Knock Me Over…

The Boy got a rather large tax refund, due to having a real job much of the year. Against my better judgement, he (with Mrs. Fetched’s not-so-tacit approval) talked me into getting him a “Valve King half-stack” (a rather large speaker with a vacuum tube amp for that “just so” sound) and he would pay me back the $1000 that it cost when he got his refund. He was into Mrs. Fetched for a similar amount.

Well, knock me over with a feather: he got his refund, for whatever reason, on a Visa cash card — but the ATM would let him withdraw $400 at a time as many times as he wanted. Yesterday, that’s what we did, and Mrs. Fetched and I both got our $1000 in cash.

Off to the bank tomorrow… and I had a rather large tax refund myself this year. Just in time to drop $200 on a 2TB outboard hard drive, and that’s what I’ll put my photos on.

I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting these short but frequent updates. I should get back to doing them.

So Happy It’s Thursday

Mason had his 6-months checkup last week. Yup, ½ a candle now. His weight and size are right at the 50^th percentile, meaning he’s dead-on average size for a kid his age. Our doc did say his head’s a little bigger than normal, to which a wide-eyed Snippet went, “What does that mean?” (It means he has some extra storage for the spare brains he inherited from his granddad, silly!) He’s cut three teeth now, and is continuing same, but at least he’s back to sleeping through the night. He adjusted to DST by the simple expedient of ignoring it, and he’s up — up? rockin' and rollin', more like — until 11:30 or even midnight now. At least he sleeps past 8.

He loves his Auntie Dearest, and gets excited just hearing her voice on the phone. We’re all (well, all of us but Snippet) looking forward to her coming home this weekend.

The Boy’s band had their first gig, and it went pretty well as such things go — they had maybe 30 people there, most of whom know one or more of the band members personally. Jake, the front guy, broke a string on the first number and they had to stand around for a few minutes while he made a quick field repair. I suggested to The Boy that they put together something they can play three-handed to buy some time for the next occurrence, something about a broken string (maybe a bikini string).

If you’ve never been to the Masquerade (a pretty good guess), it’s in an old factory/warehouse building and they have three stages which they’ve dubbed Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. The latter is where the no-names go to perform, but they did put their name on the marquee (except that it was rendered “22 to 7” instead of “22s at 7”). The same night, Infected Mushroom (a psy-trance act, my kind of music) was playing in Heaven. Since 22s at 7 opened the evening festoovities, if I’d known a bit earlier I’d have planned to slip upstairs afterwards and enjoy the music. But 22s at 7 isn’t bad — they sound a bit like Molly Hatchet. The guy who booked them for the Masquerade was happy enough with the performance that he said he would book them for a venue in Buford next month.

Some money shook out at the last minute, so I was able to buy my own ticket. After being assured repeatedly that bringing a camera would be no problem… it wasn’t a problem. I guessed right on my lens choice — 50mm f1.8 — and after a few exposure checks, cranked the ISO up past 1000 and let ’er rip. I put the SpeedLite in my cargo pocket, but it wasn’t necessary. The built-in flash lit up the venue way beyond what I expected, exposing (no pun intended) an ugly concrete-block wall behind the stage. I’m surprised they haven’t put a black drop-cloth over that wall, or even painted it. The SpeedLite would have been overkill, so it stayed in my pocket for the duration. There’s more pictures if you want to see them. Canon’s “Digital Photo Professional” software did a pretty good job of correcting the white balance and cleaning them up in general, in addition to being a really nice way to sort through the pile of shots and quickly delete the blurred or malfocused pictures. Much faster than Photoshop Elements for batch-fixing stuff like this.

Snippet reaaalllllly stepped in it afterwards — a couple of guys from Ether (the punk band that The Boy used to play in) showed up, but got there late and missed the set. Completely forgetting the connection, she gushed, “These guys sound a lot better than Ether did! Ether kind of sucked.” They laughed it off… Raymond (their bass player) said “it was punk, it’s supposed to suck.” Their front guy moved away, so Ether is all but dead. Long live Ether, I guess… they’ll live on archive.org, anyway.

Typical and Not-so-typical Manor-isms

Thursday wasn’t the best day I ever had… there was a Dilbert strip a long time ago when he was trying to explain that he had to work and to only bother him for emergencies. What they heard was something like: “I am at your disposal. Killing spiders is my speciality.” And the spiders heard, “The house is full of crippled flies.” The last three weeks that I’ve tried to work at home have been like that: whether it was the in-laws (Big V wanting me to help pull her husband’s 18-wheeler out of a ditch with a pickup truck, somehow it worked), Mrs. Fetched (“I need you to replace an outlet at the chicken house” which turned out to be burned wires just north of the outlet), or The Boy and Snippet (any ridiculous thing they can think of), everyone seems to think that I should be thrilled to drop everything and take care of their problem. That the job I’m doing, or trying to do, is at least partially supporting all of them doesn’t seem to register on them. So about 5 p.m., I got fed up with it and bailed for a while. The indie coffee shop was already closed, so I went into the Kroger and got a Starbucks. After taking my sweet time quaffing it, I wandered the store and picked up a few items I knew we needed. But when I get back from vacation, if this stuff keeps up I won’t be working at home anymore.

The Boy pulled a pseudo-TB03 — he didn’t come home last night, knowing we wanted him home, but he did have the good grace to call and give us a slightly plausible story of “we trying to get the sound right on this one song.” More than likely, he and his band-buddies were getting 'faced, but he swore up and down that wasn’t what was happening. He also promised to be home by 9 this morning to help Mrs. Fetched with the chickens, and showed up about 12:30. That was pretty much the last straw for him borrowing our vehicles.

Fortunately, I have an 18-pound anchor to keep me sane. Mason is usually a very good-natured baby, and is getting to where he doesn’t have to have attention every minute… although he enjoys, and gets a lot of, interaction with the Big People. He’s at the point where he gets on his hands & knees and rocks — the precursor to crawling. We’re thinking about getting him a walker so he can cruise around the manor. Of course, that means we’ll be baby-proofing the place in short order.

Spring #2 arrived on Planet Georgia yesterday, just in time for the weekend. I went out to the treefall and cut some more firewood on Saturday; today we hauled, split, and stacked it. Cousin Splat pulled up with The Boy and Snippet in tow as I was getting started splitting; after a few minutes, he started stacking the wood I’d split and tossed aside, then The Boy saw this and joined in. The wood rack in the garage is now heaped over, and one of the pallets out back has about as much wood stacked and covered — maybe enough that anything we cut from here on out will be there for us this fall. There’s plenty more at the treefall; I finally got all the branches cleared away and can work on trunks from here on out. Kobold got an old 22" Husky saw running, but the chain’s worn out. When I resume cutting, I should get a new chain for that one (and remember the ear plugs, Huskys are LOUD).

At least I’ve got vacation starting later this week. Daughter Dearest and I are heading to Florida to visit my family… hooray! I’m hoping to get some writing done on White Pickups; maybe the change of venue will help. Progress is being made, but it’s slow progress.

The Boy, by the Numbers (v2.0)

With this week’s TB02, I figured it was time to update the error codes. Here’s a link to the old error codes.

TB01: Left home (again)
TB02: Came home (again)
TB03: Said he’d be home, stayed out, hasn’t returned
TB04: Had a tantrum, broke something
TB05: Caught in a lie, insisting on his version of things
TB06: Talks about getting a job, no follow-through
TB09: Blames everyone else for his problems
TB21: Spent all morning in bed
TB22: Got drunk
TB23: Talks about quitting smoking/drinking, no follow-through
TB24: Talks about getting his own place, no follow-through
TB25: Band is about to be signed (again)
TB26: Not checking glucose/taking insulin
TB27: Said he'd help, disappeared/kept sleeping
TB28: Calls us at 3 a.m., emotional meltdown

Code TB07 (GED talk) was retired as he actually did get his GED. TB08 (band signed) has been replaced by the more accurate TB25 (about to be signed).

And in interest of fairness, Snippet deserves her own collection of error codes:

SN01: FATAL ERROR: Lobbed F-bomb at Mrs. Fetched or Daughter Dearest
SN02: Asked to sleep for “10 more minutes,” still in bed an hour later
SN03: Caught in a lie
SN04: Drinking (claims to be allergic to alcohol)
SN05: Blames other people for the friction in her life
SN06: Spent all morning in bed^{Note 1}
SN07: Says she'll help, no follow-through
SN08: Says something monumentally weird
SN09: Says she wants to get her GED, no follow-through

And finally, some error codes take two to tango:

TS01: Abandoned Mason to us with little or no warning
TS02: Had a fight
TS03: Brought some weird friend to the manor^{Note 2}

Note 1: Implies SN02. Often occurs in conjunction with TB21.
Note 2: Some of Snippet’s weird friends are pleasant to look at, but I wouldn’t want to keep them…

I expect that TB21, SN02, and SN06 will happen so often that it won’t be worth mentioning most of the time beyond just flagging the codes. On the other hand, they’ll be the ones getting up with Mason through the night, so I’m just a little inclined to cut ’em some slack there.

Mason and a TB02

Well, it’s official: The Boy has moved back in. They cleaned out the apartment yesterday and finished cleaning it up today. To “honor” the occasion, I’ve decided to update the TB error codes and add some SN codes for Snippet. I’m sure they would say I also need FF, MF, and DD codes to round out the list, but tough rocks. We’re not as consistently flaky. I’ll post the new codes Friday.

Mason reached several milestones this week. Mrs. Fetched made him up some rice mush Monday evening and fed it to him, and he did pretty well with it. Sure, it was a sloppy mess, but he got more in him than on him (even if the picture doesn’t suggest that). He’s been getting a little bowl of it late in the evening, in hopes it will stay with him longer than the bottle does. He often refuses getting the bottle late in the evening, because he knows it puts him to sleep… but only if we’re sitting with him. If we’re standing up and give it to him, he’ll take it.

I also noticed earlier this week that he’s starting to anticipate — if I’m tickling him, for example, he’ll start laughing before I actually get his ribs/neck/leg. And the big one: he’s starting to figure out self-propulsion. Last night, I laid him face-down on the carpet and watched… after a minute of struggle, he got up on his knees, pushed himself forward a foot, then did it again. He may or may not figure out crawling; neither The Boy nor Daughter Dearest did much of it. They were both walker babies (no stairs going down to contend with) and started walking around age 10 months. Mason’s legs are strong enough to walk now, but his balance isn’t there yet. The other thing he’s figured out is how to grab stuff. I may put off getting new glasses for six months or so.

With Spring #1 giving us cool and rainy weather, I throttled back the firebox quite a bit this morning. After choir practice, I brought in an armload. “It’s probably out,” Mrs Fetched said, “I didn’t get to it all day.” Au contraire, it was still good and hot when I approached, and there were plenty of coals and even a couple sticks left inside. I tossed in what I brought, left the door propped open for the bellows effect, and got some more. Now it’s throttled back again and should keep the living room warm all night.

I’m seriously considering dropping out of the church choir after Easter. I don’t enjoy the draggy-twangy music that the rest of them adore, and they’re not much interested in doing anything new (or, except for the choir director, a little difficult). Mrs. Fetched has already pretty much detached herself from church, mostly due to the chicken houses but she has a few issues of her own with how things are going. Then again, once Mason is consistently sleeping all night (and so am I), I might pull out of it and change my mind.

Spring #1, 2010

The snow is gone, the temps aren’t going below freezing past the end of the 7-day forecast, and the rain will arrive in the next couple of hours. That’s Spring #1 on Planet Georgia.

Mason granted us a late start to the three-day weekend (shhhh, don’t tell Mrs. Fetched); after a 6 a.m. breakfast call, he slept almost until 9… and so did we. That doesn’t mean we don’t have stuff to do — far from it — but a little rest is always a good thing to have before a busy day. While Mrs. Fetched (and Kobold) went to the chicken houses, and Daughter Dearest watched the micro-dude, I went out and gathered up the last of the dry wood and about half of the green wood to load up the rack in the garage. Mrs. Fetched had me scoot the rack over, in hopes that she can get someone out here to install the Freecycle Special garage door opener this week.

Mason was laying on the bed just now, doing a near-perfect imitation of this LOLcat. It kind of reminded me of The Boy, back when he was about four months old…

One Sunday morning, the three of us were in the kitchen, me holding The Boy. He was in a pretty good mood, and chattering away about the state of the universe and anything else that came to mind. Then he got quiet for a moment, looked at Mrs. Fetched, and went, “Nnnnnnnnn.”

Mrs. Fetched smiled at him. “Are you loading your diaper?”

Big grin. “NNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnn!”

As new parents, we thought that gathering up all the atomic diapers and dropping them on Iraq would have ended the war rather quickly.

Speaking of The Boy, he and Snippet are actually pulling the “moving back into the manor” string. They moved a bunch of stuff into the detached garage last night, displacing the in-laws’ four-wheeler, then went back to the apartment for the night. It’ll be nice when they’re actually here and taking care of Mason.

Mason milestones: he got a little cereal (rice) in his bottle for the first time last night. It didn’t seem to bother him, and we’re hoping it will stick with him a little longer and help him sleep through the night. All of the squats he’s been doing (not the kind above) have started to pay off: if he’s laying on the bed, and someone takes his hands, he’ll pull himself up… then if you raise his hands over his head, he’ll get his feet under him and pull himself up. I don’t think even The Boy was doing that kind of thing when he was four months old, and he was a strong baby too. I’ll get video and post it soon… my DSLR doesn’t do video, and Daughter Dearest left her Coolpix at her campus apartment, so we’ll grab a camcorder.

Three more things I want to accomplish today: 1) Now that the Christmas tree is put away, bring the Evil Exerbike back inside and start using it; 2) Make sure the new generator has gas and oil in it, and start it; 3) Make a baton for Daughter Dearest’s conducting class (I ordered her one off Amazon, and they canceled the order because they were out of stock). The latter is a fairly easy job; the hardware store has file handles that are the perfect size for a baton; all I have to do is widen the hole and glue a foot of dowel into it, then paint or stain it.

Given that Monday is a holiday, and it looks to be sunny, I’ll be cutting some firewood. I had to take the in-laws’ four-wheeler back to its usual place (after charging the battery enough to get it started), and noticed another large dead tree on the other side of the back garden. Easy access for the tractor, and there’s easily enough wood for a week or two of fire when Winter #2 arrives.

Anniversaries and Snow

There were a couple of milestones this week. The biggie was me & Mrs. Fetched being married 25 years as of Tuesday. Doesn’t seem that long, usually, but it’s like half my life so far. We were courier-ing some school books to Daughter Dearest, that’s how we spent the evening. Big splash, huh?

The other was Mason reached four months on Wednesday. Lordy, the kid is developing… in the last week or so, he’s really started vocalizing. If he’s happy, or annoyed, he’ll let you know. Constantly. The other thing he’s started doing is squats. Literally. He’ll stand in someone’s lap and up… down… up… down… without much support except for balance. Baby Buns of Steel! Seriously, he has really strong legs and his neck muscles have always been pretty good. P.O.D’s young bride, who works in a daycare, told us about a kid who’s bigger and older than Mason and still needs help supporting his head.

He’s almost sleeping through the night. He’ll give us a 5 a.m. wake-up call from time to time, but 7 a.m. is getting more common. It’s really too bad The Boy and Snippet are missing most of this… they’ll regret it later.

OTOH, today was not a day for anyone to get out if it could be avoided. Winter #1 has been pretty cold, as far as winter goes on Planet Georgia these days… lots of days that it didn’t get above freezing. We finally got a little snow out of the deal. Down in Atlanta and points south, it was one of those nights where it rained, switched over to snow, then froze; here it was just snow. About an inch, enough to throw the pod people into panic — if they’re not wetting their pants over a random brown guy in a turban, an inch of snow will do it. Seeing as I was working at home yesterday, and the office was within the melt-freeze zone, I elected to stay here and work. The snow will stay around a while, since it won’t get above freezing until Tuesday. Daughter Dearest had most of her classes shut down today, so she got some exercise.

An electrical problem has occurred at the chicken houses, so I must go to see what that’s about…

Approaching the end…

… of the year, anyway. As I type, we’re getting the classic wintry mix: rain, sleet, rain, and (at the moment) sleet and snow.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, and here it is. The Boy on the left (scanned from a portrait in the hall), Mason on the right (one I took) — both about 3-½ months old, give or take:



Yup, Mason is his dad’s kid awright. Just like his dad, he fights going to sleep and doesn’t like losing. There are differences, of course: The Boy’s happy place was the swing; Mason’s is getting walked around and he wants a lot more interaction than his dad did.

The refrigerator that came with the house definitely met its end yesterday morning. I was in the kitchen, fixing some coffee, when I heard a loud SPAT and saw sparks shoot out from the bottom of the fridge in my peripheral vision. The smell of burning electrical equipment made for a less than happy morning. After making sure the metal skin of the fridge wasn’t “hot,” I reached back and unplugged the sucker; Mrs. Fetched cleared it out while I was at work. Fortunately, we have (had) two refrigerators in the kitchen, side by side, so it’s not like we’ll have trouble keeping the formula cold or anything. I hope maybe we’ll be able to get along with one fridge and not worry about replacing it. If we have to have some extra cold storage, there’s a couple of small refrigerators in the studio and I’m not exactly keeping them both full of beer at the moment, unfortunately… we could move one into the kitchen as an overflow icebox.

I've been loading up my Kindle a little bit, and am getting to like this thing. I’m still not where I would have bought one myself, but I do like having it. One of the really nice features about buying a Kindle book from Amazon is that they send the book to the Kindle as soon as you buy it online, whether you’re buying it from the Kindle itself (not happening w/o a credit card) or your computer. The latter is a really nice convenience that Apple should adapt for iTunes customers; send a new track straight to your iPhone? Why not? OTOH, I’ve found a couple of glitches, only one of which is Amazon’s fault. It seems that Amazon wants you to have a credit card recorded with them to buy books straight from the Kindle — but if you’re buying from your computer, you can use gift cards and essentially run it as a pre-paid system. It’s only a minor hassle (like I said, once you buy a book it goes straight to your Kindle), but the rest of the purchasing system seems so well thought-out that this stands out.

The second problem is more of a publisher’s issue. I bought Maria Lima’s Blood Kin — third in the series, I have the first two in paperback — and it started right at Chapter One even though there was a Preface. I guess I should mention, Kindle books have a default starting point that isn’t necessarily the front cover… it could start with the Table of Contents, Preface, or wherever the publisher says. Juno (Maria’s publisher) might not quite get the whole e-book concept just yet. In addition to starting a little past (what I would consider) the most logical place to start, they include legal boilerplate about not buying books with the cover torn off. Somehow, i doubt that Amazon is going to sell e-books without the cover… that page could be eliminated entirely without hurting a thing.

On the freebie side, there’s two major places I’m going so far: Project Gutenberg, which digitizes as many books as they can find whose copyright has expired (so that the books are now public domain), is the place to go if (like me) you misspent your youth avoiding the classics. One title I thoroughly enjoyed was P.G. Wodehouse’s Love Among the Chickens, but I might be just a little biased for reasons well-known to longtime readers. Isaac Asimov spoke highly of Wodehouse, so I had to check out some of his titles. Of course, a sci-fi lover will go nutz just from the selection of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells titles.

Speaking of sci-fi, the Baen Free Library is another worthy link, and includes some more modern titles than Gutenberg. Baen’s evil plot is to get you hooked on the first books in a series so you’ll go out and buy the others… great idea, sez I.

I haven’t really had a chance to wander through the stacks of a third site, Manybooks, but some of the titles look like they’d be a good way to expand my horizons a bit.

Looking back at My predictions for 2009, I was a lot more pessimistic than the year actually turned out. Sure, I got a few things right, but I expected things to be a lot farther into the tank than they are now. Oh well, I’ll do a more detailed analysis tomorrow and maybe venture a few predictions for 2010.

If I miss you tomorrow night, Happy New Year, y’all!

Christmas!

Mason ponders the true meaning of Christmas… or maybe he’s thinking about lunch.

We got a pretty late start to the day, except for Mason of course, who woke up at 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. Fortunately, Snippet took the early shift (after I got up) and The Boy got the second shift (after Mrs. Fetched got up). We slept until nearly 9, took our time getting breakfast together, and finally got to clearing out from under the tree around noon.

Now I hadn’t planned much in the way of gifts this year; I picked up Mrs. Fetched a pot of miniature roses (she likes). In my mind, this Christmas was going to be Mason-centric. Not that he’s much into the Grand Acquisition of Stuff just yet, but it's always fun to get stuff for a baby because the older folks have great fun showing him how it works… and then he just chews it. The Boy and Snippet, however, went all-out — I think I heard someone say they pretty much shot Snippet’s entire paycheck on stuff for everyone. But relatively, this Christmas was fairly sedate.

Wednesday, though… yeesh. Mrs. Fetched invited both Panda’s family and the Evil Twins (and family) over to the manor. I cut out of work early, urged to do so by my boss earlier in the day, and picked up a few things on the way in. You think we have a lot of people tramping around in our house, you ought to try Panda’s place… they have a two-bedroom house for: his family of four, a brother-in-law and his family of four, plus his wife’s mom and fiance. Ten people crammed into a smaller space than just the downstairs here… kind of puts things in perspective. Panda’s kids (ages 3 and 6 I think) had great fun checking out the presents under the tree (I remember doing the same thing at that age, certain none would be for me but you never know, right?) and the Evil Twins and I had great fun hassling each other. All the festoovities had Mason pretty wound up that night and he didn’t really get to sleep until past 11… and slept until 7.

Yesterday (Christmas Eve) I figured to cut some wood. Mrs. Fetched said the chainsaw chain was not cutting, but I had a non-working saw in the other garage that I thought was also 18" so I figured I could swap the chain and at least get some of it done. It turned out my old chain was 16" — and when I tried swapping the bar onto the working saw, it wouldn't fit on the bolts. The Evil Twins and parents were coming back to help, so I called them to let them know I didn’t have a working saw. “You have a ‘safety chain,’ and they don’t cut,” he said. “Go to a hardware store — take the saw with you — and get the best chain they have. It won’t cost a lot. If they have a hardwood chain, get that.” As it turned out, I had to take Daughter Dearest to the bank so she could deposit a check for next semester’s textbooks, so next stop was the TrueValue in town (which also carries Stihl saws, one of which I’d like to get if the funds ever come through).

“We don’t carry hardwood chains for saws that small,” he said, “but what we got will cut a lot better than the one you’ve got now.” Undoubtedly, seeing this one could barely cut kindling. After 15 or 20 minutes, I walked out with a new chain (looking wicked-sharp, with easily twice as many teeth as the previous) and a file and spent less than $25 on it all. The hardware store was pretty quiet; I could have done all sorts of last-minute Christmas shopping and bought Mrs. Fetched some power tools at my leisure.

I got home, fired up the saw, and applied it to a tree that DD, Sasquatch, Brand X and I pushed over a couple summers back and never gotten around to cutting up — and it went through almost like it was butter. I had everything cut up that I’d planned on cutting in about 20 minutes. Mrs. Fetched returned about then, and asked me to help her feed the cows — “then you can bring the splitter up the back way, it’s already hitched to the 4-wheeler.” I arrived with the splitter, to find our friends here.

“Is that all you planned to cut up today?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I said. “I figured it would take longer.”

“We could get that one,” he said, pointing to a dead-looking oak about 20 yards down in the woods. “Or that over there,” over to the side of the house. His legs were paining him enough to need the cane today, so we decided on the second tree because he wouldn’t have to walk much uphill back to the house. I dropped the tree (a fairly good-sized one) and it took out several more on the way down. Mrs. Fetched’s mom showed up, and told me to get the tractor to drag the trees up to the driveway (where it would be easier to carry). We ended up cutting 6-foot lengths, loading them into the grapple/claw, and carrying them to the stack point. The promised rain had held off so far, and only sprinkled on us a little as we cut and stacked everything — dry stuff went on a rack in the garage (shown here), green stuff off to the side. What you see here is about a third of what we did today. We should be good until February.

So at least I worked off one or two of my Christmas dinners…

Hardware, Mason, Hardware

We had a holiday party at work yesterday afternoon — good excuse to knock off for a couple of hours and nosh on some horsey-doovers. In the past, the company would rent out a club and invite spouses along; with the economy the way it is, they decided to dial it back… only a little. The big pile of geek-compatible door prizes was still there, though (the smallest prize was an iPod nano, or maybe a digital photo frame). For the first time in like, ever, my name got pulled out of the hat! The way this works, you come up and draw a number out of a second bag; they match the number to your prize. I got a Kindle and a $50 Amazon gift certificate.

While I was aware the thing existed, I’d seen a Kindle in meatspace only once, in the hands of a co-worker taking a break outside. The second one I’ve seen is sitting next to my keyboard on the desk. I haven’t registered it yet, still going through the user manual. (Professional courtesy, don’t you know.) Amazon says it’s about the size of a paperback — which is true, if you’re talking trade size:



I found myself surprised at several things as I unpacked the Kindle and got it going: on the display is a brief set of instructions telling you to plug it in and turn it on (with illustrations). I assumed that there was a transparent overlay on the screen, and actually tried to peel it off with my thumbnail before I realized the display was showing it. They claim their “electronic paper” display doesn’t require much power once it’s showing the page. The display is 16-shade greyscale, and it looks really clear and sharp. It’s not backlit, which means you can’t read in the dark, but that’s what wind-up flashlights are for; they claim you can read in bright sunlight, and I’m not too skeptical about that claim. Other surprises include a rudimentary MP3 player, web browser, and data access over the Sprint cellular network (on Amazon’s dime)… Sprint’s signal out here at the manor is better than I expected; I usually get 3 or 4 (out of 5) bars. It’s supposed to hold about 1500 books, which would keep me busy for a long time were I stranded on a desert island with the Kindle (and a solar panel to recharge it). Sleep mode displays random woodcut-like graphics: portraits of classic authors, ancient manuscripts, and so forth.

Like the iPhone, Amazon has built an ecosystem around the Kindle. Unlike the iPhone, Amazon is providing other means to access that ecosystem: Kindle readers for iPhone, PC, (eventually) Mac, and so forth. This makes sense; Apple is about selling hardware and Amazon is about selling books. Both companies are using the ecosystem they’ve built to sell more of their product. One thing the Kindle store does that I wish the iTunes store did: keep a record of your purchases and let you re-download them if necessary.

Downsides? The Kindle doesn’t feel like something you’d spend $259 on. It’s light, almost airy, and (despite the brushed metal backside) doesn’t give me the impression that it’s rugged enough to live the hard life of a mobile device. The buttons are probably better than they feel, but I wonder how long it will be before the labels wear off. The Kindle is too big to fit in a pocket, even a cargo pants pocket, but it could go in a purse or briefcase (or courier bag). Finally, I have to wonder how long Amazon will allow free data access beyond the confines of their store, especially since it has a lightweight web browser.

The geeks are already hacking away at the device; it runs a version of Linux and some folks have managed to install software needed to make it a more general-purpose computer. Amazon has wisely taken a hands-off stance, although I suspect they would get rather exercised if people were to pound on the network too much. This is something I wouldn’t have bought for myself, but now that I have it I’m interested in seeing what it can do.


Mason was not in a wonderful mood much of yesterday. He woke up twice last night, maybe more… I got up with him twice anyway. Mrs. Fetched took him to the doctor today, and she suspects he has rotavirus, aka “baby flu.” Here’s hoping he gets over it soon. He tries really hard to be good-natured, and nothing brightens up a house like a baby laughing. Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest got the tree put up and strung some LED lights on it, and he loves looking at all the colors.


Since Mrs. Fetched needed the car to take Mason to the doc, I ended up on the motorcycle. It was one of those mornings where I put in all the linings in the jacket, added more layers underneath, cranked up the heated gloves, and only my feet froze. I’m working at the office all week since we have a new contractor in and I need to throw all the stuff I can’t get done on him (and help him get started doing it). He and I worked at the same place about 12 years ago, and dimly recognized each other at the interview… he likes his motorcycle too, and was glad to see mine.

Weekend Roundup [UPDATED]

Mason has been at the manor most of the week. Some nights Snippet has been here, some nights not… but this morning was the second time this week he slept until 6 a.m. I continue to hold out hope that this means he’ll soon be consistently sleeping through the night. Babies can be exhausting at times…

I guess he was somewhat of a pistol yesterday: Daughter Dearest had to go pick up Evil Lad NOT and bring him up here, which meant DoubleRed had to watch him for a few. For DoubleRed, very little can happen in her life without it turning into a crisis of one sort or another, and Mason picks up on her moods. So when Daughter Dearest got back, he was wailing with the volume at 11, DoubleRed was snarling and trying to take a test online… in short, nobody was happy. I got this second-hand from DD and Mrs. Fetched — what I did see was DoubleRed leaving the manor in a classic 8-cylinder huff; she returned just as I started writing this.

So while Mason is giving me the innocent look for all he’s worth, I’m not completely convinced. :-)

[UPDATE 13 Dec: He’s been working on turning himself over for a while now… he finally did it this morning. I got to see him do it the second time; Mrs. Fetched came out at 6 a.m. to find him on his back.]


I got home from work last night… and to Mrs. Fetched’s credit, “we need to swap a furnace at #3” was the third (rather than first) thing she said to me. Oh… did I mention that they got the houses sealed up enough to get birds? The good news was that it could (i.e. had to) wait until after supper. The not-so-good news was that we had to wait on Panda to show up, and he wasn’t able to get here until about 9. To be clear here, there are four or five furnaces in each chicken house — they hang on chains and blow hot air directly into the place. No ductwork involved.

Mrs. Fetched wasn’t completely sure about how to go about disconnecting a furnace from the gas line, but I sort of remembered looking at the hookups, and grabbed a pipe wrench and The Persuader (a 14" adjustable wrench) just to be sure. There was a handy nut just south of the gas cutoff, so I put the pipe wrench on, got the thing loose, started turning it… and the hose started kinking and twisting and not cooperating — like anything else in the chicken houses. With a combination of brute force and finesse, Panda and I were able to get the thing disconnected. Lifting it for Mrs. Fetched to get it off the chains was a relative breeze.

With the defective furnace off, we went to the back (which is closed off at this point) to get a working furnace. Same deal, but a little faster since we knew what we were doing. We threw it on the back of the pickup, rolled it down to where we needed it, and put it on — it only took two tries to get the hose counter-twisted enough for us to put it back on. So we plugged it in… and nothing. After some backing and forthing, Mrs. Fetched got agitated and took off, leaving Panda and I to deal with it. Figuring it was an electrical problem, we came back to the manor and got my voltmeter and a couple extension cords in case we had to plug it in elsewhere.

First, I tried the outlet. 120V. I opened the control box cover, and put the voltmeter on the AC terminals. 120V. OK, the thing’s getting power. I tried the thermostat terminals, 24V. Then I disconnected the thermostat, switched to ohms, and checked it. Open circuit.

"Make the thermostat click,” I told Panda. It was right behind us, so he did. Still open circuit.

"It’s either the thermostat or the cable,” I said.

"Mrs. Fetched said she just replaced that one,” Panda said, “but she might have done a different one and forgot.” We located a screwdriver and opened the thing up… it was packed with dust and feathers. Obviously she hadn’t opened this one up in a while. I blew the crap out of the thing…

“You think that loose wire might be the problem?” Panda said sarcastically. Someone, possibly the field man, pulled a bit too hard on it and there wasn’t much slack wire inside the thermostat. We didn’t have any pliers, but I managed to get the loose wire around the terminal and tighten it down. We plugged everything back in… and the furnace immediately coughed to life. After the high-five, we got a bit miffed at Mrs. Fetched for telling us the furnace was broke without checking the thermostat. I guess I need to send her to a troubleshooting methodology class.


Today was jam-packed with all kinds of “fun.” Someone had to be here with Mason, but: DoubleRed was gone, Mrs. Fetched had to go to the bank, Daughter Dearest was going to the chicken houses with Panda, and I had to cut firewood. But since Mrs. Fetched was supposed to meet The Boy, and he wasn’t awake to answer his phone, she stayed home and I went outside. I’d located a dead tree close to the manor (identified as such by large swatches of missing bark), and found two more when I went out to cut it down. As the other two were relatively small (about four inches), I decided to tackle them first — no splitting required, just cut ’em up and they’re ready! Except for a dead branch breaking off and me stupidly standing my ground (it missed), there were no untoward incidents. The third tree was a foot across (or more) at the base, big enough to need splitting but small enough to split by hand.

After I cut that to pieces, then dropped an even larger trunk near Butthead’s dog run that I’ve wanted to get to for a while, I was pretty well worn out. I took Panda home (he came back with DD just as I was finishing up), then Mrs. Fetched and I loaded the cut-up wood onto the truck and took around to the garage. The biggest pieces, that need splitting, went under a tarp outside and the rest went in the garage where we can get to it. I think it will last until the rain stops later on Tuesday. My back was hurting pretty well at this point, so I figured I was done with the strenuous stuff for the day.

Somewhere along the line, when I wasn’t looking, The Boy and Snippet came in. Mrs. Fetched wanted us to do a family portrait today. Seeing as my hair was a rat’s nest, and I’d been sweating like a pig in 35-degree weather, I figured I needed a shower before anything else happened. Now earlier in the week, I started looking through a photography magazine I picked up at the grocery store a while back, and saw an ad for an iPhone app that provided remote control capabilities for DSLRs (WANT). Then, Mrs. Fetched told me she wanted a family portrait to include in the Christmas cards (WANT → NEED). I had some money sloshing around in my iTunes account, so I topped it up to where I could drop $20 for the “pro” version that lets you adjust exposure (among other things) from the iPhone. It took me a while to get the thing to talk, but when I got the cables plugged in a bit more firmly we were in business.

We took over 30 shots altogether, knocking off when the flash batteries wheezed out. After I threw out the obvious clunkers (flash didn’t fire, somebody had a “duhhh” look or was looking around), we had a dozen or so possibilities. Mrs. Fetched decided she didn’t like her green top, since the shoulders weren’t right, so we’ll be doing it again tomorrow. In this pic, I’m holding the iPhone behind Mrs. Fetched. I also took a couple shots with just The Boy, Snippet, and Mason, and one of those turned out pretty well. I think if the church ever decides to do another directory, it’ll be a breeze with the stuff I have at hand. Y'know, there’s all sorts of ads in that photography magazine for stuff I never realized I needed (and can actually afford).

So the rum has numbed my back, and Daughter Dearest wants me to cook some supper. Whatever.

¼ Candle, and Other Stuff

Mason is three months old today, happy_birthday div 4 little dude!

He’s been working lately on grasping things. Of course, he can grab anything that touches his hand, but he’s starting to try grabbing by sight. He hasn’t quite got it down yet, but he’ll figure it out. He’s also trying to turn himself over, especially after waking up. He’s still not quite sleeping all night, but he catnaps through the day and crashes around 10pm, sleeping until about 4am or so; after a bottle and diaper change, he’s good until morning. He’s vocalizing a lot now, too.

He lurves his Auntie Daughter Dearest… of course, she’ll give him her absolute undivided attention and play with him for a good long while. We met her for a late lunch today, with one of her roomies, and they (Mason and the girls) had a fine time.


As I mentioned last weekend, the chicken houses are unoccupied at the moment. Mrs. Fetched and her band of hired guns have made much progress, but not enough just yet… it was kind of strange today when she didn’t go over there. If they drag this out a little while longer, maybe they can avoid having to buy gas at all this winter.

Screwdriver bits tend to not last when used heavily, it seems. I could tell this one was starting to lose some grip, then I heard a SNAP and it became like this. That might explain why Home Despot sells ’em in bulk.


What with all the stuff going on, we haven’t even had time to do our Christmas decorations. Yesterday was completely absorbed with the choir first caroling (and delivering fruit baskets) at various shut-ins around the county, then going to Amicalola Falls to perform. Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest usually tackle the decorations, but neither one has been available so far. DD would have been home this weekend if it wasn’t for the minor detail of four Christmas concert performances: Thursday, Friday, and two on Saturday. We went to the Thursday performance; it went well for the first one. [Aside: the brass section of the orchestra (I noticed this in earlier concerts) has been a bit sub-par this year.] I’d do it, but I’d hear a lot of whining about it not being elaborate/large enough and it would get torn down and re-done anyway. Then again, if I went ahead and did it, then Mrs. Fetched would do it just to mark her territory. It would help if I could get into the Christmas frame of mind without being bombarded by all-day Christmas music on the radio and non-stop ads on TV… one reason I don’t spend much time with either one. Whatever happened to just adding Christmas music to the rotation and easing people into it? Shoot, even one of the local TV stations noticed… the “news” ran a segment on Grumpy Shoppers where most people said they were tired of stores rolling out the Christmas stuff before the BBQ has a chance to cool off after Labor Day.

Another thing we haven’t had time to do is cut and split wood. We’ve done some, but it was all green and even that is starting to get used up. My chainsaw is scrod; if I could easily get hold of one (and not yanked onto some other spurious project) I could take down and/or cut up a few dead trees and fallen limbs around the manor. Lots of things I could do, actually, if I was unemployed and still had money. Oh well.


The next White Pickups episode rolls in tomorrow morning. I’ll post a conversation with Sara later in the week.

Thanksgiving, and Thanks a Lot

Another Thanksgiving, one that happened to coincide with my birthday this year (I’ve turned 17 for the 3^rd time if you want to know). I was hoping — but not expecting — a little whimsy, like candles on the turkey, and that didn’t happen. But I got something much better: the in-laws behaved themselves and didn’t launch into one of their squabblefests for a change. Mrs. Fetched’s dad hasn’t had Fox Spew on this weekend, at least when I’ve been there, which makes being there a little more bearable.


This has not been a great year for the in-laws, health-wise: Mrs. Fetched is the only one of her immediate family who hasn’t had a stretch in the hospital this year. Big V has been in twice, and not all of her came home last time. She got out of rehab just in time to join us for the festoovities, complete with an initial prosthetic foot. She made a comment about “I wish my other leg was as thin as my new one!" (Careful what you ask for, sis.)


The good news: no trip to the chicken houses on my birthday. The bad news: my birthday is only one day out of 365. For me, Black Friday was an appropriate name. The poultry company started subsidizing the natural gas for the growers a year or so ago — which, given the price, is one way to keep growers from just shutting down through the winter. However, they’ve started doing some kind of pressure test to make sure the heat stays inside for just a little while longer. The houses were built in the 1980s, before and after I entered the picture here, and they’re nearly as drafty as they are filthy. They did an initial test last weekend, and they scored a 2 with a minimum acceptable score of 5 (not sure what the dimensions/units are just yet, maybe 1/10 PSI). They delayed putting in a new batch of birds, to give Mrs. Fetched another week to improve things, so it’s all hands on dreck [sic]. While a hired gun straightened out exhaust fans and sagging doors, we spent much of the afternoon inside a closed (and unlit) chicken house, seeking out spots of daylight to spray foam filler into. Mrs. Fetched and I walked around and put screws in some of the plywood that was bowing away from the studs and letting light (and cold air) in as well.


Of course, some cracks of daylight just weren’t conducive for spraying foam into — like the large doors in front and back. Mrs. Fetched had a plan, and raw materials to execute it with: when we put wood flooring in Daughter Dearest’s room, we had to rip out the white carpet. It’s been sitting in the detached garage ever since, and Mrs. Fetched appropriated it for the chicken houses. Panda cut 6-inch wide strips of carpeting and tacked them up… so yup, the chicken houses are carpeted (but a bit askew as always).

After we knocked off, mainly for lack of material to continue, I went to the back yard to continue leaf-removal exercises, and pulled up the wild blackberry vines. They weren’t bearing that well, and I figure Mason will be running around outside by next fall, so I wanted to make sure we have a briar-free area for him. I get better blackberries from stands a little farther from home.


Of course, I’m not going to let one of these go by without a picture of Mason. Daughter Dearest has been home all week, while Mason has been in and out of the manor… but he loves his aunt DD. It turns out The Boy is often unable to wake up, even with Mason in the crib next to the bed giving him the full-throated “FEED ME!!!” roar. Anyway, DD got to take care of him all afternoon while the rest of us were suffering in the chicken houses (I’ve had that privilege a couple times myself). He continues to grow, eat ever more prodigious amounts of formula, and develop. He’s starting to laugh, drooling like Amicalola Falls, and in the early stages of cutting teeth (Snippet cut teeth when she was 3 months old). His brain is wiring up at breakneck speed; you can see him taking more interest in his surroundings and he’s starting to reach for things. Anything in his hand immediately goes in his mouth, of course. Unfortunately, we’re getting more normal weather for this time of year now, so dropping him in the stroller is going to be a very occasional event until March or April.

Just think… we get to do this again tomorrow. Oh joy.

Fall is Fell, The Boy is Sprung

Current music: Philosomatika



After the usual delays and bobbles associated with the court system on Planet Georgia, Mrs. Fetched brought The Boy home this afternoon. Of course, there was the obligatory stop needed at the apartment to get him some clothes, and then they stopped at the mechanic’s to pick up my car (Mrs. Fetched had guessed right about the problem being the thermostat). Meanwhile, Snippet was at the house, jittering, jiving, cavorting, and just plain being a giddy female-type while I was trying to work. (It didn’t help my productivity that Mason was having a colic spazz this morning.)

So the upshot of his latest episode: time served, a year probation, “family counseling” (a family-oriented anger management class), a $500 fine offset by the amount of his counseling, and probably a couple things I’m forgetting. He also lost his job. Perhaps the most onerous (to him) part is no booze throughout his probation. Yeah right, like that’s gonna happen. I just hope he doesn’t end up violating his probation.

I may have to do a 2.0 version of TBxx errors.

Never a Dull Moment

Mason is cruising right along, development-wise… and slobbering like he’s cutting teeth already. He’s also started fighting sleep through the day — if he can manage, he’ll get by on 20-minute catnaps through the day and he can get pretty cranky when he can’t keep going. He stayed awake when I took him out in the stroller with Snippet this afternoon… and we got about half the walk done. I had to carry him for the last stretch; he didn’t conk out and snooze this time. Sometimes I can prop him up on a couple pillows and get a little keyboarding done, but that only lasts 10 minutes tops. [EDIT: That's my robe he's sleeping on. Snippet had his laundry in the crib.]

So… remember The Boy’s little incident back in February? They’d continued to put off his court date, and he managed to miss the one he was supposed to attend on Monday. The court doesn’t have much of a sense of humor concerning those things, and they came by the manor looking for him Tuesday afternoon then yanked him off the factory floor that evening. The real killer was, if he had bothered to remember and show up, there’s a pretty good chance they would have dropped the charges and he would have been shut of the whole sordid mess. Now, he’s sitting in the clink in Historic Forsyth County until his (rather expensive) lawyer that Mrs. Fetched found for him can get him out. I just hope he’ll have a job to return to, so he can pay the lawyer.

Working at home yesterday (and today), Mrs. Fetched and I had to run to the chiro-cracker late in the morning. I jumped in the car; she said “When did you spill gasoline on yourself?”

“I didn’t,” I said, smelling my shirt. “I haven’t handled gas since Friday.”

Coming out of the chiro-cracker, we smelled gas again and I opened the trunk. It did smell quite a bit. “You must have spilled some gas when you were helping that woman get her car started Friday night.” (She ran out of gas in the turn lane, ahead of me… better to carry her a few hundred yards than let her risk her life trying to cross GA400 in the dark.) I guess that was possible, so we zipped over to Zaxby’s. The lawyer called her just as we were getting out, and I walked over to the building to get out of the parking lot… and saw gas dripping underneath the car. Fortunately, I had the mechanic’s number in my phone, so I called and made sure we could bring the car in after lunch. As it turns out, we didn’t make it… ran out of gas less than two miles short of the turn into his shop. Mrs. Fetched called the tow service and we got it over there. Turned out a rat chewed the fuel line — just more proof that reality is stranger than fiction at FAR Manor. I hope that little so&so poisoned itself! This was familiar territory… the shower fix that turned into a water leak last month was the product of a rat chewing the water line. The plumber left us the affected piece as a souvenir (which Mrs. Fetched tossed before I had a chance to get a picture) and a note saying we did a really nice job on the shower.

So Snippet has been here since Tuesday. She and DoubleRed have been getting on each others’ nerves, until finally DoubleRed started growling at Snippet this afternoon while I was trying to work. Snippet said, “I’m leaving now,” and walked out of the room; DoubleRed slammed her door open and stormed into the kitchen. I yelled at them both to cool it, and they kept it down until they were finally able to work out their differences. At least I assume they did; they’ve been fairly cordial and even slightly chummy since then. At least DoubleRed has gone somewhere for the evening… maybe if they don’t see each other much they can keep up the happy babble.

Work also picked a fine week to go ka-boom, and taught me that not all schedule slips are a positive “development” for me. A major project that was supposed to be done by the end of the month is now sliding out to the end of December… but with a major re-think about the feature set. So out with half the stuff I’ve done with it to date, in with whatever is going to go in (I’m supposed to get a high-level list Real Soon Now). This is turning into one of those things that suck all the oxygen out of the other projects — both hardware and software — going on; my boss is telling his boss that pretty much everything else I’m doing has to be pushed out. Vacations are being canceled, and I was planning to burn the 7 days I’m not officially allowed to carry over at Thanksgiving and Christmas. That too has been worked out… with any luck, I’ll take two weeks at the end of January and spend it in Florida. Sitting on the beach, 500+ miles from FAR Manor and the office, sounds like just the thing.

The Week of Stuff

Mason, contemplating the import of a story his great-grandmother is telling about the “good” old days. I’m not sure he’s buying it. He’s two months old today… wow, has it been that long/short?

The grandkid is definitely starting to develop a personality, complete with a few quirks and routines. For example, if he finishes his bottle and isn’t going to sleep right away, he likes to play a bit. I’ll stand him up in my lap, and he will invariably: jump twice, stamp his left foot twice, his right foot twice, then march. He’s getting stronger all the time; his legs support most of his 11 pounds and change, and he’s always had a good grip.

The “high”light of the week with him was yesterday evening. He was hitting the bottle with his normal enthusiasm, when he stretched out, grunted a couple times, then I heard — and felt — and smelled — pbpbpbbbbttttt from the nether regions. He continued his bottle-draining (and farting) for a couple more minutes, until I figured he was done. Turned out the storm wasn’t over, it was just the “eye” of the hurricane… I opened up the diaper, saw the nuclear waste dump, and began decontaminating the waste outlet. When I hoisted him up by the feet to change the shielding, phpbpbpbbbbtttt went the alarm and I clapped the diaper back over him. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“I didn’t think he was done!” Mrs. Fetched said, ever so helpfully after the fact. "You weren’t finished, were you?” she asked him. He grinned, quite pleased with the minor mayhem he caused.

Shortly after the atomic waste issue, Mrs. Fetched and I headed over to Reinhardt for Daughter Dearest’s fall concert. We had planned to go, then she texted us earlier in the day and said it was sold out (at $2/seat, why not?) — then two seats came open and we were on again! Our seats were almost exactly in the middle of the hall, so I didn’t have the clear view of the stage I had for the Phylicia Rashad concert back in the spring. I took a few shots of DD and some of her friends, and the daughter of the lady sitting next to us, then a few artsy-fart shots like this one. I wound up putting the telephoto zoom on and getting closeups.

Mrs. Fetched was concerned about the clacking of the camera — mechanical shutters do tend to make a fair amount of noise in a venue, as we learned last weekend, shooting the community chorale — but I did my best to not pull the trigger during rests. In fact, a couple ladies behind us wanted to know what kind of camera I had; the EOS 40D has a large-ish (3-inch) display that provides a pretty good image of what you just got and they were looking at the preview (post-views?) after each shot.

The weekend is upon us… but every day is Monday when you have a chicken house. I’m hoping that since Daughter Dearest decided to come home for the weekend, that she’ll give me a reprieve, but I’m not holding my breath. I leave you with a shot from the chorale last weekend…



And I’ve had enough to drink that going to bed early sounds like a really good idea.

Mid-week Mason-ry

Mason has been at the manor more than not the last couple of weeks. DoubleRed thinks they’re taking advantage of us… on the other hand, we know we’ll do a good job of taking care of the kid, so I’m not all that bummed about it. Besides, Snippet has been taking on a bigger share of the night-time load… he starts crying, and she’s mostly down the stairs by the time I’m starting to shuck my robe on (or Mrs. Fetched, for that matter).

It’s finally gotten a little warm this week, and we got the stroller out. We learned yesterday that Mason likes being outside: if he’s crying, take him outside and he stops. So he was pretty cranky at first in the stroller, but as soon as I got him outside he got quiet. Three seconds later, he was asleep. I really want to get one of those slings to put him in, so I can walk around with him and have both hands free.


One of the things I’ve been wanting to do since he was born was to get a picture of the five generations extant on Mrs. Fetched’s side of the family… and yesterday, I finally got it. Here you see Mason, The Boy, Mrs. Fetched, her mom, and her granny. We’ll probably send this picture (or one I took inside the night before) to the paper.

It’s really too bad he was born in the fall… while he loves being outside so much, it’s going to be difficult finding nice days for him to enjoy until spring. The days (and years) are going to go by fairly quickly, methinks.

Mason, Moonshine, Motor Vehicles

Mason has been in and out of the manor a couple of times this week. As I type, he’s here as expected — The Boy has his band buddies over on Saturdays, rain, sun… or Moonshine Festival.

I was hoping to avoid the whole zoo this year, and at first it looked like I’d be able to… I took care of a surveillance camera at the chicken houses and helped get a more solid hanger put up for one of the feed bins where the rafter cracked, and that was going to get me off the hook except to take Mrs. Fetched. We loaded up a couple of chairs, and I brought my camera Just In Case, and I dropped her off and headed back to grab a peanut butter sandwich.

I hadn’t gone a couple miles when the phone rang… “Can you turn around and bring the chairs?”

“I said something about that when you were getting your other stuff!” I said, “I figured you didn’t want them.”

“I didn’t hear you.” Didn’t listen, is more like it. Anything I say is optional for listening to.

“Whatever,” I said. “Send someone to meet me at the corner so I you can grab them.” There was nowhere to park, even for a few seconds, and the detours were packed with cars. Naturally, nobody was up at the corner and where I had to go was the wrong way on a one-way. I couldn’t even turn around; I had to follow the detour and every turn was the wrong way. I was getting hungry, and cranky, and I finally got to a place where I could text Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest: If nobody is at the corner to get the chairs, I’m not coming back. It took a good half hour to get back to what should have been a five-second trip.

As I was about to turn to go past the booth, Daughter Dearest called. “Come to El Rio, we’re eating lunch there.” Naturally, that meant another lap through the maze, but I was beyond caring. I coughed up $5 for parking and ate, then walked the chairs over to Mrs. Fetched (with a few words of advice to pay attention to what I’m saying next time). But I figured since I was in the middle of the zoo, and had a camera, I’d go take a few pix:



I took about 40 shots, not including a couple botches I threw away… I’ll post a few of them over the next couple weeks as my own version of fall color.

Some Mason pix

Six weeks old today. Time flies, kids grow like weeds… and sometimes fall asleep.



I took these Thursday. The plan was to post them last night, but I didn’t want to put them with a “things went w0rNg” story. Snippet was a pretty good sport about the pic, and even asked for a copy to put on her MySpace page.

He was in a pretty good mood on Thursday:



Actually, he’s a happy kid overall. He has his moments, like when he’s hungry or is trying to load his diaper, but don’t we all?

Happy Birthday, Daughter Dearest!

But I need to know… how can you be 20, when I keep thinking I’m 20?

We went to her fave restaurant for dinner this evening. Mason came, and managed to bring The Boy and Snippet along, and now he’s here with Snippet.

It’s been a strange day, in a lot of respects. DoubleRed was on her way to Toccoa, and I was settling in to get some work done in relative peace & quiet (I worked at home today), when she called in a dither about her spark plugs being worn out and she couldn’t afford to have them changed. I told her to get the plugs and I’d change them, especially when I learned the plugs are up on top of the engine (where they’re really easy to reach). Of course, I couldn’t find the 5/8" plug socket (seems like it’s been missing for a while) and we had to run to town to get another. Since it was lunch time, we grabbed lunch too. We spent 30 minutes or more looking for the existing socket, and it took maybe 10 minutes to change out her plugs once I brought a new one home. For 4 bucks, you really have to cut your losses.

So we’re getting ready to play Apples to Apples and everyone is asking me if I’m playing (yes). Come back tomorrow, when we’ll be talking with Tina ball of White Pickups…