The labor day weekend is usually supposed to be a celebration of beer and barbecue in the backyard, then getting stuck in traffic on the way home. Because the Lockardugan house is a poor house, we were content to lock the doors, grill some burgers, drink cheap beer and hide out to recharge our batteries. We had grand plans to “get lots of stuff done”, which is a blanket statement that means “planning an impossibly long checklist of stuff we’d never accomplish with four friends in two weeks.” I had hoped to make serious headway on the outside windows by finishing off the front of the house and working my way over to the side. Jen had hoped to get out into the garden and battle the weeds that have taken over in her absence. Three days seemed like a blank check to have all of this done and more. What actually happened was a lot of sleeping, some lazy consumption of food until noon, halfhearted attempts to motivate into a productive phase, an early cutoff for dinner, and then more sleeping. We did get the second-floor front windows finished, and the side garden dug out. Unfortunately Jen’s ankle met with an unscheduled twist in the backyard, and we postponed our afternoon for a visit to the St. Agnes emergency room, where the diagnosis was a bad sprain. Mother and ankle are resting comfortably on the couch with warm soup and grapefruit juice.
Did anybody else realize that this dude on CSI: Miami was Slater from Dazed and Confused?
I have to agree, the current Liz Phair album sucks. (One of my top twenty favorite albums is Exile In Guyville. Pick it up if you don’t have it already.)
I Heard It On The Radio. Let’s just be clear here, before I get started. I love my Jeep. It’s running like a top, it has cold A/C, all the buttons and dials and switches work, and it seems to like me. However, the radio has developed a nasty habit of not working reliably anymore. On hot days, when it’s been sitting for a few hours in the sun, I’ll get about two minutes of NPR before the reception dives into the toilet. Then all I can seem to get in are the the annoying right-wing talk show stations, which I have no interest in hearing anyway. Even better, whenever I pass a radio relay tower, high tension power line, or cell relay tower, the reception across the dial goes down like a drunken prizefighter, and doesn’t come back up at all. So I’m looking to replace my right-wing radio with something inexpensive but flexible. My requirements are simple: $150 or less, an auxilliary input for the iPod, removeable face, and a CD player. I don’t need a remote, 400 billion watts of power, a changer, or a DVD display. Crutchfield is the obvious choice for this purchase, and I found an inexpensive Blaupunkt with all the things I need or $130.
I woke up this morning with Teller the cat anxiously pawing my face for food and a splitting headache. I dozed through Jen’s shower and rose a half-hour late to make coffee, only to find she’d already done it. Two ibuprofen later, I was in a better state and paused to look at the week’s progress: one coat of primer in the linen closet, a working light, and the pipe access door mudded for sanding. The front windows are on their second coat of paint and looking for a final touch-up before I put the storm windows back and move on. Not bad for a week’s work.
Alien Pod. Since I brought my busted Airport Base Station back into work, I’ve had three different people enter the ubercle and say, “Whoa! What is that?!?” After I explain it to them, they nod approvingly and we continue our work-related issues. Single men, take note: walk your Base Station at the park this week; the chicks will stop and ask what it is, at which time you can strike up conversation and get a phone number. It’s as good as a puppy or a baby. Anyway, I decided not to order the repair kit from this “company”, as their “home page” is all broke-down and I get a suspicious vibe. I’m just going to hit Baynesville Electronics and pick up the capacitors I need on my own to repair it.
The iMac I have set up here at work as an iTunes server has been discovered by the rest of the office. Because of the five-stream limit Apple wrote in to the sharing feature of iTunes, I’m not able to listen to my own music right now.
Brief Political Statement. I’m glad I’m not in New York City. Now, why is the news media ignoring the comments of Dennis Hastert, your House Speaker, the third most powerful Republican in the country, who accused George Soros of financing his empire with drug money last Sunday? (Soros is anti-Bush, and, understandably, kinda pissed.)
Vote Democrat. Vote Independent. Vote Martian. Just get these pricks out of office, please.
Thank You. To the good people of Home Depot: You’ll let me test nailguns in the Tool Corral unsupervised. You’ll let me carry flimsy cans of highly toxic substances through your store and help me load them into my trunk. You’ll leave dangerous circular saws unattended and plugged in throughout the store. You’ll trust an 18-year-old kid to drive a forklift loaded with half a ton of drywall over my head and store it on a rack thirty feet in the air. You’ll rent me a wood chipper to grind the brush in my backyard or dispose of Steve Buscemi, whichever I choose.
Why is it, then, that you won’t let grown adults cut glass to order in your stores because of “insurance reasons?” I wasted half the evening driving across western Maryland looking for somebody who could cut me two panes of replacement glass. (For the record, Lowe’s will happily do it for you.) Unbelievable.
Also, the Airport Extreme base station is up and running without a hitch. The extra $50 or so I spent on the Apple product was worth the money.