On our way to get some ice cream last night, Finn and I passed by these chairs, which I think are the first of 2010. They are zip-tied to the pole.
I have really, really been thinking about playing my bass again lately. I’d be doing it at night after Finn is asleep, but I couldn’t plug into an amp and play along with anything without waking her up. So I started looking around for an inexpensive amp that will take an iPod input along with a headphone jack (my little 15 watt Crate amp has no aux input), and I found the Acoustic B20 1×12 Bass Combo Amplifier at Musician’s Friend for $150. This is waaaay back burner right now, but when I’m ready to buy one, I’ll venture down the street and see if Bill’s Music has one for a competitive price.
This is possibly the funniest, most transparently stupid thing I’ve read all year: Rep. Joe Barton Apologizes to BP’s Tony Hayward. A brief sample:
“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown.”
Given that he is, more or less, a paid employee of Big Oil, I’m not surprised. The frightening thing is that if the GOP takes the House this fall, he’s the guy in line to be the chair of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
Here’s your daily awesome: stuffnoonetoldme.blogspot.com. This is the kind of thing I see and I wish I’d been smart/motivated/talented enough to do.
The garage has been empty since the weekend. The Scout is out at the mechanic getting a carb rebuild, which makes me happy, but the rain we’ve been getting today, which was coming down so hard that it slowed traffic on I-95, has surely soaked the seats to the springs. I didn’t get the chance to put the full soft top back on before we ferried it down, which I’m regretting now, but I’ll be happy to put a plastic bag on the seat to get it home. Plus, we’re supposed to get two days of sun starting tomorrow, so maybe it will dry out by the time it’s ready.
The garage is even emptier as of this morning, because a nice man backed a dump truck up to the doors and hauled off six contractors’ bags worth of debris, as well as the pile of concrete that’s been sitting on the side of the driveway since 2008. He threw in all the brush I cleared off the garage a few weeks ago and some junk from the side porch, and raked everything smooth. Jen says it looks beautiful out there now, which makes me very happy. It’s good to have that taken care of in time for the parade.
Finally, Mr. Scout is studding up a new wall around the bathroom on the side porch in preparation for the plumber to come in and rough in a new toilet and sink. It looks like we’re going to pull the floor and drop in a subfloor in order to level it and butt it up to the hardwood. I have to figure out where to put the huge pile of insulation that’s out there (most likely in the new empty space in the garage) so that little hands don’t play with it, and straighten up/vacuum/childproof the rest. As much as an unfinished space can be childproofed.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Yet another album I’ve been listening to on heavy repeat is XX, by The XX. I can’t honestly say I’ve heard anything that sounds like this before, but damn, I like it.
Some more good music I just found this morning while listening to Morning Edition: Kodomo’s Still Life. Nice melodic electronica, nothing too intense, but enough melody to be background/working music. Very nice.
File this under Future Projects: a video podcast on iPod Music Link Installation in the CR-V. Looks like it might be the next gen model from the screenshot, but the general info looks pretty good.
After an inexcusable delay, the fucknut off-duty Baltimore police officer who shot a guy outside a nightclub last week is now in custody. He’s claiming the guy he shot was threatening him, and “did what he had to do”, which apparently means “empty your service revolver into an unarmed man.” For the record, I’m pro-police. But every gun-happy jerk like this makes the whole force look bad. My reasoning:
documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun under a public information act request show that Tshamba was also disciplined in 2005 after he shot and wounded a man after getting into an altercation while driving drunk.
Uh-huh. Why am I not surprised? Kick his ass off the force. It should have been done in 2005.