Making a Virtue of Necessity

It’s Virtual Monday at FAR Manor, having come off a 3-day weekend. Mrs. Fetched has been working on a video (for a — wait for it — poultry convention!) and the client said they wanted widescreen after she showed them the first (standard screen) cut. Oops… we never did get around to upgrading her system (a G4 dualie “Quicksilver” that is only now showing its age after 7 years), but a copy of Final Cut Express 4 has been sitting around in an unopened box. Given the requirements, it had to go onto my MacBook. I plugged in my 1TB external drive, pulled all her stuff over, and let her get at it.

Of course, since we were starting with a standard (4:3) project, moving it to widescreen (16:9) involved more than opening the project and continuing. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say the project fought us every step of the way, but Mrs. Fetched wanted to get it done so we did manage to wrassle it to the ground and hogtie it in the end. One of the hassles was that I had to install and run FCE as the admin user — a rather unpleasant surprise for a Mac user, especially when it’s one of Apple’s own products. We’re used to things not being so cranky. The upshot was, I was fenced off from my writing files for most of the weekend while Mrs. Fetched worked or left things for me to deal with.

Undaunted, I picked up my new replacement Kindle and finished reading Walden. Then I started on another book I transferred to the Kindle, one I hope you’re familiar with. I wanted to give it a once-over to note a few awkward passages, but then I remembered the note-taking capability…

This actually has worked pretty well so far, and I’m 2/3 of the way through the book. So not only did I make a virtue of necessity, it was a happy virtue. You don’t find many of those.

I’ve found that the AppleTV thing has been really helpful when Mason is tired but still fighting sleep. I can stream Groove Salad or Ambient Alternative, then the photos of the animals start a few minutes later. Mason watches them, gets still… and zzZZZzzzZZZzzz…

All the Extras in One Shot

One thing you can say about the snow: it gave me the opportunity to get all the extra people at FAR Manor together in one shot!

From left to right: M.A.E., Moptop, The Boy, Lobster, Mason, and Snippet. If you’ve wanted to put faces next to the names, here they are.

The Boy and Snippet built the snowman. I, um, accessorized it.

Winter #1 Comes In Like a… Snippy Snippet?

Along with the first serious arctic blasts from the uttermost north, comes a serious arctic blast from an uttermost ding-a-ling.

This really started Saturday, when I was alone with Mason pretty much all day while Mrs. Fetched and The Boy (and even M.A.E.) were at the chicken houses. Around 5pm, Snippet called wondering how she was going to get home from work.

“Sit tight, Mason’s been napping for a couple hours. I’ll just get him up and we’ll come get you.”

“Can’t The Boy come?”

“He’s still in the chicken houses.”

“Oh.” The unhappy kind.

I got Mason up. “You want to go bye-bye?” I asked him.

“Bye-bye.” He pointed at the door.

“You want to get your mom?”

He shook his head. Seriously, even Mason doesn’t like Snippet much.


As we were on our way to town, Mrs. Fetched called and asked me to meet them in town for supper. No problem… except that M.A.E. was riding with The Boy while Mrs. Fetched rode with Panda. Snippet is projecting her own guilt of cheating on him onto others, which means she has serious problems with The Boy’s long-since-ex M.A.E. being around him when she’s not there to supervise. Or whatever. Snippet even came out and told me she didn’t like it; I told her she had nothing to worry about.

To confirm my (lack of) suspicion, I later asked M.A.E. whether she had any designs on The Boy, which got her a bit pissy about Snippet’s suspicions. Somewhere along the line, M.A.E. went and told Snippet in essence to get over herself, she and The Boy were ancient history. Indeed… she was like 13 when they got together. (“I wonder who she was screwing then,” said Mrs. Fetched later. OUCH)

So we come to last night… Daughter Dearest arrived for the long Christmas break, and the three of us plus M.A.E. were chatting in the bedroom, when The Boy came down. “Can you come upstairs?” he asked. “Snippet wants to tell you something.”

What she had to say started with “You don’t talk to me, I don’t talk to you.” and continued with a rant about how I messed stuff up for her by “dragging” M.A.E. into the situation.

“What I was trying to do was help you get over this ridiculous idea that M.A.E. has any feelings for The Boy.”

“Yeah, well she posted something on Facebook about how she wanted to get back with him.” I was more than a little skeptical about this, and left. Turned out Snippet was right, M.A.E. had posted that… about three years ago. Jeeeeeeeeeez.

So this morning, she started in on me again, and I had enough. “As long as you keep pointing fingers in every direction except at the real problem, which is yourself, you’ll never solve your problems.” I had to repeat this, given that it contained a three-syllable word, and expected a “yeah whatever” kind of response. She turned away, then turned back.

“If Mason wasn’t standing right there,” she said, “this coffee would be all over you right now.”

“It’s a very good thing, for your sake, that it isn’t,” I said, and she woke up two brain cells long enough to agree. I may have ended up in jail, but I would have delivered unto her the ass-kicking she needs and deserves first. Now that I have time to plot a reaction if she actually does do something like that, I’ll settle for bodily throwing her out of my house — a much more satisfying solution, both short- and long-term.

Wednesday Wibbles

Wibble: (UK, Internet slang) Meaningless or content-free chatter in a discussion; drivel, babble.

Maybe this should be Monthly Musings, given the frequency I post them. Anyway…

• • •

I found this Eschatological Taxonomy Poster to be interesting. On this scale, FAR Future is a Level 0 apocalypse, and White Pickups is more or less a Level 2. I say “more or less” because (in the story) the bulk of the human race is eliminated not by war or disease, but a zillion trucks.

• • •

Mason and I have both had colds lately. It’s more effort than it’s worth, trying to figure out who passed it to whom. But Mrs. Fetched waited until last night to tell me I ran a high fever Monday night. I must have worried her; I knew I had a fever because I had major chills — like I had no body heat at all — when getting out of bed to use the bathroom. But I woke up some time in the night, and was really hot on top. I figured Mrs. Fetched had dug out an electric blanket to help warm me up, and it had done a fine job.

“I’m hot. You can turn down the electric blanket now,” I told her.

“What?”

“The electric blanket. You need to turn it down, I’m too hot.”

“Um… I don’t have the controls.”

“Okay, just turn it off or unplug it.”

Needless to say, there was no electric blanket. It sure felt like one though. She may have thought I was delirious, because she asked me if I remembered it. She did say I was really hot; she didn’t stick a thermometer in me but figured I was around 104°F. Just to be sure, though, I stayed out of work on Monday and Tuesday. The good thing about when I get those chills is that it means the cold is almost over. I figure I’ll be fine by the weekend.

• • •

This just in: Snippet tells me that Mason just climbed up into a chair on his own! I see many faceplants in his future. Or maybe not… The Boy did okay. I did have to convince him that he could climb down from whatever he climbed up to, though.

• • •

We’ve gone from a November that felt like October, to a December that feels like… December.

• • •

Mrs. Fetched canceled the planned move of video equipment. M.A.E. and Moptop sleep in the guest room; that wouldn’t be a problem except that Moptop has a really bad habit of feeding DVDs into VCR slots and anywhere else they’ll go. And can’t be trusted with markers or anything else resembling a writing utensil. So says my dresser, some of DoubleRed’s sheets, other furniture…

• • •

Speaking of Moptop, she’s almost as skilled as Snippet at getting on people’s nerves. Even Mason’s. Either she has no concept of personal space, or Mason has an early start at the concept himself. I can be doing something with him, and Moptop will start crowding in — either to see what’s what, or just to be a part of it — and Mason will go “Urrrrrr!!!” and shove her away. It’s kind of funny, really.

• • •

Mason, on the other hand, has really been good about letting us wipe his nose during this cold.

• • •

The toilet in our bathroom may need to be replaced. Or there just might be something in there that Mason tossed in while I wasn’t looking… he’s fascinated with toilets for some reason. Maybe he was a plumber in a previous life. But at the same time, the flapper thing isn’t seating right and Mrs. Fetched wants to replace the guts anyway. I think just moving the chain to another position will help.

“But it’s all corroded and I want to replace it.”

At this point, I just have to fall back on the old standby: “Do what you want — you will anyway.” She grinned.

• • •

After all the sturm und drang around the Wikileaks release of s00p3r-s3kr1t diplomatic cables, we have learned that: 1) diplomats have opinions; 2) Russia is a kleptocracy. In other words, they’re trying to nail this Assange guy on what could very well be bogus rape charges, for telling us stuff we knew already?

Weekend To-do List

There’s some stuff I want to accomplish this weekend. Check back on occasion; I might add a picture or two as I cross stuff off (or add more stuff to) the list.

• Put up insulation in the shower area


• Sand the shower area ceiling Need to do another layer of putty though


• Knock down the stump out back


• Get the winter garden plot started


• Blow some leaves off the yard (excuse to crank up the generator)

Snippet is still not at the manor. I’d forgotten The Boy’s visitation was this evening, and she got a ride to the jail and planned to ride back to the manor with me — but she’d left her smellphone charger at her friend’s place, so I got a reprieve. She might get a ride out here tomorrow… which is the only way she’ll get back. I’m sure Mrs. Fetched will “round out” my day with plenty of other items.

Oh, and let me start with a photo. Mason, being a boy, likes big jugs… and I have photographic proof:



It’s pretty difficult to get a cellphone shot of him these days, as he’s almost constantly in motion. I got lucky this morning.

Snipped! (Temporarily anyway)

Snippet had been bugging me to borrow my car all afternoon. Um… no, you’re not on the insurance is the standard answer that seems to go flying right past her. If it were something important, we’d overlook it — for example, she was supposed to pick up a statement from her former job (Wendy’s) that she was no longer employed there to take to DFACS, presumably to get a boost in her WIC vouchers — but she kept talking about meeting up with a friend. Besides, DFACS is closed due to today being Veteran’s Day.

So while I’m trying to work, she starts asking me if I can just take her to see a friend, and maybe spend the night. After a moment’s thought I said, “Sure… we can keep Mason. I’m supposed to take M.A.E. grocery shopping after I get done with my work, so we can drop you off then and combine the trip.” She got positively giddy and spent the next hour fixing herself up for a Night Out.

And that’s what we did. I don’t think Snippet has figured out yet that she might find it a little more difficult getting back to FAR Manor than it was to leave — she did ask me if I could get her at lunch tomorrow, but I’ll be at the office. I think it might also have escaped her mind that Mrs. Fetched is going to be in the chicken houses all night and thus not disposed to get up in the morning. She’ll definitely make her way back before The Boy gets sprung from jail come Wednesday, but she may well do it under her own power. I’ll disconnect the phone so Mrs. Fetched gets some sleep tomorrow, if that’s what it takes.

Permit me an evil laugh: MWAH-HAH-HAHHHHHH!

Wednesday Wibbles

Wibble: (UK, Internet slang) Meaningless or content-free chatter in a discussion; drivel, babble.

A lot of little stuff has been happening lately, none of which warrants their own posts…

Hey, DoubleRed might have moved out! Her computers and “stuff” is gone, just the furniture remains.

• • •

Mrs. Fetched opined last night that Snippet might be pregnant again. AAAAARRRRRRRRGH!!!!! But she asked The Boy this morning and he says she isn’t. whew On the other hand, other people say she is. AAAAARRRRRRRRGH!!!!! That would be worse than the elections last night. Both of them need to get fixed, pronto.

• • •

OK, click on this picture to get the full-sized version. Tell me that’s not a deep-fried scorpion embedded in this doughnut. Mrs. Fetched says it’s a blob of chocolate. She’s welcome to eat it if she’s that sure. (I used a +4 closeup filter on this.)

• • •

After downgrading from the iPhone, I dug the old iPod 5G out of the basket it was languishing in and put it back in service. One of the things I find I missed about it (without realizing) is just how good the battery life is on that thing. I had it playing pretty much all the way up to Michigan during that 13-hour drive in September, and it had plenty of juice in reserve. It wheezed at work on Monday, and it surprised me until I realized I hadn’t charged it in about a week. Fortunately, I still had the iPhone charger on my desk. I’m thinking about replacing the case with something that doesn’t obscure the screen and deaden the click wheel.

• • •

Looks like our first frost will be Saturday morning (forecast low of 30°F). I'll have to gather the volunteer tomatoes Friday evening and put them in the kitchen window; maybe they’ll ripen — and if not, I guess we’ll have fried green tomatoes. If I’m going to ride the motorcycle to work (and it will need to stop raining first), I might as well bite the bullet and put the second liner in my jacket. Not to mention the wiring for the gloves.

• • •

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) started on Monday. I’d love to participate, but I’ve talked about why I can’t before. This year adds a new reason (besides Mason): I want to finish White Pickups this month, so that’s my informal NaNoWriMo goal for this year.

• • •

Hallowe’en was kind of a bust this year, despite the near-perfect weather — we only had one group of kids come by, so there’s a pretty good pile of candy left in the bucket. Mrs. Fetched took Mason and his parental units to the outlet maul, where the stores were dishing out candy to the kids. Mason had a vampire outfit, pictured here, but he didn’t like the collar and kept pulling it off. He also managed to lose a shoe, so maybe he should have gone in drag and been Cinderella instead. :-P

• • •

With all the people at the manor, the septic tank has once again filled up and needs to be pumped. I might go into the office tomorrow just so I can walk to a working bathroom.

• • •

And that’s all the news that is news at FAR Manor.

A Snippet-y Kind of Week

Current music: Anberlin — Dark is the Way, Light is a Place (album)

Snippet hasn’t exactly had the best kind of week ever. When her manager got onto her about someone else doing something she was supposed to do (he volunteered), she went into one of her rages and slapped the manager. Needless to say, she wasn’t working for Wendy’s after that. So she came home, and you can see here how she decided to return the favor.

Later on, I had Mason outside. Turns out he’s a dog person — he has little or no interest in Sprite (the alien kitty from planet Lardassia), but oohs and aahs over the puppy (whose name is Mongo, thanks to The Boy) — and he was chattering at a hesitant Mongo in his pen. The Boy, Snippet, M.A.E., and Mrs. Fetched were all outside too. Snippet and Mrs. Fetched started arguing, because Snippet wanted to take Mason when her dad came to pick her up, and Mrs. Fetched didn’t want her to because she doesn’t know her dad (who was an absentee father pretty much all her life). After several “yes I am”/“no you’re not” exchanges, Snippet came very close to throwing the fatal SN01 error:

“Bitch.”

“Call me that again,” said Mrs. Fetched, “and your dad can just take you and keep you.”

“Bitch.”

Mrs. Fetched immediately turned and went into the house, grabbed some garbage bags, then went upstairs and cleaned out the dresser. Meanwhile, Snippet (and The Boy) followed her up, and they continued the quarrel as Mrs. Fetched loaded the bags. From what I gather, Snippet took a swing at Mrs. Fetched and fortunately (for Snippet) missed. As it was, had Daughter Dearest been there, there wouldn’t have been a second utterance and we would still be shoveling up what was left of the little idiot. Somewhere in there, she called her dad and told him not to come, which gave her a convenient excuse to not leave. I guess Mrs. Fetched didn’t try to order The Boy to take her to some designated dropzone, but I wouldn’t have minded a bit. As for The Boy, I think he agreed with Mrs. Fetched that Snippet was out of order at first, but decided to take Snippet’s side because he has to sleep with her. Difficult decision.

Losing her job had a second drawback that I doubt she even thought of: now that she’s not working until oh-dark-thirty, she has no excuse (note that I didn’t say “reason”) for not getting up in the mornings and taking care of Mason. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from trying.

To make matters even more fun, The Boy is no longer working the warehouse job. According to him, his boss kept forgetting to write down when he had to be at the courthouse for his probation stuff, and they expected him to be at work on Thursday when he had planned to not be. So they simply decided to end his probationary (no relation) period and axe him. Snippet referred to him as a “dumbass” over this. It makes me wonder: does she somehow think that calling people “bitch” or “dumbass” is going to magically turn them to her way of thinking? She tells me it’s none of my business — as if what goes on in the house I’m paying for, whether I want to or not, isn’t my business — but however you look at it, it doesn’t help.

On to a less unpleasant topic… Mason is proving himself to be a pretty clever baby. Jam found us this fireplace screen at a yard sale, and Mrs. Fetched thought it would be the perfect thing to keep Mason away from the firebox once we start using it. WRONG — he’s already figured out how to undo the latch and open the doors. Well, it might prevent burns from an accidental contact, anyway.

He’s also figured out that I often keep interesting (i.e. shiny) things in my shirt pocket, such as a pen or cellphone. When he goes for my pocket, I’ll clap a hand over it. He pulls it out of the way and lets go, and my hand claps right back over. So he holds my hand away and reaches in with his other hand. Another thing he does sometimes is try to climb the changing table when his diaper is in need of attention, or climb the playpen when he wants to get away from Moptop for a while. He can make himself understood, anyway.

Give it a few more weeks, and Mason will be more mature than either of his parents.

Grrrrrrr!

With M.A.E. and Moptop being at the manor for a while, and Daughter Dearest at college, Mrs. Fetched thought it would be OK to let them stay in DD's room. Now DD is home on break and livid about the state of her room. She's growling about the disarray, including "trying on my clothes and shoes without being asked." Maybe it's better that M.A.E. is elsewhere this evening.

Me? I got sent up on the roof to nail down a few shingles, which turned out to be loose flashing under said shingles. There's a couple shingles that have come off, but not leaking. Yet. I knew the roof was going to be a trouble spot the first time I looked at the place. Naturally, Mrs. Fetched ignored me.

Everything Happens at Once

We came home from the resort on Friday. No big deal.

Saturday, we had another birthday cake for Mason, this one so The Boy (who was still in jail on Monday) could participate. Go check out the pictures — the last nine are from Saturday. He fed his parents each a bite of cake and I got pictures!

I also got serious about the woodpile out back on Saturday. In the photos linked here, the second pile has been completely removed and the first has taken a big hit. The Boy and I split up what was left needing splitting this afternoon. There’s still plenty to pick up and stack… I’m just trying to figure out where to stack it. What we have now might be enough to get us through the winter, especially if it isn’t too cold. I should have it all finished up by tomorrow, then I can start to finish (heh) the shower room.

Speaking of the shower room… as I came out of it this morning, I was treated to this particular sight in the bathroom. Now Andi gets to see them outside, 15 feet up in the air. Me, I get them in my personal space. It saw a bright flash, then the Atomic Flyswatter blasted it oblivion.

I don’t have a problem with spiders building their webs where I’m not going to run into them or open a cabinet door into their webs. When they get that close, it’s go time.


In the sigh department: The Boy came home last night… with Lobster. This might be construed as a TS03, but Lobster came to apologize to us for the stuff he’d done. OK, we’ll clear that alarm and move on. He got in with the Job Corps, got certified as a welder, and is hoping to find a welding job around here (sounds good, anyway). This evening, we had to run some stuff down to M.A.E., and decided to eat at the Steak & Shake where The Boy and M.A.E. used to work. The Boy met us there… with Lobster (so much for “move on”). Anyway, remember when M.A.E. and Moptop moved out? Well… her job started getting flaky soon after, with one decent manager and one Psycho Manager From Hell, and her hours got cut back. So she moved in with SPOW, her mom, at the end of the month. Mrs. Fetched predicted this would last about two weeks.

So while we’re eating, M.A.E. calls us: her mom’s having a psycho tantrum, can we come get her? Sure… why not? They got back, and I momentarily had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t 2005: The Boy, Lobster, and M.A.E. were all there once again, perhaps the first time since we unloaded them. The Boy took Lobster home, but M.A.E. and Moptop are here with us.

So we have The Boy/Snippet, DoubleRed, and M.A.E./Moptop. I told Mrs. Fetched I need to start hitting on the extra women, maybe they’ll move out.

She’s Leaving Home, Bye-Bye

Today was a day long hoped-for, and even more hoped for since the end of June: M.A.E. and Moptop have moved into their own place! They have an apartment in town, with an easy stroll to a supermarket and the convenience store (gotta suck those butts, yup yup). There are a couple of questions I haven’t worked up the nerve to ask — I don’t want to be a wet blanket — which are:

1) How is M.A.E. getting to work?

2) Where is Moptop going to stay while M.A.E. is at work?

But hey, let’s not focus on the negative here. Abba House, a more-or-less local women’s support charity, gave her a bunch of furniture for the apartment. I think we had a piece or two we sent along, and we certainly made sure they have some basic necessities (toilet paper, wash cloths, etc.). 9th District Opportunity is helping with the first month’s rent, a church org is doing some other stuff. I really have to hand it to M.A.E. — she got on the phone and made most of this stuff happen, then she got herself a job (yeah, Burger King, but like I said this isn’t a post for negatives). It’s a big step — a lot of people have said, even to her face, that she would never be able to live on her own… and now she’s not only doing it, she’s supporting a kid.

As long as she lived with us, this is almost like watching one of my own kids spread her wings. Now if we can push Snippet and DoubleRed out of the next, we’ll be set!

Rest of the Week Roundup

All the other stuff that happened this week…

Yesterday came the last step of that little procedure I had last Monday — in other words, they took the stitches out. Once again, this went smooth as warm butter: I hardly felt it, even when they warned me to “let us know if this one hurts much.” Of course, it’s right in that part of my back that I can’t reach, so I still can’t scratch it when it itches. They told me there might not be much of a scar, which is kind of a bummer; scars are part of my history, reminding me of things that happened. “Yeah, this one is from when I was 7; I was riding my bike down the dirt road by my house and I hit a loose patch of dirt and went into the ditch.” (and so forth)

Some (ahem) twit took out the name LibTardBot on Twitter and attached it to a skr1pt. Basically, it scans the public timeline for tweets containing the word “teabagger” and retweets them with a pre-programmed insult. At least, I think it’s a script: with teabaggers, it’s hard to tell. Either one spouts their talking points on cue, and neither one can actually learn anything — it’s all programming.

Mason is getting better… actually, he’s pretty much over the ear infection and other sickness. The amoxicillin started helping almost immediately; by Saturday night he was wanting to get down and play a little instead of being clingy all the time. But he was still fighting an infection, and between that and trying to be his usual busy self, he was waking up ravenous in the middle of the night. He’s starting to get that back to normal too, fortunately… he slept all Wednesday night and only woke up once last night (and The Boy & Snippet got him). He’s also doing what The Boy used to do at that age: point at stuff and go “dat” (as in, “what’s that?”). He loves pulling wires, pushing buttons, and so forth… yup, geek in training! He figured out the OFF button on the TV this week, much to my amusement (nay, delight) and everyone else’s chagrin. I applauded him and Mrs. Fetched said, “No, he’s not supposed to do that! I popped his hand last time!” So when he went to do it again, I tried to tell him NO but was laughing too hard.

He has fat little feet, like the people on the Axiom in “Wall-E.” I’ll try to get a picture soon. As much as he runs around, I’m stunned that he has any foot fat at all.

The Boy & Snippet were nearly handed a perma-ejection this week. Personally, I’d have gone ahead and done it; I have no clue why Mrs. Fetched gave them Yet Another Chance. Daughter Dearest is a little cranky about the whole situation, and has threatened to move out a couple of times. Maybe the only reason she hasn’t is that I’ve threatened to move in with her. Meanwhile, M.A.E. and Moptop are still here, but they now have a firm departure date — two weeks from today. She lined up various public and private agencies to help her out, and she signs the lease on her apartment on Monday. Yes, she’s had a lot of help from Mrs. Fetched and others, but she’s taken a lot of initiative, found a job, talked to the various aid people, and basically made a lot of things happen. If The Boy and Snippet put half that kind of energy into getting their act together, nobody would have a problem.

Mrs. Fetched has been on me for a couple of weeks to pull some stock out of my account to raise some moolah for DD’s college (and, I hope, kill another credit card or two). I farted around for a while, then couldn’t get into my account. As it turned out, the delays were good because the price went up a buck & a quarter in the meantime… so I got to keep 40 or so shares that I would have otherwise had to give up to raise the same amount of money.

What kind of oddball things have you seen this week?

Pictures, Food and Fights…

…but not pictures of food fights. We’ll start off with the pictures…

Mom and Mason


Golf carts on parade…


Mason meets his first clown. He did quite well.


After contemplating the daisy for a few moments, he attempted to eat it (of course).


And, now to the fights. For an evening there, I thought M.A.E. was going to go back to her cheating a-hole of a boyfriend. Well, that now seems to be inoperative. He doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything w0rNg, and thinks that M.A.E. is the one with the problem. But now he’s pulling the control-freak card, threatening to take Moptop (fat chance with a felony drug conviction there, d00d) and making veiled threats (“you’re about to have a very bad week”) and a not-so-veiled threat to get her fired from her job. So she just got her smellphone number changed and who knows what will happen next there? Stay tuned… soap operas aren’t this weird.

Finally, food. Mrs. Fetched said “After I’m done at the chicken houses, I’ll bring some chicken up from Mom’s and we’ll do something with it for lunch.” This is code for, “I’m going to run way overtime, so you might want to fix something if you don’t want everyone here to starve to death.” There were a couple of steaks from last week’s grillin’ in the fridge, and I found some other stuff to make…

Steak Parmesan Pasta Salad

1 16oz box macaroni
8 oz grilled steak, sliced thin
1 cucumber, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 med. onion, sliced thin
1 20oz can corn, drained
1/2 c parmesan cheese (grated)
1/2 c vinaigrette

Prepare macaroni according to package directions. Rinse in cold water and drain well. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and chill for 3 hours (preferred) or serve right away.

Everybody liked it — but they were hungry.

Dust and Fallout

As the dust begins to settle on vacation, we also ponder the fallout of The Boy and Snippet. As usual, they pushed things right to the limit while we were gone. I made a deal with them that they could use my laptop, and I'd leave it logged on for them, if they didn’t have any visitors staying overnight. They managed to stay within the letter of the agreement, even if they trampled the spirit thereof: one person slept in the detached garage (but not in the house!), and Lobster (who is banned from the manor permanently) came to visit. M.A.E. and DoubleRed were both here and their stories pretty much agree. Now The Boy and Snippet are planning to move out since they don’t think we’re being fair. But Mrs. Fetched has an ace in the hole, and I will talk about that if and when the time comes.

As you might have surmised from the vacation post, Mason is doing a pretty good job of walking — and he’s getting better at it. He’s also waking up at night a lot; I think he’s so active right now that he’s not getting enough food to fuel the legs and needs that midnight snack.

Of course, I have to include a photo — especially since it’s so cute. I think I should get an award for this one, don’t you?

Oh, M.A.E. (and Moptop) are still here. They were going to move in with Big V, but M.A.E. didn’t really want to do that — see, I told you she was smarter than she gives herself credit for! Seriously: if Snippet made the effort that M.A.E. does to raise her kid and improve her lot in life, she’d be doing pretty good right now and she wouldn’t have any friction around here to complain about.

While I was on vacation, my iPhone really started to act up: when it gets warm, the entire unit resets itself and comes up to the “plug me into iTunes” graphic. This happened even when I removed the SIM and/or put the iPhone in Airplane mode (which turns off the phone), so that kind of put a cramp in my whole Skype-phone scheme. While I’m completely on Skype now, phone-wise, if I want to have a wifi phone I need to carry the iPad (if I don’t have $200 for an iPhone 4, I certainly don’t have $300 for a newer iPod touch). Fortunately, work isn’t blocking Skype so I can leave the app running on the work computer. The home and work MacBooks pair with a Jawbone I have laying around, but there are some strange audio issues going on there — I haven’t had a chance to try messing with it just yet.

If I get a chance, I’ll do a vacation photo-post this weekend.

Welcome Back, M.A.E.

Those of you who have been kind enough to stick with TFM through all the weirdness, fictional and otherwise, might recognize the name Ms. Almost Einstein, whom I usually just call M.A.E. Waaaayyyy back when, she was The Boy’s girlfriend, the one he swore he’d kill himself over if we tried to break them up. (Drama queens come in more than one gender.) She was one of the original FAR Manor boarders and hangers-on, and continued to live with us even after The Boy (after sharing a house with her for a good long while) broke up with her over the phone while we were in Florida. Somewhat over three years ago, she left the manor to be close to her new boyfriend.

That didn’t last long, and she eventually found another boyfriend, reproduced (deliberately), never did quite marry the guy. M.A.E. and Mrs. Fetched have stayed in touch, and even went to the resort with us (and little Emma, who now has the blog name Moptop) last September. Then the boyfriend ran into some trouble, going to jail for drugs, and not exactly being a model father and SO after he got out. Somewhere along the line (according to M.A.E. anyway), he started cheating on her and she finally had enough last weekend and bailed (with Moptop of course). She spent a day at SPOW (her mom’s) place, but her mom makes Big V look like a model of sanity and she bailed on that situation too…

… and guess where she landed?

Mason certainly doesn’t mind — he likes watching girls, and Moptop is definitely a girl. We had a daybed in the garage, and were able to set it up in the living room with just a little furniture shuffling. M.A.E. and Moptop were both going to sleep in it last night, but DoubleRed had some place she needed to be for a few nights so she got her own (very large) bed. She brought a ton of food with her, and we’re taking a lot of it for Big V to have some chow.

I can’t wait to get some photos of Mason and Moptop together. They ought to be tooth-rotting cute!

Weird and Wacky Wednesday

Well, not that weird, not much weirder than any other day at FAR Manor. The day started out kind of promising; Snippet woke up pissy from a bad dream and threatened to leave The Boy. His response: “Go right ahead.” (They’ve talked about getting married in July, but stuff like this has to make you wonder.) She seems to have gotten over herself though — her mom coming by may have had something to do with that. She (Snippet’s mom) had to have an MRI today, and she needs to be sedated due to seizures when exposed to certain electrical fields, so Snippet did the driving. They took Mason with them, which made for a pretty quiet day.

Daughter Dearest was a little concerned about it; she heard much of the argument The Boy and Snippet had this morning and thought maybe Snippet would bolt the manor with the baby. “That’s the absolute last thing I’m worried about,” I told her. “Snippet lays in bed all day until I take Mason upstairs and drop him in bed with her, and ten minutes later she’s asking me to take him so she can get a shower or eat breakfast, and then she’ll eff off to watch TV. She takes care of him as little as possible; she’s not going to take him on full-time.” Sure enough, they were back later in the afternoon. Mason has been free-standing for a while now, and trying to take his first steps, but he’s not even 9 months old yet. He’ll be walking soon enough, then we’ll really have to get serious about baby-proofing the manor.

My wallet is $1500 lighter, but I have my Civic back. Most of that was replacing the clutch and timing belt/water pump, but there were a few other minor things that got done. I still don’t have working A/C, but so far everything else seems to be okay.

While my net worth took a thumpin’ at the mechanic’s, today was somewhat of a net-worth watershed for Apple: today was the day Apple’s market cap overtook Microsoft’s for the first time. I don’t expect it to be a permanent situation — Microsoft will rally, or Apple will stumble, and this might only last a few days or weeks — but it’s going to be a fun datapoint to rub in the faces of all those people who thought Apple was walking-dead just 10 years ago. Too bad I didn’t grab some Apple stock back then…

Lately, I’ve been reading J. A. Konrath’s blog, off and on. Konrath is a mid-list author who writes a series of crime novels, and has lately had a huge sales boost by selling Kindle editions of his books, out of print and otherwise, and pricing them dirt-cheap (like $1.99). As book publishing (the major publishing houses, collectively referred to as “New York”) has found itself circling the same drain as newspaper publishing, this hasn’t exactly been welcome news in some circles. Publisher’s Weekly wrote a nice little hit-piece about Konrath signing with AmazonEncore, including lovely sentiments like “a book that nobody wanted” (where “nobody” = New York), misrepresenting his sales, and implying that AmazonEncore is a bare step above self-publishing. Naturally, Konrath set the record straight. I’ve been the victim of a similar hit-piece in the past, when I posted a series of articles (on a now-defunct Yahoo!360° blog) that was critical of XML — or rather, how consultants were deliberately over-complicating it for their own gain — and a consultant got a bunch of other consultants together and trashed me… of course, without bothering to contact me for a rebuttal. It did have the side effect of sending a tsunami of traffic to that blog though.

Seeing that I’ll have to write a sequel to White Pickups, which is now “Book I of the Truckalypse,” maybe I should look into this whole publish-on-Kindle thing myself.

Weekend Roundup

Yet another pic of Mason, just because I can. We haven’t seen him all week, which is probably a good sign because it means The Boy and Snippet haven’t needed our help.

And happy birthday to the great-grandparents, Mom (tomorrow) and Dad (on Monday)!

FAR Manor being FAR Manor, there’s still plenty of stuff going on even without a grandson in the house. Even when it has rained pretty much every day since we got back from vacation, and rained here a few times while we were gone. You know all that rain we didn’t get in May, June, and July? We’re getting it now. But we get a break most mornings, which means this morning I took care of most of the “go outdoors” stuff before breakfast: replace the kitty litter, empty the compost bucket (a coffee can) into the composter, pick a few tomatoes. Today ’s rain, as seen on radar, is moving in a little slower than I expected — but it finally got here.

After taking care of those little chores, then scarfing some breakfast, DoubleRed shocked the living daylights out of me: she asked me to follow her to the bank and (almost) caught up on all her rent… since May! I now have something in my pocket that Mrs. Fetched might like to get her hands on for a change.

I’ve mentioned problems with the manor windows before — not only do they have aluminum frames, which aren’t exactly wonderful for keeping out the winter chill, the funky mechanisms that are supposed to hold them in place when you raise them are pretty much all wrecked. Mrs. Fetched got curious recently when someone at Home Despot was trying to interest anyone in their window installation services, and considerably brightened the day of a rather discouraged worker. She made an appointment for their window guy to pay us a visit, and he did so late Thursday afternoon just as I was wrapping up my work at home day. With 18 windows that need to be replaced, fortunately all standard sizes, the total bill came to $12K. Um… thanks for your time, dude. I still want to replace at least the two windows in the bathroom, but with standard sizes and a friend who’s done that kind of work giving us advice, I might be able to get to that before winter. Meanwhile, I have a roll of window film that has been waiting for me to put it on the bay window in the kitchen, and I’ll be getting to that shortly. It helps that I figured out (on Thursday, while Window Dude was measuring) how to go about it with the least amount of waste.

Mrs. Fetched had been asking me to cash in some stock for some time, just to cover Daughter Dearest’s college for the rest of the term, and (during vacation) it got to where I thought it was worthwhile. The “problem” was, I thought I was cashing in stock options when I was actually cashing in restricted stock… so I ended up with a check for four times as much as I was expecting (but not enough to cover the window replacement). That caused a moment of panic, thinking the guy cleaned out my account, but when I pulled it up again I realized what happened. We’re going to kill off a couple of nagging bills and cover most of Daughter Dearest’s second term. Mrs. Fetched suggested I go ahead and accessorize my camera — so I ordered a smart flash and a 100-300mm lens last night — that should pretty well cover everything now: I have the 50mm f1.8 and the flash for indoor venues, the 28-135mm zoom for some indoor and short- to mid-range outdoor work, and the new lens will cover long-range work. What DoubleRed handed me this morning more than covered it.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet: this is NSFW, but very funny. Check out the woman’s expression about 6 seconds in. Besides, it’s good advice: I learned long ago, what you don’t do to the chicken, the chicken will do to you.

New story starts Monday… it’s coming along well, so I’m pretty comfortable with the head start I have.

Not-so Empty Nest

Current music: BassDrive

Today was Moving Day for Daughter Dearest… back to Reinhardt with her. This year, she got one of the campus apartments — four girls, each with their own room plus two full baths, a kitchen & living room. The “official” moving-in day is tomorrow, but they asked the choir members to come a day early — they got their own cookout, followed by a rehearsal and a planned performance tomorrow. No rest for the music majors.

We had two Civics loaded up with stuff, although we packed pretty casually (i.e. we could have got lots more in if we had to). The early move-in was a big help with parking; we had no trouble finding parking spaces. The only hang-up was that DD, being the first one there, got to do the walk-through with the RA. That meant we stood around for about half an hour, wondering what was taking so long for DD to get her keys, until Mrs. Fetched finally called and found out what was going on. Eventually, she came down and we started hauling boxes. I don’t know how many kids brought a couple cases of chow they helped can earlier in the week, but I doubt there were very many.

Meanwhile, one of the girls across the way had porters bringing enough stuff to pack a circus tent. “That’s Brooke,” Daughter Dearest explained. “She’s really high-maintenance.” No kidding: there were no less than four sizeable vehicles (minivans, SUVs) packed with her stuff — they were hauling it in with a grocery cart. Then they went to Mal*Wart to get more stuff. I can’t say too much about that, since we also went there for a few ancillary items: a mattress cover, USB A/B cable (I wish she’d said something, we have several here at the manor), dishes and cups (the apartment is furnished, but doesn’t include dishes or cookware, oops). Two of her roomies “love to cook” so we hope they’ll bring cookware. If not… well, they’ll either buy some new stuff or we can bring some over.

So the nest is empty for a few months, right? DoubleRed is supposed to be heading to Toccoa Falls College soon, but she needs a job in Toccoa to support herself… and she needs to be in Toccoa to get the job. Catch-22. So… now she’s planning to stay here and take online classes.

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Not that she’s been around much lately, anyway. Maybe it will work out.

Knee update: it behaved quite well during the move-in. It complained a bit when going down the stairs for the last time, but was happy enough with some rest. It gave no trouble at all when I mowed the lawn after we got home. (Then I took a nap, we were up way too early for a Saturday.) Up and down a ladder this evening, once again fixing the garage door opener, still no trouble. I might need to move the “down limit cam” another link down the chain, to drop the door another quarter inch, but that’s it for now. I might have another look tomorrow — after I change the motorcycle oil.

Random Grumbles

The feed truck came late last night, so no cannibal chickens this go-around. Whew!

Came home from work, no dinner as usual… even though Mrs. Fetched said she was going to fix something. Maybe we’ll eat at home tomorrow.

We didn’t find out until Sunday night, but some time after the Easter service, DoubleRed checked herself into the hospital and was diagnosed with diabetes. We started seeing some warning signs Thursday or Friday evening, and mentioned it to her then. Her glucose reading was somewhere north of 600… really bad, but not coma-inducing bad. I told her last night that she should get together with The Boy to learn everything she shouldn’t do.

This morning at work, I got another email of the “this cable is the wrong color again” variety. I’m sure the seagull manager behind the last two installments of Programmers. Argh. is directing his people to nitpick everything at every opportunity, and I was getting rather exercised… then he followed up with “and the part number is wrong,” which actually defused me. You see, I’d explicitly requested that part number and edited it in when I got it, so I knew at that point he was looking at the wrong version. I told him as much, and included the right docs with a “here they are again” (since I sent them last week). Then my new boss got a query, and asked me if it was fixed; I told him the same thing and didn’t hear from him after that. I know I’m getting older, because I’m getting ever less patient with this kind of crap.

Taxes are done, woo-hoo! We have a far too large refund coming back this year, because Mrs. Fetched didn’t bring in a lot with her video stuff, and Daughter Dearest contributed mightily by both capsizing her mom’s farm truck and bringing in a large tuition credit. The refund will mostly go to covering her college expenses for next year.

Well… I should have said our taxes are done: Mrs. Fetched volunteered me to do a bunch of other peoples’ as well… including Jimmy Last-Minute, who did better last year but has gone right back to dumping a bunch of incomplete info on me at the 11^th hour. I printed him out an extension form for him to sign in the morning, with a list of info I needed (and an admonishment to get it to me sooner next year). The Evil Twins’ parents are another, but they know they’re on the hook for an extension anyway and theirs should be fairly simple.

If it wasn’t already bed time, I’d have another beer.

Saturday, and I’m Parked

You would think it’s the middle of November out there: chilly? damp? windy? Check, check, check.

I dodged chicken house duty this morning, ironically after I’d “suited up” for the ordeal. After grabbing some cereal, Mrs. Fetched decided I needed to make the rounds of three banks… two deposits and one payment. The payment involved down to the next town down, where there happens to be a Best Buy. DoubleRed is having grief with her laptop (she thinks $800 doesn’t qualify as a cheap laptop, but whatever), but at least it’s under warranty and she was able to shovel her schoolwork over to her desktop system. Her preparations cost me all of 10 minutes, which was no big deal since I had to be at the last bank before noon and (even with the slight delay) I figured to make it before 11:30 anyway. So I dropped off stuff at banks, she dropped off her computer with the Geek Squad, everyone was happy. (Well, DoubleRed isn’t happy about her laptop going back to the garage, but whatever.)

We got back, Mrs. Fetched got back, then it was off to get a mattress set for the upstairs bed (in what used to be The Boy’s room). I was going to turn that room into a library, but I suppose I still could… I like to read in bed, anyway. I also went out and had a look at the tomato plant — it was pretty well dead, but there was one last handful of yellow pears on it. I’m putting in at least a dozen of these next year… since they’re a heirloom variety, I saved a few seeds already and will have at it next year.

Daughter Dearest is coming home for the weekend, although she’s getting a late start… looks like she’ll get here around 7pm. Then we’ll probably go to El Rio to eat, because that’s like her favorite place in the world and there’s no good (and cheap) Mexican restaurants around Reinhardt. Speaking of Reinhardt, she’s seriously considering transferring out after the year’s up… a couple of nearby public colleges have been named, but I think the big problem is that the music students seem to be more like the drama students (if you get my drift).

I need to start some bread tonight for a church thingie tomorrow. I’m trying to decide whether to make challah bread or rolls. Probably rolls; it’s easier to scale up and people don’t have to break off pieces that way. And P.O.D. wants me to solder the F-connector back onto his old TV tonight.

Somewhere along the way, I tuned in Obama’s first weekly address on YouTube. I couldn’t help cringing when he said “make no mistake,” because I heard that too many times from Bush-league, but after that point the address went from fluff to meat. I hope he’s serious about the energy policy… it’s good to hear a political type really seeming to get the point that we need to stop talking about the post-petroleum world and start building it (and putting people to work building it certainly won’t hurt). The question is: can we make it happen?