Monday, September 8, 2008
Walked with Peter this morning. Perfect weather.
I don't know what made me think of it, it's not something I've thought of in years, decades even, but I've been thinking about a weird habit? characteristic? anomaly? whatever the word I'm looking for - about my mother.
She couldn't keep caps on anything, especially small caps.
Back when we used fountain pens, her nibs were always dried up, because the first time she used a pen, the cap disappeared.
She used to buy packages of Bic ballpoint pens, the kind with the separate caps. There'd be ten or twelve of them lying around, and none of them worked when you needed it, because none of them had caps, and they all dried up. We'd get her click-type ballpoints, and they'd dry up because she never clicked the point back into the barrel, and the points got all dust-fuzzy.
She hated the felt tip and nylon tip pens, because they bled all over everything, because they didn't have caps.
Bottles of ketchup and salad dressing sat in the refrigerator with twists of foil on top, because the caps had disappeared. Soda went flat.
The toothpaste tube in the kids' bathroom had a cap. The toothpaste in our parents' bathroom never had a cap.
This was true for quite literally everything! I would get so frustrated with her, because when none of her pens would write, she'd borrow mine "just for a moment" and it would come back with no cap. "Where's the cap?" "I don't know. Was there one?"
Her house was always clean and neat. There was no clutter. My parents were used to moving every three years or so (Air Force), so they traveled light. And yet those caps disappeared. Evaporated into thin air. Mom would have a pen in her hand for five minutes at the kitchen table, didn't move from the table, and yet the pen's cap would disappear. Not on the table, not on the floor, not in the trash, nowhere. And we'd never see it again. You'd think we'd find a bunch of them when we cleaned, but we never did.
Somewhere in some other dimension, there's a huge pile of my missing socks - and a small heap of bottle, tube, and pen caps.
.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
1994 American Pie
Sunday, September 7, 2008
For several decades I've been arguing with younger folks, and party to discussions with older folks, as to the meaning of the verses of Don McLean's "American Pie". McLean himself has never explained, and has never agreed to any interpretation, knowing, I guess, that to explain would detract. And then he'd have to get a job.
This video is wonderful. It's unauthorized (in that Don McLean hasn't said yea or nay), so it's one interpretation, but I found it fascinating.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsZFiMo8TIc&watch_response]
This is an updated version of Kim Komando's Video of the Day today.
.
For several decades I've been arguing with younger folks, and party to discussions with older folks, as to the meaning of the verses of Don McLean's "American Pie". McLean himself has never explained, and has never agreed to any interpretation, knowing, I guess, that to explain would detract. And then he'd have to get a job.
This video is wonderful. It's unauthorized (in that Don McLean hasn't said yea or nay), so it's one interpretation, but I found it fascinating.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsZFiMo8TIc&watch_response]
This is an updated version of Kim Komando's Video of the Day today.
.
Friday, September 05, 2008
1993 Power Paradox
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Several things happened today that I don't understand.
On Thursday, I checked several weather sites to find out what today and tomorrow would look like. Daughter and Hercules were planning to go camping at Ricketts Glen this weekend, and they'd invited me to hike the falls trail with them on Sunday. TV weather and everyone else said it would pour today, everywhere, Ricketts Glen and here and NJ, thunderstorms, much nastiness. I warned the kids. Not only would there be rain, but even if Sunday was nice, after storms the falls trail would be both spectacular and unhikeable. Daughter wanted to go anyway, "if my underwear isn't already damp before I put it on, it's not camping", but Hercules pointed out "it's a hurricane!" So they didn't go.
We've had a few sprinkles.
I don't know whether I'm annoyed or pleased.
-----------------------------------------
We lost electricity at 11:20 this morning. I was on the laptop, and it went smoothly to battery, so I unplugged it in case the power came back up with a surge, finished what I was working on, and then put it to "sleep". I figured that if the power wasn't back up in a few hours, I'd shut it down.
The power returned within the hour. I plugged the laptop in and pushed the "mommy's back" button. I got a message about "resuming windows", a glimpse of a cursor, then a black screen. No whirring. No blinking. Nothing.
**After a while I held the power button down for a while - emergency off - gave it some time to think about its sins, then turned it on again. The screen turned a few shades of gray and pale blue, then went black. No whirring, no blinking, nothing. Repeat from ** twice more. Think about where I'd go for service. Wish I'd got that external hard drive working.
And then it came up as if nothing had happened. Firefox even resumed my previous sessions.
I don't understand.
--------------------------------------
When I was running the (groundwater-based) A/C, I had only a trickle of water from the faucets. I turned the A/C off about a month ago, but the water never recovered beyond a slightly thicker trickle. It was dribbling in the bathrooms, and worse in the kitchen end of the house, where the A/C is located, so I figured that the pipes were full of silt from it running constantly all summer at low pressure. I was afraid I'd have to get a plumber in and have the pipes blown.
When the electricity is off, there's no well pump, and no water at all.
When the electricity came back on, I turned on the faucet in the kitchen, and it burped, sputtered, and then exploded. I've got water! Full force!
It's full of silt, so I can't use it for anything beyond washing my hands, but damn, I've got water again!
Why? What happened? What did the power going off have to do with it?
I really don't understand at all.
.
Several things happened today that I don't understand.
On Thursday, I checked several weather sites to find out what today and tomorrow would look like. Daughter and Hercules were planning to go camping at Ricketts Glen this weekend, and they'd invited me to hike the falls trail with them on Sunday. TV weather and everyone else said it would pour today, everywhere, Ricketts Glen and here and NJ, thunderstorms, much nastiness. I warned the kids. Not only would there be rain, but even if Sunday was nice, after storms the falls trail would be both spectacular and unhikeable. Daughter wanted to go anyway, "if my underwear isn't already damp before I put it on, it's not camping", but Hercules pointed out "it's a hurricane!" So they didn't go.
We've had a few sprinkles.
I don't know whether I'm annoyed or pleased.
-----------------------------------------
We lost electricity at 11:20 this morning. I was on the laptop, and it went smoothly to battery, so I unplugged it in case the power came back up with a surge, finished what I was working on, and then put it to "sleep". I figured that if the power wasn't back up in a few hours, I'd shut it down.
The power returned within the hour. I plugged the laptop in and pushed the "mommy's back" button. I got a message about "resuming windows", a glimpse of a cursor, then a black screen. No whirring. No blinking. Nothing.
**After a while I held the power button down for a while - emergency off - gave it some time to think about its sins, then turned it on again. The screen turned a few shades of gray and pale blue, then went black. No whirring, no blinking, nothing. Repeat from ** twice more. Think about where I'd go for service. Wish I'd got that external hard drive working.
And then it came up as if nothing had happened. Firefox even resumed my previous sessions.
I don't understand.
--------------------------------------
When I was running the (groundwater-based) A/C, I had only a trickle of water from the faucets. I turned the A/C off about a month ago, but the water never recovered beyond a slightly thicker trickle. It was dribbling in the bathrooms, and worse in the kitchen end of the house, where the A/C is located, so I figured that the pipes were full of silt from it running constantly all summer at low pressure. I was afraid I'd have to get a plumber in and have the pipes blown.
When the electricity is off, there's no well pump, and no water at all.
When the electricity came back on, I turned on the faucet in the kitchen, and it burped, sputtered, and then exploded. I've got water! Full force!
It's full of silt, so I can't use it for anything beyond washing my hands, but damn, I've got water again!
Why? What happened? What did the power going off have to do with it?
I really don't understand at all.
.
1991 Nuttin'
Friday, September 5, 2008
No post yesterday. Nothing to say today. Them doldrums, I guess.
.
No post yesterday. Nothing to say today. Them doldrums, I guess.
.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
1990 State Tax Woes
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
I have a business name (a DBA) that is doing no business, but New York still wants me to file a sales tax report every year. All it says is that I made no sales and I collected no sales tax. It has said that for about five years now. Well, Angel, the CPA, didn't send the forms in on time this year, so NYS has billed me for $50 in sales tax, "based on the average previous taxes paid". Um, the average of 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 is 50?
I complained to Piper and Angel, it was supposed to happen automatically, and the Angel made some calls, and he says it's all taken care of, NYS has agreed to forgive the $50.
Unfortunately, NYS doesn't seem to be aware of that, and is continuing to bill me, and the latest letter is threatening legal action.
I talked with Piper about it this morning. I told him that I have no doubt that the Angel made the call. But it seems like the state tax people will say just about anything, but if they don't feel like making the note in the file, or following up, they don't.
The year after Jay died, my extimated NYS income tax payments were creditied to Jay's account, even though the forms and checks I sent had my SS# and name, which was different from Jay's. There was absolutely nothing to connect my payments to Jay, except for the fact that we had previously filed jointly. So at the end of the year, when I got the statement saying that I had made no estimated tax payments, I freaked. They had all been credited to Jay. Who was dead. And whose name and number were on nothing I had sent.
It took eight or so calls to figure out where the money was, and to get it transferred to my SS#. At first, they tried to refuse to move the money from Jay's account to mine, because he hadn't given them permission to do so. I calmly pointed out that I hadn't given permission to have my payments credited to his account, and besides, HE'S DEAD!!!!!
Believe it or not, the same thing happened the next year. My name and SS# on the form and on the checks. They again arbitrarily credited my payments to Jay.
I was telling Piper about this, and he told me a worse story.
He owed an additional $800 on his 2007 NYS income tax. Since his 1040 had been electronically filed, he sent a check separately. He received a bill from the state for $500 owed on the 2007 taxes. He called and told them he'd paid $800, and where did they get the $500 number, anyway? The clerk said she'd check and put him on hold. When she came back, she said no, he owed $500, and there was no evidence that he'd sent any $800 payment.
He pointed out that the check had been cashed by NYS. She asked that he send a copy of the front and back of the $800 check.
He did so.
And the state used the info on the copy of the check which he had sent to prove he'd paid, to electronically debit his bank account for $500. He's fighting it. He's into his fifth or so call now.
These people scare me.
.
I have a business name (a DBA) that is doing no business, but New York still wants me to file a sales tax report every year. All it says is that I made no sales and I collected no sales tax. It has said that for about five years now. Well, Angel, the CPA, didn't send the forms in on time this year, so NYS has billed me for $50 in sales tax, "based on the average previous taxes paid". Um, the average of 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 is 50?
I complained to Piper and Angel, it was supposed to happen automatically, and the Angel made some calls, and he says it's all taken care of, NYS has agreed to forgive the $50.
Unfortunately, NYS doesn't seem to be aware of that, and is continuing to bill me, and the latest letter is threatening legal action.
I talked with Piper about it this morning. I told him that I have no doubt that the Angel made the call. But it seems like the state tax people will say just about anything, but if they don't feel like making the note in the file, or following up, they don't.
The year after Jay died, my extimated NYS income tax payments were creditied to Jay's account, even though the forms and checks I sent had my SS# and name, which was different from Jay's. There was absolutely nothing to connect my payments to Jay, except for the fact that we had previously filed jointly. So at the end of the year, when I got the statement saying that I had made no estimated tax payments, I freaked. They had all been credited to Jay. Who was dead. And whose name and number were on nothing I had sent.
It took eight or so calls to figure out where the money was, and to get it transferred to my SS#. At first, they tried to refuse to move the money from Jay's account to mine, because he hadn't given them permission to do so. I calmly pointed out that I hadn't given permission to have my payments credited to his account, and besides, HE'S DEAD!!!!!
Believe it or not, the same thing happened the next year. My name and SS# on the form and on the checks. They again arbitrarily credited my payments to Jay.
I was telling Piper about this, and he told me a worse story.
He owed an additional $800 on his 2007 NYS income tax. Since his 1040 had been electronically filed, he sent a check separately. He received a bill from the state for $500 owed on the 2007 taxes. He called and told them he'd paid $800, and where did they get the $500 number, anyway? The clerk said she'd check and put him on hold. When she came back, she said no, he owed $500, and there was no evidence that he'd sent any $800 payment.
He pointed out that the check had been cashed by NYS. She asked that he send a copy of the front and back of the $800 check.
He did so.
And the state used the info on the copy of the check which he had sent to prove he'd paid, to electronically debit his bank account for $500. He's fighting it. He's into his fifth or so call now.
These people scare me.
.
1989 Doldrums, and other stuff
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Titles:
I am amused by some of the titles people choose for their blogs.
My own, for example.
It started out as "Moraine", on AOL journals. A moraine is a pile of mixed rocks dropped by a glacier, and I think it did sort of suit, but it was rather esoteric.
When I moved to Blogger, I changed the title to "I Don't Understand". I liked that, because it was so very apt.
When I had to move the blog and go into hiding for a while, I changed the title to "The Silken Touch". I like it as a bunch of words (and there are men who think it fits), but it doesn't really suit the blog because I snipe and complain a lot here. Not exactly a silken touch, even though sniping and complaining here releases me to be more silky in real life.
I'd like to go back to "I Don't Understand", but I won't, because I don't like it when other people keep changing the titles. I forget who they are. I lose continuity.
.... I changed my mind on the course of this post. I'm not going to comment on specific titles, mainly because I'm not able to think of synonyms to disguise them. But I'm thinking mainly of those that, like "The Silken Touch", set up expectations in the title that just aren't met in the content. It must be awfully hard to live up to some of those titles.
A little humility is a good thing.
-------------------------------------
The Doldrums:
This entry, Medical Matters #1 :: The Furious Compassion of Diligent Dr Payne, from La Bête, is a perfect description of what I call the doldrums. A kind of loss of motivation. Not exactly depression, because I still enjoy things that drift past. I'm sort of in doldrums these days. With me, it's sort of like I've stopped moving, and I'm waiting, waiting for something to happen, a breeze to come up and move me on.
--------------------------------------
Today:
My nose and sinuses are still complaining, and I'm coughing a lot, but the cold medicines are doing nothing. I stopped at the pharmacy and bought a sinus-dryer-upper, and that's working better. (If you could hear me now, you'd wonder what "worse" must be like.)
Lunch with Vinnie and Piper. I had a bowl of very good cheese broccoli soup. I rarely eat soup (the only kind I like is "cream of"s and bisques), and although today's soup was very good, with lots of nice big pieces of broccoli, it reminded me why I rarely eat soup. When it was finished, I felt empty. Soup just doesn't fill me. Lunch? What lunch?
---------------------------------------
Frustration:
There's a woman in M3nsa that I've had some run-ins with. She's a drama queen, I mean ultra drama queen - to the point of faking asthma attacks when anyone passes on the street with a cigarette within 20 feet of her. Faking! Which pisses me off. She's loud and demands attention. When another friend and I were entering menopause, she decided she was, too. She was 35 at the time, and had hotter flashes, worse sleep, and bigger mood swings than anyone ever. And it's going on 15 years now that she's been menopausal.
We have a hardship committee, which pays the dues of any member who has run into difficulty and can't afford the dues. I'm on the committee. One of the other committee members moved away, and I was unaware that this woman had been appointed to the committee until we got a request to review.
The member requesting assistance wrote that he and his wife had spent their savings on IVF attempts earlier this year, and now he has discovered that he is losing his job. This is what the committee was set up for.
Well, the drama queen and her husband have no children (good choice). She's vehemently and loudly anti-population growth (I don't know that her husband ever had a voice in the matter). Anyway, she voted to deny the assistance request, because she disapproves of what the guy spent his savings on. That's the only reason she gave, and there's been no reasoning with her.
I pointed out that last year's recipients were a guy who has no job and is incapable of holding a job because he's a total idiot, and a woman on disability who blew her budget on a fantastic sound system. And you want to deny this guy because he wanted to have a child? Her response, in effect, "Yes. No one should have children, let alone blow their savings to make one."
The woman is past reason. Pardon me while I go bash my head against a wall.
.
Titles:
I am amused by some of the titles people choose for their blogs.
My own, for example.
It started out as "Moraine", on AOL journals. A moraine is a pile of mixed rocks dropped by a glacier, and I think it did sort of suit, but it was rather esoteric.
When I moved to Blogger, I changed the title to "I Don't Understand". I liked that, because it was so very apt.
When I had to move the blog and go into hiding for a while, I changed the title to "The Silken Touch". I like it as a bunch of words (and there are men who think it fits), but it doesn't really suit the blog because I snipe and complain a lot here. Not exactly a silken touch, even though sniping and complaining here releases me to be more silky in real life.
I'd like to go back to "I Don't Understand", but I won't, because I don't like it when other people keep changing the titles. I forget who they are. I lose continuity.
.... I changed my mind on the course of this post. I'm not going to comment on specific titles, mainly because I'm not able to think of synonyms to disguise them. But I'm thinking mainly of those that, like "The Silken Touch", set up expectations in the title that just aren't met in the content. It must be awfully hard to live up to some of those titles.
A little humility is a good thing.
-------------------------------------
The Doldrums:
This entry, Medical Matters #1 :: The Furious Compassion of Diligent Dr Payne, from La Bête, is a perfect description of what I call the doldrums. A kind of loss of motivation. Not exactly depression, because I still enjoy things that drift past. I'm sort of in doldrums these days. With me, it's sort of like I've stopped moving, and I'm waiting, waiting for something to happen, a breeze to come up and move me on.
--------------------------------------
Today:
My nose and sinuses are still complaining, and I'm coughing a lot, but the cold medicines are doing nothing. I stopped at the pharmacy and bought a sinus-dryer-upper, and that's working better. (If you could hear me now, you'd wonder what "worse" must be like.)
Lunch with Vinnie and Piper. I had a bowl of very good cheese broccoli soup. I rarely eat soup (the only kind I like is "cream of"s and bisques), and although today's soup was very good, with lots of nice big pieces of broccoli, it reminded me why I rarely eat soup. When it was finished, I felt empty. Soup just doesn't fill me. Lunch? What lunch?
---------------------------------------
Frustration:
There's a woman in M3nsa that I've had some run-ins with. She's a drama queen, I mean ultra drama queen - to the point of faking asthma attacks when anyone passes on the street with a cigarette within 20 feet of her. Faking! Which pisses me off. She's loud and demands attention. When another friend and I were entering menopause, she decided she was, too. She was 35 at the time, and had hotter flashes, worse sleep, and bigger mood swings than anyone ever. And it's going on 15 years now that she's been menopausal.
We have a hardship committee, which pays the dues of any member who has run into difficulty and can't afford the dues. I'm on the committee. One of the other committee members moved away, and I was unaware that this woman had been appointed to the committee until we got a request to review.
The member requesting assistance wrote that he and his wife had spent their savings on IVF attempts earlier this year, and now he has discovered that he is losing his job. This is what the committee was set up for.
Well, the drama queen and her husband have no children (good choice). She's vehemently and loudly anti-population growth (I don't know that her husband ever had a voice in the matter). Anyway, she voted to deny the assistance request, because she disapproves of what the guy spent his savings on. That's the only reason she gave, and there's been no reasoning with her.
I pointed out that last year's recipients were a guy who has no job and is incapable of holding a job because he's a total idiot, and a woman on disability who blew her budget on a fantastic sound system. And you want to deny this guy because he wanted to have a child? Her response, in effect, "Yes. No one should have children, let alone blow their savings to make one."
The woman is past reason. Pardon me while I go bash my head against a wall.
.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
1988 Bylaws again
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Yesterday I went to NJ to visit Daughter and Hercules. The drive down was in Labor Day shore traffic, and it took me almost five hours. Coming home late at night took 2.5 hours. I stopped at the all-night gas station in the village, where I saw Harriet, a woman I had worked with on the fire department rescue squad. We had two years of catching up to do, so I was a lot later getting home.
I had read in the newspaper that the fire department and rescue squad were desperate for volunteers. She says they might go under, and if the village has to contract for professional firefighters and EMS, our taxes will go through the roof. (I'm already paying over $500/month in local, county, and school taxes, and I get the senior and widow's discounts.)
I spent all day today making updates to the Mensa bylaws. Our proposed revision was reviewed by national, and they had some comments and suggestions. They keep changing the minimum requirements, and it's not easy to hit a moving target. In general, they had good things to say about what we'd sent.
The Republican convention is on TV, and I'm not really watching. I don't know who was speaking about a half hour ago, but I got the impression he was saying that the country is in terrible shape, and the person the Democrats propose to fix it is completely unqualified to do so.
Um, did he realize what he was saying? Did he really want to emphasize how bad things are? Does he think we can't figure out how they got that bad? I may need to look that speech up on YouTube or something. I must have missed something.
.
Yesterday I went to NJ to visit Daughter and Hercules. The drive down was in Labor Day shore traffic, and it took me almost five hours. Coming home late at night took 2.5 hours. I stopped at the all-night gas station in the village, where I saw Harriet, a woman I had worked with on the fire department rescue squad. We had two years of catching up to do, so I was a lot later getting home.
I had read in the newspaper that the fire department and rescue squad were desperate for volunteers. She says they might go under, and if the village has to contract for professional firefighters and EMS, our taxes will go through the roof. (I'm already paying over $500/month in local, county, and school taxes, and I get the senior and widow's discounts.)
I spent all day today making updates to the Mensa bylaws. Our proposed revision was reviewed by national, and they had some comments and suggestions. They keep changing the minimum requirements, and it's not easy to hit a moving target. In general, they had good things to say about what we'd sent.
The Republican convention is on TV, and I'm not really watching. I don't know who was speaking about a half hour ago, but I got the impression he was saying that the country is in terrible shape, and the person the Democrats propose to fix it is completely unqualified to do so.
Um, did he realize what he was saying? Did he really want to emphasize how bad things are? Does he think we can't figure out how they got that bad? I may need to look that speech up on YouTube or something. I must have missed something.
.
Monday, September 01, 2008
1987 Whence Worries; GNP; Oil Price
Monday, September 1, 2008
Driving around yesterday, I was listening to NPR on the car radio, and there was a lot of talk about preparations in N.O. and Texas for Gustav. The consensus was that evacuation was pretty much complete this time. They said that "People seem to be a lot more worried about Gustav than they were about Katrina."
I thought about that statement a long time.
There's something wrong with that thinking. It's like they forgot two centuries of history. They forgot what actually happened three years ago.
The folks of New Orleans have been through hurricanes before, some even bigger than Katrina. (Even I have been through a hurricane in Biloxi, as a child. When the eye passed over, my mother opened the house door and quickly slammed it shut again because the street was full of snakes. I remember that part. Which has nothing to do with this. Sorry.)
New Orleans would have survived the wind and rain of Katrina as well as they'd survived all the others. They know how to do it. It wasn't the direct effect of the hurricane that hurt them. It was the bursting of the levees.
So, I don't believe they're "a lot more worried about Gustav than they were about Katrina." I think they trust the levees less. They've lost faith.
That's a significant difference.
--------------------------------
Also on NPR, someone was talking about how the GNP is up, and that's supposed to be good. Higher productivity. But is it really? I wish I could remember who was talking about it. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, but there were a few things that struck me. (Hmmm. Maybe it wasn't NPR today. Maybe it was PBS yesterday. Maybe I should pay more attention to my life.)
We work hard to make money. We want money to buy things. We make more things so we can make more money so we can buy more things. The things we make have to be sold, or nobody gets any money. So we are sold things. We buy things things we are sold (where "sold" means being convinced we must have them).
It expands - a circle, a cycle, that gets bigger and bigger.
In the end, by working harder to make more things so we can buy more things---
---We are trading our leisure for things.
That's what "GNP is up" means - that we've traded away more leisure.
This is good?
--------------------------------------
I found out why the fuel oil company send out the offer letter with so little time to respond.
If I hadn't been sick, fuzzy in the head, they wouldn't have gotten away with the trick.
They didn't want people to have the time to the research. If I hadn't been whacked, I'd have researched it before responding. It's what I do. I can't believe I didn't.
I looked it up yesterday.
Turns out the local average current retail price of fuel oil is about $.80 CHEAPER per gallon than the lowest price they offered. So they're going to contract with their supplier for 800 gallons of oil for me at the current wholesale price, which is less than the retail price, and then sell it to me for their usual markup PLUS $.80 more.
NOT a good deal for me.
.
Driving around yesterday, I was listening to NPR on the car radio, and there was a lot of talk about preparations in N.O. and Texas for Gustav. The consensus was that evacuation was pretty much complete this time. They said that "People seem to be a lot more worried about Gustav than they were about Katrina."
I thought about that statement a long time.
There's something wrong with that thinking. It's like they forgot two centuries of history. They forgot what actually happened three years ago.
The folks of New Orleans have been through hurricanes before, some even bigger than Katrina. (Even I have been through a hurricane in Biloxi, as a child. When the eye passed over, my mother opened the house door and quickly slammed it shut again because the street was full of snakes. I remember that part. Which has nothing to do with this. Sorry.)
New Orleans would have survived the wind and rain of Katrina as well as they'd survived all the others. They know how to do it. It wasn't the direct effect of the hurricane that hurt them. It was the bursting of the levees.
So, I don't believe they're "a lot more worried about Gustav than they were about Katrina." I think they trust the levees less. They've lost faith.
That's a significant difference.
--------------------------------
Also on NPR, someone was talking about how the GNP is up, and that's supposed to be good. Higher productivity. But is it really? I wish I could remember who was talking about it. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, but there were a few things that struck me. (Hmmm. Maybe it wasn't NPR today. Maybe it was PBS yesterday. Maybe I should pay more attention to my life.)
We work hard to make money. We want money to buy things. We make more things so we can make more money so we can buy more things. The things we make have to be sold, or nobody gets any money. So we are sold things. We buy things things we are sold (where "sold" means being convinced we must have them).
It expands - a circle, a cycle, that gets bigger and bigger.
In the end, by working harder to make more things so we can buy more things---
---We are trading our leisure for things.
That's what "GNP is up" means - that we've traded away more leisure.
This is good?
--------------------------------------
I found out why the fuel oil company send out the offer letter with so little time to respond.
If I hadn't been sick, fuzzy in the head, they wouldn't have gotten away with the trick.
They didn't want people to have the time to the research. If I hadn't been whacked, I'd have researched it before responding. It's what I do. I can't believe I didn't.
I looked it up yesterday.
Turns out the local average current retail price of fuel oil is about $.80 CHEAPER per gallon than the lowest price they offered. So they're going to contract with their supplier for 800 gallons of oil for me at the current wholesale price, which is less than the retail price, and then sell it to me for their usual markup PLUS $.80 more.
NOT a good deal for me.
.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
1986 Things I Learned Shopping Today - 2
Sunday, August 31, 2008
I needed printer paper. Office Max often has paper on sale in quantity, like 6 500-sheet packages for $20 or less, so after the craft fair I headed for Office Max. There was an unusual amount of traffic, and I somehow ended up in the wrong lane, and found myself making the turn for Wal-Mart. I shrugged and decided to see if they had paper, and maybe another like the flattering $10 cotton blouse I'd bought in Baltimore a few weeks ago.
Big mistake.
The place looked like a cyclone had hit.
I forgot about back-to-school shopping.
I did some back-to-school shopping way back when, but I never threw things on the floor when I decided against them. I folded stuff and put it back on the shelf exactly where I'd found it, or put it back on the hanger and on the rack. The right rack. In the right spot. I suspect Daughter did, too.
Our local W-M is usually pretty neat (in contrast to the usual shoppers), so it's easy to find one's size. Today the shelves were mound on mound of wadded-up clothes, and most of it nowhere near its mates. There was even female clothing on shelves and hangers in the men's section.
It looked like people had carried things around looking for other stuff to match, and if they were unsuccessful, they just dropped them wherever they happened to be standing at the moment.
I found where the blouses I liked should have been, there were a few there, but they were also scattered all over everywhere else, too. I have no idea if there was one in my size. I gave up looking after sorting through a few heaps on the floor.
I did get paper.
.
I needed printer paper. Office Max often has paper on sale in quantity, like 6 500-sheet packages for $20 or less, so after the craft fair I headed for Office Max. There was an unusual amount of traffic, and I somehow ended up in the wrong lane, and found myself making the turn for Wal-Mart. I shrugged and decided to see if they had paper, and maybe another like the flattering $10 cotton blouse I'd bought in Baltimore a few weeks ago.
Big mistake.
The place looked like a cyclone had hit.
I forgot about back-to-school shopping.
I did some back-to-school shopping way back when, but I never threw things on the floor when I decided against them. I folded stuff and put it back on the shelf exactly where I'd found it, or put it back on the hanger and on the rack. The right rack. In the right spot. I suspect Daughter did, too.
Our local W-M is usually pretty neat (in contrast to the usual shoppers), so it's easy to find one's size. Today the shelves were mound on mound of wadded-up clothes, and most of it nowhere near its mates. There was even female clothing on shelves and hangers in the men's section.
It looked like people had carried things around looking for other stuff to match, and if they were unsuccessful, they just dropped them wherever they happened to be standing at the moment.
I found where the blouses I liked should have been, there were a few there, but they were also scattered all over everywhere else, too. I have no idea if there was one in my size. I gave up looking after sorting through a few heaps on the floor.
I did get paper.
.
1985 Things I Learned Shopping Today - 1
Sunday, August 31, 2008
I went to the New Paltz craft fair today. There are annually two major craft fairs, the biggest is in Rhinebeck (moneyed area) in the spring, and New Paltz (college town), quite a bit smaller, is in the fall. In neither case are we talking home-made pre-holiday trinkets.
Rhinebeck has some spectacular stuff, but New Paltz is better juried. At Rhinebeck I have seen things that I know to be manufactured and imported - things I've bought from China or Tibet through eBay. I don't know how they were allowed to slip in. In New Paltz you are more likely to see the craftsman in the back of the booth actually making items. Everything in new Paltz is hand made ---hand carved, printed, painted, spun, woven, embroidered, blown, wrought, glued, dried, beaded, strung, built, quilted, recorded, sewn, designed, soldered, whatever.
I usually buy too much that I don't need, because it's all so beautiful.
Today I learned that if you wear a hat with a brim that hides your eyes, you can look at things without making eye contact with the sellers, and wow, you buy less. All I bought today was lunch, and some biscotti.
Open letter to craft fair organizers: All the other stuff is pretty well mixed. Wood, fabric, metal, glass, jewelry - all nicely mixed and scattered throughout four or five medium-sized tents and multiple aisles of stand-alone booths. So why oh why do you put all the scented stuff (spices, candles, oils, craft foods, sauces, dips, perfumes, soaps, all the odiferous crafts) all together in one huge tent? By the fourth stall (of the sixty-four in the tent) I couldn't smell or taste anything anymore. It all ran together. By the sixty-fourth, I had a pounding headache. I can't imagine what it must be like for the people who have to spend all day there.
Open letter to ALL fair organizers: Thank you for providing free parking, and for the kids to direct us to open spaces. But why oh why do they direct people who arrive at, say, 3 pm to the far end of the south forty? By mid afternoon, the folks who arrived early have left. The closer parts of the lot are nearly empty. Why not let us look for spaces there, instead of making us walk for a half hour past empty space after empty space, even entirely empty sections, to the gate? The only explanation I can come up with is an attempt to prevent cross-traffic, but since it's all one-way anyway, I don't see where that matters.
Oh well. I enjoyed the day, even if the french fry guy didn't have malt vinegar, at least he had gravy.
.
I went to the New Paltz craft fair today. There are annually two major craft fairs, the biggest is in Rhinebeck (moneyed area) in the spring, and New Paltz (college town), quite a bit smaller, is in the fall. In neither case are we talking home-made pre-holiday trinkets.
Rhinebeck has some spectacular stuff, but New Paltz is better juried. At Rhinebeck I have seen things that I know to be manufactured and imported - things I've bought from China or Tibet through eBay. I don't know how they were allowed to slip in. In New Paltz you are more likely to see the craftsman in the back of the booth actually making items. Everything in new Paltz is hand made ---hand carved, printed, painted, spun, woven, embroidered, blown, wrought, glued, dried, beaded, strung, built, quilted, recorded, sewn, designed, soldered, whatever.
I usually buy too much that I don't need, because it's all so beautiful.
Today I learned that if you wear a hat with a brim that hides your eyes, you can look at things without making eye contact with the sellers, and wow, you buy less. All I bought today was lunch, and some biscotti.
Open letter to craft fair organizers: All the other stuff is pretty well mixed. Wood, fabric, metal, glass, jewelry - all nicely mixed and scattered throughout four or five medium-sized tents and multiple aisles of stand-alone booths. So why oh why do you put all the scented stuff (spices, candles, oils, craft foods, sauces, dips, perfumes, soaps, all the odiferous crafts) all together in one huge tent? By the fourth stall (of the sixty-four in the tent) I couldn't smell or taste anything anymore. It all ran together. By the sixty-fourth, I had a pounding headache. I can't imagine what it must be like for the people who have to spend all day there.
Open letter to ALL fair organizers: Thank you for providing free parking, and for the kids to direct us to open spaces. But why oh why do they direct people who arrive at, say, 3 pm to the far end of the south forty? By mid afternoon, the folks who arrived early have left. The closer parts of the lot are nearly empty. Why not let us look for spaces there, instead of making us walk for a half hour past empty space after empty space, even entirely empty sections, to the gate? The only explanation I can come up with is an attempt to prevent cross-traffic, but since it's all one-way anyway, I don't see where that matters.
Oh well. I enjoyed the day, even if the french fry guy didn't have malt vinegar, at least he had gravy.
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1984 Superlatives
Sunday, August 31, 2008
I am so tired of screaming superlatives. "They" are now calling Gustav the "Storm of the Century". Oh good grief! We've only eight years into the century. Call it "the Storm-of-the-Century-So-Far" if you want. Somehow in my mind I connect this tendency with that "everybody gets a trophy" mentality.
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I am so tired of screaming superlatives. "They" are now calling Gustav the "Storm of the Century". Oh good grief! We've only eight years into the century. Call it "the Storm-of-the-Century-So-Far" if you want. Somehow in my mind I connect this tendency with that "everybody gets a trophy" mentality.
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Saturday, August 30, 2008
1983 Jane and the Dragon
Saturday, August 30, 2008
I love "Jane and the Dragon". It's on my local NBC affiliate at 9 am Saturday, and I've been known to get up early on Saturday just for Jane.
I love the stories, the characters, the animation (the expressions and tiny movements are perfect), the colors and shading, everything.
You can watch an episode here: http://www.qubo.com/jane_show.asp
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I love "Jane and the Dragon". It's on my local NBC affiliate at 9 am Saturday, and I've been known to get up early on Saturday just for Jane.
I love the stories, the characters, the animation (the expressions and tiny movements are perfect), the colors and shading, everything.
You can watch an episode here: http://www.qubo.com/jane_show.asp
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Friday, August 29, 2008
1982 Oh, Come ON!
Friday, August 29, 2008
On behalf of all women, I am insulted by McCain's choice. I'm sure there were many more qualified candidates, so his choice of this particular one seems very disingenuous.
Does he really think Hillary's pantsuit brigade is so easily swayed?
At least she isn't Black. Then I'd have to be insulted on behalf of Black males, too.
(It wouldn't be so insulting if she were at least well known and/or highly experienced, if she brought more to the table than gender. Alaska is suing the federal government over the designation of the polar bear as endangered, because it might hurt oil drilling. So I guess she takes the proper Republican stand on energy, anyway.)
(Note - a lot of Mensans were excited, until they found out it was Sarah, not Michael.)
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On behalf of all women, I am insulted by McCain's choice. I'm sure there were many more qualified candidates, so his choice of this particular one seems very disingenuous.
Does he really think Hillary's pantsuit brigade is so easily swayed?
At least she isn't Black. Then I'd have to be insulted on behalf of Black males, too.
(It wouldn't be so insulting if she were at least well known and/or highly experienced, if she brought more to the table than gender. Alaska is suing the federal government over the designation of the polar bear as endangered, because it might hurt oil drilling. So I guess she takes the proper Republican stand on energy, anyway.)
(Note - a lot of Mensans were excited, until they found out it was Sarah, not Michael.)
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1981 Breakthrough
Friday, August 29, 2008
I know a lot of people who are in or have been in some kind of counseling or psychotherapy, from myself to Jay, Daughter, several current friends, and more. Something I've noticed is that those who are, seem to need it least. There are a lot more who aren't "seeing someone", who should. We're all a little warped. The healthiest people are just more likely to admit it.
An aside - when I was in college and dating Ex#1, he and his social group considered any type of counseling to be an admission of weakness, that a "real man" never admitted any emotional problem. When Ex#2 and I were in marriage counseling, he asked me not to let it slip to his father, because his father would be disgusted, think him a wimp, that he couldn't control his life or his wife.
The big change since the '70s, when I was in intensive analysis, is that back then talk therapy was the path to realization. Now it seems like medication is the first choice. That's the effect of insurance companies - they'd rather pay for pills than ongoing (no end in sight?) therapy.
I do agree that there are some conditions where medication is most effective. But I insist that there are others where medication fixes nothing. It just covers things up.
Most of us carry a lot of emotional baggage, things that people said to us or did to us in the past, that affect how we react now. It's for that kind of problem that medication is merely coverup, and where talk therapy is most effective and necessary. Unfortunately, most talk therapy seems to consist of "what happened, how did you react, why, what could you have done differently" and so on. Trying to change behavior, to change reactions.
That's often not the problem.
The problem is that we believed what other people have told us about ourselves.
People with enormous influence when we were most vulnerable told us we were stupid, or worthless, or incapable. That we were fat, or ugly (like when my mother described my nose as "all over my face"), or it was always our fault when things went wrong. And then when things did go wrong, as they inevitably will sometimes, we accepted it as proof that we are stupid, incapable, ugly, worthless. Maybe it doesn't show up front, but it's always there in the background.
So we believed them. We incorporated their judgment as part of our self image.
In these cases, the goal of talk therapy should not be simply to change behavior, but to lead to a realization that those people were WRONG! They told us lies to make themselves look good. Their need for control, their need to win, caused them to define us as lesser, and we believed them.
If we believed them, it is not proof that we were stupid, only that we trusted them. We were vulnerable. It starts when we are very young, the self-deprecation ground is broken, and from then on the predators out there recognize us as fertile ground.
The breakthrough comes when we realize that they lied to us. They were wrong, not us. When we are able to look at ourselves through our OWN eyes, not theirs, and realize that the real "me" is quite different from what we had been told we are, then we are able to finally be ourselves --- the good, strong, smart, capable, generous, creative, nice person we are, but they didn't want us to be.
.
I know a lot of people who are in or have been in some kind of counseling or psychotherapy, from myself to Jay, Daughter, several current friends, and more. Something I've noticed is that those who are, seem to need it least. There are a lot more who aren't "seeing someone", who should. We're all a little warped. The healthiest people are just more likely to admit it.
An aside - when I was in college and dating Ex#1, he and his social group considered any type of counseling to be an admission of weakness, that a "real man" never admitted any emotional problem. When Ex#2 and I were in marriage counseling, he asked me not to let it slip to his father, because his father would be disgusted, think him a wimp, that he couldn't control his life or his wife.
The big change since the '70s, when I was in intensive analysis, is that back then talk therapy was the path to realization. Now it seems like medication is the first choice. That's the effect of insurance companies - they'd rather pay for pills than ongoing (no end in sight?) therapy.
I do agree that there are some conditions where medication is most effective. But I insist that there are others where medication fixes nothing. It just covers things up.
Most of us carry a lot of emotional baggage, things that people said to us or did to us in the past, that affect how we react now. It's for that kind of problem that medication is merely coverup, and where talk therapy is most effective and necessary. Unfortunately, most talk therapy seems to consist of "what happened, how did you react, why, what could you have done differently" and so on. Trying to change behavior, to change reactions.
That's often not the problem.
The problem is that we believed what other people have told us about ourselves.
People with enormous influence when we were most vulnerable told us we were stupid, or worthless, or incapable. That we were fat, or ugly (like when my mother described my nose as "all over my face"), or it was always our fault when things went wrong. And then when things did go wrong, as they inevitably will sometimes, we accepted it as proof that we are stupid, incapable, ugly, worthless. Maybe it doesn't show up front, but it's always there in the background.
So we believed them. We incorporated their judgment as part of our self image.
In these cases, the goal of talk therapy should not be simply to change behavior, but to lead to a realization that those people were WRONG! They told us lies to make themselves look good. Their need for control, their need to win, caused them to define us as lesser, and we believed them.
If we believed them, it is not proof that we were stupid, only that we trusted them. We were vulnerable. It starts when we are very young, the self-deprecation ground is broken, and from then on the predators out there recognize us as fertile ground.
The breakthrough comes when we realize that they lied to us. They were wrong, not us. When we are able to look at ourselves through our OWN eyes, not theirs, and realize that the real "me" is quite different from what we had been told we are, then we are able to finally be ourselves --- the good, strong, smart, capable, generous, creative, nice person we are, but they didn't want us to be.
.
1980 Dating Thoughts
Friday, August 29, 2008
A certain early-20's-something blogger (a very nice-looking, intelligent, funny guy) has decided to try online dating, and has put his proposed profile out for comment. Almost all his 35 commenters have told him not to mention booze and bars so much. It sounds like that's his main interest in life.
Having read his blog for the past year, I'm aware that he has other interests, but bars and booze do seem to be the only way he knows to socialize. That means most of the girls he's been meeting are also boozers and barflies. I'm not surprised that nothing works out. I recommended that perhaps he needs not to change his profile, but to change his lifestyle. Other social activities might yield and ultimately attract more of the kind of women he wants to meet.
That got me thinking about how I've met most of the men in my life, and how would I go about meeting a man now (if I were in the market, that is).
I'd never realized it before, but ALL of the relationships I've had that were at least temporarily satisfying were with men I met either through work, or through Mensa.
With the guys I met "on the street", so to speak, it seems like right from the start it was work keeping it going. Of course there was something about him that attracted me, and kept me trying, but there was a lot of head butting and eye rolling on both sides until finally I (or he, but usually I) gave up.
I think it was a matter of similar experiences, education, taste, opinion, and values. I think I was more likely to find that similarity in a coworker or Mensan.
Interesting.
(Of course, it's possible I'm just too demanding and stubborn, and will compromise only so far, but I like me that way.)
.
A certain early-20's-something blogger (a very nice-looking, intelligent, funny guy) has decided to try online dating, and has put his proposed profile out for comment. Almost all his 35 commenters have told him not to mention booze and bars so much. It sounds like that's his main interest in life.
Having read his blog for the past year, I'm aware that he has other interests, but bars and booze do seem to be the only way he knows to socialize. That means most of the girls he's been meeting are also boozers and barflies. I'm not surprised that nothing works out. I recommended that perhaps he needs not to change his profile, but to change his lifestyle. Other social activities might yield and ultimately attract more of the kind of women he wants to meet.
That got me thinking about how I've met most of the men in my life, and how would I go about meeting a man now (if I were in the market, that is).
I'd never realized it before, but ALL of the relationships I've had that were at least temporarily satisfying were with men I met either through work, or through Mensa.
With the guys I met "on the street", so to speak, it seems like right from the start it was work keeping it going. Of course there was something about him that attracted me, and kept me trying, but there was a lot of head butting and eye rolling on both sides until finally I (or he, but usually I) gave up.
I think it was a matter of similar experiences, education, taste, opinion, and values. I think I was more likely to find that similarity in a coworker or Mensan.
Interesting.
(Of course, it's possible I'm just too demanding and stubborn, and will compromise only so far, but I like me that way.)
.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
1979 Fuel Oil Deals
Thursday, August 28, 2008
I finally got the "deal" letter from my oil company, you know, where you can lock in a maximum price for the winter's fuel oil by paying up front for a set number of gallons. It arrived just before I left for last weekend, and I didn't look at it in detail until today. The deadline for signing up is tomorrow!
I normally use about 800 gallons per winter. The way it used to work was that they'd offer a maximum of say $4 per gallon maximum. So I'd sign up and hand them a check for $3200. Then when they delivered the oil, they'd charge my account whatever the price was that day, but no more than $4/gal. So if the price dropped to $3.50, I could end the winter with money left over that rolled over into the next winter's account.
The choice was to take it or leave it.
This year they've got a lot more choices, and with a head full of phlegm I'm having a terrible time trying to figure it out.
I'm going a bit crazy trying to figure it out. The old "just plain cap" was obviously a good deal. But being offered four different prices like this is confusing. It's a bet. If I go with option #3 and the price drops lower, I lose.
It looks like their price is determined not so much by the market as by the payment plan.
I've pretty much decided on #3, IF they will let me put it on a credit card, because it'll take me 10 days at least to put together $3632, and they'll want the money by tomorrow. If they won't take the credit card, then I might go for #4.
Whatever, I obviously have to go to the oil company office today. I'm dripping from the nose. I'm breathing through my mouth not so much because of nasal congestion as that breathing through my nose makes me sneeze. Attempts to talk or laugh make me cough. But if the freakin' oil company sends out offers like this with ONE WEEK to figure it out and get your response and check back to them, well, they deserve to be exposed to my germs. So there!
.
I finally got the "deal" letter from my oil company, you know, where you can lock in a maximum price for the winter's fuel oil by paying up front for a set number of gallons. It arrived just before I left for last weekend, and I didn't look at it in detail until today. The deadline for signing up is tomorrow!
I normally use about 800 gallons per winter. The way it used to work was that they'd offer a maximum of say $4 per gallon maximum. So I'd sign up and hand them a check for $3200. Then when they delivered the oil, they'd charge my account whatever the price was that day, but no more than $4/gal. So if the price dropped to $3.50, I could end the winter with money left over that rolled over into the next winter's account.
The choice was to take it or leave it.
This year they've got a lot more choices, and with a head full of phlegm I'm having a terrible time trying to figure it out.
- I can sign up for Price Cap, which means I'll pay no more than $4.99 per gallon, less if the price drops, due at delivery. I have to pay $127 to sign up for this.
- I can enroll in EZ Pay, which spreads fuel bills over 10 months. If I didn't also sign up for Price Cap above, I'll pay whatever the price is at the time of delivery. If I did also sign up for Price Cap, the maximum is $4.89 per gallon, or less if the price drops. I don't know how they figure out what the monthly payment is, and I think it's weird that the price is lower even though they get their money later.
- I can pre-purchase 800 gallons at $4.54 per gallon paid up front in a lump sum. I gather this is not a cap, it's a flat price, so if the price drops below $4.54 I lost the bet.
- I can pre-purchase 800 gallons at $4.64 per gallon, to be paid in five equal payments, the first due up front, otherwise the same as #3.
I'm going a bit crazy trying to figure it out. The old "just plain cap" was obviously a good deal. But being offered four different prices like this is confusing. It's a bet. If I go with option #3 and the price drops lower, I lose.
It looks like their price is determined not so much by the market as by the payment plan.
I've pretty much decided on #3, IF they will let me put it on a credit card, because it'll take me 10 days at least to put together $3632, and they'll want the money by tomorrow. If they won't take the credit card, then I might go for #4.
Whatever, I obviously have to go to the oil company office today. I'm dripping from the nose. I'm breathing through my mouth not so much because of nasal congestion as that breathing through my nose makes me sneeze. Attempts to talk or laugh make me cough. But if the freakin' oil company sends out offers like this with ONE WEEK to figure it out and get your response and check back to them, well, they deserve to be exposed to my germs. So there!
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1978 Weekend Escape Photos
Thursday, August 28, 2008
I mentioned the view from the room. This photo shows four of the six window panels on one wall. That wall met another wall at a less than 90 degree angle, came to a point in the corner, and that wall had the same set of windows, which made it feel like the room was hanging out there in the air. This photo makes it look gloomy outside, but I think it was just the camera, or reflection on the glass. It was actually very sunny. I took other photos of the room and out the windows, but all the others have bad reflections on the glass, or The Man in them.
Us at Mall of America. Go ahead and laugh. I chopped out all identifying characteristics, and cropped the biggest identifier off the bottom. No, not that - his legs. They're very long.
Mary and me again. Why do I look so fat? Could it be the 10 pounds I've gained in the past year? Ten pounds on me is a lot, because my legs are so short. Sigh. Back to the celery sticks, I guess. And NO MORE Starbucks frap crap. A minimizer bra would help, but I can't breathe in them. Maybe if we just pushed 'em together more toward the center?
The shirt he chose for me, in an attempt to pass me off as a fan. I liked it a lot better than the jerseys other women were wearing. He's got good taste.
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I mentioned the view from the room. This photo shows four of the six window panels on one wall. That wall met another wall at a less than 90 degree angle, came to a point in the corner, and that wall had the same set of windows, which made it feel like the room was hanging out there in the air. This photo makes it look gloomy outside, but I think it was just the camera, or reflection on the glass. It was actually very sunny. I took other photos of the room and out the windows, but all the others have bad reflections on the glass, or The Man in them.
Us at Mall of America. Go ahead and laugh. I chopped out all identifying characteristics, and cropped the biggest identifier off the bottom. No, not that - his legs. They're very long.
Mary and me again. Why do I look so fat? Could it be the 10 pounds I've gained in the past year? Ten pounds on me is a lot, because my legs are so short. Sigh. Back to the celery sticks, I guess. And NO MORE Starbucks frap crap. A minimizer bra would help, but I can't breathe in them. Maybe if we just pushed 'em together more toward the center?
The shirt he chose for me, in an attempt to pass me off as a fan. I liked it a lot better than the jerseys other women were wearing. He's got good taste.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
1977 Backlog of Photos
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I've been using a disposable digital camera (which takes terrible photos, by the way), and you can't download from a disposable, so I had to wait until it was full to have the pharmacy folks put them on a disk. So there's quite a backlog here.
Actually, if it weren't for the IRS, we wouldn't have them today. I'm sick. My head is full of virus. I wouldn't have gone out at all today (I wouldn't have even got dressed), but I absolutely had to mail some tax stuff, and the pharmacy happens to be across the street from the post office.
I hope the tax stuff gets where it's supposed to go. My head hurt, so I just sort of made up an address for the envelope.
The flamingo flock in a rough part of my side yard:
There are 30 of them, in four different colors.
The flowers from the handsome biker:
The Moroccan ewer comes up to mid-thigh on me; the tips of the flowers were over my head. There's more than a dozen stems there. I guess some are hiding behind others.
The view up through the cleared woods to the house:
Me, after melting through a day at the Renaissance Faire, and enjoying a breeze:
The kid who took the photo was very tall, shooting down on me. That works to smooth out my neck, but it does terrible things to my body. See what I meant about the laces gaping by the end of the day?
And that's some of the things I've mentioned in the past few months. (I've got to get the REAL digital camera in action.) Next, A few photos from last weekend. Very few of those came out, and those that did have The Man in them, and I don't have permission to put his face here. Tsk. (No, I didn't ask. Because I know what the answer would be.)
.
I've been using a disposable digital camera (which takes terrible photos, by the way), and you can't download from a disposable, so I had to wait until it was full to have the pharmacy folks put them on a disk. So there's quite a backlog here.
Actually, if it weren't for the IRS, we wouldn't have them today. I'm sick. My head is full of virus. I wouldn't have gone out at all today (I wouldn't have even got dressed), but I absolutely had to mail some tax stuff, and the pharmacy happens to be across the street from the post office.
I hope the tax stuff gets where it's supposed to go. My head hurt, so I just sort of made up an address for the envelope.
The flamingo flock in a rough part of my side yard:
There are 30 of them, in four different colors.
The flowers from the handsome biker:
The Moroccan ewer comes up to mid-thigh on me; the tips of the flowers were over my head. There's more than a dozen stems there. I guess some are hiding behind others.The view up through the cleared woods to the house:
Me, after melting through a day at the Renaissance Faire, and enjoying a breeze:
The kid who took the photo was very tall, shooting down on me. That works to smooth out my neck, but it does terrible things to my body. See what I meant about the laces gaping by the end of the day?And that's some of the things I've mentioned in the past few months. (I've got to get the REAL digital camera in action.) Next, A few photos from last weekend. Very few of those came out, and those that did have The Man in them, and I don't have permission to put his face here. Tsk. (No, I didn't ask. Because I know what the answer would be.)
.
1976 Check Your Tires!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
This is a 20/20 segment on tires. I didn't know that tires dry out sitting in the warehouse. (I did know that certain gases, like those given off by electric motors, would make rubber brittle.) After about six or seven years, there's a danger of tread separation at highway speeds.
So, one would think there's no problem, since you usually have to replace the tires every few years anyway, right? Wrong. Stores are selling tires as new that are already 10 or more years old. They're unused, but in no way new!
This clip tells you how to find and decode the manufacture date. Now pardon me while I go out and crawl under my car.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Ch_CBgcX_20&eurl=http://videos.komando.
com/2008/08/23/check-your-tires/]
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This is a 20/20 segment on tires. I didn't know that tires dry out sitting in the warehouse. (I did know that certain gases, like those given off by electric motors, would make rubber brittle.) After about six or seven years, there's a danger of tread separation at highway speeds.
So, one would think there's no problem, since you usually have to replace the tires every few years anyway, right? Wrong. Stores are selling tires as new that are already 10 or more years old. They're unused, but in no way new!
This clip tells you how to find and decode the manufacture date. Now pardon me while I go out and crawl under my car.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Ch_CBgcX_20&eurl=http://videos.komando.
com/2008/08/23/check-your-tires/]
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