Observations

Our kitchen range (that would be "stove" for people who don't live in woodburning land) got old and we had to put it out to pasture.  In it's place there is a shiny convection-oven five-burner thingy.  There was some obligatory grumbling due to the gas inlet location but after a bit of impassioned male grunting I got it installed.  Now we can bake bacon in about 1/2 the time.  That's hot.

Our house is well past voting age and there is a pipe that runs about 60 feet from the garage to where the main drain plumbing assembly is back near the bathrooms.  This 2" pipe ends at about 18" up and takes a turn down and enters the rest of the drain.  I know the rest of you with an engineering background are starting to think about slope and flow rate... Let me assure you that there is too little of both for anything more than plain water.  Any wee scraps of food or lint from the washer turn to cement in the line and it stops draining.  It likes to do this every couple of months.

Usually these backups happen when we have guests, or when it's late at night, or cold, or whenever it's most inconvenient.  Being as handy as I am, I have always resolved the issue myself.  Let me assure you (once again) gentle readers that this is uniformly a Very Icky(TM) process with the junk that comes out of the pipe.  It does not lift ones soul.

So this last time, after making a horrible smelly mess for two hours and not resolving the problem, I called in a professional.  Actually I called two of them.  The first one to come and unclog the drain (which was done rapidly and without a mess for well under a C note), and the second to give me an estimate on replacing the 63 year old pipe that doesn't slope enough with a slick new one that is pitched more.  We'll hear on Monday or so how much they'll want for that.  Don't tell them in advance that I'm pretty much gonna pay whatever they want.

On the way back from buying the stove, Sharon and I saw a fellow dressed in a white suit, with white shoes, carrying a white briefcase, wearing five-foot long angel wings - feathers and everything - just walking down the sidewalk in Belmont as if he was on the way to the drugstore or something.  We asked each other if we had really seen that, then wondered if it was worth turning around for to take a picture.  It almost was.

Bang; you're dead.

I heard the somber music and the unrehearsed tones of the commentator on the radio when I went to go to the bank before lunch.  It must be very bad, I thought.  Then the story spooled out.  More than 20 dead, lots of dead children.  Shooter dead.  I had to turn it off.  I played some 40+ year-old music.  When I came out to the car from the bank, the commentators were still at it.  I turned it off again.

I imagined the horror of the parents on hearing the news without knowing whether their child was dead.  I imagined the horror of the adults at the school on seeing the dead children.  I imagined the unimaginable horror of the children while they were getting gunned down.  I imagined the unthinkable and life-altering conversations that the parents of the surviving children will have with their children who don't actually know what happened.

I tried and failed to imagine how anyone could stand in front of a classroom of eight and nine year-olds and shoot them.

When I got home and read the thoughtless things that people said in the aftermath, I felt sorry. Sorry for us as a civilization that we simply throw up our hands and say that nothing could have prevented this, that this is "not as bad as (fill in the blank)", that a solution is not even worth trying to discuss, let alone implement.

Happy Birthday

Now I'm a day older than yesterday, but because today is my birthday, somehow that makes me a whole year older in just one day.  It's weird.

Thanksgiving Day

As today is Thanksgiving, I want to take a few moments to reflect "aloud" on what I have to be thankful for.  I'll try to leave out the mundane stuff so you can get back to what you were doing.

Life - It isn't permanent so I'll be thankful while I can.
Sharon - She has made my life so rich.
Jessamy - So tiny at first, and now so grown up.
Andy - An amazing man who has taught me so many things.
Danny - Never far from playful imagination.
My home - It keeps me warm, dry and safe.

My family - I am just a leaf of an awesome tree; it's complexity awes me.
My friends - You are legion and you form my social world.  I am never lonely.

Cashews - The perfect nut.

I'm gonna blog

I said I'd post today even though I *just* posted yesterday.  So I posted.

My friends on FB nearly came to keyboard blows over the whole election thing.  I told them that they were real civil to hold it down and not get all e'splody on us.

To my conservative friends: I'm sorry about your inevitable disappointment.  I'm not sorry that the ideas on governance espoused by your standard bearer were rejected, and in all but one of the "swing" states.  320 electoral votes literally means that those ideas were broadly rejected.

In which I say

I may never make it to 1000 posts, but I'll keep working at it.  Today, since I've been saving up loads of topics and thoughts, I may pile on a bit.  I hope you'll understand.  Bless me readers, for I have not penned; it has been five weeks since my last confession.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and Holiday Party is on us again.  The other day I was trying to figure out how many years I've been at this but the closest I got was ten or eleven.  Or maybe nine.  I went back and looked at a lot of pictures and tried to figure out from the date stamps and what I was wearing.  All my life, I have been terrible at remembering chronology and dates, and how long blah blah blah.  If any of you faithful readers really know when I started, please let me know.  The winner gets to sit in my hot tub.

Speaking of boobs, during the naughty french postcards auditions, several of my female cast-mates had whipped out their boobs for the audition pictures (like we all do) and more than ever it was just like they were exposing their elbows, only far smoother and with nipples.  Maybe it's just like they say, "It's just boobs, meh." It was actually something of a relief not to be so damn thrilled to be seeing naked boobs that I couldn't carry on a rational conversation.  Also, my friend Kurt never seems to wear underpants.  I could have gone at least several more hours without witnessing The Spectacle(TM).

And how about our national spectator sport, voting.  It would seem that nowhere near all of us that are eligible actually participate in government by the people, for the people.  It seems so many have decided, in a practical sense that their participation isn't worth it.  I say, "VOTE like your life depended on it!" because in a sense it really does.

Not nearly as close as the RWEC thought.  Also +29 for FLA when they finally get their third-world voting act together, the n00bs.

Regarding the outcomes, I was pretty pleased that the electorate collectively rejected so much Bad Crap.  Let's make a list of Bad Crap, shall we:

Stupid Ideas That Should Never Be Spoken Of Again 

• Spending nearly infinite sums of money to get a few thousand people who already made up their mind to change their mind is a winning strategy.
• Rape really isn't that bad, and it doesn't cause pregnancy, or if it does, it's a gift from a deity.
• Gays have second class relationships because they are second class.
• Binders full of women!
• Muslim Kenyan Socialists!
• Trickle down economics - SO EFFECTIVE!! (do not pay any attention to the contrary data)
• Karl Rove (holy shit, that dude has some explaining to do)
• Corporations are people, my friend
• Abortion is our nation's biggest problem
• "Contraception" is Kenyan for "Destroying religious freedom!"
• Job creators just need some more money
• MOAR KILLING MACHINES
• Benghazi was a partisan failure
• Sheldon Adelson and The Fabulous Koch Brothers!
• "Our number one legislative priority is making Obama a one-term president."
• Newt!
• Vote suppression is patriotic!
• FOX
• Etch-a-Sketch!!
• The Tea Party
• The Right-Wing Echo Chamber.
• I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot here.

Math is real.  When the pollsters did their work, and the data was analyzed scientifically, the outcome of the election was accurately predicted.  I can only hope that in the next cycle, the GOP does not delude itself so much.  It makes us all look like idiots.

Hmmmm.  Two more of my good friends at work are leaving.  There is a lot of opportunity for me at work but at the same time, there has been a lot of change.  So many people that I liked and respected have moved on.  There is a lot of growth on the horizon, but there is also a lot of much-larger-company culture trickling flowing in.  I can't complain about the commute or the compensation, but what is important and what the people are like has changed a lot in my tenure, several times actually.  Luckily, I have a high tolerance for change.

Apparently, I snore.  Also, I tend to hear song lyrics in most everything people say.  Oh, and boobs.

I *promise* I'll post tomorrow.

It writes itself

When I sit down to write (like 'write' now) I often have no idea what I'm going to say.  I try to surprise myself.  A friend of mine asked for a story idea.  Here's what I said.

A man awakes to find his wife and children have been replaced with others who know him, but he doesn't know them. When he looks in the mirror, he doesn't recognize himself. He pushes through this and gets in his unrecognizable car which he is oddly certain is his. He starts out to work and drives aimlessly to a place, parks and goes in. Everyone knows him. He walks to an office, sits down and logs into the computer with a guessed password. He starts reading email and making up replies. A meeting notice comes up, and he goes to the meeting full of strangers that know him. At the end of the day he retraces his path to "home", has dinner with his "family", makes love to his "wife", and goes to sleep. In the morning, he wakes up and is greeted by a whole new family, wife, house, car, job, and guessed password.

I thought it was kinda fun.