Nice Dirt

Mmmmm......
(make sure that the sound is way down)
Can't wait to play in some of this.

Joy

When I returned from half way around the world in the late summer of 1994, I was standing on the fantail of a huge flat-top warship looking down toward the USS Arizona, and at a large flag attached to my boat waving in the light wind, finally back on the land that it was sent from. I was proud of my country and thankful for those who went before.

Today, listening to a poet, a group of musicians, and a new leader for this country, I once again have that feeling. It's hard not to be happy for today and each day that we all enjoy without fear of being shot for what we think.

CP's First Carrot of the Season

She's doing the first-carrot-of-the-season dance with a mouthful of broccoli florets. I picked one that I thought might be done growing, since none of them are crowning yet, and told her to give it a pull. It started coming out of the ground and just didn't stop. It was roughly 8" long, but by the time CP got done with it, all that was left was the green top.

This carrot was sincerely the sweetest carrot I've ever tasted. It was amazing. Full of liquid and it had that really light sweet taste that reminded me of the confectioners' sugar sweetness from Minneola Tangelos.

Fruit Peddler

Just heard a song about the last fruit peddler in New Orleans by Chris Smither on Radio Bob McWilliams' show Trail Mix. We used to listen to Radio Bob when we lived in KC and Topeka. Sometime soon, our little superJetta will be filled with that sound again. Anyway, the song and the story are worth checking out.

Not that bad...

After watching Frontline tonight, I realized that no matter what comes our way, we'll probably never have it as bad as some. About half way into this show, I started wondering why there aren't some retired military SF or spook types sitting at home bored, who don't help people wade through the mess of getting their family members back.

As an added bonus, or just for old times' sake, they could just help some of these traffickers disappear.....as in assume room temperature. When you figure in the human misery that these traffickers and their enablers (corrupt police) spread across the world, an $0.18 bullet is a small price to pay to wipe them from the earth and commit them to a compost heap. I don't know, but I think that if I had the amount of training that folks in the ugly business that nobody ever sees have and didn't have a family life, it'd be a valuable use of that training and one hell of a contribution to society to pull just one person out of slavery.

Farewell Project Truck

A year or two ago, my lovely wife who is spoken of here often, allowed me to remove $750 from our savings account to get started with yet another old project vehicle. We purchased a VW van before that and made a little money off of it with only limited work, so this seemed like a promising enterprise. Well, it turned out that as of today, we are down a few hundred dollars from where we started because my project truck left on a flatbed truck in exchange for $300. I trust that it's going to a good home because a family friend bought it as a project vehicle for his biodiesel making hobby. As much as I am sad to see it go, the open space created by the removal of said truck will soon be filled with fruit trees. Minneola tangelo, Meyer lemon, Ruby or Rio Red grapefruit and possibly a fig or a white pomegranate. We shall see.

Fries With That?

Here's what came up on google this morning.
Things may be a'chaning around here pretty soon.

Mmmm Mmmmm Good

There's nothing like having a one-income household in these financial times that relies on contract work with a big computer and bigdrivesinthebasement type company. Well, evidently they had their super-efficient contract signer down in the basement with a red swingline stapler working on TPS reports. This ingrained silliness resulted in a dozen or so contractors being furlowed just like the year before last. To add insult to this year's missing paychecks, several of the projects aren't being funded and the shuffle is on. Luckily, the LW's contracting company put her into training mode and idled her with pay for a week. On the flip side of that luck though, was news today that she'll be taking an unexpected week off without pay soon and may be out of work at the end of the quarter.

Wild

I just read this post from over at Sweet Juniper and it made me think of the wild spaces near where my brother and I grew up. Here's a map to show what I'm talking about.

If you look closely at it in the satellite photo, you'll see a house just to the north of what's now River Birch Ln where it meets Willow Creek Dr. That was where all of the fun started for my brother, myself, five beagles....and two ATVs. You can zoom out and see where there are several ponds and it looks like a lot of clearing. Well, when we lived there, none of that existed. It was hard to get down into the valley and across the creek and it limited access to most. River Birch Ln and the houses to the west weren't there. It was old logging roads....and trees.

Following River Birch out to the west where it makes it's first turn and it's our old "duck pond". Someone dammed up the natural drainage there and it filled with water and wood ducks. There were always a few there hanging around and it was a great nesting spot. All of the surrounding trees in this area were, and what's left of them are, hardwoods. Beautiful trees that were just perfect for sitting at the base of on a cool winter afternoon...and falling asleep. The old logging roads snake around through the area and made a nice loop, whether whizzing by on the old ATC200 or walking with my old 20ga over my shoulder and a happy mutt at my feet. Many weekend days as a 12 year old, under the guise of hunting, I'd leave the house with my shotgun and dog and just go off into the woods for half a day. The sights and memories of it still come back to me when I kick over a wet pile of oak leaves somewhere and get a passing bit of the smell. A little further west, and just north of the weigh station that you see on the north side of I-20, is where I missed a shot at the biggest deer that I'd ever seen at the grand distance of 20 yards. Not to far from there was where we surmised that this deer, or one of his intelligent contemporaries, jumped I-20 when one of our dogs was chasing him, and waited in the space between the highway lanes until the dog was hit by a car.

It was a good place and I can only hope that the people who live there now have kids that go out into the woods and enjoy it like I did. I learned all kinds of things out there and was simply allowed to experience it as it was - woody, quiet, perfect.

Almost

..into a new year around here and we made it through the holiday madness relatively unscathed. CP had a good time with her grandparents and seemed to enjoy opening her presents from Santa and family. We did manage to get a tiny Canon Elph camera for her to use. She loves playing with mine, so we figured a small ten year old point and shoot from eBay would be good.....and we were right. She's already working on filling the little CF card with photos of her feet, her mother, and the cats.

The LW cooked enough green bean casserole to feed 100 on Christmas day...no, really....and we took that and a ham from Costco down to the place where the Giving Tree was having their Christmas week edition of Project Feed. It's a good thing and the people that run it work hard to help everyone that she can.

Yesterday was leaky diesel day. After the car almost not starting due to a pump distributor o-ring leak, I decided that 68 degrees was warm enough to work on the TDI. I almost got a sunburn out there in shorts and a t-shirt. I got the parts a while back from Jim at dieselgeek.com and the little kit that he sells is great. The first time through the procedure I pinched the o-ring and the pump wouldn't prime....plus it was leaking worse than it was originally. The second time through, which was faster than the first time, I sprayed some silicone lube on the seal and it worked fine. I hope that this will stand up to the switches that we make back and forth from B100 to ULS D2 in the tank. We ran all summer on B100 whenever we could and one tank after switching back to D2, it started leaking. There was so much diesel on the engine, the whole car was beginning to smell like an old tractor. It starts much easier now too - I think that there was just too much air being let into the lines.

B&B ...or a Hotel in the GGGG..Ghetto

We looked up some places for the parents to stay today and found a really nice B&B that's close to our house and run by a former chef. Mmmm....breakfast. Well, my parents aren't accustomed to B&Bs where you meet the owner and stay in a nice personalized space - they like chain hotels and staying next to 400 other people that they don't know in questionable areas of town, so they didn't like the idea of a B&B. I called my mom and asked her if there's a "Stay in a crappy part of Tucson" website that they search to find the places that they stay..... This time, it's a chain hotel for $110/night down by Irvington and I-10. I guess they will be close to a Honda shop and an RV store that's in bankruptcy. Sheeeshh....

Why...

...I sometimes really can't f(*$#ng stand people. I spoke to a kindly old gentleman in the Wild Oats a few minutes ago and had the small passing type of conversation that you have in the veggie isle.... then sonofabitch hands me a jeezus pamphlet and wants to debate his delusional creation story with me. I stopped it when he moved too far into my personal space. One thing was funny though, how quickly he turned up his nose and dismissed the creation stories of various other cultures when I brought it up. What a f(*$#ng $hitstain. He was handing out a pamphlet to everyone in the store too. Why is it that I just want to pound on a$$holes that do this...?

Pendant Lamps

You wouldn't really think that pendant lamps would be an issue to fight about, but in my house, you'd be wrong. It was shaping up to be a really nice Saturday morning until I picked up the latest issue of Ready Made magazine. Well, the light section discusses how to make a pendant light and this is where it all begins to go south. I see the pendant light cord that they show with a two blade plug on the end of it and say, "Hey, we could just clip that plug off and tie it into the wall fixture that's vacant".

It gets ugly here. Evidently the wife has done some extensive and time consuming research out there on the interwebs and found that you void the UL stuff by doing that and is completely, and rather ferociously against it ....and against me all of the sudden for even having the nerve to suggest it. Well, we live in a 1960s house that was a rental for a llllllllong time. The furnace fan runs on an extension cord with electrical tape and all of the outlets have 3-wire fixtures even though the whole house is still just two-wire. I guess having these is the limit for her UL voiding level of comfort. I eventually got told that someday "in my house" that I could have whatever I wanted.

After a half-hour of searching, I found a place that sells 18/3 shielded wire for pendant lighting and they probably have the fixtures for the bulb as well as the cover place and stress relief pieces for attaching it to the wall. Man, I really just wish that whoever built this tiny house had put in cieling fixtures instead of wiring things to the sides of the walls.

The wife just piled the baby into the car and left the house in a huff with a slam of the door. Ahhhh...Saturday.

Movies

Recently we watched two really good movies: Spirited Away and Porco Rosso They're Japanese animation, but have been dubbed with the voices of American actors. I happened to pass a person in the library who was picking up a copy of Porco Rosso and he recommended it highly...and now I do too.

Cloudy and Cool

Pies, pies, and more pies this morning.

It was pure joy to listen to CP singing to me, and into the phone to her paternal grandmother, who 39 years ago on this day as a 20 year old girl, sacrificed her birthday and Thanksgiving to push me out into the world. Thoughts of family and friends today run around the map like the scent of pie spices in the house - the Mississippi delta and central cattle country, the outskirts of Kansas City, California's wine country, and the left turn (x4) redneck racing capital of North Carolina.

We'll be off this afternoon to spend time with good friends, or what's sometimes referred to as "the family you pick". I'm taking a break from everything this afternoon to do some work behind the camera and I'm looking forward to it. My LW was up until 10pm or so making pies to give to a local charity today. Chocolate pecan and banana cream....she said that, "everyone needs a little bit of home cookin' on Thanksgiving".

It rained most of the night here and it looks like it'll be a good day.

Hanksgiving

Holy smokes. KXCI is playing Hank songs from all of the Williams generations (that count) and others named Hank today. It's great!

Hearing a toddler sing happy birthday is icing on the cake for today.

Life Lessons from Mary Gordon

There's a nice article called past, perfect on preserving traditions in the October issue of Real Simple. It discusses hanging on to relics of happy times. The article is only a page at best, but it's sure to get you thinking about your own history. I immediately thought of the thing, for me, that has stayed the same over decades. My paternal grandparents live in Cary, Mississippi. The fact that not much changes there isn't really a plus in the tally sheet of our modern plus/minus columns, but it's a huge positive when it comes down to comfort. The article discusses how great the feeling of something familiar can be.

Green bowls and old spoons. Every time I'm at my grandmother's house there is a pot of chickenndumplins. Really it's chicken and dumplings, but it's never pronounced that way, it's Mississippi after all. They're always dished up with an old serving spoon with a floral mark on the handle and I always eat them in one of my grandmother's plain old green bowls. At a garage sale, the whole set might fetch 50 cents, but they're irreplaceable. There's just a bit of perfection there in those bowls - with my childhood and a pinch of salt.

Visit from the Human Debris Fairy

Last night, after hearing all of the thumping base that I could stand from four houses down (yep, that far) I called the police. Well, the person who is the shacker-up with this lady was walking down the street and heard me talk about TPD coming soon. A little while later, the inverted bowling pin of a woman came down and beat on my door. Straight away, it was "You gotta problem with me?" and I knew that it would go downhill from there.

It did. The next part of the tirade started with, "You people...". Yup, us, the respectable ones that haven't been forced to move out by this person. Three houses close to this person have sold in the past 1.5 years. Two of the three cited this person as the reason for leaving.

After a stream of deluded consciousness and a few pretty funny nonsequitors, I got in a word edgewise and told her just to keep her f$(*@$g kid's music down. It really got funny after that and she started screaming obscenities and more nonsensical stuff at the top of her lungs, which for this little troll, was surprisingly loud. Her 20-something live-at-home son came down with a .45 or 9mm on his hip to see what mama was getting herself into and she must have realized that things could get ugly, and started to leave. Now, this kid is a superstar ....really, so I was a bit concerned about how he'd react, but he stayed in the street and only talked smack. So, by now, I'm pretty bent, and all of my neighbors have come outside to watch the show. She got in her truck, which she'd parked in front of my house, and left. After I settled down a bit, I called TPD again to speak to dispatch and let them know that they can add this to the incident report for this episode.

A couple of nice officers from TPD showed up an hour or so later to see what was going on. Talking to them, I got the impression that they thought she was as crazy as I did, so that was mildly reassuring. There wasn't really anything that they could do since the music was down, but they stressed that if *anything* else comes up, that I should call them immediately. They've got a tough job dealing with the crazies, but I'm really glad that they do it.

The American List

I found this list of American made things while reading around at Sweet Juniper. It's a pretty good line of things and I'm glad that someone has taken the time to put it up - I only wish that it were longer. I asked the owner of the list to add Vornado fans, since, like my wife, they're made in Kansas.

Almost...

...got signed in before CP emptied her entire bladder on the couch....."because she wanted to..".

Welcome to Tuesday.