Only in Sector 706…

You’d think that soldiers tossing grenade simulators at people in a parking lot would be crazy enough for Planet Georgia.

Now The Boy tells me that the local Chevron got raided and shut down for running a gambling operation in a back room and selling designer drugs? (couldn’t find a link) Too bad they weren’t selling moonshine, at least we could have made jokes about liquor in the front and poker in the rear.

Things break down in August. My car and Daughter Dearest’s are two recent casualties. I guess the heat is starting to fry what’s left of the pod people’s brains too.

My Little Cyst (with photo!)

A while back, I mentioned in passing that the doc checked out the Eternal Zit on my back and told me it was a cyst. I got the appointments confused and thought she was going to yank it the next day, but it actually happened on Monday of this week. I figured (correctly) that they would use a local pain-killer on me, but I had no idea how I’d feel when I was done, so Mrs. Fetched offered to drive me. No problem.

So I got there, and a brand-new medical assistant intern put me on the scales… and promptly kept sliding the slider the wrong way. (Yup, she’s blonde, but I figured it was first-day jitters.) They hauled me into a corner room I’d never been in before, and I shucked my shirt and emptied my pockets.

“Hey, you brought us your pocket knife!” one of the nurses said. “We won’t have to use ours!”

“Knife?” I replied. “I figured you’d just drill the stupid thing out!”

Having never had this done, I was a little surprised at the numbing process: they stick you several times, around the cyst, because poking the cyst could make it more difficult to get out. The second shot is the one that hurt most; after that, I have no idea how many times they stuck me because I was pretty well numb. In came the doc, and she got to work…

“That was easy!” she said, “I thought it would be bigger.” She laid her prize on the table. It took her less time to do the work than it did to prep me.

“Looks like a blueberry that’s not ripe yet,” I said… and it did. It even had a stem at that point. My initial squeamishness went away fairly quickly.

“You must have some around your place,” she said, cutting some suture. “I planted some, but they all died.” She sewed me up and slapped a bandage over it. The admonishment to take four ibuprofens in the afternoon wasn’t needed; all in all, there was very little pain and a little more itching.

Being around all the weirdness at FAR Manor has rubbed off, because I had to get a picture:



The little round dark thing right of center is the cyst. It got knocked around a little bit and the stem went away before I could get the picture.

The Cluster-Post

Since I can’t seem to get to these nearly as often as I’d like… they all get rolled up into one big post.

I’ve only had it for a few days, and I’m finding the new iPad is a game-changer, at least as much as moving from desktops to laptops was. It’s already changing how I read email, use Twitter, read blogs, and play games. Once I get a Bluetooth keyboard for it, I expect that I’ll be on it more than I am the MacBook since I’ll use it to blog and work on stories too. Actually, in landscape mode, the on-screen keyboard is big enough to touch-type on. I have to look at it though because I have no idea whether my fingers are drifting off their correct position, though.

I really wish Google would come up with a way to allow writing and editing in Google Docs with the iPad. But until they get it figured out, I’ve found that Yahoo Notepad at least works for tapping out something into the cloud. Obviously, I’d settle for limited functionality with Google Docs.

Mason had his 9-month checkup this week. He hasn’t gained any weight, but our doc didn’t seem too concerned about that since he’s so active (which he demonstrated quite well in the exam room). She said his iron’s a little low, feed him some baby vitamins… and meat, if we can find any he’ll eat. Actually, there’s an organic turkey w/vegetables combo that he seems to like OK.

As you can see in the pic here, he: 1) is constantly in motion; 2) has figured out how to carry something around when he has his hands otherwise occupied. He’ll be walking pretty soon — this afternoon, I watched him get to his feet “open-field” (that is, not pulling up on anything), so he’s getting a little more confident with his balance. He has also taken a couple of steps, ran three more and dropped to his hands and knees once he realized what he was doing… looks like all he needs a little more confidence. I’m rediscovering how one can turn stuff laying around into instant baby toys: large pill bottles are just the right size to hold (but not eat) and can really be interesting with a few beads or jingle bells inside; cardboard boxes and upside-down laundry baskets are perennial hits; even a stack of old magazines can be a happy distraction for pulling down and strewing around.

One of the downsides of Mason’s continued development is that he’s learned how to cut loose with this blood-curdling screech when he wants attention. I guess I’d better warn the Wicked Stepfather to turn off his hearing aid when we go visit.


Reality is stranger than fiction, at least around FAR Manor, and the two sort of came together this weekend at church. The little teen girl who sings in the choir introduced me to her friend Caitlin on Sunday morning. And… Caitlin is this little redhead, just like Caitlin Cooper in White Pickups (the one with the gigantic crush on Cody). The real-life Caitlin is fairly slim, but the chubby fictional Caitlin is slimming down what with… well, some upcoming episodes will explain. I have to say, meeting one’s own characters IRL (when they more or less introduced themselves from thin air to begin with) ranks right up there with some of the weirder writing-related things I’ve run into. Speaking of writing, I’ve been making pretty good progress on the story lately… I have episodes sorted through #60 and have about eight more that need to be ordered and laid out (with one more to insert). From there, I know how it’s going to end and mostly how to get there… and the details tend to be there when I need them. Then it’s on to Book 2!


And… what would a week (or a day) at FAR manor be without some TB/SN/TS errors? Snippet has constantly been throwing SN06 errors lately (sleeping all morning, sometimes into the afternoon); her excuse is (SN05) she can’t deal with Mrs. Fetched or Daughter Dearest. Seeing as DD is in Florida this week, she should be getting up twice as soon since she only has half the can’t-deal-with to deal with.

Yesterday, she wanted to go tubing on her off-day, leaving Mason with us (of course) and Mrs. Fetched vetoed it. Snippet, of course, got all defiant and threatened to “take Mason and she won’t see him for a long time.” That qualifies as an SN08, because she can’t usually get her skinny little @$$ out of bed before noon — what makes her think (if one can call it that) that she’d be able to do even a halfway job of taking care of an active baby?

The Boy, meanwhile, has been indulging in multiple instances of TB03 (not coming home) and TB21 (in bed half the day). And several TS03 (bring weird friends over) — one of them was here all weekend and wasn’t out until Tuesday. Despite the uglification he’d obviously worked hard at, he wasn’t all that bad… he would keep Mason entertained and watched over, and was a fair hand at the piano. Snippet doesn’t like him, so that’s maybe one more thing in his favor.

Oh, and I’ve been continuing to work on the wood spill. More later…

Pink Laptops and Other Oddities

Work, as always, is work. I’ve been stumping to get a change into a new set of products that will make life easier on the people who have to set the things up, and it looks like it’s going to happen, yay! We have some outside people developing a part of the product that’s not really our core competence, and they came from Taiwan this week to sit down with various folks and get a better idea of what we expect. The young woman was carrying around this hot pink gator skin laptop which, like the proverbial train wreck, you just can’t take your eyes away from.

She was kind enough to let me get pictures:

Turns out it’s an ASUS S6 “pink leather” model. I figured something looking like that would sell only in Taiwan or Japan, but target.com carries it and it’s out of stock… I guess there’s a lot of middle school girls who have their dream computer. The pictures just don’t do justice to the massive pinkitude of this tiny computer. They call it leather, but it looks more like faux alligator skin, or at least the skin of some kind of reptile. To me, “leather” comes off something that looks more like this:



Cow → milk → baby…
Mason returned to the manor yesterday, along with Snippet. The latter is gone, supposedly doing laundry at her place, but Mason is still here. He’s fighting sleep right now, but last night he’d get a bellyful of formula then go to sleep… but “sleeping” doesn’t really describe it. It was like he’d gone completely boneless. He’s pulled that on us a couple of times this evening, but wakes up 10 minutes later. He was rockin’ and rollin’ for a little while, having a good time… but I think Mrs. Fetched has finally gotten him to give up and snooze.

I promised oddities… here’s a good one. Barnes & Noble have released their own e-book reader, called the Nook. And, of course, it has instantly earned the moniker Nook e-book reader (say it fast). While I’ve said before that e-book readers won’t take off until they can be purchased for $19.95 from the drugstore checkout display (you need $259 for a Nook e-reader), I might be interested in a Nook e-book…

But is that as odd as a toad that throws itself down a mountainside and rolls away from predators?

Reality, as always, is stranger than fiction.

Post-pourri (including Weekend Cinema)

The usual collection of stuff that kind of kicked around all week but I never got a chance to post. And since it’s already Friday, a short-and-silly video awaits…

From the “Stupidog is one word” files: Mrs. Fetched decided she wanted to breed Crissy, her thoroughly obnoxious Austrian Shep mix who happened to be in heat, and got Luke (another shep) from her mom and put him in the pen with her. And he proceeded to… do nothing. Well, that’s not completely true: he forced his way out of the pen through a hole in the gate. I got him back in and wired the hole shut. He proceeded to open the latch (he knows how to do that) and ran home. (Maybe he’s gay?)

After most of a week of not seeing Sasquatch around, he came by Wednesday evening with Jar Jar in tow. The latter needed to get away from his family for a while, so naturally he came to the manor. :-) He was hoping for a chance to work and earn a few bucks, but all he got was raking up the grass in the (small) front yard after I mowed it yesterday afternoon. At least Jar Jar managed to not do anything spectacularly clumsy this time — about the only thing that went w0rNg on his watch was DD’s computer’s audio cutting out for a few hours overnight. He’d been using the laptop a lot, so I figured it overheated then brought the sound back after it cooled off a bit. He, Daughter Dearest, and Sasquatch played a fair amount of Magic: the Gathering while they were here. Sasquatch also managed to clear a clog in the upstairs sink; he used a bent hanger to fish out the clog and an earring that got caught in it. He said, “it looked like an Amish guy’s beard fell off and went down the sink.” YUCK GAG GAG

Speaking of Sasquatch, he got so hooked on the “Mouse Hunt” game on Facebook that he started playing in meatspace. Using a really simple string/stick/box setup, he managed to catch six specimens of Mus musculus (aka the common house mouse) at his place. He has them in an aquarium, with a screen lid they jump onto and walk around on like flies on a ceiling. He’s so excited about his new pets, that’s pretty much all he wants to talk about lately… which is annoying the living foo out of Daughter Dearest. Personally, I’d find a snake owner who wanted some free chow… or at least release them somewhere far away. Maybe in the Atlanta Country Club, where they could aerate the golf course.

Silly me, putting up a gas price poll: prices have jumped from $1.89 to $2.15 here in the last couple of days. (If you haven't voted in the poll, you have plenty of time. I’ll wait.) Of course, the rain has mostly kept me off the motorcycle. Both Little Zook and the Virago are running happy, so all I need is a shot at some dry pavement. That, or find the bottom of my rain suit.

Vacation is postponed for *another* week… we were talking about going this week, but we have to shoot the community chorale tomorrow night. Next week didn’t work for various reasons; we were planning for the week of the 18th but now something else has come up. Maybe the week after… which would let me stretch it an extra day for Memorial Day. Not all bad.

And now… Weekend Cinema! With a hat-tip to Faboomama, who linked to this on Twitter. De Prez and his crew set up nuclear talks with “My Man” Mahmoud:

Cannibal Chickens?

How Easter afternoon is spent at FAR Manor: Mrs. Fetched grabs me, Daughter Dearest, and Sasquatch for chicken house duty.

Upon arrival, a telltale thumping noise signaled the lack of feed at the #4 house. I banged on the bin, just to make sure the feed wasn’t stuck: hollow. When Mrs. Fetched called the field man, he said “the feed mill is behind, I’m not sure when they’ll be able to get feed to you.”

“I hope it’s not too far behind,” Mrs. Fetched said to me. “There was one grower who didn’t get feed for a week last year.”

“What? What happens to the chickens?”

“After a couple of days without feed, if a chicken dies, the other ones just eat it. If you don’t get to it right away, you’ll have the bones and the feet to pick up.”

I suspect what will actually happen: every evening until the feed truck arrives, I’ll help to dump feed from the other houses into a tractor bucket and unload it up at #4. The mental image of cannibal chickens will make this task somewhat less burdensome.

Foom!

When you’re running down the street, and your
hair is on fire… people get out of your WAY!”
— Richard Pryor

As I was shoveling down a bowl of cereal this morning, Mrs. Fetched asked me, “Do you want to help me with the chickens?”

“Sure,” I said, “as long as I can get to a junkyard by noon to get a jack and fake spare for the Civic.”

“Oh yeah.” I mentioned this need somewhat earlier in the week. I once had these things, but Daughter Dearest’s Civic did not and I’d rather have me stranded than her. While I have new tires on the Civic at the moment, that doesn’t mean I won’t catch a nail or just wear ’em out later on.

So while she was getting ready, I called a junkyard about a half-hour from the manor, and got no answer. Their Yellow Pages ad included a website, so I pulled that up… and found they’re not even open on Saturday. (That would explain their not answering the phone.) “Try the mechanic,” Mrs. Fetched suggested. “He might have some in his bonepile.” I have that number in my phone already, so I tried it and got the same no-answer. Having struck out, I went with Mrs. Fetched.

While we were there, she tried unsuccessfully to start the incinerator. This is a normal occurrence when it has been raining, especially as much as it has this week. “Do we have any gas?” she asked. We did, since I’d filled a pair of 1-gallon cans last weekend; one had 2-stroke mix in it, but the other was straight gas. She sent me home to get the gas while she raised a curtain that had many gallons of rainwater trapped in the folds.

When I returned, she had me pour about half the gallon into the incinerator (which is nearly full of dead chickens). “Did you bring a match?”

“I didn’t think we’d need one,” I said. “You can just hit the igniter and it should get it going.” She hit the switch…

FOOM!!! Fire belched out the smokestack and blew the access hatch off the front (the latch has been broken for a long time). I found this highly entertaining, really the high point of a morning that involved dealing with both heavy rain and stinky chicken houses, and vocalized my appreciation. “I’m glad you enjoyed that,” she groused. “It scared me.” Well, sure… but nothing happened we weren’t expecting. By this time, the rain was slacking off.

After finishing the last chicken house, we came outside to find Mrs. Fetched’s mom. Suddenly, the “we don’t have to take hay to the cows” became “we have to take hay to the cows.” Grumble. At least it had stopped raining. But the 12:30 ending became a 2:30 ending, involving me locking the keys in the truck and having to go to the in-laws to get the spare (at least Mrs. Fetched now had something to be amused about). So we went back to the incinerator and Mrs. Fetched again tried to get it going, with no success.

“Do you think we can pour some more gas in there?” she asked. There was a little smoke coming out of the stack, but no obvious fire.

“I suppose.”

“Well, be careful!”

I obliged, splashing some gas into the main opening. With no bark-back, I commenced to pour some more in. With about a quart left, I was thinking “that should be enough—”

FOOM!!! For a moment, all I saw was flame, then the normal picture returned. I’d jumped about three feet to the left; Mrs. Fetched squawked and got out of her jacket (one sleeve was on fire); the gas can was lying on its side, also burning at the nozzle end. She put out her jacket, and I slapped my head to make sure I wasn’t doing a Richard Pryor, then grabbed the can and flung it into the gravel where it continued to burn. With the immediate danger past, I started laughing — I’m sure if we’d gotten video, it would have been worthy of Jackass.

“That wasn’t funny!” Mrs Fetched said, then started laughing too.

I felt my hair. “It’s singed!” which, somehow, made things even funnier. “I guess I’ll have to get another haircut.”

“Nah, it doesn’t look too bad.” My hands both had all the hair singed off them as well, and there were tender spots on my left hand and on my forehead above my right eye. (Good thing I wear glasses all the time.) Mrs. Fetched’s jacket didn’t even look singed; I think maybe a little gas splashed on it and she put out the fire before it scorched the material.

Meanwhile, the gas can continued to burn in the gravel. “Do you think it will blow up too?”

“I don’t think so,” but all the same we backed the truck up and watched it finish burning up from a few dozen yards away. Once the flames mostly died down, I grabbed a shovel and put out the molten remains before dousing it in a convenient mud puddle and then carrying it to the dumpster.

And we never did get the incinerator started, although we tried for nearly half an hour afterwards.

I suppose you could say we were very lucky. On the other hand, if we actually were lucky, we wouldn’t be dealing with chicken houses. :-P

Weekend Cinema

If you haven't voted in the poll, it's open through Tuesday!

Got no money and only a little time? Weekend Cinema thinks about you!

You may not have much time on your hands, but these guys? They have plenty. Perhaps far too much, in fact. But the results are… quite interesting. So put on your wool sweater and marvel at the Baaa-Studs as they bring you Extreme Shepherding!

Intentional?

I wander into Burger King for a veggie burger, and see that they have a new sandwich they call the “Angry Whopper.” It's your basic Whopper with jalapeños, hot onions, and an “Angry Sauce.” Of course, you can get it with a combo.

So you can go to McDonald’s and get a Happy Meal, or go to Burger King and get an Angry Meal.

DoubleRed suggested you could get a Horny Meal at Wendy’s, forgetting that The Boy and Snippet work there…

When Animals Annoy

Being at FAR Manor, an in-law freakout wasn’t necessary to cut my staycation short and get me home — they were right there, after all.

The last few days, basically the weekend, was spent being farm labor. The poultry company decided to try putting four houses’ worth of chicks in two houses, the idea being it would cost much less on heat and they could move half of them after they got a little bigger. Sounded great on paper, but the crowding caused a rather large die-off — about 3000 chickens per house, more than usually die in an entire grow-out, croaked in the first week. Thus, much of the weekend was spent getting the other two houses ready; Sasquatch and Jar Jar were there to help as well. But a chicken house screw-up, as long-time readers probably know, is not unique or even much noteworthy.

Saturday afternoon, I was getting ready to take a nap when Mrs. Fetched piped up: “Call Dad, ask him if he’s going to feed the cows and see if he needs you to help him.” ARRRRRRGH!!! The timing is… incredible. How do they do that, and how do you make it stop? Anyway, the drill is that the helper goes down in the truck to open the gates. So I went on… and found eight cows already in the hay barn. I opened a gate and cussed them out, which got two of them out right away. Six to go… I climbed up over the hay, nearly falling down a hole of unknown depth once, and cussed out the other ones. Three of them left right away, leaving the three all the way down at the far end. I climbed across the hay and got them moving… and the $#!@$%!!! stupidogs chased them right back in! Lather, rinse, repeat. By the time my father-in-law got there with the tractor, I was entertaining thoughts of butchering a cow with my bare hands and BBQ’ing it on the spot, and launching dogs in a trebuchet to entertain myself while the beef was cooking. We got the dogs away, got the cows out, and fixed as much of the fencing as we could before it got too dark to see. I hadn’t planned on making any New Year’s resolutions, but I thought about resolving to eat more beef this year.

Went to bed Sunday night, hoping to get some sleep and get a good start back at work. But at 4:30 a.m., I was awakened by a plink plink plink sound from the bathroom.

“Oh, crap,” I said, waking Mrs. Fetched. “The toilet’s backing up.” I got up, not putting on my glasses, and went to see if I was right and how bad it was going to be. The water level was normal, but there were what looked like two “floaters” in the bowl. But… one was swimming.

“It’s a rat!” I bellowed, and slammed down the lid. “Or two of them!”

“How big?” Mrs. Fetched asked. “And how did they get in there?”

“I don’t know.” I was already looking for something heavy to sit on the lid, in case one of them managed to get to dry porcelain and tried to get out, and found a magazine rack. I dropped that on and went back to bed. I considered flushing for a moment, but was afraid it might clog the drain… and who’s to say it wouldn’t climb right back up?

“How do you think they got in?” Mrs. Fetched asked again.

“No clue… but I haven’t seen any rat droppings in the house. Maybe they got in through the drain vent — or maybe it was a squirrel that got in — and they came up from below.”

A thunderstorm an hour later pretty much put the kibosh on my getting any sleep, especially when Mrs. Fetched’s alarm went off at 6 (she had to be there to greet the chicken moving crew). Since the plink noises had quit a while back, I figured whatever it was had drowned, but I wasn’t taking any chances — I slipped a piece of glass between the lid and bowl, then raised the lid to find:



One small squirrel, not exactly alive. I grabbed the fireplace tongs and a bucket, and got it back outside where it belonged. I also managed to feel a little pity for a brief moment… but that was all. Not only had he taken a third of my night with him, he’d gone crawling into someone else’s den.

Only at FAR Manor.

I’m sure if I stuck my face in a squirrel’s nest, I’d get it bitten and scratched. Think of it as evolution in action.

A Special Edition

The not-so-far future: The New York Times, Special Edition (July 4, 2009).

Be sure to read the My Times link to hear the publishers 'splain themselves.

Weekend Cinema

Welcome back to Weekend Cinema, where the entertainment (or in some cases, horror) is quick and free. Just like a perfect date. ;-D

All of us, even us Mac users, have likely hurled the occasional obscenity at our computers. But this kid goes waaaayyyy over the top. (In German, but with English sub-titles. Mucho vulgarity here.) Frankly, I think it’s a put-on: that webcam would have been toast long ago.

Hat tip/fling against the wall to Brand X

WTF of the Week

Okay… I’ve known that Planet Georgia is full of moonbats, and they’ve been running the place since 1984 or so.

But finding a dead Bigfoot here? That goes above and beyond the call of the weird.

Weekend Cinema

If it’s short, strange, and free, it must be Weekend Cinema!

Now I put a lot of miles on my motorcycle, and I’ve gotten pretty comfortable riding it. But this guy is a lot more comfortable than I’d ever want to get!

Bike Night

The local bike shop has a “Bike Night” once a month, and they’ve recently added a Vintage Bikes segment: bring in your old bikes, and everybody votes on Best in Show for prizes. They also have a dyno with a horsepower shootout, which is mostly a curiosity when you have a stock DR-Z400 (rated 34 HP) and several bikes there made well over 100 HP.

This was one of the vintage bikes, a Honda Passport C70 with… a NOS canister???? Someone has got an even weirder sense of humor than me, and that’s saying a lot!

I came for the free food, primarily, and to see how much a new front tire is going to run me ($120) when I need to replace it, probably next month. But the good thing about these gatherings is getting to meet up with other people who love motorcycles and talk about them. Two other guys came in (together) on bikes like mine, and so we hit it off pretty quick. Turns out they live in Buford, but come up this way often to ride both on & off road. One guy was laughing about my milk crate, and even offered me a tank bag if I’d get rid of it, but it was a magnetic bag and I have a plastic tank… then we all laughed about the 70cc scooter with the NOS canister.

There was a chance of rain, and I’d brought my rain suit… and it turned out to be needed. A few drops were enough to get the staff moving their bikes inside; some of the sporties clustered under the awning provided by the dyno truck and some of the visitors boogied on out. The few drops turned into an impressive downpour, which was kind enough to wash a lot of the grime off my bike, and those of us who waited it out alternatively watched the owner’s video of a Colorado ride or stood under one of the large metal awnings and watched the rain wash our bikes.

The rain finally let up, so I put on my rain suit and headed home. It didn’t take long to find some more rain, although it looked as if I might get a break closer to town… and in fact, it stopped for a couple miles. But after that, it pretty much rained all the way home. My hands and feet were soaked, but the rain suit did its job well and kept the rest of me dry and comfortable.

You Go, Girl. To Some Other School.

Lovely… and it’s the school I graduated from.

This is a story that sucks on several levels.

Lordy, but I was glad to get out of high school. I blew that town and didn’t go back for a long time. When I did, I took Mrs. Fetched to the Farm House, a restaurant I worked at for a while. I told the waitress I wanted to say hello to the owner, and she got a funny look and said, “Oh… he moved to Grand Rapids with his daughter. And nobody knew he had a daughter.” oooooops

Summertime?

July came in like early April. 55°F this morning and very low humidity, something quite unusual for Planet Georgia in July. Usually, this time of year, people are considering turning on the car A/C during the morning commute. DD’s pal from Norway would have approved.

A more reliable indicator that summer has arrived: The Boy moved out a couple weeks ago. A few weeks ago, he showed us the place he and his friends were looking at: a double-wide with rotting siding (not well-hidden under fresh paint) and a missing central A/C unit. The place was locked, so I can only imagine what the roof & floors were like. So they ended up renting a trailer from Mrs. Fetched’s mom… they agreed to a bunch of stipulations about alcohol and parties (none), although I’m sure they’ll have some booze hidden away somewhere. Snippet is there (of course), along with one of the other band members and his cousin P.O.D.

Speaking of P.O.D., his commute to Canton is eating him alive — why he can’t find an apartment closer to work is beyond me, but he’s Big V’s son and I’ve long given up on trying to untangle what passes for logic on that side of the family. So he started nosing around to see if I’d “loan” him my Civic (which I bought from him so he could get a truck), but it picked this last week for the speedometer sensor to start acting up. Not thinking he’d take me up on it, I offered to loan him the Virago and he jumped on it. I didn’t think a crotch rocket pilot, even a former one (he sold it after a large speeding ticket some time back), would be interested in a large cruiser. But he figured he could save $30/week in gas alone, so maybe it’s not a big surprise.

I let him borrow it over the weekend to get acquainted with it, and he brought it back complaining of it missing and acting weird. I wasn’t in any shape on Sunday to deal with it, but I checked it out last night and it acted just like it had once before, a couple of years ago, and hadn’t done since. Using the strategy, “check the cheap stuff first,” we (P.O.D. helped) quickly stunk up the garage with spilled gasoline and found that the fuel filter was beyond dirty. Mrs. Fetched picked up a new one today while I was at work, and I got it in tonight. I haven’t refilled the gas tank yet, but I’m pretty sure that will fix the problem. I figure he’ll pick it up while I’m at work tomorrow.

The blackberries are already getting ripe — and I’ll definitely be out picking this weekend when it’s not raining. There’s a new stand, where the timber people cleared an ingress point, that looks nearly as big as the one in the pasture I raided last year. There’s a smaller stand in the front yard, and that’s getting picked first because I won’t have to walk as far. :-) I’d like to get 3 gallons total, which would keep us in jelly for a while. If The Boy and Snippet aren’t too lazy to do a little picking, they could get some free food.

In any case, I’m looking forward to a three-day weekend.

Bad Product Names

I happened to notice this sitting under the bathroom sink one night, as I was — oh, I have to say it! — doing my own bowl blaster.

Mrs. Fetched was the one who bought it. Me, I would have laughed heartily and left it on the supermarket shelf. On the other hand, it’s more fun seeing it at home.

I see at least three double-entendres on the label. Sing out, everyone, 'cause maybe there’s more!

This has potential!

Via Man Eegee…

The Lakota people are seceding from the US, taking what appear to be large chunks of five states with them:



I’d like to get some popcorn and watch the fun, but this could just as easily be either boring or horrifying. It’s also a little unsettling, as (much) later episodes of FAR Future will cover the balkanization of America, including the native nations. Once again, reality is jumping the gun on me.

3-Day Weekend Update, and Planet Georgia Logic

We (mostly) got our 3-day weekend after all. Mrs. Fetched woke up Saturday morning feeling much better than the day before, and continued to improve through the day. Hooray! Late in the afternoon, we packed a couple of bags with things (and I left the laptop at home, as advised by my good blog-buddies) and headed down. We had a little time to just rest and chill out before going to the company party.

The party went pretty well — I ran into a guy who sits two cubes down from me; he had a short but incredibly cute girlfriend with him. She and Mrs. Fetched hit it off famously, and us guys talked about various things (including shop talk).

A couple of hours into the party, the cellphones started ringing. We had told The Boy that he could have four specific friends over (including Cousin Splat), but no girlfriends or other female types, and nobody was to go into the house without escort. Well, that went by the wayside shortly after we left — there were eight people, two of which were female (one of which was The Boy’s old girlfriend Snippet) — traipsing in and out of the house like they owned the place. Daughter Dearest, who isn’t terribly fond of any of The Boy’s friends, locked the door and The Boy broke the doorknob to get in. Then she got rather upset and yelled at all of them. Cousin Splat lived up to his name by threatening to slap her silly if she didn’t shut up. And that was all she wrote.

Upon arriving at FAR Manor, I immediately told everyone to git. And told Splat that if he ever threatened Daughter Dearest again, there would be Hell to pay. He made some lame excuse, and Mrs. Fetched took over at that point. I started fixing the doorknob — the latch was bent and binding — and The Boy made the mistake of asking me what the big deal was.

“The big deal is,” I told him as he waved his hand at me and walked away, “that your mom and I can’t go anywhere without you ruining it for us!”

“Well, I guess I’m just a big screw-up,” he said, climbing into one of his friends’ cars.

“Yes, yes you are. And if you don’t want to straighten up your act, you’re not welcome back here.” He made the same waving gesture and left. Do I sound like I was peeved? I managed to get the doorknob working and put it back together. It’s a little loose; I guess we need a new one. And deadbolts. FAR Manor is about as secure as a Dozebox. But I digress. All of our stuff was at the hotel room, except for my laptop (which Mrs. Fetched said I should have brought).

Sunday morning, no Boy, and Daughter Dearest pronounced herself fit to solo again. We decided to go ahead and go, told DD to go to the grandparents’ if she didn’t want to stay at the manor, I sighed and grabbed my laptop — Mrs. Fetched didn’t want me to leave it there if The Boy decided to retaliate somehow — and a box of oranges we’d ordered for her older sister, and we took off again. We took a nap through the late afternoon, then decided to resume our original plans to eat at Gimza’s Polish Restaurant in Norcross (the guy whose name is on the sign is a co-worker, doing two jobs and burning the candle at both ends). If you’re in the area, the restaurant is at the corner of Medlock Bridge Rd. and Spalding Drive; the parking lot segues into an adjacent Citgo station. The prices are quite reasonable (much more so than the decor suggests) and the food is very good. Mrs. Fetched, who’s usually fussy about “strange” food, is a fan.

Yesterday (Monday) was our planned shopping day. This worked out. VERY well. We didn’t have the mall to ourselves, but parking was no problem and there were no crowds. We will be doing a Monday shopping trip next year, even if there’s no 3-day weekend to go with it (we may not have another one of those for a long time, or at least until Daughter Dearest is safely in college). We got ahem, cough, and phbhblltt for the kids (neener neener, DD!), and met the sister at a Thai place to transfer the oranges. I was very good; even though I had the computer, I only used it when Mrs. Fetched was watching TV — and then, only to type up stuff I’d written instead of getting online. Much. (She asked me to pull up the weather. Really.)

Speaking of shopping… in one locale, the cops are patrolling mall parking lots and yellow-tagging vehicles that have merchandise visible on seats or floors — “in other words, vehicles that are easy targets for thieves.”

Now that’s Planet Georgia logic for you: find easy targets and make them that much easier to spot! All in the name of fighting crime, of course.