Oh, almost forgot...

M.A.E.’s back, and brought a cold with her. Fortunately, the other female type (whom her acquaintances call “Psycho”) is not. The Boy considered coming back, but it hasn’t happened. I guess we all got our priorities. He and M.A.E. aren’t exactly buddies now that they’ve broken up, although they finally agreed to be civil to each other.

Sigh For a little while, I was able to traipse through the house in my underwear as was once my habit. I’ll probably have to wait until Daughter Dearest is in college for more opportunities.

Give Ya the Bird

I had a peek at the nest, evening before last, and found a new occupant. The picture sucks, but that was the best angle I could get & I didn’t want to disturb things to the point where the parents would abandon it. At least you can see the top of its head.

I'll post better shots if/when I get them.

Pop goes the fake spare, and other minor emergencies

Monday, I mentioned that The Boy was having tire problems, and put the (mostly bald) fake spare on. I said at the time, “pray it holds up until he has enough money to fix the regular tire.”

Late yesterday morning, he called me: “You working at home today? That spare tire blew up and my jack broke, so my axle’s sitting on the pavement.” Unfortunately for him, I had an off-site after-hours department meeting to attend at the CTO’s place (pssssht!)... meaning I was at the office. Nobody else was around, so I suggested he call Mrs. Fetched’s parents and ask them to bring a jack. It wasn’t until afterwards that I wondered what he was going to put on in place of the fake spare. His (flat) regular tire?

On the way to the department meeting, the phone started ringing. (Have I ever mentioned I’m not a real big fan of smellphones?) First it was a friend of M.A.E.’s, who has been here off & on over the last couple of weeks, wanting to know if I can put battery cables and belts on her car. A mechanic was supposed to do it for her, but they’re balking. She’s the kind of person that other people get tired of very quickly... in my book, she’s gone from “ehhh” to “repulsive” in a couple of weeks. I told her I’d try doing it after work (today) if it wasn’t raining (it did). Mere minutes after that, Daughter Dearest wants to know if I can email a picture. Um, not on the road I can’t. Then it was The Boy, who somehow managed to get back on the road but was now out of gas. I managed to get to my destination somehow, then M.A.E. rang up with the sob story du jour.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Mrs. Fetched invited her to leave early yesterday. She and Ms. Repulsive have been hanging out with some friends the last couple of nights, and M.A.E. decided she was too sick (i.e. having too much fun) to work. And here we thought she was getting some responsibility. Mrs. Fetched was disappointed, and doesn’t handle disappointment well. At all.

After that one, I just turned the dang phone off and headed for the cooler. Funny... I was planning to decline the invitation, since there was a board meeting at church, but Mrs. Fetched pressured me to go. Turned out to be the good choice — everyone had to deal with their own problems for a change, and I got to taste some high-quality tequila (oh, what a difference). Sometimes, she’s prescient.

On the way home, I called The Boy back. He’d gotten a little gas and was OK. Until this evening, when he called again. Mrs. Fetched went, and I’m sure he paid for the fuel by listening to a lecture.

Study hall

Two guys from the old private school where our kids used to go have been camping out here most of the week to get their senior term papers finished up (or started—they’re Cutting It Mighty Fine since it’s due tomorrow). We have amenities like lots of computers and a DSL line, plus a guy who writes for a living and several other high-speed keyboarders... what’s not to like? Yes, they’re writing the content. I gave them a few pointers about structure and so on, stuff they probably would have learned about in school if they had been paying attention.

I can’t believe there’s only two weeks until school is out. Daughter Dearest is about worn out (90 math problems for homework? Come on!) though, and is starting to get “icepick headaches” that hurt like #3!! for about 3 seconds then go away. Not good. A little R&R will do her some good, but she needs to start getting some exercise. So do I, I’ve been slacking lately although it’s not all my fault.

Been up wayyyyy too late the last few days for various reasons—one night I just couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe I’ll get to sleep late on Saturday morning.

Another houseguest!

Well, at least this one just lives in the garage. I’m not sure how she(?) deals with the garage opening and closing all the time, unless there’s a hidden exit I’m not aware of. Then again, I think I know how all the bird seed got spilled out now. Sheesh. The only thing that seems to bother her is when I move the grill, which usually lives in front of the shelves here (which is how the nest managed to go undetected in the first place). Click on the picture to get a slightly larger version; look for beady little eyes under the white “eyebrows” in the center.

I'm not sure what kind of bird that is; it might be what my father-in-law calls a “jenny wren.”


I would have just chucked the nest outside, and let the interlopers build somewhere else, but I was a little late in discovering the addition. Okee-fine... maybe she’ll keep the bug population in the garage under control. If she keeps the garage spider-free, I’ll invite her in for next year.

When/if the egg hatches, I’ll post more pictures.


If you count comments, this is the 300^th post on Tales from FAR Manor!

Comma comma down, dooby doo down-down

It’s official: The Boy has broken up with M.A.E. She’s not taking it too well, even though she kind of expected it. Actually, he announced the breakup while we were coming home from Florida, but I’ve learned to not take statements from most of the denizens of FAR Manor at face value. He has another girlfriend already; I’m not sure if he was seeing her before.

I’m hoping this doesn’t drive M.A.E. back to old behaviors or anything. It might be touch & go with her for a while.

Third time the charm?

In the Roundup post below, I mentioned that Lobster was supposed to cough up the rent but I figured he wouldn’t. This one was a little on the spectacular side.

So yesterday evening, Mrs. Fetched caught him and asked him if he had the rent money.

“No,” he said. “That’s not important. I don’t have to pay it anyway.”

“Then pack up and get out,” said Mrs. Fetched, starting to switch to Battle Mode.

“You can’t make me leave,” he said, “it’s against the law.” (Have I mentioned that Lobster has pretty much turned off his brain lately?)

I chimed in at this point, “Show me a lease, foo’.” He had a chance to sign an agreement, which could perhaps have been construed as a lease, but never did it.

Mrs. Fetched didn’t say too much, but I’ve seen her Axe Murderer look before. Charles Manson would have thought twice before messing with someone giving him that look. After disagreeing with our choice to drop off his stuff, Lobster suddenly realized he needed to be at work and left precipitously.

Next thing I knew, garbage bags were dropping down the stairs and landing in the hallway. I went up to help, and so did The Boy. We loaded up all his stuff, dropped it on his parents’ porch (after calling them), then went to get groceries. Since Lobster works across the highway from the supermarket, I popped into the KFC to let him know where his stuff was, not to come back to FAR Manor, and to let us know if anything was missing. Having heard nothing since then, I presume he has it all.

Never say never, but I don’t think he’s coming back. I guess he just finished wearing out his welcome. This (unfortunately) being a real-life soap opera, nobody is ever completely written out of the script — but everyone is glad to see him go. After talking to Mrs. Fetched the way he did, I guess he’s lucky he didn’t have to pick his teeth off the floor with broken fingers or something.

Roundup

I spent two of the last three weeks in Florida... unfortunately, it was the week in the middle I was at FAR Manor (two trips). As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to collect a bunch of short items into a single post. I might come back and update this tonight or tomorrow if I think of anything else.

The first week, you pretty much know about already.

Lobster is (as usual) late with the rent. He seems to think he can just blow us off and spend it on clothes or whatever. WRONG! I’m hoping he’ll just move out, personally — he’s pretty much worn out his welcome as far as I’m concerned. If he takes the money and runs, fine.

From the Wishful Thinking Department: At work, I got a purchase requisition signed off for a translation project. I’m hoping to come back to work Monday to find it’s well under way.

Driving to Florida on a Spring Break Friday is not something I would advise under any circumstances. Between the time it took just to get through Atlanta, the road construction on I-4, and the usual delays (including dropping off M.A.E.), we got to where we were staying at 3 a.m. (about four hours late).

Speaking of M.A.E., I joked with BJ a few weeks back that we might just drop M.A.E. off at her aunt’s and “forget” to pick her up on the way back. Bad move: it got back to her and she thought I was serious. While we were in Florida last week, she called us just about every day to make sure nothing had changed.

As usual, there was nothing available in Orlando this time of year so we stayed at a timeshare in Titusville. Getting there at 3 a.m., we didn’t realize that the unit we were staying in was actually on the street instead of the little lane where the office and five of the units are. It took us 15 minutes to figure that out, at a time when we really didn’t need that aggravation.

Mrs. Fetched and I agree: we like Titusville. That’s probably because it’s not primarily a tourist area; Kennedy Space Center is the primary economic engine and there isn’t a beach area nearby. Even though it’s on the water, there’s only one high-rise condo development and it’s under construction. The only hurricane damage that we saw was the demolished fishing pier. Another part of its charm is that it’s separated from the Orlando (aka Tollando) area by 17 miles of marshland — fat chance that will get developed any time soon! It has that scruffy but comfortable feeling of a favorite pair of shoes. I could see myself living there more than just about any other part of the state. Not that I ever expect to escape Planet Georgia, but you never know.

Toll booth operators hate it when you pay in pennies. Tough $#!+ — if you’re going to screw over the people that pretty much keep your economy afloat by charging them to get from Point A to Point B, you need to expect some pushback. Especially when people are down to their last few bucks.

We ended up spending a night over at Mom’s — we had invited them to visit us, but they started hitting problem after problem (sound familiar?) and gave up. We decided to check out a day early and go over there instead. Very nice!

From the Rant-o-rama Department: One of the more egregious pieces of happy horse$#!+ I heard (last week or ever): men consider the “ideal woman” to be totally subservient and totally uncritical. Talk about gritting one’s teeth to keep from making a scene. Personally, that would be boring after a short while. I’d settle for someone who thinks she is (and actually is) equal, rather than superior in every way, and isn’t compelled to point out every freeking mistake (in her mind) that I make, especially when she doesn’t want to do it herself — or worse, set me up to knock me down. For example, we got in about midnight last night. Mrs. Fetched decided that the four eggs in the refrigerator were probably bad — even though I’m totally strung out from driving the last 13 hours, I’m supposed to hear (and remember) not to use the eggs on one side of the tray. (I guess making an effort to throw them out was totally out of the question.) So she wants me to fix eggs for breakfast and gets them out. Naturally, I got the “wrong” eggs. Of course she had to tell me that she knew I would get the wrong ones; but again, actually making an effort to prevent me from doing that must have been beneath her — either that, or she wanted me to get the “bad” eggs so she’d have something to gripe about. It’s getting harder and harder to scream “F**K YOU” and leave when that crap happens. I’m starting to wonder if she’s trying to kill me with stress for the insurance money.

Going north on a Spring Break Friday isn’t much better than going south. The first 100 miles were stop-and-go, finally opening up around Gainesville FL. But the freeway was pretty much carrying its capacity all the way up to Atlanta. Breaking for a picnic lunch at a rest area is probably the best way to cope with it, although things won’t necessarily be better when you get back on the road.

Finally: road atlases definitely have a shelf life. They should probably be replaced every three years or so, especially if there’s a lot of construction in areas where you’re travelling.

Status quo

Things are rapidly getting back to what the problem children call “normal” — staying out waaayy past 10:30p.m. curfew and the like. Mrs. Fetched is again making noises about clearing them out. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Lobster called from work, wondering if we were going to pick him up. Um... no. He really must think that nothing I say has any actual content. Mrs. Fetched got a bit squeamish the last couple of days about letting him fend for himself — I was half-expecting her to let him come back and to #3|| with what I wanted, at which point I would have packed up and left myself — and even The Boy, who is not exactly fond of Lobster these days, tried to talk me into letting him come back. I figured he could fend for himself at least one night, then see if he suddenly got enlightened about how one should treat people who let you stay in your house for months on end, etc. etc.

Well... shades of the Summer of Discontent. Guess who took him in? Yup, Big V. She picked him up from work, hitting a deer along the way (serves her right for poking her nose into things again, she can’t see at night anyway). Then she brought him here to get his clothes, and came in herself. Words were exchanged with Mrs. Fetched, as usual, with me (futilely) trying to get a word in edgewise, until Big V did one of her typical eight-cylinder-huff exits.

The way Lobster has been acting, he hasn’t learned a thing: he did zip/nada to find another place to stay, then tried to tell me a couple of nights ago that I had to give him 30 days’ notice (WRONG). Tonight, he whined about not being able to go back to school (the school policy is that you have to live at home; they bent it to let him stay with us)... although from what the principal told us, he hasn’t doing anything but warming a chair lately anyway. Hey, he said it himself: he’s 18, he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, he can do what he want and go where he wants and come back when he wants. Fine, he just can’t do it at FAR Manor.

Obviously, Big V hasn’t learned a thing from the previous episode either. Her and Lobster both think the universe was created solely for their benefit... so I expect things will blow sky-high before too long. I doubt it will even last the 2-½ weeks The Boy and M.A.E. stayed there. I give it 10 days.

This is one of those times when I would really like to have a second place far away from here. I’d be there, with everything valuable that I could carry with me, right now.

Project “Honey I’m Home!” continues

The Boy is next in line on the launching pad. After this morning’s rant, I went to get The Boy up to help me pick up the trimmings from the butterfly bushes. He rolled over, looked at the clock, and asked for 20 minutes (11 a.m.). OK, it wasn’t anything that needed to be done right away. I gave him 45 minutes (almost 11:30).

And of course, he didn’t want to get up at 11:30, either. He wanted to not have to do anything (even a half hour worth) until it was time to go to work (i.e. until it was time for me to take him to work). I finally told him that if all he wanted to do here was eat and sleep, giving us nothing but disrespect in return, he could follow Lobster right out the door. While I was picking up the trimmings, the girlies returned from the chicken houses and Mrs. Fetched helped me get the rest up while I let her know what was going on. Afterwards, she jumped in the shower and I did a couple of other things then woke M.A.E. up about 1 p.m. to vacuum the floors.

After Mrs. Fetched & Daughter Dearest got out of the shower, we decided to go out for lunch (we’d planned to do something since we had a day off, although I would have preferred more than just a lunch). The Boy had to find a ride to work: he can’t get up to help me, why should I be arsed to drive him around? We weren’t where we could drop everything and come back for him anyway. After lunch, we picked up Lobster then went in the store to grab some garbage bags. M.A.E. called Lobster and (according to Daughter Dearest) was complaining that I woke her up at 1 in the afternoon, the horror! When we got home, the two went outside (one at a time, but right after the other)... y’know, for two people who profess not to like each other, they sure do stick together. Wife sent me out to “putter around in the garage” while they were out there; they kept their voices too low to hear but I did manage to find a coax cable with F-connectors (I swear I looked in that box last week and didn’t see one!) and a soft-sided cooler. The former went to the outbuilding for future photography needs, the latter in the trunk of my car.

So Lobster gets to stay through the end of the month. I’d just as soon give him the $30 rent, pro-rated for the rest of the month, and tell him to hit the road... but whatever. As long as they’re out of here. Eight days, then they really can be independent. Eight more days.

Throwing Back the Lobster

A while back, we made it pretty clear to Lobster — as well as The Boy and M.A.E. — what was expected from each of them individually and all of them as a group... and if they didn’t want to live up to those expectations, they knew where the door was.

Lobster is kind of a special case at the moment: he’s the only one actively in school. The Boy started flinging the “this school is stupid, I’ll be able to do better at the private school” (that he couldn’t wait to get away from last year) crap. Fine, whatever, as long as he finishes, right? So we started making the arrangements to get him back in the private school. We figured there wouldn’t be much of a problem — especially since the preacher at the church told Daughter Dearest that they would try to make some arrangements if they wanted to come back — and The Boy just jumps and expects the soft landing to be there anyway. The upshot is, he quit the public school and the principal at the private school said “I prayed about it and it’s not the best thing.” I’ll spare y’all the obligatory potshots at pentecostals.

So ever since, Lobster has been whining and complaining each morning that he has to get up while The Boy just lays there. We’re trying to arrange a home school program for The Boy so he can finish up (as if he’ll put any effort into it, but he won’t be able to say we didn’t give him the chance), but these things don’t happen overnight. None of them have any sense of responsibility, it seems... as if we didn’t know that already.

President’s Day weekend rolls around, under the unskilled aegis of the worst president ever. Daughter Dearest & even your humble correspondent get Monday off. But not Lobster (nor Mrs. Fetched, because chicken houses never rest, but anyway). That private school has some good points, but they’re seriously weird in others. The Boy and M.A.E. decide they want to go to a movie, along with Lobster. Since it was 8:30, I figured they could go, be home by 11, and I’d be able to get Lobster off to school. I fiddled around, did a little exercise (been slacking on that lately, bad FARfetched, bad!), and called Lobster’s smellphone around 11. No answer. I told him he needed to be home ASAP to get to school the next day.

Around midnight, still haven’t heard anything. I called his phone, he picked up & hung up. I tried it again, same result. The third attempt went straight to his voice mail, and I left him a rather pointed message. About five minutes later, I tried again, got the voice mail, and started leaving a real happy note when he called. “Oh, we decided to just come home around 6 and you can take me to school.” I told him at that point to not bother coming home, he could get a ride to school with whoever was carrying them around.

“But what about my bookbag and uniform?”

“Not my problem,” I told him. He whined about my trying to “control” him, and I told him it had nothing to do with control and everything to do with responsibility. After some more whining on his part, I just hung up, turned off the phone, and went to bed.

So of course they don’t show up at 6... it’s almost 8 a.m. sharp when The Boy calls and says, “we’re outside, can you unlock the door?” The three of them came in and all of them, including Lobster, got in their beds. Uh-uh, Lobster, you’ve got school. I said I’d take him there but not bring him back; he could find somewhere else to live and whoever takes him in can come get his stuff.

On the way to school, I told him I really do hope he succeeds at whatever he decides to do, but we obviously can’t help him take the next step. He wants to be his own person, it’s time for him to step out on his own, and The Boy and M.A.E. will be gone just as soon as he gets his car legal. He just grunted, as if I expected anything different. Now Mrs. Fetched starts criticizing me about how I shouldn’t have said anything about the others leaving, and Lobster has paid rent through the end of the month, and M.A.E. still owes us $270... and that, in a nutshell, is why I haven’t made much effort to play much role in what goes on around here: when everything you do and say gets criticized or negated, why bother? I told her as much, and she clammed up after a couple feeble attempts at self-justification. As far as M.A.E. is concerned, there’s such a thing as cutting your losses.

So that’s my day off. Now I need to get The Boy up to help pick up some brush trimmings....

M.A.E.: You’re Fired

How romantic. Valentine’s Day rolled around, and M.A.E. was scheduled to work at Arby’s. A lot of her co-workers were taking the day off, which gave her the opportunity to get some needed hours on the job. She decided that she wanted to spend the day with The Boy instead of working too... and depending on whose story you believe, she either called in or she didn’t. Either way, the result was the same — terminated for no-call/no-show. So much for being responsible.

There’s a bright side: the business at Arby’s has been a bit slack as of late, and M.A.E. had recently been lucky to get in more than 16 hours in a week. Given that she still has to get her driver’s license back, and has no car anyway, Mrs. Fetched has been providing transportation. Yes, M.A.E. has been paying for the gas, and it was a noticeable chunk of her take-home pay. She applied for a job at a resort about two miles from FAR Manor, and with any luck she’ll get that job. But it’s always best to hang on to what you have until you can grab something better... something I’ve had to start reminding The Boy about lately.

The Lobster Crash

So yesterday morning, Lobster dragged himself out of bed and headed on to school. I’ve always been a little leery of the turn into that school (the private one where the kids went last year); it’s just below the crest of a hill on a fairly busy highway. So Lobster is waiting to turn left into the school/church lot, with the sun in his face. He went for it... and some goober in a big pickup pulling a boat, came wailing over the hill and clipped Lobster in the rear, totally destroying Lobster’s truck bed.

Nobody hurt, fortunately... just a couple grand worth of repairs that nobody can pay for. Of course, Lobster got the ticket because he was doing the left turn, but he’s going to ask for an investigation because the guy was traveling at a pretty good clip in what should be a school zone.

One more expense for the kid. I’m not much inclined to cut him a break; his attitude of late is that he is entitled to do what he pleases, regardless of how we feel about it, and to live here basically for free. I kind of think his living here is compounding the problems he’s having with his own parental units — both sides may feel like they don’t really have to work out their differences because he can just come here instead.

I’m not sure whether it will take a crowbar, or those new mini-nukes they want to drop on Iran, to get the extra peeps out of FAR Manor. Maybe I should grab an axe like in The Shining, yell “Honey, I'm home!” and chase ’em outta here.

All’s quiet

The Boy, as usual, is taking his sweet time getting home. He has to get up & go to work in the morning, and he hasn’t had much sleep as it is lately, and he has a cold... but when you’re 18, you can burn the candle at both ends for a while. Things have settled down into a series of head-butting contests with Mrs. Fetched; she’s ready to take him back to his apartment and leave him there. Now if only he would stop the head-butting crapola, she might let him have the old minivan (we got it back this week) and he could have all the fun of living on his own for real.

The chances of his (and Lobster’s) graduating this year are pretty slim at this point. Lobster has often elected to sleep until whenever instead of going to school; The Boy is a little better but is often tardy. Report cards are pretty rank, with the usual I’m-doing-better-now protests that don’t pan out. If Lobster wants to spend the rest of his life working in a KFC, he’s certainly going about it the right way... at least until he sleeps late once too many times and gets fired.

The wife’s new dog (Crissy, although I often call her Princess Bladder or Pissy for reasons that should be easy to guess) is learning the ropes amazingly quickly. I think today was the third day she’s been to the chicken house and she’s already picking up dead chickens and bringing them to Mrs. Fetched. There was the incident last week where one of the in-laws’ dogs attacked her on her first day at “work,” chewing on a foot and freaking everyone out, but she has pretty much healed because this afternoon she (again) climbed over the top of her pen and jumped out. Nothing wrong with that foot if she can take a six-foot drop and not yelp! Her breed, whatever it is (I was told blue healer but she doesn’t look anything like the photos I found on Google) is energetic and thinks a chain-link fence is a ladder. We’ve had several dogs from this line, and they’ve all been like that.

Me, I’m doing OK. I left a post on Eat4Today that lists some of the benefits I’m already seeing from trying to get my own situation under control. Those first 15 or so pounds were easy come, easy go; I suspect the next 15 pounds won’t be quite as easy or quick to shed (they’ve been there a long time). There are other things I talked about that I think are more important than simple numbers... maybe I’ll start feeling more energetic before too long too. Or maybe I should try getting more sleep....

Dangit

Mrs. Fetched baked some salmon last night, with some potatoes etc. on the side. I put the leftovers into two microwave plates — one for my lunch today and one for The Boy after he came home from band practice.

As things really went, Lobster ate The Boy’s plate... and The Boy ate my plate.

The Boy meets Reality

One of the recurring theme of conversations with The Boy, especially bringing him home from work, is his assertion that he, Lobster, and M.A.E. are going to move out and get an apartment in January. My audible response has usually been a grunt, although I think “Yeah right” to myself. Trying to explain the Real World to The Boy, I have found, is a waste of syllables; I figured he’d find out for himself.

So with school closed around here Thursday and Friday due to the ice, they piled into Lobster’s truck and went off to secure an apartment they had scoped out some time back. M.A.E. later told us that the manager wouldn’t rent to them because The Boy and Lobster are still in high school, and “we’ve had problems doing that before.” The other minor detail was three people of mixed gender in a two-bedroom apartment. Nobody would come out and say it, but it was pretty clear that The Boy and M.A.E. had planned to share one of the rooms.

The Boy said, “everything was going fine until the manager asked us if we were students [presumably at the local college -FF], and M.A.E. said we were in high school.” He didn’t even mention the other part.

In a vain attempt to further drive the lesson home, Mrs. Fetched ran a few numbers past The Boy: at $525/month rent, each person had agreed to put up $175/month. Lobster says he can’t even afford to pay us $100/month for rent (plus all the food he eats), and M.A.E. barely brings home more than that per month. With the only full-time job among the three of them, The Boy would be the one essentially paying the rent. And then there’s the minor detail of electric bills, heating bills, laundry, food... kiss all the extracurricular stuff (movies twice/week, shooting pool) goodbye. He didn’t respond much. With him, you can’t tell if it’s sinking in or bouncing off.

December funk

Current music: Creation Steppin’ Radio
Sheesh. Not only is it December, it’s mid-December. Hey, at this rate I’ll wake up and it will be spring! (now that’s a happy thought)

Like most early winters, I wrestle with light deprivation and my disgust at the commercialist orgy that Christmas has become (if that O’reilly whackjob on Faux wanted to “save” Christmas, he should have started about 40 years ago). Unlike most early winters, this time it’s getting the better of me. The choir’s annual caroling & food basket delivery was this afternoon, and participating did more to boost my spirits than anything else has so far.

Another wrestling move I’m trying this year is been to throw myself into working over the technical writing chimeras called structure and metadata. Perhaps I didn’t dig deep enough, but most of the literature on metadata that I found in a Google search is geared more toward libraries and museums than technical writing.

The blob here is a mind-map of what I’ve come up with so far; I’m almost ready to start turning it into a paper (click the pic for something almost readable). The muddled state of the mind-map perhaps reflects the muddle in my own mind, but nothing I’ve run across so far has challenged my belief that most people involved are making things far more complex than need be. If I don’t write more about it on the blog, I’ll stash the paper somewhere and point to it.


But speaking of muddling, I’ll muddle through, like I always do. It’s nice that Christmas falls on a Sunday this year. Not being a member of a mega-church, we’re having a service on Christmas, although the pastor told me he’s thinking of just reading the story and letting it stand as such — not a bad idea, really. It will be nice to light that big white candle in the Advent wreath on the day it should be lit.

A funk isn’t much of a problem, in the grand scheme of things. A friend of The Boy’s spent last night at our house, and he and Lobster headed out about 10 this morning. About a mile down the road, he went off the road and literally flew over Lobster’s truck before rolling. Thank God he was wearing his seatbelt; the car is totaled but he has a split lip and needs a trip to the chiro-cracker. Lobster called 911 and waited until the first responders got there before leaving.

So later in the morning, Lobster calls from work in a near-panic. You see, he was supposed to hang around until the cops got there and give a statement; the cop who called him told him he needed to come down to the station to give his statement “and then we’ll decide if we should charge you with anything.” He was nearly freaked out, to the point where Mrs. Fetched agreed to go with him. He got off with a lecture, and a lot of teasing from everyone else, in the end.

Yes, there are things far worse than a simple funk. And the tinnitus has been mostly gone for two days, hallelujah!

M.A.E. with PITA

M.A.E. and The Boy were goofing around a few nights back, and he tried to pick her up. What he actually did was drop her on her can. It didn’t take long before she was in serious hurt. Mrs. Fetched ended up staying up with her and giving her Advil until they could get to the chiro-cracker.

Dr. Chiro X-rayed her and yep, she had a compressed disk and some shifting down there. He did what he could to re-align it, and told her to use ice, help it out by pulling her knees to her chest, and avoid hot baths. Things started getting better, until M.A.E. forgot about the hot bath part and took one. Baaaaaaaaad move. Worse, Dr. Chiro had a continuing education seminar in Orlando, so he couldn’t do anything about it. He did refer her to a guy in the next town down, who worked on her for about an hour and only charged her $25 (very important, as she doesn’t have a lot of extra moolah).

Meanwhile, The Boy, who’s like half responsible for all this, is kind of ignoring the whole situation. For example, he called us while Daughter Dearest and I were running errands, and asked us to bring them home some lunch — but when we got there, he fixed his own plate and left it to M.A.E. to hobble out and get her own. Needless to say, she is getting more than a little cheesed.

The one bright spot: I apparently guessed right about the problem being inflammation. I have some good old aspirin (can’t seem to convince Mrs. Fetched that it does many things better than Tylenol or Advil). After we got M.A.E. to eat something, we gave her a couple of aspirin and it seems to have helped. Dr. Chiro will be back in tomorrow evening and will see her then — maybe he can do something else for her.

Lobster Stew(ed)

The ding-a-ling came home with another ticket — this one for 72 in a 45 zone. Baaaaaad news.

Seeing that it’s his second ticket within 30 days (he got another one Hallowe’en night), he’s probably going to get his license suspended. I assume they’ll give him a special ticket to drive to work and school... but that second ticket was while he was going to work.

He’s going to learn a whole new meaning of the word, “fine.”