Urine Us." Same thing happens when we talk about Terdistan.) Thursday, March 11, 2004
IT’S A TAGLINE SMACKDOWN FREE-FOR-ALL!
Yesterday, as you no doubt recall, I mentioned that my favorite broken-ribbed, smoking-cessated business professor in the entire state of East Carolina, Jim Smith, has not received due credit for inventing the interesting tagline at the top of Possumblog on at least two occasions, including the one currently up there now. As was mentioned, it was decided to allow Jim to use the Axis of Weevil company car to compensate him for his efforts, and in a fit of something that can only be described as being akin to a mental breakdown, the Editorial Board of Possumblog decided to put out a call for contributions for anyone else who wanted to try their hand at crafting future nuggets of wisdom: If any of the rest of you would like to play along, leave a comment below. No guarantees they’ll get used, of course, but everyone who participates, even if you are not a winner, will get to ride in the Pinto with Jim when he goes to the drugstore. Anyone whose tagline is chosen can pick from the following choices of prizes: 1) Porter Waggoner autographed photo, 2) a $1,000,000 bill, or 3) not getting to ride with Jim in the Pinto to pick up his ointment. Well. Well, well, WELL! Let me tell you, dear readers, we had ourselves a real whim-doozie of a competition in TWO DIFFERENT sets of comment threads. Tough, TOUGH competition betweenNow then, their entries: Little A: 1) I always liked the city motto from one of the Ernest movies. “Ignoramus ad infinitum” It looked real good incorporated into the city seal on the side of the police car and trash truck. 2) “Possumblog: All your eggs in one handy basket.” 3) “Possumblog: Less filling, tastes funny.” 4) “Possumblog: Custard’s last stand.” 5) “Possumblog: Recommended by four out of five voices in your head.” 6) “Possumblog: One wardrobe malfunction per day - guaranteed.” 7) “Possumblog: Leave your name and number...we’ll get back to you.” 8) “Possumblog: Certified rabies-free since 10 o’clock last Tuesday.” 9) “Possumblog: Wake me up if I start making sense, otherwise I could use the sleep.” 10) “Possumblog: Better than a sharp stick in your eye...at least less painful...long term.” 11) “Possumblog: Speedbumps installed for the safety of our readers.” Jim A) You don’t have to move; the rash is getting much better. It’s hardly contagious anymore, really. B) The old mottos are not lost to posterity; they’re now available to be recycled. C) “Possumblog, meshing ideas out since 2001.” Jordan ù) “Possumblog: If you miss one day, you don’t miss a whole lot.” SUCH INCREDIBLE INSIGHT! Such a feel for what makes Possumblog both nutritious and agitating! It would be difficult for anyone in his and/or her right mind to choose a single winner from this cavalcade of wordiness, and it seems quite a shame to call anyone a loser just because of a failure to provide surreptitious cash payments to the judges. Such a terrible decision--you know that Shakespeare guy was right, “Heavy is the head that writes a blog,” or whatever it was. SO, rather than have to make such an agonizing decision myself, I will allow YOU, the vast, swarmy Possumblog-reading public to choose for yourselves which mottos you prefer to see! Entrants are specifically prohibited from voting. The prizes mentioned previously are still up for grabs, although Little Aa has already stated his preference for the third one if he is selected, and Jordana has asked for an autographed photo of LittleA and Dr. Smith in Speedos in lieu of my Porter Waggoner autographed picture. AND FINALLY, the elephant polo/elephant bowling teams will be having a organizational meeting at noon on Saturday at Sonic. Do not bring elephants at this time.
Yet another...
...silly meeting to attend. But when I get back, buddy-boy, you're gonna have a SURPRISE!!
'Dukes of Hazzard' car still the favorite The Associated Press
I am sorta surprised that Todd and Buzz's Vettes got left off. Of the list, I guess I like McQueen's Mustang the best, 'cause, you know, it's Steve McQueen. The General Lee is cool for one reason only. Gone in 60 Seconds? Blah. Likewise, BTTF. The Batmobile? When I was a kid, I thought it was cool, but I have become less enamored of it as the years have passed. Batgirl Yvonne Craig, on the other hand... Bond's Astons have always been nifty--the whole series lost something when they went to BMWs. The Bandit's T/A was cool--I wouldn't mind having one even now, even with the big chicken puking on the hood. 'Mon back. However, you couldn't give me KITT. Unless it sounded like Catherine Bach. Or Yvonne Craig. Herbie? Ick. Starsky's Gran Torino? As someone who grew up in the Automotive Dark Ages known as the mid-1970s, all I can say is that anyone who took the trouble to tart up a big-bumpered Ford was pretty idiotic. I never did really like it. Could be because I had a friend with a '74 Cougar that had a 351 and a 4 barrel. Couldn't pull a greased string out of a [crude reference deleted]. He thought it was very fast, though, because it had a floor shifter. Black Beauty? Ick. And since we're talking movie cars, where's Kowalski's Dodge Challenger? Mad Max's Falcon XB? Garth's Pacer? Anyway, I have to go to Parkway Dodge and pick up some brand new hub covers for Moby. Be back in a bit. I promise not to try to jump the van over any cop cars or anything.
George Michael to put future songs on Internet, for free
Amazingly enough, I believe I have the will power necessary to overcome the urge to listen to any of them.
Just had this person come by--matt lauer and speedo and picture.
Sicko. Freak. I mean, Matt's dreamy and all, but he doesn't quite look like this.
Stupid Meeting AGAIN
And I'm late, but not because I was playing on here. Had another Nigerian spam, and this time it's from a SENATOR! Cool. So I had to write back. That'll be up in a bit if I get any kind of response. And then there was the angry man at the counter. That took up a lot of time, because he was, like, you know, ANGRY!! GRR!! And so now I have to go meet. Be back in a bit with something or another. Or not.
Some of you might recall...
...that last week we received a nice visit from Richard Grayson (noted real author of books and stuff). Well, not only is Mr. Grayson quite a fan of Rich Scrushy, it seems he's also quite a fan of my friend Martha Stewart, and sends along a link to an article in today's Newsday regarding a nice Long Island caterer lady who has volunteered to step into Ms. Stewart's lovely Prada pumps while she's pumping iron in the Big House. Mr. Grayson is quoted at the very end of the article, and we find out that he is not only a noted real author of books and stuff, but also a kind and compassionate man who cares about others, and especially Ms. Stewart: [...] So will [colorful Huntington caterer Rhona] Silver be the new ambassador for gracious living?
Richard's fine work on behalf of Martha also garnered notice from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (purported to be a real newspaper) in this article from the middle of last year, in which once again Richard's quote ends the article: [...] Stewart's fans were out in droves Thursday voicing their support.
Thank you, Richard, and continued good luck on your quest! Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Such a morning.
These early meeting mornings are always a pain. I have to set the alarm for 5, and rather than getting to doze in bed while the 5 - 5:30 a.m. edition of the local news is on, I actually have to get up and go get showered and dressed. (And since I don't live in a house like the Jetson's, I actually have to do all of the dressing and bathing MYSELF, instead of being assisted by friendly and helpful robots.) Then I have to get the kids up and try to impress upon them the need to get their clothing on so Mom doesn't have an aneurism and complain to me about how sluggish they are. Oh, and I have to also cajole Miss Reba into waking up, herself. I have often thought I should just let her sleep, but I would only be hurting myself. Catherine gets special attention since she only has two conditions--off and full-speed. When she's off, she has to be hoisted out of bed like a sack of wet cement, then semi-dragged to the potty, then prodded up onto a suitable flat surface (the bed) where her pajamas can be swapped out for school clothing and socks and shoes, then propped upright on some pillows so her ratty mess of curls can be groomed and beribboned, then led to the bathroom again to brush her teeth. (She has no need of a Jetson house, in that her needs are met by a friendly and helpful robot--ME!) After that, I sometimes have enough time to throw some cereal or fruit at them, but usually I have to hit the door at 6:20. Keys, drive, somehow manage to arrive at work at just slightly before 7, then arrive upstairs at my spacious, paper-strewn office and start setting up the conference room and answering e-mail and trying to remember where I put all my meeting papers. Then there's the meeting itself, starting at 7:30 on the dot. Or so. Today's zipped by in a bit over an hour, even though we had 15 cases, but sometimes they can drag on for two hours or more. Best not to drink anything ahead of time. After it's over with is when I can finally relax a bit. Start typing minutes (which is why days like this are so lacking in rich, possumy goodness) and occasionally dip into the Internet and see what all's going on. This morning I have been keeping Chet the E-Mail Boy busy with a running e-mail exchange with Jim Smith about Shriners and clowns and evening gowns. And the little mottos I put up on the top of the page. I should have mentioned this earlier, but the one for this week and the one for the week of February 1 were both courtesy of Jim. He asked if people really read the things, and I told him I thought so, especially have they had super-human magnification vision, but they were really there more to take up space than anything else. And yes, they do change every week, although sometime in 2003, during one of Blogspot's occasional brain farts, a bunch of the earlier ones got "updated" when the archive files got restored. Stupid, STUPID Blogspot! The wonders of American comic genius which were so cruelly erased simply boggles the mind--gems such as, "Possumblog is Powered by Pure, Clean-Burning Whale Oil," and, "Turgid, turbid--whatever," and, "Objects on Possumblog are Stupider They Appear," were lost to the ages. Oh well. In any event, Jim has been cogitating long and hard on a follow-up for me. I guess I should pay him or something--although he does get to use the Pinto anytime he needs to go get ointment--but as for cash, well, that's always a sensitive subject around here. His suggestion for next week is "Possumblog--Your 24-Hour Drivel Headquarters." Personally, I think it shows a lot of promise, but I really don't want to run afoul of the Kerry For President blog. Anyway, continue on with your excellent work, Jim, and we'll see what happens. If any of the rest of you would like to play along, leave a comment below. No guarantees they'll get used, of course, but everyone who participates, even if you are not a winner, will get to ride in the Pinto with Jim when he goes to the drugstore. Anyone whose tagline is chosen can pick from the following choices of prizes: 1) Porter Waggoner autographed photo, 2) a $1,000,000 bill, or 3) not getting to ride with Jim in the Pinto to pick up his ointment. SO, I have to get back to work now that lunch is over. P.S. Almost forgot--but if there is any interest in starting an Axis of Weevil elephant polo team, please sign the sign-up sheet in the foyer bulletin board. Each player will be required to provide own mallet and elephant. Tuesday, March 09, 2004
My usual semi-monthly prettification-through-regulatory-interference meeting will be held tomorrow morning, so the usual supply of stupidity issuing from hence will be decidedly less abundant than is usually the case. As always, there are many fine folks listed up there in the directory to visit (including a few new ones for you to discover), and as always, there's the moldy Possumblog Archives if you're really a glutton for punishment.
Or there's this. No matter how you choose to drive down America's world-leading rate of worker productivity, we thank you for your continued patronage and promise to start up the Drivel Machine as soon as possible tomorrow.
Thank goodness it was Georgia--Police: Woman Tried to Pass Fake $1M Bill COVINGTON, Ga. - A woman was caught trying to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at a Wal-Mart, and was later found with two more of the bills in her purse, police said.
Gator goes for ride on Fla. school bus The Associated Press
None of the 11 students on the bus were injured, and the alligator was fine when it was released into a nearby river by the father of two of the boys. Dad NEVER lets us have any fun!State wildlife officials and the Pasco County State Attorney's Office are investigating the bus driver. Sherry Hattaway, 41, has been on paid leave since the Thursday incident.
Hattaway did not immediately return a telephone call for comment Tuesday.
The gator was hauled onto the bus and off again at the home of two boys. Their father Jimmy Scroggins came home to find a crowd of kids around the calm alligator. Calm, or just embarrassed?Scroggins took the animal to the nearby Withlacoochee River and released it. The next day, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers were at his house.
Little Snaarkvark
LittleA with a good rundown on the state of education in way too many public schools. Aardvarkian solutions to follow. My own? The primary job of a parent is to be a parent, not a playmate.
Obscure Architectural Term of the Day--Triple-Play Version AMBO. A stand raised on two or more steps, for the readng of the Epistle and the Gospel; a promiment feature in medieval Italian churches. Sometimes two were built, one for the Epistle, and one for the Gospel, on the south and north sides respectively. After the C14 the ambo was replaced by the PULPIT. vis.:PULPIT. An elevated stand of stone or wood for a preacher or reader, which first became general in the later Middle Ages (the AMBO was used in the early Middle Ages). Often elaborately carved, and sometimes with an acoustic canopy above the preacher called a sounding board or TESTER. Occasionally found against the outside wall of the church. The Anglican three-decker pulpit combines a reading desk and a clerk's stall with the preacher's stand, one on top of the other. Rather puts one in mind of a particular Jack Handey "Deep Thought"--Contrary to popular belief, the most dangerous animal is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. The most dangerous animal is a shark riding on an elephant, just trampling and eating everthing they see. Well, that's what it reminds me of. Finally, the throw to third:TESTER. A canopy suspended from the ceiling or supported from the wall above a bed, throne, pulpit, etc. So there you go.From the Penguin Dictionary of Architecture, Third Edition.
U.S. cars top European in reliability By Matt Nauman, Mercury News
There was once (and probably still is) a perverse status in being able to say, "My Benz/Ferrari/Lamborghini/Jag/Skoda is in the shop," and it seems that a lot of premium manufacturers took that as a license to abuse their customers with less than stellar quality. But no one wants to think they got snookered by buying an expensive pile of crap, so customers brush it off as part of the cost of exclusivity. At some point, like when cash is tighter and conspicuous consumption begins to take a noticeable bite, such stuff is less likely to be overlooked, and more likely to adversely impact the manufacturers. (By the way, the problematic BMW 7-series is not a new phenomenon--the V-12 versions have been particularly troublesome, and one guy even devoted a website to his travails with his '89 750iL and with its less-than-helpful parent company.) Caveat emptor.
Tacoma reporter quits after ethics probe The Associated Press
That's one thing that's good about Possumblog--just like I told Jodi Applegate the other day, you can rest assured that every single thing you read on here is 100% true. Except for those parts that aren't.
Man, where have I been!?
I mean, Protein Wisdom returns six days ago, and I just find out about it today!? I gotta quit shooting myself in the head with nail guns--it's really starting to have an effect on me. In any event, welcome back, Jeff, even if I am a bit late in saying it.
Deformed Roman God of Forge Accepting Visitors Once Again
Didn't post it yesterday, but the restoration of Vulcan, his stone pedestal, and the visitor's center at Vulcan Park is now complete and ready for folks to once again come and enjoy the view: 03/09/04
There is some kind of weird irony in here. I just wish I could figure out what it is exactly:
Bag of money stolen from film crew The Associated Press
Go figure. Monday, March 08, 2004
This time the rest of the family was going to get to go to the game since they were all cleaned up and awake and anxious to go see all the people. ON the other hand, I was getting sorta tired. That happens. Anyway, I went ahead with Middle Girl so she could get her warm up in, with the rest of the crew to follow.
Another good game, interrupted by Catherine’s near continual need to gad about and go do anything other than sit still and watch the game. Mom had to go take her to see the tee-shirts, then I had to go get her some supper at the hard-hitting, dramatic world of THE C.S., then Mom had to take her to the bathroom, then back again later. Then she and Jonathan had to make forty or so trips to throw away individual bits of paper in the garbage can down at the bottom of the hill. Grr. As for the game, a very close one and pretty clean for the most part. Both teams seemed pretty well matched, but once again, Rebecca’s team came through with a 2-1 win. They had a final game Sunday, which they lost 0-2, BUT, with the amount of points they racked up, they managed to win their division. I think this is their first first-place win--they’ve had several seconds and such, but it’s good to see they are improving. Home, by way of the gas station to fill up Reba’s van, then finally home. Quite a long day it was. Into bed late, then up too early Sunday for our normal round of church things. Catherine refused to sleep this time, but at least she was more or less still and quiet. Some lunch at the little Chinese place (for some reason the usual cashier was gone and we were served by some Chinese slacker kid in a backwards baseball cap. So much that the world could learn from America, yet the backwards ball cap seems to be the most popular. ::sigh::) To home, where I had first decided (since I kept falling asleep on the way home) that I should reward myself with a nap. I sat down to read the newpaper, and… “::heavy wifely sigh:: Terry! Would you PLEASE come help me?” It seems that Miss Reba took the opportunity presented by Oldest having stayed at the building for a meeting to go in and attempt to clean some of the piles of junk from her room. Oh boy. I stumbled upstairs and we managed to make pretty good headway. When I wasn’t drifting off somewhere warm and quiet and clutter free. Or when I wasn’t typing up something for Rebecca--seems she had a report due on electrical circuits, and had not gotten it finished until Sunday afternoon. ::sigh:: (Once more! With FEELING!) Back to church for a meeting, then evening worship, THEN we got invited to go to the youth devotional at the house of one of our friends, which we really couldn’t refuse. The older folks and my crew of non-teenagers stayed in the kitchen out from underfoot and tried to stay out of the food (nachos with that good Rotel tomato/cheese dip--mmmmm!) until it was the official, scriptural time to eat. Finally got home last night after 9:30. Boy, am I tired.
Ahh, yes. The carwash. Nothing quite like a full-service, small-town carwash on the first warm sunny Saturday in weeks. Quite an operation--three lanes stacked with cars, squadrons of backwards-baseball-cap, gigantic-basketball-shoe-wearing youth with pencil thin arms hanging out of torn-sleeved tee shirts lovingly towelling off the random drops of water and spraying “tire shine” on everything, a long glass window so you can see the watery mysteries of carwashological science, and a supermodel cashier. I don’t know if the last part is in some kind of a business book on running a successful carwash, but I cannot recall a time since I have been driving (nigh onto 26 years) when I have walked into a carwash and not been greeted by a Vogue model. Saturday was no different--willowy, tanned, 6-foot high 20-year old brunette, sitting pertly on a high stool (the better to show off her equally willowy, tanned limbs that took up approximately 87.6% of her tallness) nonchalantly ringing up sales on the register and talking to the mom of one of her friends.
I paid my money and took a chair, alternating between watching CNN and her messing with her cell phone and in just a little while Reba’s box came through the tunnel and was wrangled to the drying and spritzing station. Very nice--we usually just get the cheapie wash at the gas station, but the past weeks of rain and dirt and kids with grassy shoes had made it a little too earthy for anything other than a real good scrubbing. Done by someone with more energy than me. Got home and was tasked with taking back a load of stuff to JCPenney that Reba had ordered online and that didn’t fit. “But, but…” You see, I had decided while getting Reba’s van cleaned that I needed to get Moby a similar treatment. Now that he is going to be relegated to backup duty in place of Franklin, I felt I owed it to him to make him presentable, too, so he wouldn’t get his feelings hurt. And he needed it, too. It’s been several years since he had a real cleaning out by slack-jawed kids with vacuum cleaners, and the crust of wayward food hunks had built up to a thickness equal to that of the carpet. Yes, “eww” is right. It was a mess. But, that had to wait a bit--off to the store first. I did decide before leaving to pull out the seats so they could get into all the nooks and crannies. Such nooks! Such crannies! Didn’t need a vacuum cleaner so much as it did a team of archeologists. Yuck. Store, return stuff with ABSOLUTELY NO TROUBLE AT ALL. Incredible. Then back to the same place I had been two hours earlier. Told the chubby goateed guy with backwoods dental work to clean the whole thing out, clean the tar off the bottom rockers, clean the sills and jambs, vacuum it out to a fair-thee-well, clean the dash--“D’you want tire shine?” Yeah, whatever. As long as the inside is shoveled out. Went in and our young lady was still at her task, “Back again?” she asked sweetly. Gosh, you know, for a supermodel, she sure does have an embarrassingly good memory. I allowed that I had indeed returned and paid my ticket, all the while trying to figure out something to say that would not make it seem like I was one of those weird old guys in the supermarket in front of you in line who like to smooth-talk the cashier with their encyclopedic knowledge of Little Feat. (I mention this because there was one of these guys at Food World the other day in front of me. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again--when you make another GUY uncomfortable, you’re doing something really, REALLY wrong.) I came up with a very nice version of “Yes, back again, thank you,” as she handed me back my change, and she said they had been very busy and it seemed like everybody was bringing in every car they had to get it cleaned. I could believe her--I saw two other people there I had seen earlier. Sat down again and watched whatever home decorating show she had switched to and after a much longer wait, the White Whale came through the tunnel and was zipped to its appointed place in the drying line. The outside was cleaner than it was, although there was still some tar that they didn’t get off until I pointed it out. Likewise the door jambs and sills were a little cleaner, but they didn’t really do anything more than swipe at them. Which is understandable, from their point of view I should have bought the “detail package,” where they charge you more to REALLY clean the dirt off. The inside was a lot cleaner, although they had not cleaned all the cargo area plastic, and it was still covered with several viscous drips of congealed soft drink. Ewwww. Again. Got it home and decided I had to finish cleaning it up before putting the seats back in. After an entire roll of paper towels and half a bottle of Simple Green, it looked presentable once again. The carpet still really needs to be shampooed, but it’s a hundred times cleaner than it was all over. And a word of endorsement for Simple Green--I’m not sure what’s in it, but it is one of the best general-purpose cleaners I have ever found, and it has the great fragrance of synthetic sassafras. It worked very well for cutting the years of build up of greasy dirt from the door jambs, as well as the crud off of the plastic. Good stuff. Back in with the seats, final wipe-down, and it looks almost as good as new. (Still gotta find myself to wheel centers, though--it has wheels like this one, and the centers are notorious for coming adrift.) Time then to get ready to go to the second soccer game of the day. Whee.
Alarm Creak. Pop. Grunt. Roll out of bed, onto the floor, roll to the bathroom, wonder if it would be worth it to just sleep on the toilet so as to keep from having to go all the way to the bathroom every morning. Shower. Eat my medicine. Brush. Shave. Dress. Fill pants pockets with manly stuff. Wake up Rebecca. Get her to put her uniform on. Fill water bottle. Ask her what she wants for breakfast. Fix a wonderful, hearty breakfast of a banana for her. Get her gear together and we step outside into Technicolor springtime. The rain that had managed to move through during the night while I blissfully snored had been replaced with a gloriously sunny and warm morning. Autumn in Vermont has its strong points, to be sure, but springtime in the Deep South is like seeing a girl in her wedding dress.
Sure makes you feel better about getting up early, that’s for sure. Off to the park, parked the van and once again parked myself at the concession stand, which I cannot bear to call Café Boeuf again, because once you’ve called it that twice in earlier posts, calling it that again gets tiresome. In a nod to my large following among the young set, I may take to calling it “The C.S.”, an homage to the hit FOX teen drama, The O.C. Or not. Anyway, the girls started warming up and I picked my way through the mudpuddles on the sideline from the previous night’s deluge and slumped down in my folding chair to read a bit before the game. Reba bought me a paperback memoir the other day written by a P.T. boat skipper who served in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. Looks like it might be pretty good (even if I can’t for the life of me remember the title of it), but I wasn’t able to get very far in it before the game started. Another good game, although the (one-year younger) team they played was much more aggressive. Or we were much less so. They held their own, though, and managed to wind it up with another win, and a score of 3-2. Terrible field conditions--never could quite tell what the ball was going to do. Sometimes it would skip along like a stone on a pond, other times it would splash into a puddle and stop dead. They were a muddy mess after it was over. And the officiating was horrid. One humorous moment came about midway through the second half when everyone was over on the fan’s side of the field. There was a good bit of jockeying for position and Rebecca was crowding out a tiny little girl who barely came up to Rebecca’s armpit. Rebecca got the better of her, and the little girl kicked the ball out, partly as a tactical decision and partly out of sheer frustration. As one of the other girls on Bec’s team ran over to throw the ball back in, Rebecca moved upfield into position and the entire way, the little girl gave her the absolute dirtiest, angriest little scowl imaginable. ‘If looks could kill,’ and all that. Rebecca just ignored her--she was concentrating on where she needed to play--which made her opponent’s reaction even more priceless. Of course, in such a situation it is unsportsmanlike for the parents to laugh or anything, but some things are just too funny. Gotta give the little kid credit though--that scowl didn’t leave, even after she heard us chuckling. Homeward after the game, with a stop-off at the bank to pay the house note. For some reason, Rebecca decided she wanted to go in with me. I am happy to report that the Trussville AmSouth will not kick you out if you bring a dirty, smelly, barefoot, girlchild to the teller queue with you. Just in case any of you need to know. Also cashed my Franklin money, and got back a whole stack of fresh green Franklins. Mmmm-money! Dropped Middle Girl at home then took Reba’s van to the Honda shop to get the brakes worked on. We’ve put up with a set of warped rotors for a couple of months now--it’s felt like they were the shape of a cowboy hat’s brim they vibrated so badly. I just knew I needed new rotors, but they were able to machine them true once more. Took four hours. I read every magazine in the waiting area and drank three cans of Diet Coke and went to the bathroom three times. I would have walked around more outside since it was so pretty, but when I first got there, I tried that and ran into a sales manager. Eww. I was looking at the new Civics parked beside the service building. “Nice, huh!?” Yep. “That one there’s got the blahblahblah really blah blahblah…” Uh-huh. “Are you here…getting some service work done!?” Everything was sort of peppy, excited question with this guy. “Yes sir, getting some brake work done.” I kept trying to ignore him and look at the cars. “AH! What sort of vehicle!?” “’01 Odyssey.” “How many miles!?” ::sigh:: ::grrr:: “Around 48--got a couple of warped rotors.” A deeply caring and concerned look creased his face. “Oh, that’s unfortunate…” His voice trailed off, then, “Are you considering a trade anytime soon!?” Oh, sweet jumping Moses on a pogo stick! CAR SALESMEN!! GRR! “No, just looking at what you have here.” “Well, do you have any kids just about to start driving who might be needing a car?!” I just threw my head back and laughed at him, “Nope! I don’t have anyone who needs a car, now or anytime soon--I’m just trying to keep the one I got running.” I believe he finally got the hint. “I just hate to have folks on the lot who haven’t been waited on--we want you to feel special here and I want to make sure everyone is taken care of.” “Oh, I know, I know! It’s okay--I know why exactly why you’re asking.” And I do--nothing wrong with trying to scare up an early morning sale, but I just don’t quite know why it took you so long to get the clue that I didn’t want to talk to you. Maybe I need to get my Angry Coot Wave Generator fixed. Anyway, got that all fixed up and paid for, and it was time to head back towards the house. Right now, though, it’s time for me to go meet Miss Reba for lunch out in the springtimey air of the big city, so I’ll go do that and afterwards, you and I will then go to the magical land of… THE CAR WASH!!
Friday I got home right at 5:30 and began furiously trying to get ready for Franklin’s adoptive father to come get him--had to get the bill of sale and title from upstairs, and the keys, then had to start trying to get my padlock off the spare tire (wouldn’t budge--too much dirt in the lock cylinder, so I just left the lock on there and gave him the key) and fumbled around getting the tag off. Had just gone back in to get a different wrench when my buyer came walking down the sidewalk. Got him to sign the bill of sale and title while I finished up, and as he handed me the check, I told him the kids wanted to be sure they could come by and see it every once in a while. Not really, but I was sorta ashamed to admit to it myself. He said not to worry, that they (I) will get to see it drive by every day. Good for me! I mean, them.
He hoisted himself in and was away back up the street in a coughing rumble and a curling cloud of blue smoke. I looked down at the check in my hand. HEY! MONEY!! Cool. Reba got in with the kids just a few minutes later, and we had a bit of supper. Nothing heavy, because Rebecca had the first game of her tournament and we didn’t want her to get sick. Got her dressed out, and Reba stayed behind with the rest of the kids--late game, threatening weather, and cranky children do not a happy combo make. We found a parking spot and sat down at one of the tables on the porch of the concession stand to watch the world pass by with a world-weary insouciance as we waited for the rest of her team. (This is the sort of sidewalk café culture that prompted Rebecca’s coach to begin calling the concession stand Le Café Boeuf.) Anyway, tons of visitors wandering around, and as always, some interesting ones to look at. I will say that attractive women probably attract more of my interest than they should. I will also say that no matter how attractive you might be, when it’s cold and messy and there’s really no one around to impress except old farts, it’s probably better not to wear spandex workout pants and a low-cut, tight white tank top. Trying just a little too hard, know whadda mean? Anyway, it got to be time for the game to start and I reluctantly got out from under the shelter of the stand and went and set up my folding chair beside the bleachers--and caught a constant, hard, wind right in the face. Thankfully, it was nothing but wind (it was predicted we’d get bucket of rain) but it was still miserable. Good game overall--for our girls’ first real game of the season, and for having had only one scrimmage beforehand, they performed very well and controlled the ball well the whole game. The only bad part was when Rebecca took a kick full in the side of the face from one of our backs late in the second half--she didn’t go down, but was stunned and crying and couldn’t go on playing. After the ball was finally kicked out, her coach was able to come on and see about her and walk her off. I walked around to the other side of the field to see about her--the ball had hit the corner of her glasses and driven the temple piece back into the side of her head behind her eye, leaving a tiny vertical cut. The upper part of the frame also hit the upper part of her eyelid, which has since developed into a nice shiner. The trainer from UAB came down with some ice and shined a light at her eyes--she was fine, aside from the shock of getting smashed and some soreness. I bent her glasses back into shape and got them fitted back to her. “You know, we probably need to get you some sport glasses if you’re going to keep catching balls with your head.” They have shatterproof plastic lenses already, but set in metal frames. She said she didn’t want any. At all. “But sugar, they’ll keep your head from getting cut!” “I’m okay.” Tough nut, she is. And rather vain--sports glasses aren’t pretty, you know. Both of these characteristics give me great hope in the future of America--one mustn’t trifle with a country full of strong, pretty women. By the time she had got taken care of, the game was over, with Bec’s team winning 3-0. Off to home, where she proudly recounted her head injury to her mama, and then took her bath and got herself into bed. Early morning on Saturday--had to be at the park at 7:30, which meant another one of those games where it was going to be much easier to leave everyone at home…
Ahhhh...staff meeting!
Wonderful way to start the week. But you probably want to know about the weekend, and as usual, you're just going to have to wait a bit for the vapid tales of suburban life, such as: Fond Farewells; Soccer in the Evenin'--Soccer in the Mornin'; Cafe Boeuf-Trussville; Vibrationless Arrestment of Forward Motion; Waiting at the Car Wash; A Big Filthy Box; Waiting at the Car Wash, Part Deux; Simple Green; Soccer in the Evenin'--Family Edition; Naplessness; Homework; Devotion and Cheese; and to start it all off... IT'S SPRINGTIME!! Walked out early Saturday to see that Boy's anjou pear tree and Tiny Girl's yoshino cherry tree had done busted out all over with a shower of tiny flowers. Same thing with all around town--forsythia, tulip trees, redbuds, tons of daffodils. The daffodils had kind of peeked out a couple of weeks ago, but they're all strutting around now all show-offy like. (You know how they are.) In any event, the sap's rising and that frisky, spring fever feeling's about, so be careful around here. Check back in a bit and I might have something typed up. Friday, March 05, 2004
And then, the weekend.
Gonna be a busy one--Middle Girl has a soccer tournament this weekend, with a game tonight at 8:20, one tomorrow morning at 8:00, another tomorrow afternoon at 6:30, then one Sunday morning at 10:30 that she’ll have to miss. Thank goodness it’s at our home park--I’m not in the mood to have to travel anywhere. What’s going to be interesting is if we get the amount of rain the Dopplergangers have predicted. Supposed to be a real frog-strangler. In other news, last night was the final night for Franklin to sleep at our house--when I get home the signatures will be signatured and filthy lucre will change hands. But that’s okay. As usual, I believe there will be a gigantic stack of laundry to be done. I have not been wrong yet. I predict I will not get a good nap on Sunday afternoon, which is one I HAVE been wrong about before, but am not counting on it this time. Finally, I predict that, Lord willing and I make it back to my desk Monday morning, Possumblog will be FULL of FUN & INFORMATIVE things! Not that that’s ever come true, but there’s always time for a first. SO, all of you have a good weekend and I’ll see you Monday.
Good grief, where have I been?!
Go to lunch and the dealership, and come in to find that Martha's going to be checking in to the Gray Bar Hotel! Oh well--that'll teach me to leave my trusty computer to go out and meet with actual people. Good lunch--today's repast was held at a relatively new place over in Homewood called Cool Beans. BhamDining.com sez: Mon.-Thurs. 6:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri. 6:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Coffee house offering selection of organically grown coffees and teas, as well as fresh baked mufins, bagels, scones, sandwiches and soups. Wireless Internet access, display of local artwork. Hmmm. Two neatly-dressed professional men of a certain age, coffee house, local artwork, organic mufins...AAARRRGGGGHHHHH! WHERE'S MAH TRUCK!?Thank goodness it had girl waitresses. In what seems to be a recurring trend, one of them looked just like the redheaded girl from the hit '90s T-NBC show Hang Time. Must be something in the water or something, but it seems where ever we eat lunch, I see someone like that. The other girl looked sorta like Courtney Cox, and she brought us our food, so everything turned out okay. The place itself is indeed a real coffee shop, of the Central Perk, I'm-straining-incredibly-hard-to -look-slapped-together-from -thrift-store-hand-me-downs variety. Mismatched chairs and tables, a horrifying couch with a real life Birkenstock-shod slacker sprawled on it, painted squiggles, tiny lights in the black-painted ceiling tiles, and the aforementioned local artwork, which was Deep. And Meaningful. And Expressive of the Plight of Creative Genius. And the selection of organically grown coffees was likewise a wonder to behold. I pretended the Diet Pepsi I was drinking was an Andean blend with a chicory/cocoa undertone. Couldn't fault the sandwich, though--thick slices of hot meat and cheese on a grilled and buttered hunk o'foccaccia bread. Conversation was of a more serious nature than is our usual fare, so I won't burden you with it here--suffice it to say that sometimes having to be grown up is not what you thought it would be when you were 21. As for the magazine swapping and vehicle inspection, I got two Car and Drivers, and he got a foot-thick stack of stuff, including the usual Automobile and Autoweek. One I have really become a fan of is Hemmings Muscle Machines. It's a stupid-sounding title, but the content is more varied than the usual Ford-Chevy stuff, and includes some less-than-pristine daily driver stuff in among the more usual assortment of $150,000 trailer queens. One great weakness, at least for those of us who have a blog to run, is that there is no website link. As for the inspection tour, Jeff seemed to be satisfied that I had gotten a good deal and was complimentary of the overall package. He sat himself in the driver's seat and made pbpbpbpbpbpttttt noises and cranked the steering wheel back and forth and jiggered around with everything and nothing came adrift. I then ferried him around the corner to where his car was parked and On then to Adamson Ford to get a new key made. It only came with one--I suppose the other original was lost and never replaced and I can understand why. EIGHTY-ONE FRIGGIN BUCKS. I appreciate the effort Ford has gone to in order to ensure no one drives away with our new purchase, but that's ridiculous. Our Honda has a chip embedded in the key, too, and it cost only $18 to have duplicated. And took five minutes. Surely there is an equally secure way of stopping vehicle theft that doesn't make me feel like I've been keyjacked. One of the reasons the Ford price was so high was 7/10 of an hour of technician time being equal to $49.95. And then there was the issue of the $3.75 charged for "Misc. Supplies & Hazardous Waste Disposal." Must have been for my going to the restroom to pee. Had I known it was going to cost me $3.75 for the profiled, I assure you I would have REALLY given them some hazardous waste to dispose of. I might just have to go back again. Anyway, that's where I've been.
Took the kiddies to soccer practice last night and decided to fill up the Focus and do a gas mileage check. In a mix of 90% highway and 10% buzzing around home and to the soccer park and Wal-Mart and back, managed to get a right respectable 31.67 mpg. Quite a far cry from my old '76 Vega wagon, which did good to break 20, with a tailwind. Going downhill. In neutral.
And today I have it with me again so I can go show it off to My Friend Jeff™--it's that old magazine-swapping-and-eating-lunch time again, and he seems quite excited about getting to check it out. The next question is if it will turn out to be good enough to earn itself a nickname.
Life is pretty much unfair.
I say this because a few weeks ago, Miss Janis mentioned that she had a terrible nightmare because of a photo link I had posted to a certain fashion designer. Well, it just so happens that sometime in the past few weeks, Janis mentioned seeing the old Blake Edwards movie S.O.B., starring the still-attractive Julie Andrews. I don't know what might have triggered it--maybe it was the Jane Pauley pot-boiler last night on NBC about Princess Diana--but sure enough, last night I dreamed about Julie Andrews. She was quite upset about something, and was seated in a chair by a wall, next to a desk, holding forth in a most agitated way. Not screaming or anything like that--just sort of that stiff-upper-lip English agitation. She had on a dark lavender suit, with a modest skirt that came just above her knee. Modest, except for a slit on the left side that exposed a slender part of the upper portion of the area just above her knee when she crossed her leg. Rrrrrowlllll. Donatella, she wasn't. So unfair.
It always gives me the itchies...
...on those occasions when real live authors drop by--I mean, the place is a mess, and there's all sorts of participles hanging out of the hamper, and stuff that just shouldn't be seen by polite folks and such. But, every once in a while, they do come by to say hello and leave some nice tracts or maybe a casserole. Such is the case with a fine fellow named Richard Grayson, a prolific sort of author, professor, raconteur, and former denizen of Gotham (and I'm sure one who never gets asked the directions to stately Wayne Manor) who came by last night and left a comment way down below in the post about my favorite disgraced greasy-haired former CEO, Dick Scrushy, and his most recent foray into the video arts. Since the comments sometimes get forgotten after a couple of days, I am taking the step of posting it here so you will receive the necessary encouragement to go see a few scripts of of an earlier show about the Scrushys: "I Love Scrushy." Mr. Grayson has provided us with several script synopsiseseses of all the loveable, wacky, zany hijinx of the First Family of HealthSouth, and the wonderful ensemble cast that surrounds him-- This unforgettable sitcom lasted six seasons, during which the wacky, dictatorial but lovable star, HealthSouth CEO Richard M. ("Red") Scrushy, stole millions and delighted millions more with his corporate shenanigans and auditing antics. The shows featured Scrushy's zany attempts to satisfy his dreams of being a country music star, to meet celebrities, to make himself look important to the people of Birmingham, Alabama, and to surround himself with as much luxury as possible.
And thanks to Robi...I mean, Richard for not mentioning what a wreck my place is. Thursday, March 04, 2004
Speaking of wealthy professors...
East Carolina's own Dr. Jim Smith took note of my pithiness yesterday about certain people and sent me this gem that explains it all: We sometimes talk about there being two ways of grouping people, smart/stupid and energetic/lazy.
Well anyway, you have no problem with the energetic/smart combination--they will do well and can be left alone to do that work.
Speaking of possum…
I’m sure most of you have at one time or another used FirstGov, the handy site self-described as the “U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal.” Ooooh--web portal! I was looking up something for work, and then decided to see just how robust it was and if it had any kind of stupid filter on it, so I typed in “possum” in the search box. Well, whaddya know! 629 results! Admittedly, most of these are for place names with possum in them, such as Possum Creek, Possum River, Possum Point, Possum Kingdom (I particularly like that one). But if you look long enough, you finally run up on some of the fine ways the Federal government uses your taxes. One particular site I stumbled into was “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and SAMHSA’s National Clearinghouse for Alcohol & Drug Information,” particularly a page in the so-called ‘kids’ area’ about a “Wally Bear and the KNOW! Gang™” character called Priscilla Possum: Prissy Possum lives in a wonderful Mansion in the hills of San Francisco. She is the only child of a busy and wealthy professor, who is a single mother. Prissy attendes private school which requires a uniform of a navy blazer, plaid skirt, and white blouse.
And some folks wonder why others decry government waste. Where to start?! First, the idea that somewhere, some semi-literate bunch of goobs managed to pass themselves off to a mid-level lifer in the DHHS as a worthy of being paid for this claptrap is amazing. (Unless it was done in-house--in which case it’s amazing it got done at all.) You can just hear the presentation: “We’re able to provide your site with robust, synergistic lead-through and pass-in contenting, while at the same time helping you mission-fulfill without adversely impacticating your functionalities and cross-branding costrategies.” And I can hire people who think Mansion should be capitalized, and can’t understand why MSWord keeps putting a squiggly line under “attendes.” Second, there’s just the whole soppishly politically-correct bizarro-world aspect of it all--Priscilla is a prissy wealthy private school snot, but she lives in San Francisco, which is where gay people and rich Democrats are, so it’s okay for her to be one of the elite. She does, after all, want to teach us all the value of a good education, so she’s obviously not an evil Republican. And she’s part of the urban hipster set--rural people are so out of it. Man. Or dude. JONES!! What is it that the kids are calling each other nowadays!? For some reason, her uniform seems to be of interest, at least to the content provider who typed it up. Probably some ABBA tee-shirted feeb with cheese-puff-stained fingers and a thing for schoolgirls. Or furries. Her mom is single (I guess her dad’s out exploring San Francisco’s notorious gay marsupial underworld. Or he got hit by a car), and is a professor. And is wealthy. Now, I know there are a few professors who make some money, but for the most part it’s not one of those things people go into thinking they’re going to rule the world and make a fortune. Whadda I know? Maybe San Francisco’s different. She's an only child. The rest of her littermates are probably in rehab somewhere, but if she's a real possum, she ISN'T an only child. (Then again, maybe it's just part of HHS's way of building a better America through promoting the Glorious People's Revolution's One Child Policy. Of course, in China she wouldn't last long since she's a non-boy.) Priss is a gang member. Says so right there on the page. Give them credit for trying to bite off a share of the valuable gang-member demographic, if nothing else. Oh sure, it’s the KNOW! Gang™, and they say they just want to help you recycle cans and get good lurning and edukashuns and all, but that’s before the beating-in and the KNOW branded across your stomach with a hot iron and the bloody knife fight with those “Adventures from The Book of Virtues” punks. And finally, I suppose the biggest problem I have is with Priscilla herself. I mean, come on, look at her (after first noting that her name in the filename is spelled PRICILLA)--but she looks nothing like a genuine possum. Rather, she bears an eerie resemblance to a popular songster and crazy person. Eww. Anyway, the Internet is a strange thing. Good to see my taxes are being well spent to make it a better place.
Pieces of Possum for a Peaceful Palestine
Many thanks to long-time reader, Loyal Possumblog Minion, and Northwest Florida Possumedia Circulation Manager Jim Calloway for pointing me to this heart-warming suggestion from Silflay Hraka of a few days past about how to spread peace to the whole Middle East with nothing more than a few specimens of your everyday Didelphis virginiana. Read the whole thing, as Doc Reynolds is wont to say. I think it’s a fine idea, as it does not rely on any additional possum harvesting beyond that already accomplished by speeding hrududil. WARNING: Contains the word “spatula.”
So anyway--
I got home yesterday as quick as I could and ran inside to see if the guy who called yesterday had been by or called back. Nope on both, so I grabbed the keys out of the kitchen cabinet and started to grab a hunk of food to eat when I thought I heard a car outside. (My supersensitive possum hearing, doncha know.) Walked out and sure enough, there was a fire-plug of a guy walking up the sidewalk. We introduced ourselves and I led him on a walkaround of Franklin and tossed him the keys. I walked around to the passenger side and clambered aboard and started trying to explain the delicate starting process. First, though, he adjusted the seat backwards to clear his forward abdominal excess. Bad move--he had little tiny legs shorter than mine, and Franklin has a clutch requiring the equivalent of a 100 pound push on a Nautilus leg-press machine to disengage, and the clutch pedal itself is returned to the ready position by not one, but TWO gigantic return springs. Give Archimedes a lever and a place to stand, and he MIGHT be able to press the pedal all the way down. Anyway, my new buddy lost a bit of his mechanical advantage over the operation of the clutch, and without having the full leg-length necessary to fully depress the pedal, it was a Bad Thing just waiting to happen. Likewise, with the bench all the way back, he could not push the gas pedal all the way to the floorboard--normally this is not that bad, but lately a cold start has required a healthy stomp to set the choke and get the old man started and running fast enough to not bog down. And it only takes one stomp. Pumping the gas only floods it, which makes it run rougher than 40-grit sandpaper. I tried to explain this fighter-jet-like complexity, but he did it his way and finally got it to light off. As predicted, a lumpy idle and much stinkiness and a general inability to be driven with any sort of smoothness. He managed to get it off the driveway and down the street, and we took off out of the neighborhood with the engine grumbling and coughing like, well, me. Silly old thing. You know, I’m sort of odd (shaddup) in that unlike some people who swear machines are out to kill them and they can’t get the copier to work because it’s cursed and are generally mechanically inept, when something mechanical messes up around me, I don’t ever anthropomorphize it. I generally treat it as nothing more than an inanimate object that has to be fixed. On the other hand, when things are running nice and tight, it’s like having a happy friend. Same with Franklin--when he’s running good, he’s a he, and a buddy. When not, it’s just a truck. So, when he started acting up like that on our little test drive, it didn’t cross my mind at all that it was just his way of expressing his dissatisfaction with being traded away. But, now that I have thought about it, well, you never know… Anywho, we managed to get back to the house--despite the engine woes, it really does ride and drive well--I had the front suspension rebuilt when I bought it four years back and had the brakes redone, and it has power steering, and good tires, and lighter duty springs than the F-150. We parked and I popped the hood and we hunkered there looking at the long straight lump of Dearborn iron in there. New battery. Single barrel. Look at the unbent fenders. “J’take 12?” Oooh, no. Firm on the price--even with all the obvious rough-running, it’s worth 15. Hmm. Chat a bit about his job--he works as some sort of buyer manager for the Academy store up Highway 11 about a mile away. Moved here from Boston about a year ago. Hates his older Nissan Stanza. Good mileage, tiny interior. Good car, he just hates it. Doesn’t drive much--just here and there and to work and stuff. Hmm. “Well, would you be willing to pay 14?” Hmm. He walked around to the side and asked if the radio works. It does--I told him it originally had a big Motorola CB with an AM/FM, but I changed it out for a $15 K-Mart special that will play tapes. Hmmm. “13?” he asked. Just then, Reba came out of the house, so I felt compelled to stop the negotiations and introduce them--“Come here, Reba, this here Yankee’s trying to beat me down on the price--should I let him?” They shook hands and laughed, and she acted like she cared how much I got for it. “He says he’ll give us thirteen hundred--should we let him get away with that?!” She figured we should. “Alright then, you bought yourself a truck.” Afterwards, as Catherine came screaming out the door with Ashley hot on her heels, we talked a little more about the fascinating path that brought him to Trussville. Born and raised in Detroit, got into the construction business, found his way to Boston, worked for one of the big contractors up there, worked his way up in the union, somehow managed to work sideways into the restaurant business, wound up with four restaurants, decided to get out of it, sold them all, and transferred to Birmingham to follow his wife’s TSA job assignment at the Birmingham Airport, found a job with Academy, and bought his house up the street over the Internet before moving here (with a little help from a local relative). He said he has thoroughly loved coming to Alabama, which I told him is always nice to hear, given our usual negative rap. “I imagine that you probably didn’t spend too many March the Thirds in Boston standing on your driveway in shorts and a tee-shirt, did you?” He laughed--“Not many.” Quite a story. Quite a fellow--Franklin goes to a good home. I told him I would fix up a bill of sale, and we agreed to do the final transaction tomorrow, at which time Franklin will roll up the street to a new driveway, one unsoiled by his naughty oil-dripping habit. I think both of them will be very happy.
SOLD!
To the nice little Yankee feller down the street! Details to follow--it’s the Semi-Monthly Mass Mailout Morning, so I am in the middle of folding, spindling, and mutilating stuff. Back in a bit. Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Franklin Buzz
Being that I am so totally wiped out by having to have spent seven thousand, eight hundred seconds in a roomful of mental homunculi, I can think of not much else to say this afternoon. So, an update on the Great Truck Sale of 2004! Well, first, it seems Drew Carey Guy's mechanic friend has decided to pass on this exciting opportunity, and after some consideration it seems DCG's ardor has also cooled. Which is really okay, because I would hate for him to have bought it and had buyer's remorse and blamed me for it. Stuff like that does happen, you know. But, a happy coincidence came up Sunday as I was putting the emergency kit in the Focus and bimbling about under the hood. One of my neighbors up the street stopped by and inquired about it for her son, who had just totalled his fancy-pants Explorer in a sleep-induced rollover. One thing to be said for old vehicles like Franklin is they are pretty unforgiving of such crap--no air bags, no side impact beams, not much there between you and rough asphalt except for some glass. Anyway, I extolled the other virtues of the old fellow, and she seemed quite smitten. We'll see what happens. THEN just now I received a call from a fellow who lives around the block who is interested enough to want to actually come and sit in its fragrant interior and feel the raw power of its mighty 300 cubic inches of inline six-cylinder, single barrel carb power. And maybe do a few backfires and stuff. Wheeee! So, signs are definitely looking positive for a sale, and maybe to someone who lives close. That way I can still keep an eye on him and come by and visit.
I have reached a conclusion.
The problem isn't stupid people--the problem is people who think they're smart.
Meetings
Are bad. I have one to go to in just a bit, and I would rather crawl across the floor of a typhus ward over broken toilet shards than have to attend it. Tiny room, full of people to the point that the vanishingly small amount of common sense that enters will be squeezed from the place with a sound like someone popping a piece of bubble wrap. ::sigh::
My tax dollars at work.
As I mentioned a while ago, I did my taxes this weekend. As always, I did them by hand, because despite my constant need to exaggerate, your normal, everyday Federal 1040A is not that difficult to decipher, even when you have itemized deductions and kids. HOWEVER, there is always the good old Alabama Form 40 to gum things up. It looks a lot like any other state's income tax form, I suppose, and is somewhat like the Federal version. At least on the surface. It does have some maddeningly frustrating things, though, like making you write in your employer's name and address in two different places on the front and back of the sheet. Why? Who knows--the Feds don't make you, and why the state feels it has even more of a need-to-know than Uncle Sugar is beyond me. Another cluttery thing is the dozen or so donation checkoffs for the Democrats and Republicans and The Children and The Veterans and The Halt and The Lame and The Infirm--all quite worthy groups I'm sure (aside from the politicians), but it seems like there ought to be an easier way to donate to these folks than by mucking up the tax forms. The big kicker this year is Part V. This is where you have to pay taxes on your Federal Advance Child Tax Credit--no beef at all with having to pay it, by the way; render unto Caesar and all--BUT the form is not quite clear about what to do in one particular circumstance. What's supposed to happen is that you subtract The Credit from the amount of taxes you owe to The Big PX. Which is fine if the tax you owe is more than The Credit, you just enter the difference back over on the front side of the sheet. (Grr.) But, if your Credit is bigger than the federal tax you owe, there's no clue as to what to do, either on the form itself or over in the instructions Theoretically and empirically, the result would be a negative number, which, although cumbersome-looking, is just another number. I went ahead and figured it in back over on Line 13, Page 1, and added everything up. Before I sent it in, though, I thought I might better call one of our fine civil servants in the Revenue Department and make sure I had done the right thing. Got on the blower Monday morning and contacted the handy-dandy service center here in Birmingham, and after about eleventy-dozen automated button-pressing sequences was connected to a real, live, bureaucrat. I explained my conundrum briefly and that there was no indication in the instructions what to do. The kind and lovely woman on the other end of the string blustered at me with the vim, but with not quite the elocution skills, of Judge Mablean Ephriam--I could imagine the head-bob she was doing as she berated me: "Well, if the credit more, then it add up ZERO! You can't has no number under ZERO! How you think you gonna do that?" "Well, I filled it in as a negative nu..." "YOU CAN'T DO NO NEGATIVE ON THERE! How you think you gonna do that!?" ::sigh:: I'm obviously no math genius, but... "Well, I just added it in and figured..." "WELL, IT ZERO! You put ZERO!" Good-bye, sweet lady! Good to see you've been working hard in your "How to Deal With the Public" classes.
From Mr. Bleat: […] Variety is necessary to any blog. If you demonstrate a certain amount of monomania, you’ll reduce your audience down to those who share your worldview, which might be smaller than you suspect. I think readers of general-interest sites will tolerate the occasional patch of monomania, but not if it’s Fevered Monomania. Long stretches of Fevered Monomania drive people away. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this from time to time, but overall I think the balance works. Some alienating political blather here, some tiresome pop-cult rants here, some ootsy-cutesy kid stuff here, some interminable digressions about culture and commerce here, and you have a site that’s hard to dismiss for a single reason. […] Possumblog--Giving our readers multitudes of reasons for easy dismissal since 2001!
For all you schadenfreude fans--.Scrushys' TV show at bottom of ratings MICHAEL TOMBERLIN
A nice article from today's Birmingham News about one of my favorite local people, Thomas "Tommy Test Tube" Wdowiak, an astrophysicist at UAB.
He's real smart.
One for Dave Helton: Drunken Polish nun crashes her tractor
Y'know, you don't read that every day...
Yes, I remembered to get the doctor's excuse.
I took the extra step of calling ahead on Monday to explain myself and ask them to go ahead and fill out an excuse ahead of time in order to place it in my hand when I got there. Yeah, as if. Picked up Cat from school after waiting MUCH too long for a big group of charter buses to move out of the way, and the first thing she said when she rounded the corner--"Daddy, you need to remember to get a doctor scuse!" I told her we would have to get it at the actual doctor's office, not in the lobby of the school. "Oh." Got there and immediately asked for her excuse, which was not ready. It only took a minute for them to fix, though, so I couldn't fault them for that. I carefully put it away in my shirt pocket, then later in the evening put it in a special envelope with a note to the teacher on the outside about why Tiny Terror hasn't been bringing her excuses as she should. Whew! Glad that ball's outta MY court! BUT NOW, the most important thing--her audio input devices. They are... FINALLY CLEARED UP! Hooray and all that. She has to go back in six months to check the tube, but other than that she's all better. Oh, and she has to go back again this week to have her hearing test--the technician was on jury duty yesterday. ::sigh:: Oh well, I suppose that's what my sick leave is for. ANYway, though--a hearty thank-you to all of you who have sent words of concern and encouragement and said prayers on her behalf. We appreciate it very much. Time to head home, making a stop so I could get some lunch (although 4:30 is a bit late for lunch) then on toward Trussville and the Promised Land for tiny girls who have been very good for the doctor--a stop at the Anyway, she is now back to what passes around the old homestead as normal. Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Yes, I remembered to get the prescription.
(The tricky part is if any of you remember from yesterday why I’m even saying this.) But, suffice it to say that I did get Miss Reba’s Little Pills and arrived home to the normal tumult--television blaring, range hood whooshing, children chattering like gibbons, pans being rattled, homework strewn about the kitchen table, a variety of brightly colored papers shoved into my face, the information that there was a brand new gigantic door ding on the van. Bedlam. BEDLAM, I say! And PANDEMONIUM! But of the more manageable variety that does not cause the dilithium crystals to phase-shift and cross-polarize the matter/antimatter drive, which always make my head hurt. Lots to do last night--soccer practice, ‘nother trip to the store to get elastic cord (more on this later) and cheese, then come home and hector children about not waiting to the last minute to do things, then, as was the case last year a fun-filled evening exploring capitalism through the production of inexpensive trinkets to be sold to savages. Ate a quick bite for supper, then got Middle Girl and Boy prepared to head to the park and a more thorough evaluation of the brand new, 66,000 mile Focus. Reba didn’t want me to take it with me, fearing that I would cause the interior to experience rapid deteriorate with my well known tendency toward ill-windedness, but I promised I would be good and not fart. If she had been thinking, she would have made the kids promise, too. Oh well. AUTO REVIEW TIME I piled them in and off we went to the park, and after I dropped them off I made a quick dash to Wal-Mart. There are tons of reviews of the Focus out there--most of them praise the aplomb of the suspension and the general level of quality, and I pretty much agree. Even though the little thing has pretty high mileage, there isn’t a rattle or squeak in evidence, even while going over the innumerable, and occasionally unseen, speed bumps around Trussville. The exterior is interesting-looking--I kinda have a thing for upright small cars--but it manages not to look as tall as it is, unlike, say, the ungainly and tippy-looking Toyota Echo. The inside has expensive feeling materials and controls, and a big honkin’ fat steering wheel. The design I could live without--the angles and swoops and cutlines of the exterior are one thing, but inside splayed all about the cabin they are just too busy and fidgety looking. If I remember what I read, the dash will get a much-needed calming-down for the ’05 year. Otherwise, the seating position, the seats themselves, and the controls are all right where they should be. Even though it was the cheapest version when it was built, it doesn’t feel the least bit like a slow-rolling penalty box. And the biggest attraction is the one I have alluded to in several earlier posts. Should the hearty, though hardly hot, 110 horse L-4 poop out, one of Ford’s new DOHC V-8s slides right in. (Some assembly required, of course.) Anyway, I like it and I like it a lot, and it got me up the hill to Wal-Mart with no problem at all and was able to hold both me and my purchases of a hunk of sliced cheese and two packages of elastic bead cording. (More about that later, I promise.) Back to the park, stood around, watched the kids, and for once Boy wasn’t about to keel over afterwards. Back home and set to work on the latest in a proud line of money-making schemes. As you probably don’t recall from last year, Little Boy is in an advanced class at school that involves them in little feel-good enrichment opportunities and stuff. One of those things is a fund-raiser the kids do to help the program buy extra stuff. This “marketplace” is ostensibly promoted as a way to teach the children about capitalism and profits and running a business and so on by making small articles like cookies or silly trinkets for sale to the other, less egg-headed students. I came to find out last year that after going to all the trouble of being good little capitalists, the kids were expected to have their entire earnings confiscated by totalitarian thugs for the good of the collective. So we learned the tricks associated with setting up phony company expenses as a tax dodge. He lost a fortune, yet was still able to buy himself a nice surprise from the real store (you know, Wal-Mart). Poor kid. Heh. Anyway, it’s time again for this silly thing, and he decided he wanted to do some kind of thing with glow-in-the-dark stars that bounce. So, we got some packs of stick-on plastic stars from the dollar store and some thin, stretchy cord to make them bounce. Only, our test model didn’t really bounce--the elastic was too firm. Not to be outdone, I demonstrated that by holding one end of the cord and letting the star go in slingshot fashion, the star would shoot forward with eye-poking-out velocity. So, instead of bouncing stars, they would become shooting stars. “WOW! Like a NINJA, Dad!” Uh-huh. Anyway, we made some last week, and I was employed making a hole in the tip of the star with a #5 X-Acto blade for the string to go through. And who says I’m unemployable!? He decided a couple of days ago to make some more, after I had already put the OTHER packages of elastic somewhere and promptly forgot where. Thus explaining the trip to the store to get more. So, we made another batch last night, and bagged them, and figured out how many he would have to sell to make a profit. This will be OUR set of books, of course. The set we show the revenooers might be somewhat different. In any event, it was late to bed last night. And up early again today. And now? WHY, it’s time to ONCE AGAIN take Catherine to the ear doctor to check on the progress of her tube installation. She’s been fine the past two weeks, and her hearing seems to have made a good recovery. Keeping my fingers crossed that this has done the trick. I just hope I can remember to pick up her school excuse--the past two times, I have been so addled that I walked out without getting it, thus endangering her of having on her permanent record TWO unexcused absences. Oh, the ignominy! Anyway, we’ll see how she does, and I will see each one of you bright and early tomorrow!
Being stupid...
...is hard, which is why I don't know if it's a good thing or not to mention that I just discovered Blog*Spot has a syndication feature using something called Atom. I have no idea if any of you care about this or if it will be of any use to you--all these electronic gimcracks and fizziwhigs are a mystery to me. But if any of you want to know when I have posted something, rather than wasting your time coming by here in the hope (and that's a might strange sort of hope) that I have posted something, you can bookmark this address: http://possumblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml, and it will keep up with the updates for you. They are in abbreviated form, so if you want to read the whole thing you'll still have to come here. So, there you go.
Dr. Weevil decides...
...he has not quite enough to do, and therefore brings us two additional blogs for our amusement and edification.
Once more unto the breech...
As is so often and regularly the case, the fine staff here at Possumblog are called upon once more to answer a question of a most complex and delicate nature. A matter of protocol and etiquette comes before us this morning, with a worried Googleer wondering about: wording for a co-ed barbeque baby shower You know, our modern world is full of unfamiliar territory and potential faux pas and the sorts of alternative lifestyles innovations that can lead to utter confusion and a spoilt party atmosphere. First, it might be good to add some punctuation to the whole idea--is it a baby shower where both ladies and gents are invited, and in addition to the giving of gifts, barbecue will be served? Or is this an event where men and women will hop in the shower after gobbling down some delicious and tender barbecued baby? (MMmmmm--back ribs!) Regardless of the type, careful wording will prevent many surprises and embarrassed hosts. Assuming that the shindig is of the former sort, the best idea is to remember that men are usually left out of such things, and if you want them to come, your invitation will have to be geared more toward the masculine. Something along the lines of: Short, to the point, and the words "free" and "meat" are worked into it. It may not sound as lyrical and poetic as some more frou-frou invitations, but if you want straight men to show up, it is the preferred wording. NOW THEN, the above wording IS geared toward men who are married. If you intend to invite straight single men, a slightly different approach is warranted: Even more succinct, and playing on the required cues necessary to get a single man to come to a baby shower. While you might not actually be serving adult beverages, and your female friends might be rather less than attractive, and your single-man guest will obviously be disappointed when he finds out the truth, the most important thing is taken care of, namely, getting a gift out of him for your precious bundle of joy. We hope this has been of help!
For the most part...
I think violent street protests are a bad way to institute lasting, meaningful change in government--the usual result is a lot of heartache for innocents caught between mobs of rabble and security forces. But if all violent street protesters looked like this, I would be much more amenable to scheduling a couple of protests every few days.
Video Games Make Kids Fat, Violent, Swedish Experts Say
Fat, violent, and Swedish is no way to go through life, son.
And you thought PossumblogTV was a bad idea...
Scrushys' TV talk show debuts after attempts at radio, print MICHAEL TOMBERLIN
(None of them had their own television show, though.) "Viewpoint," the Scrushy television show, aired on WTTO channel 21 Monday with former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore as its main guest. According to the show's Web site, the Scrushys "saw the need for a place for news stories to be discussed truthfully and accurately, free from the bias of mainstream media." Free from one, enslaved to another... Scott Campbell, general manager of Sinclair's Birmingham stations including WTTO, said the time when "Viewpoint" airs was purchased by Word of Truth International Ministries. Word of Truth is an outreach of the Guiding Light Church, a predominantly black church the Scrushys recently started attending.
Alamerica sponsors
Scrushy spokesman Charlie Russell said Scrushy hopes to sell commercial time to other advertisers, allowing the show to turn a profit.
Kerry Lambert, operations manager for Citadel's Birmingham radio stations, said Scrushy expressed interested in buying time for a one- or two-hour show on WAPI-AM 1070, but the station's scheduling obligations prevented a deal.
'Cowboy' and 'Gator':
Before that, Scrushy and Hervey attempted to put together a newspaper based in Birmingham that would cover the entire state with an emphasis on positive news, according to a person approached to work for the newspaper.
Finebaum said Scrushy wanted him to work for the newspaper and said Scrushy mentioned that he had started lining up investment partners for the project.
Moore on 'Viewpoint':
Scrushy did not discuss his own situation on the show, though in a press release issued last week he vowed to address misconceptions about his case.
Could this mean a new source of funding for non-profits?
City bans public nudity for profit MALCOMB DANIELS
Monday, March 01, 2004
And in other news…
Got in Friday and got Bec to go with me to the wilds of Branchville to pick up our young guest. They giggled constantly all the way back home, where Reba was in the process of cooking up a big pot of spaghetti and meatballs. (I was wrong about the pizza, obviously.) Oh, and I forgot to get Reba’s prescription while I was out. They went in the den and our visitor was immediately set upon by the rest of the children, who had not seen her since Wednesday night. They played and jabbered and I helped get supper finished and grabbed an extra chair for the table and dithered around being all helpful like. Ate supper, cleaned up, then started the task of getting the floor set up for sleep duty. Scoot the chairs and table back, out with the big Coleman mattress, find the batt’ry-powered air pump underneath a mountain of junk, and…and. Hmm. There’s supposed to be a little cone shaped adapter to go on the pump. It should be right with it. I walked in, then back to the garage. Back to the kitchen--look in the junk drawer. Back to the garage. Back in, looked at the pump to make sure there was no way to make it work without the nozzle. Starting now to get desperate. The convocation in the den was getting progressively louder, and a certain child (who shall remain nameless since she has already been the subject of a post earlier today) was quite adamant about asserting herself as everyone’s boss and overlord, which created much festering tension between her and the child most close in age to our visitor. Gotta find that nozzle. Gotta get them all back to their own rooms and NOW! Back to the garage--toolbox, junk box, cabinet, tent bag, mattress box--NOTHING!! Well, I’m just gonna have to go to Wal-Mart and BUY ANOTHER ONE! Walked back into the kitchen, hear them all in ever more earnest competition with each other. Start to twitch. Back to garage ONE MORE TIME, just in case. Move some boxes, start putting my hand down under the cabinet where dwell both the black widow and the brown recluse spider. I NEEDED that nozzle. Back under the toe board, behind another box, in the dark and AHHH! FOUND IT! I did the happy nozzle dance. You don’t need to know any more. I rushed back in and shooed the rest of the kids to their rooms and flopped the mattress out and popped the pump in and away it went. Never have I been so relieved. Got down all the stack of comforters and blankets and quilts and covers and shawls--you’d think that we don’t have heat--and arranged them just so and told the girls to hop in. Aside from Oldest wanting to remain up the rest of the night so as to continue to pester them, the rest of the evening was blessedly quiet. Up kinda early Saturday--Cat came in and flopped on top of us to let us know she was awake, and the others were up but were being nice and quiet. Up, on with some jeans, and then time for some good scrambled eggs and sausage and biscuits and fig preserves. Mmmmm--hard to beat. Although I skipped the biscuits and preserves. They sure smelled good, though. Afterwards, the girls went back into the den to bounce on the mattress and watch television, while Boy absented himself to stay in his room and be a boy. I spent a few minutes gathering together all my junk to start doing my taxes and managed to get started in time to stop and take our guest back home again. I warned her not to speak of the shambling mess that filled the left side of the stairs or the dining room. She agreed, but you know how some kids are. Back home, forgetting to stop and pick up Reba’s prescription as I had promised. Worked on taxes some more, and then it was time for the really big show--car shopping! Again. There is a tiny little house right on Main Street in Trussville that houses an alarm system company, and outside on the bit of front area that was left after the road was four-laned, they keep about three or four cars for sale as sort of a side business. Last Thursday evening, I noticed they had a dark blue ‘01 Focus (almost a duplicate of this one, except with black interior) for sale--no telling how long it had been there before I noticed it--but I stopped and it looked very nice, and the price was just a few hundred above wholesale. In other words, cheap. I got Reba to go by Friday, and she liked it, so I told the guy I would come by Saturday and let her test drive it and see what she thought. So, after several calls to make sure someone was going to be there, we loaded the three younger kids up (Ashley decided she did not want to go AT ALL) and drove down to the foot of the hill to see what we could see. Well, aside from it smelling like an ashtray inside, it was very clean and straight, so we decided to go ahead and get it. The fellow who runs the shop lives there in town and his kids go to school there, so it would be hard for him to stay in business being too dishonest. I asked him, in a roundabout sort of way, why the car was so cheap. He said that one day he got a package in the mail saying his parent company was in receivership, and no accounts would be honored for the next 45 days. No money at all in sight--so he needed to put food on the table and decided to see if he could sell some cars. He buys them at lowest wholesale, adds 800 bucks and moves them out the door. It was intended to be a temporary thing, but after seeing that it could tide him over when needed, he decided to keep doing it. He apologized for the smell--he had loaned the car to one of his alarm salesmen when his car broke down, and despite the salesman having promised not to use it for his personal smoking lounge, his nicotine jones got the better of him. No matter. I drove it down to the detail shop and had them do their top-secret “Fresh Air Treatment” to it. Got in afterwards and sure enough, it smelled great. Then I found out after stopping and getting gas that it smelled much better when the A/C was blowing. In the short time it took to fill it up, the odor was back about as strong as before. Not to be outdone, when I got back to the house, I spritzed it all over inside and inside the trunk with Febreze. It smells like fresh laundry now. Not quite the coveted New Car Aroma, but better than a stack of butts. After that, and forgetting to pick up Reba’s prescription once again, I had to make a run with some boxes of too-tiny clothes and unplayed-with toys over to the Hannah Home pickup place, then back home again, forgetting again to pick up the prescription. Oh well, I was going to have to go out again later and get some parmesan cheese and some feminine hygiene products (how’s that for variety), so I settled in to do a few more calculations. This year’s taxes went much more smoothly than last year. Nothing out of the ordinary, and I had all my receipts more or less in hand. Let me tell you--kids is danged ‘spensive. After it was all written and done, I turns out that I managed to let Uncle Sugar have a sizeable interest-free loan this past year. I really would prefer not to have any sort of refund at all, but I suppose if nothing else it’s a way to force us to put aside some money that we would otherwise have spent on frivolous stuff like bills or a small Ford. Anyway, time to head back to the store--the CVS at the foot of the hill, which in addition to all the things one would expect to find in a drug store, also has an entire shelf of fine non-perishable foods. Got some Kraft Parmesan, started to go over to the other side of the store for You Know What, and… ::sigh:: The pharmacy was closed. The one thing you would expect a drug store to have--in fact, it’s very reason for being--was shuttered tighter than a NORAD control center. They closed at 6, about thirty minutes before I got there. I put my cheese back and went to the grocery store, where, even though I could not get Reba’s prescription, I could at least get cheapo store-brand parmesan cheese and sanitary napkins. Home, baths for the kiddies, bed. UP Sunday, fix breakfast, fix a casserole to take to church, get dressed, go, listen intently, and wonder of wonders, during the sermon, Catherine plopped herself down beside me, lay her head on my leg and went to sleep. Incredible! I actually got to sit through an entire sermon without having to either shush her or take her to the restroom. Of course, without the constant stress of having to keep her quiet, I became very sleepy. I did not fall over, though. After that we had our normal fifth-Sunday lunch that was very nice, then home for a bit so I could complete our taxes (in pen this time. Computer?! What’s that?) then back to the building for the kids to do stuff. Evening worship, then home with the intervening meltdown mentioned earlier. Oh, and still forgot to get Reba’s medicine. Today has been a madhouse of getting the tag for the car, transferring money, setting up the insurance, and trying to pick out the perfect set of gigantic chrome wheels and underbody neon kit for it. In amongst all the work I’m supposed to be doing. This afternoon, I plan to stop and pick it up Reba’s medication on my way home. We’ll see if I remember, I suppose.
Life is rather complicated. You know, they don’t tell you that up front. They let you figure it out, which is fine, I suppose, but rather stressish on your vital bodily organs and stuff.
One minute, you’re driving along coming home from church; the next, a minor disagreement in the back seat devolves into a screaming, name-calling, pinching, slapping, brawl; and then further still, yours truly finally reaches the point where he decides that this particular brawl (even though it is similar in tone and content to the last 50-odd similar occurrences) is quite more than he can stand at the moment and proceeds to pitch his own little fit. A fit that few people could even begin to match for tone, volume, rancor, heat, vitriol, vituperation, &c. A good, old-fashioned, Pap-done-gone-off’n-his-rocker, hell-fire and brimstone, JDAM dropping, Sultana boiler explosion of a fit. As it unfolded, I imagine I could have been used as the model for cartoonists who wished to know exactly how to draw those radiating anger waves, or what steam actually looks like coming out of a person’s ears. Now, you all, having read my usual happy-go-lucky palaver herein, might find it difficult to believe I could let loose like that--usually, I am pretty even-tempered, at least on the outside, but sometimes I gets like Popeye--I’s had all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more! I doubt it’s healthy, either physically or mentally, to let stuff build like that--but hey, that’s just me. I’d rather not have to pull rank on my kids, I’d rather their obedience come from trust--trust that I won’t tell them to do anything wrong or harmful. Reba and I are both strict on them, but we understand they are kids, and don’t try to control every single moment of their existence. At some point, though, they have to learn to get along with each other without having the Marines come in and maintain order. Maybe because of that they decide, ‘Aww, screw him, you know, he’s just all talk.’ So, they press on. “Stop it.” Press on. “STOP.” Press on. “STOP!” Then they step on the trip wire to the claymore and wonder why no one said stop. Needless to say, after the blast subsided the ride home was much, MUCH quieter. Finally home, and Oldest runs to her room and shuts herself in. ::sigh:: Here goes. Every six months or so, this happens. I got the other kids to get their church clothes off and go do something, while Reba went in and started trying to decipher the indecipherable. I came in on the part where it comes out that I hate her, and never let her do what she wants, and pick on her, and don’t ever discipline the other kids, and how her life would have been so much better if I had never married Mom and I don’t ever let Mom do what she wants and no one cares what happens to her and it’s all my fault and her siblings hate her and it’s all their fault, too, and she hates her whole family and her school and her teachers and going to church and living in Alabama and me and she wished she lived in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin?!) She has the certainty that all thirteen-year olds have. The idea that she might be wrong about anything is alien, and any suggestion otherwise is proof of nothing more than how misunderstood and hated she is. Not to say she isn’t justified in her feelings when she talks about how she gets treated at school--she does get picked on--but rather than develop any sort of coping skills to deal with the taunts and insults, she has come to the conclusion that her problems are all external. She can’t quite seem to grasp the idea that there are children who tease her for no other reason than to see her rant back at them. Rather than learning to not feed the trolls, she believes going elsewhere would put a stop to it. Or, better yet, if I were elsewhere. ‘Cause it IS all my fault, you know. In the same way, she cannot quite seem to grasp that she herself is guilty of the same teasing and hatefulness that is directed at her--I reminded her of a girl who used to go to church with us whom she made a point of very blatantly shunning and being rude and hateful toward. “But you don’t understand, Dad--she was just SO WEIRD!” Yep, it’s all me. We came very close to being able to convince her that to treat someone else badly makes THEM feel the way she feels when SHE is treated badly. Empathy, however, is apparently one of those things that goes on holiday during adolescence. On and on. An hour-and-a-half’s worth of conversation, including the part every teenager rolls his or her eyes at--the idea that your eternally bossy parents, as a matter of incontrovertible fact, love you, even though they're always telling you what to do. And love you despite how you act, or how you feel in the reciprocal. And love you even though they insist that you still have to go to school and church and live in the same house with your brother and sisters. And love you when they tell you to get your homework done, even if the teacher is an evil witch. And love you when they tell you that you have to quit thinking everyone’s out to be mean to you. It’s a hard sell, I promise you that. It troubles me to think that I might not live long enough to see it when the light to finally comes on in her head. It troubles me when I see the effect her actions have on her younger siblings. It troubles me that she has such hurt inside, and has such an unwillingness to believe in her family’s love for her, and our desire to help her. But you know what? Parenting is not for the weak-minded and timid, and that’s just the way life is. Some parents can’t do it, and run off to their own worlds and leave their kids to fend for themselves. But God has given me a job to do, and I figure he wouldn’t have give it, if he didn’t think I could do it. Sure does make lots of gray hairs on me, though.
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