Plants, flowers, bees [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: I added a picture of the mountain laurel.]

Mrs. Fetched snagged me from the comfort of a lounge chair this evening, where I was reading Cell, to plant a few things out front in the dusk. I dug, she planted, and we both scooped dirt back in.

Looking out the bathroom window this evening, I saw a huge mountain laurel in full bloom down at the edge of the woods. Click the picture for a closeup of the flowers.

Some of the lilies that run riot around the manor grounds are also starting to bloom, purple varigated with white, that look somewhat like large versions of the wild violets that I couldn’t get rid of even if I wanted to.

The mountain laurel was getting plenty of attention from the large carpenter bees, and my strange old friend the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth was also getting in on the pollination action. I haven’t seen any honeybees in about a month, when they were buzzing around the wisteria. Colony Collapse Disorder is a terrible thing to have happen, but it looks like other bugs are already picking up the pollination slack. I hope so, anyway.

Are you seeing honeybees at your place, or are other bugs stepping in?

Home 0wn3rsh1p – a Thought Experiment

James Kunstler’s column today is the sort of thing that brings FAR Manor to mind. Not so much the state of architecture, nor even the shoddy build quality of most homes today.

My first thought upon reading it was that the real failure isn't architecture — or even construction — so much as people collectively have a “busted give-a-damn.” But then I thought about it a little further. Owning — or rather, being 0wn3d by — FAR Manor has taught me that two things are required to maintain a home: 1) money; 2) time (and improving a home requires the same, just more of it… lots more). Anyone who marketed any part of a house as “maintenance free” should have been summarily drawn and quartered, but that's another story. This tale is going to be a thought experiment that will perhaps illuminate the current situation.

Let’s look at Joe and Jane Average. They bought a tract house back when Joe had a decent manufacturing job and Jane was working part-time as a bookkeeper. Like most people these days, they bought something a little more expensive than they should have, but figured they could sell it in a few years for a tidy profit. Then comes the perfect storm: the decent job went to China, the local housing market cratered with the job market, and a birth-control failure led to a couple of unexpected kids. Joe’s “lucky” — he’s working a couple of so-called part-time jobs, six and a half days a week at crap wages, that bring in about 3/4 of what he used to make on a 40-hour shift. Jane still has her bookkeeping work, but she hasn’t had a raise in three years and is mostly tied up minding the kids.

Instead of owning the house, the house now 0wns them. They tried selling it, but the few offers they got for it weren’t enough to cover the mortgage, so they’re stuck. Fortunately, they were smart enough to nail down a decent fixed rate before things went to hell; most of their acquaintances with creative financing got foreclosed on last year, and most everyone else is looking at that reset and sighing in resignation. What Joe and Jane are bringing in would be enough, except for the credit cards. They ran up some plastic debt back when things were looking good; they bought a few luxury items and figured they’d have plenty of time to pay them off. Then the clock ran out and left them hanging — everything not going into living expenses is now barely keeping them abreast of the credit cards.

So the siding's starting to look a bit grungy, and it’s even coming loose in a couple of places. The fake-wood trim needs to be repainted, and the front door frame is dry-rotting at the bottom. The living room carpet is, to put it nicely, shot. Joe has little experience with construction or carpentry work, Jane none at all — they could do some maintenance, but neither one has much time or any energy to do so much as paint the trim.

They’re holding on by their fingernails, folks. They nearly got burned by a debt consolidation “service” that was saturating the radio with ads last year, which turned out to be little more than a scam — there may be legit ones out there, but they don’t trust any of them now. They looked into bankruptcy, but Bush-league made sure that door was slammed in their faces. Their few friends are in worse shape than themselves. The car is starting to make a weird noise (the second one got sold a few months ago, just before it went to pieces; they used the money to pay their property taxes). The bright spot is that they should be getting a few hundred bucks back on their taxes, which will go to fix the car.

Is it any wonder that people aren’t maintaining their houses?

Compared to Joe, I’m far better off. My job hasn’t been outsourced (yet), and I have (if Mrs. Fetched allows) a little time on weekends to fix steps or work on a wood floor. FAR Manor, as I’ve found by pulling up carpet, is far from quality construction (and I give Mrs. Fetched hell about buying this place every time, you betcha)… but it’s mostly maintainable. I can manage a few of the things that need to be fixed, and the few things I want to do.

The Averages might have a way out, though — now the thought experiment begets a thought experiment within itself. Jane’s bookkeeping skills have saved their bacon, so far; she set up a budget and has managed their money the way a skilled kayaker negotiates a Class V rapids. One mistake, or the submerged rock of an unexpected expense, could spell disaster; but so far so good. She made a little extra money this spring doing taxes — a local tax preparer was swamped with complex (i.e. expensive) returns, and farmed out many of the 1040A and EZ jobs to her. A little of the money treated the family to dinner at a cheap Mexican restaurant; the rest went to a credit card payment, opening up a little breathing room.

But I digress. One day, one of her neighbors sees Jane playing in the front yard with her kids. She just landed a job at a big-box store, nothing to brag about but it will help to supplement what her husband Frank makes doing odd jobs. Would Jane watch her kids (close to Jane’s in age) in the afternoon? She couldn’t pay anything right away, but —

“I have a better idea,” says Jane. That afternoon, Frank brings the kids over. While the kids get to know each other, he tacks up the loose siding and pressure washes the whole house. The next day, he paints over the trim. The house is looking better already. Joe gets home and silently picks up the trash in the yard before collapsing with a beer in front of a TV he suddenly can’t stand to watch.

That weekend, the two families get together and have a cookout during the few afternoon hours that Joe has free. Frank says he can replace the front door, frame and all, with a better one that he bought for a job (that fell through) some time back. Joe offers to trade the lumber he’d bought for a deck, back when he had a life, and the deal is struck on the spot. “I’ll keep an eye out for some carpet for your living room, too,” Frank says. “If there’s no hurry, I can probably get a roll-end for nothing or next to it.”

At his jobs, Joe gives Frank’s name to co-workers — there are always things that need to be done, and people willing to pay someone else to do them. Jane starts getting money instead of barter for the day care work, and takes in one more kid (all she feels comfortable handling). Slowly, almost reluctantly, the credit card debt gets whittled down. Jane manages to squirrel away a few hundred bucks for emergencies; the car will need new tires sooner or later and gas prices are only getting worse. Joe and a co-worker start car pooling to split the expenses.

The Averages are nowhere near out of the woods yet; a major sickness or accident could put them under in a heartbeat. They have put their house back on the market; it’s the nicest one on the street now. But as tempting as it is, I can’t in good conscious pull a deus ex machina and give them an offer that would pay off all their debts with enough left over for a deposit on an affordable apartment.

In the end, it’s not completely their fault that they bought the Endless Growth line; it seemed true for so long. But they are slowly bartering their way into (what they hope is) a better future.

Linkin Park Music Video

I’m normally not a Linkin Park fan, but I’ll make an exception for this song (and video).

Linkin Park – What I’ve Done

Steppin’ Out

The steps leaving the porch out back have been in a state of disrepair for some time now. Daughter Dearest nearly hurt herself when the top step gave way on her one day, as she was carrying the litter box out to dump. Since then, she’s been taking the big step down to the second one, and recently told us that it was starting to get loose too. Mrs. Fetched suggested that I take care of it, since I had the supplies ready for some time, and so I did (after resting up from a bike ride).

This is the end of the second step. You can see it's a little rotted-out, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the top step and I deemed this one salvageable. I cut a new tread for the top step.


The support pieces on the top two steps were split pretty badly, so I replaced them. The original ones had been painted, but not until everything was put together. I went ahead and painted them first, using some leftover paint from the gable job. Here, the top support is still getting leveled up before nailing it in.


While trekking to and fro to grab tools and other necessities, I noticed that the blackberries are opening up. We have vines scattered around the yard; if we get a normal amount of rain we’ll have some goodies for 4th of July.


Of course, the newly-painted step was much brighter than the rest of the steps, so I brushed off the dirt and painted everything to match up.

The deck above is a postage stamp, but the railing needed to be scraped and re-painted as well. The deck itself had never been painted, so I guess I’ll tackle all that next.


More work than strictly necessary, but with any luck I’ll never have to do it again.

Friday Night Cinema

The drive-ins closed years ago, and it’s getting to expensive to drive anywhere anyway. Friday Night Cinema lets you take your laptop outside to enjoy a short flick al fresco!

Chick-Fil-A’s cows are trying to persuade you to “Eat Mor Chikin,” but… more radical elements might not find persuasion to be effective or quick enough. Keep your BBQ fork by your side and watch (out for) Cows With Guns…

(Rated SBIF, for So Bad It’s Funny)

Notes from the FAR side

Another roundup…

The Boy got out today! The paperwork was apparently sitting on the D.A.’s desk: he called the public defender, that worthy soul put a call into the D.A., and the latter sent it on. He now gets two months of house arrest, with the ankle bracelet thing, but he has two weeks to get it. The roar of a guitar is emanating from the garage as I type.

Mrs. Fetched’s mom also got out (of the hospital) last night. She was more than ready to leave; the retarded howler monkeys who run their billing department may have taken over the rest of the place from the sound of it.

One reason I haven’t been around much: what little time hasn’t been absorbed by other matters, I’ve been spending finishing up reading the Dark Tower series. I’m on the last book now. I still kick myself from time to time for not grabbing a copy of On Writing when it was on the shelves… I enjoy King’s stories, but I enjoy his “liner notes” just as much, and a book of nothing but liner notes would be killer. Next time I’m in Humpus Bumpus, to pick up WinterMaejic (ordered it for Daughter Dearest), I’ll see if they have a copy.

DD’s boyfriend is still in Indiana. He said he’ll probably come back next month, once his car is running right.

We’ve started the long-awaited (again, by Daughter Dearest) replacement of her white carpet with wood flooring. We’ve pulled up the carpet and padding… to find a couple of humps that need to be sanded down and some spots of blood on the plywood. FAR Manor wasn’t even finished yet, and it was causing pain. It seems to have mellowed in its old age; instead of drawing blood it just squeezes my wallet dry. I’ll have pictures of the proceedings soon.

During the really cold nights we had a couple of weeks ago, we tossed blankets over the rhododendron bush (shot from last month) out front. It either worked, or the bush didn’t care. It started opening up last weekend, when I took this shot; it’s in full-zoot bloom now. We’re waiting for it to stop blooming so we can trim it back some, but it never stops.



The pansies certainly didn’t care about a cold snap — I think the impatiens got nailed worst, with the butterfly bushes a close second (they look dead, and it’s nearly impossible to kill those dang things). The cherry tree was OK — the wind knocked most of the blooms off and the others weren’t affected. The dogwoods are a little frostbit, but the Flowering Whatever Tree on the garage side of the manor house looks like it got whacked a good one.


I took that strange “film” stuff that Clickzilla uses in for processing. I have a couple of portrait shots I took of some friends of ours, plus that hyacinth I posted a while back, so I’m interested in seeing how they turned out. (I tell you what, I’d pay $1000 for a 4–6MP digital back for that camera. The only thing I’d have to think about is how to get the money together.) I had them order me a couple rolls each of color & B&W film while I was there… I can put one of each in the two film backs I have. If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I would have checked out the lighting equipment they have on display… I have to go back anyway to pick up the prints. A roll of 35mm was laying on Mrs. Fetched’s night stand, and she doesn’t know what it is, so I guess I should take that in too. It would be a good excuse to have an early look at the lighting and other gadgetry, and they could do the 35mm while I was looking at Shiny Things.

Speaking of Shiny Things, I’m way overdue for a podcast. If I can get caught up on everything going on right now, I’ll do one. I recorded me reading a short story (that I haven’t posted here), which I was planning to use for the feature this time.

Visitations

The Boy is still “vacationing” at the Cinder Block Resort, but with any luck he’ll come home tomorrow. We’ve been pretty good about going to see him, and he seems ready to do what’s necessary (or rather, avoid what’s not necessary) to stay out and get his act together. I sure hope he follows through; I think he means what he says right now, but there’s no telling how he’ll feel in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Fetched’s mom is laid up after (successful) knee replacement surgery on Friday. She has gone stir-crazy even faster than The Boy — after three days, she’s impatient to be able to walk and otherwise get back in the game (kitchen, garden, cannery). The plan was to visit The Boy this afternoon after church, then roll on up to the hospital and visit her for a while.

Things rarely go as planned around FAR Manor. Daughter Dearest’s chorus sang at the big Baptist church, and Baptists usually run overtime anyway. We got to the designated restaurant, but the food was slow in coming and it was already past 1:30 (The Boy’s visitation time) when DD and I finished our lunch. Mrs. Fetched suggested we go to see The Boy, they (she and her dad) would go see her mom, and we could come on home.

So I’ve been taking it easy this afternoon. DD needed a portrait in her black dress, so I shot one for her outside (very bright sunny day). I thought I had one more frame of film in Clickzilla, but it was used up — so I grabbed the digital and used it instead. I wrote an entry for my work-stuff blog (under my real name on Yahoo 360) then wrote this post. Now I’m going to do some reading.

With a window open in the living room and in DD’s room upstairs, we’re getting a good draft through the house. Very pleasant outside… I think I’ll take a book and a lawn chair outside and do some reading.

Friday Night Cinema

For all those who are broke and hyper… Friday Night Cinema comes to the rescue, with short freebies and free shorties!

Tonight’s feature is rated RR for Really Rude (but hilarious!), and stars Wil Farrell.

The Landlord (from Funny or Die)

Waiting

Current music: BeirutNights Radio

Jimmy Last-Minute brought his tax stuff by late Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the chicken house festoovities prevented me from doing much with them until yesterday night. And of course, he'd left out some crucial information that we needed to expense the tools we bought for his business, which we got this afternoon.

So now his taxes are done, and Intuit’s “Filing Center” is too busy to take an e-file. “Try again in an hour or two,” it suggests. Unfortunately, it’s already past 10 p.m. so it can’t be two hours. I suggested several times yesterday that we file an extension for him and he completely ignored me (not even a “I don’t want to do that”). So I’ll be pinging the server every 10 minutes or so until I get through. WIth any luck, I’ll get through before midnight.

If he doesn’t have everything here before April 1 next year, he can take it to H&R Block for all I care.

Ridiculous

Middle of April? check
Planet Georgia? check

Now could someone explain WHY there is SNOW mixed in with the light rain this afternoon?

As if it couldn’t get any worse, my hands smell like a chicken house.

Someone just shoot me.

Easter Magic… in the Strangest Places

A while back, The Boy ended up spending a few days in the clink for a probation violation. He got out, said he was ready to straighten up… and got arrested the very next weekend for underage drinking. Kind of hard to argue when you fall out of a (fortunately parked) car and throw up in front of a cop. Now this, amazingly enough, seemed to get through to him. He spent most of March at home, and was actually reasonable and helpful most of the time. However, last Thursday it was face the music time again: this time, we got to deposit him at the jail… not a pleasant duty, but a duty nonetheless. We had no idea at the time how long he would be there, which is partly why I’ve held off talking about it — I wanted to have a more complete story to tell here.

So our truncated family spent Easter first at church, then at the in-laws’ for lunch. I’d made a batch of Parker House rolls (my grandmother’s recipe), otherwise known as Crack House rolls for their addictive quality, before church; that contribution was taken care of.

I told you that, as Bill Cosby said, to tell you this. Family Man talked about the magic of Easter, and I found some of it in a rather unlikely place.

While we were eating, Mrs. Fetched suggested that I call the jail to see what time The Boy’s visitation times were — “maybe we haven’t already missed it.” Good thought… I called at 12:30, and one of his two times was at 1:30! So I bolted the rest of my meal, skipped dessert, and went on down to the jail. Mrs. Fetched had the chicken houses calling, and a cousin (Splat’s older brother) said he’d come but wimped out, so I went alone.

The waiting area was full — “packed” wouldn’t be exaggerating much. Lots of kids there, some dressed up, some not, all of them in a pretty good mood. None of the people there were members of what might be considered my socio-economic class, but everyone was friendly and upbeat — we all had something in common, after all. It was fun to watch the kids chattering, hopping about, sharing moments with grandparents, undoubtedly jazzed on Easter candy but it was all good because they were about to see someone they loved and cared about.

I settled in to people-watch, figuring The Boy would get delayed what with all the other people in front of me, but then I heard a woman’s voice call his name, then saw me and said, “I didn’t know The Boy was in there! What happened?” I rolled my eyes and she laughed, knowing that got to the root of the matter far more precisely than some ding-a-ling misdemeanor charge — which really is only a symptom of the real problem. Her son was one of The Boy’s best friends for years, and has been into the same kind of stuff he has, so she understands exactly what the problem was. So I stuck my head in the alcove, where there are two visitor stations, and there he was behind the thick plexiglas. An entire family — kids, grandparents, wife, and who-knows who else, were crammed chattering into the second station, but that didn’t matter anymore.

What we talked about wasn’t that important; it seemed that we actually connected for a little while. I really can’t explain it; I got to express some regrets about stuff that I wasn’t able to follow through with, and he seemed amenable to a make-up session. I told him about our planned summer trip, and he seemed to actually look forward to joining us (I hope without a guest riding along this time). The nurse is actually making sure he’s getting his meds and tests done this time (written orders from the endocrinologist helps there), and he thinks he’ll be getting out this week. He says he’s “done with that shit,” and plans to do little else but work and save money through the summer. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, but it’s so difficult. I can only watch, pray, and hope. Our half-hour went quickly, but at the end we ran out of things to say, and we’re not quite comfortable enough to enjoy silence together (something my dad and I can do), so we wound it up and I promised to be back on Thursday.

All kinds of miraculous things happen on Easter, and often in the strangest places — be it a jailhouse or an empty tomb, but it happens. You just have to be ready to see it.

A Late Freeze

Winter, or what passes for winter on Planet Georgia, has made one final visit to FAR Manor:

A BROAD SURFACE RIDGE CONTINUES TO BUILD SOUTH FROM CENTRAL CANADA AS A LARGE UPPER LOW REMAINS ANCHORED OVER SOUTHEAST CANADA. THIS PATTERN ALLOWS COLD CANADIAN AIR TO SPREAD FAR INTO THE SOUTHEAST UNITED STATES. A REINFORCING SURGE OF COLD AIR WAS MOVING THROUGH THE AREA THIS MORNING. TEMPERATURES WILL BE NEAR OR JUST BELOW FREEZING THIS MORNING...AND MOSTLY IN THE 20S SUNDAY MORNING...

Mrs. Fetched is understandably concerned about all the flowering stuff around the manor house, and wanted me to get pictures. Fortunately, I’d already done that except for a close shot of the flowering cherry outside our bedroom window. But as of this morning, it seems the wind (strong all evening and even stronger last night) was crueler than the cold — many of the blossoms got blown off the tree. One was on the ground when I was taking pictures; I took it into Mrs. Fetched.

Fortunately, it looks like it’s going to be slightly warmer tonight than last night, and (if we’re lucky) it will stay above freezing Sunday night. The wind may have rescued much of the fruit crop in the state by preventing frost from forming.

Blackberry Winter came early this year, and stronger than usual. Let’s hope that’s the end of it.

Sprouting!

It took a while, but the basil seeds I saved from previous years’ plants are starting to sprout. I was starting to wonder… and most of the marjoram pots haven’t shown anything yet. But a good dozen basil plants will give me more than enough pesto this year. I might take some to the local farmer’s market later on, when the plants are thriving in the hot sun and I have plenty.

The Pesto King is seeing his domain grow. Unfortunately, we’re in for some below-freezing weather this weekend, so I’ve hauled them all into Studio FARfetched and plugged the electric heater back in. That should keep things happy.

I also bought a spearmint plant and put it over by the rosemary last weekend. It’s already half again as big as it was when I brought it home. The parsley seems to have given up the ghost, but I can get some more. It will probably like the impending chilly weather. I need to get some more oregano, too. I thought I’d saved some seeds from the first plant, but have no clue where they went. One of The Boy’s friends probably tried smoking them. :-P


Meanwhile, the lilac bush out front is blooming better than I’ve ever seen before. Or I might just be paying attention this year. Trying to upstage the dogwoods…

The Joke’s on Me

Pet photography can be… frustrating. I learned that a long time ago (dang, has it really been 24 years?). Megabyte (age 11 months at the time), was in a mellow mood for a change, so I thought it would be cute to get him to pose for a portrait. Getting him to hold still for five seconds, though, turned out to be difficult. He would put his paw down, or stretch, or come over to see what I was doing with the camera. I persisted, though, and finally got the shot.

And what does he do but STICK HIS TONGUE OUT????

Four-Glove Weather

As I said earlier, Daughter Dearest now has her “real” driver’s license, and got Cousin Splat’s parking permit in return for taking him to school too (Big V took the keys). With The Boy out of school, I now (for the first time since the kids started school) am no longer responsible for getting the kids on the bus or dropping them off myself. Thus, I can a) sleep a little bit later; b) ride the motorcycle to work.

Besides making the commute a bit more enjoyable, there are a couple of other advantages to biking it: even as large a bike as a Virago 1100 gets 42 MPG without too much trouble, while I have to work to get 40 MPG out of the Civic. Then there are a couple of right turns where I have enough room to squeeze between a car wanting to go straight and the curb.

But one thing you have to do is get ready to ride. You can’t just jump on, start it, and go: without a shiny glass & metal cage around you, you have to wrap yourself in safety equipment — helmet, jacket, gloves, and decent boots at a minimum. I keep saying this is the year I’m going to get a riding suit, although I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds in the last year so it’s probably best that I put it off thus far. The wind chill on a bike with no windshield is amazing — even when it’s 80°F outside, you’re happy to be wearing that jacket once you get above 40MPH or so.

This time of year is what I call “four-glove weather.” In the mornings, it’s around 50°F or so, and you want the heavy gloves. (The alternative is not being able to type for an hour after you get to work.) On the way home, it’s 75°F and just the right temperature for well-ventilated summer gloves. A sweater is good, too; I can wear it in the morning and bungee it to the back rack in the afternoon.

The laptop rides in a courier bag. I let the shoulder strap out just enough to let the bag touch the seat; that helps keep it from moving around. The wind turbulence (and the weight) keeps it against my back pretty well.

So this is how I save gas and have fun at the same time.

Self-Defense for Bicyclists

Jack at Tallpoppy, a commuting cyclist, writes:

Texas just expanded the legitimacy of deadly force to include vehicles and workplaces. [...] You're allowed to use deadly force to protect yourself in your vehicle. Regular readers should be able to spot where I'm heading with this.

Picture it: you're cycling down the road at a good clip, and some oncoming idiot swerves to force you into the ditch, laughing as you're forced off the road and they drive off secure in their metal cocoon. Previously, you'd have had to content yourself with getting their license plate number. Now you can just pull a .45 loaded with hollowpoints out of your jersey pocket and blow the little fucker's head off (while taking care to ensure that their uncontrolled car does not cause an accident) as soon as they start swerving towards you.

Oh, I'm sure there will be weasel words in the bill about being in fear of your life, but that's the beauty of it: on a bike, most of the inconsiderate or malicious stuff that drivers can do does put you in fear of your life. So they've just given us carte blanche to strap a Glock to the top tube.

Ah, such lovely thoughts bring back the days of my youth. After my fourth year of college (a mid-stream change of majors cost me an extra year), I was offered a summer job at what was then Sperry-Univac in Roseville, MN (a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul). It didn’t hurt that Michigan Tech had Univac mainframes at the time; I was already familiar (as a user) with their products. Like many college students in 1981, I was financing my education partly through scholarships, largely through parental help, and partly through summer jobs and part-time jobs on campus. The occasional short-term loan, financed by the college for the college, smoothed out cash flow bumps. Thus, my mindset upon arriving in Minneapolis in my beat-to-hell '66 Rambler was “find somewhere cheap to live.”

After turning down the absolute-cheapest option, a filthy unfurnished upstairs room in a house full of drug-addled hippies (they literally talked like Cheech y Chong) for $50/month, I found a furnished one-room apartment on Aldridge, just off West Broadway and close to the river, for $140/month. That part of town was kind of on the edge at the time — two blocks north, it was pretty nice; two blocks south were slums. But the location was good; it was less than six miles from the office, and grocery stores and restaurants were only a couple of blocks away.

In addition to my Rambler, I brought along my old Schwinn Continental 10-speed — a good move for a summer in Minneapolis, which was bike-friendly years before many other cities. I lived in a “walkable” (if seedy) part of town, within biking distance of my job, and I was trying to save money, so I used the Schwinn pretty heavily for that three months. In the 5.5 miles between the apartment and office were 17 traffic lights, and I found it took 20 minutes to make the commute by car and 25 by bicycle. The 30- to 40-mile weekend rides were fun — Mom accused me of not exploring the city, since I didn’t know where the good restaurants were, but I saw quite a bit of it atop the Schwinn.

Although there were bike trails running all over town, mostly between the parks, West Broadway was somewhat less bike-friendly and heavily travelled during rush hour. Trying to be the considerate person I was raised to be (not to mention the natural self-preservation drive), I stayed as close to the curb as I could for most of the trip. However, there were a couple of narrow spots and had some fairly close brushes.

Then one day, I had an idea. Instead of wrapping the heavy chain that I used to keep the bike secure (this was a seedy part of town, remember) around the seat post, I simply doubled it up and draped it over my neck. Suddenly, I found drivers giving me plenty of room. It was like having my own bike lane, even in the narrowest spots. It seems I wasn’t the only person on the road concerned with self-preservation: I could have easily caught any miscreants at the next light and given them what-for.

The chain may also have kept me out of a fight one morning: a local bus got “caught” behind me, right at Aldridge and West Broadway. I crossed Aldridge at the light, but the bus was unable to get through. As I was waiting for the light to let me across Broadway, a guy jumped off the bus and started screaming at me — I don’t remember anything he said, but his demeanor was totally at odds with his business attire. I said nothing, just watched him as he continued his tirade… but when he stepped into the street toward me, I pulled the chain off my neck. He stepped back quickly, and continued to scream at me until I got the green light and rode away.

So Jack’s thought about “[strapping] a Glock to the top tube” is not quite the right way to go about it — my own experience suggests that displaying weaponry is key. A Glock should be stuffed in the back of one’s riding shorts, with the grip protruding and very visible. Perhaps a shoulder holster would be more secure, with the gun hung on the back. This would probably work even in locales where self-defense isn’t an explicit right — the whole point is to not get run off the road in the first place, and visible weaponry is perhaps the best deterrent.

I hope commuting cyclists will try this out and report back on how well it works.

The Downside of Spring

Very few things in life are purely good or purely bad, and that includes spring. The downside to spring, of course, is yard work. It was quite warm, bordering on hot, over the weekend, so there wasn’t much excuse to stay inside.


Mrs. Fetched decided that the entire front bed needed to be tilled up so she could re-arrange it. Figuring it would be easier to till up without the stepping stones in the way, I pried them out of the ground and stacked them off to the side. There were 25 of them all told, some of which were buried under dirt or plant-sprawl. This wisteria was hiding two, maybe three of them. I just probed around with the shovel, heard the tonk, and pried out the stone.

The hard part was when I started tilling around a couple of the butterfly bushes along the driveway: I’d forgotten those beds were graveled (easy enough to do when the gravel is covered with dirt, grass, and leaves). The Mantis about shook my arms off before I was done. We covered that area with mulch cloth and eight bags of pine bark. I also appropriated three of the stepping stones so I could cross it (on the way to Studio FARfetched) barefoot.


Brown Thrashers are Planet Georgia’s bird, which is appropriate. They get into your business, attack their reflections in car windows, and roost in inconvenient places. Like the little porch in front of the studio. They’ve been roosting there at night through the winter, and I’ve shoo’ed them away I don’t know how many times (and ducked many more times when trying to go in and they freak out). Although it was rather warm in the studio, I had stuff to do; the thrashers kept flying back & forth outside, waiting for me to leave.


Here’s one of this year’s houseguests, perched in the dogwood outside Studio FARfetched, waiting for me to get back to the yard. They’re going to love it when I replace the burned-out light bulb on the porch. I figure I’ll wait for the young to get gone, then I’ll put tack strips in the rafters. They can use one of the several bird houses we’ve put up around the manor.


The upside of spring, of course, is that I’ll be riding the motorcycle to work. Daughter Dearest is getting Cousin Splat’s parking permit, so she can drive herself to school…

Pretty weeds

One certain sign of spring at FAR Manor is that the weeds start waking up and (in some cases) offering bribes. One of the prettier weeds, the wild violets, are nearly impossible to eradicate. I even poured old kerosene on them over the winter, and they only died off temporarily. The lawn mower passes over them and leaves them pretty much unscathed.


This is what they look like up close and personal.


A few of them, for whatever reason, are more white than violet. I have no clue.


Here are some cheerful yellow flower-weeds popping up amongst the violets (and the grass).


Cutting one yellow flower-weed out of the herd.


Mrs. Fetched buys a lot of flowers and plants them in various places. She doesn’t really have to bother, but she likes bigger blossoms and putting them where she wants them. These don’t get out of the grass and are nickel- and dime-size. What do you want for free?

Stuff (mostly good)

Another collection of things, too short by themselves to merit their own post…

New computers! We made a pilgrimage to the Apple Store yesterday, and came home with a new MacBook. The fun part was walking by the Dell kiosk (on the way to Godiva, Mrs. Fetched wanted some goodies) with a big grin and a new Mac. The “specials” involved big rebates on printers, so I also grabbed a Canon Pixma printer/scanner/copier — $10 after rebate, and we needed a copier anyway. Mrs. Fetched and I agreed on a very similar model last year, to be bought when needed. The difficult part, as usual, is finding a place to put it.

I also ordered Daughter Dearest a used G4 Powerbook, which should be here tomorrow or Tuesday. One of the things I really like about new Macs is how they can transfer all your old files over, and let you pick up right where you left off. In my case, the iBook was dead — but the drive was sitting in a USB enclosure and “get files from a partition” was the right incantation to copy it all into the new MacBook. Clutter and all. I really need to clean things up.

A smaller gadget is the Blue Snowball mike. DD’s chorus teacher asked me to mess with his, and I had to get one of my own. Podcasts should sound a little better.

Boyfriend issues: The boyfriend’s career at Home Despot is coming to a close as of Tuesday. It turns out he’s allergic to pine straw, which isn’t good when you’re working the Garden section. He’s also thinking about heading back to Indiana for a while — personally, I think he’s better off on this planet(!) but it’s his choice and he himself admits he’ll probably be back in a few weeks. Daughter Dearest has been working hard to accept that he won’t be around for a while, but it seems to be taking. He got a new iPod nano yesterday too.

Plastic: In the last while (about a year), I’ve taken to writing “CHECK ID” on the back of credit/debit/gift cards instead of signing them. It isn’t any inconvenience — my driver’s license is in the same wallet, after all — and it’s interesting to see how many few cashiers actually look at the back and ask for ID. About 1/3 or 1/4 of them do. That sounds bad, but it would be enough to trip up someone who got my wallet and wanted to have a good time at the mall. Of course, they could buy gas at the pump safely, but that’s about all they could dare to do before I could call in and get my cards invalidated.

Weight: Down to 202 as of this morning. 3 more pounds before the celebration!

Well, that’s about it. My friend from SC just rolled in.

Yup, I jinxed It

I said winter had just gone by, and this morning and tomorrow morning are around above/below) freezing.

Stay warm, wherever you are.

No Test Left Behind

A post on 43 Folders today linked in turn to a Brian Kim post about things that schools should be teaching: personal finance, communicating effectively, social skills, sales (yuck!), and time management. While I think the important things about sales would be covered in communicating and social skills (which themselves are heavily related), there’s some good points to chew on here.

I responded in part to the 43 Folders post: “On one hand, I find myself wishing I'd been taught time management in high school — on the other, I probably would have (as Kim says) regurgitated the answers to pass the class then promptly forgotten about it.” Another response thought that school should teach kids how to change a tire and iron a shirt.

While it’s certainly a valuable life skill, time management just wasn’t relevant for me in those days. School days were pretty well planned in advance: I’d get up, eat, catch the bus to school, go to classes, ride the bus home, do housework and homework (what little I didn’t finish in study hall or history class), eat supper, run 5 miles (I was on the cross-country team), then usually do what I pleased in those 2–3 hours before bedtime (the softball field a couple blocks away in season, reading or messing with electronic equipment otherwise).

Time management and personal finance might be more relevant to kids these days than it was for my generation. Like many of us, today’s kids tend to have more discretionary income and less time. But when I was in school, “home ec'” (as we usually called it) was primarily a cooking class — even then, I wondered where the "economics" part of it went. We learned more about money management in shop class, where we had an assignment to list what tools we would/could buy with $100 then had to justify our choices. But if there is an existing class that would be ideal to cover these topics, home ec' is it.

Of course, today’s NCLB-driven schools are focused primarily on teaching kids how to pass standardized tests — and doing very little to teach useful life skills. Nowadays, they don’t even give kids time to visit their lockers between classes… if they’re even assigned lockers. Instead, they drag around knapsacks loaded with 30 pounds of books and other materials (I'm not exaggerating). How could you even teach them time management when you don’t even give them the time to do the planning that’s a part of it? Where in this avalanche of SAT cramming is there time for learning real necessities like basic home and auto maintenance, meal planning (including nutrition and cooking), writing, or planning a budget? Today’s school curriculum is well-suited for anyone who can afford servants or contract labor for such things, but 99% of the kids are getting short-changed.

Daughter Dearest had a finance job for a few months, entering stuff into QuickBooks for a small local company and helping with the payroll(!). While she was constantly afraid she’d make an expensive mistake, she probably learned more about bookkeeping and finance during that one afternoon per week than she did in her entire school career. (They amicably parted ways a couple of weeks ago; between school and chorus, there isn’t much afternoon left for work. That may change, now that she can drive herself around.)

Most of the things I can do (and blog about here) are things I learned on my own, either because I was interested (electrical, early on) or needed to fix something (plumbing, much later). No school taught me how to cut and glue pipe, or how to solder. I learned how to cook and clean long before I had home ec' in junior high (not because I wanted to… hi Mom!). I also learned how to type before I had typing class (but this was something I did want to learn). Bookkeeping… now that was practical, I learned how to balance a checkbook in bookkeeping class. As was the basic math that is pretty much a prerequisite. College English was the only humanities class I actually enjoyed in high school, but that was more about honing the writing skills I already had (I learned to type because I wanted to write a novel).

(I’m sure I wrote this once before, but can’t figure out for the life of me where.) In a better world, schools would evaluate each student, identify their talents, and tailor their education to develop those talents (and throw in the basic life skills things I’ve been ranting about). But an intelligent move would raise taxes… OMG, we can’t have that!

Getting Ready for Spring

Ready, set…

The hedge in front of our garage is getting ready for spring. On the other hand, it will bloom all year around if it gets a mild winter like the one just gone by¹. It started sprouting bulbs in early February; they got frostbit so the hedge just shrugged and started another round. Check out the top right picture from last year, this is what it will look like when it blooms. We’re supposed to wait for it to stop blooming to trim it, but it never stops!

I’ve been planting herbs — garlic some friends gave me (and some more that I bought to eat but sprouted), marjoram, and basil. Lots and lots of basil. I’m going to be the Pesto King this year.

---

¹Of course, now that I said that, we’ll get a late frost. But the extended forecast shows us staying above freezing by a reasonable (for March) margin, so…

That Driving Beat

The weekend started with Dad arriving safely, on his way back north after six weeks or so in Florida. There also occurred a driver’s test, a time change, and what would a weekend be without The Boy throwing multiple TB errors?

Daughter Dearest had an appointment for her driver’s test early Saturday afternoon. The Boy invited himself along, because he was supposed to surrender his driver’s license and get a picture ID, so that was fine. The DMV facility tends to be crowded on weekends, with long waits — fortunately, the appointment held up and Daughter Dearest did her thing: and passed. Barely. The Boy was waiting impatiently for his number; he was starting to make noises about leaving while DD was still taking her test. But shortly after that, about the time she finished and went in, his number came up and he went in too.

Daughter Dearest came out, waving her new license and grinning (naturally). A few minutes later, The Boy came out with a similar grin. “They said my license isn’t suspended!” (Like Solar, I suspect that a clerical error has occurred and will eventually get fixed.)

I dropped The Boy off at Ryan’s, where he met up with Mrs. Fetched and her parents — he was still hungry after lunch, because he hadn’t eaten Friday night. Daughter Dearest wanted to try out her wings when we got home, offering to go to Home Despot to get a bag of potting soil for me (that the boyfriend was working there had zippo to do with it, I’m sure). No problem, as far as I was concerned, although Mrs. Fetched was quick to inform me that DD needs to be re-attached to our insurance now that she has a “real” license — they met up at Home Despot, as her mom wanted some flowers and other necessities.

The Boy’s demeanor, which had been marginal up to now, went to hell in a handbasket — probably because he figured that with a non-suspended license, he no longer needed us to drive him around. Yesterday afteroon, he started badgering Mrs. Fetched to let him use “his” car to visit his usual friends. He agreed to be back by 7:30, and naturally a TB03 came up — he called and asked for an extension to 10 so he could take a friend home, then Mrs. Fetched called him around 11 and hold him to be home in 15 minutes OR ELSE. He made it.

As soon as he was home, he and Mrs. Fetched got into it (it was 11:30 p.m. by now) and a TB09 came up. He decided that he had to move out right away (TB01) and demanded a phone. We said no and he went into Badger Mode. I matched him.

“I need a phone.”
“Shut up.”
“I need a phone.”
“Shut up.”
“I need a phone.”
“Shut up.”

After a few rounds of that, he (to my surprise) cracked fairly quickly and made the mistake of asking why.

“Because you haven’t done even the smallest of the things we told you were the conditions for living here — why should we give you anything?”

“Why are you trying to change me?”

“Well… you need to change. You’ve screwed up your whole life trying to do it your way.”

That went over like a lead balloon. Surprisingly, there were no TB04 errors. But Mrs. Fetched could have saved me some trouble had she told me he was supposed to stay at her parents’ place — the Evil Twins had come for an overnight (their dad had therapy in Atlanta) and were in his room. I told him he could use the phone down there for all I cared, and go wherever he wanted from there. He began to object and suddenly changed his mind.

On the way down, he told me to “not come looking for him.” Fine — I figure we can catch him at the jail sooner or later if we get the urge.

He lasted here two days longer than I expected. But as far as I’m concerned, he can stay away until he starts straightening his life out himself. We can’t help him until he’s ready to help himself.

Weekend Cinema

Since Dad’s in for the weekend, I had too much going on to post Friday Night Cinema. But this is too good not to share.

The Escape Pod podcast recently plugged a new video series called Stranger Things. They describe it as “…a free 30-minute television series of original speculative-fiction stories, released monthly via the Internet. Stranger Things lives adjacent to the moody worlds of Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick.”

Their first episode, Sacred Cow, is dark but very well-produced. Go check them out before they go commercial or something!

Programmers. Argh. (3.0, when “RTFM” is Just Too Much Effort)

I had to bang out an emergency project today — well, they’re all emergencies these days, but that’s beside the point. Knowing it had to be done today, I seriously considered working at home; I decided not to because The Boy is around and I didn’t want him interrupting me with spurious requests for money, car keys (missing driver’s license notwithstanding), a ride to somewhere, blah blah blah. There was also some camera work to be done, which usually involves my physical presence anyway.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Instead of The Boy, I had people popping into my cube all day and committing Documentus Interruptus — some of them were asking about the project I was trying to get done in spite of the interruptions. It was difficult at times to hold my tongue. Worst, though, was a programmer from down the aisle.

“Where in the manuals would I find Voice Quality Metrics?” “There’s a description in the Feature Guide, and instructions in the Troubleshooting Guide.”

“Where in the manuals would I find Loop Diagnostics?” (same answer)

At one point, I was about to get into The Zone — a rare state where I can out-produce just about anyone — when he popped in and barked my name a bit too loud, causing me to jump several inches.

“Sorry. Where would I find Loop Voltage Management?”

“Description in the Feature Guide. Instructions are either in Management or Provisioning, I can’t remember.”

“How could I find out?”

“Um… have you tried looking at the table of contents?”

I think he got the hint, because he didn’t come back the rest of the day.

The second most annoying visit was from the Vietnamese guy in Tech Support, who waved his hand alongside my head to get my attention (I have my iPod going most of the day, partly because the guy across from me is on the phone being Super Consumer Advocate half the time). Naturally, he wanted to know about the emergency project he’d just delayed.

I’d seriously considered, early on, grabbing a conference room and closing the door so nobody could find me. In retrospect, that’s exactly what I should have done.

I never did get to the camera work. Maybe tomorrow.

If you want to see the previous installment…

TB02: For a day or two, at least

TB02: The Boy comes home (again)

The Boy called the house yesterday, getting Mrs. Fetched. “Can I bring some stuff home?”

“Like what?”

“My guitar, amp, clothes…”

“What are you really asking?”

“Can I come home and get my life straightened out?”

While we’re both all for that, long experience has taught us that The Boy is better at making the right noises than following through. We both quickly agreed on a list of conditions: keep normal hours, stop smoking, pocket that stupid lip ring while at the house, find some new friends, and plan to be around the house most of the time. In return, we would help him save his money and get him ready for tech school.

It turned out that his belongings — including a puppy, of all things — were split among two places, so we had plenty of time to let him know what we expected while we gathered it all up. I finally asked him the $20,000 question: “Are you ready to agree to all this?”

“To a point,” he said.

“There is no point,” said Mrs. Fetched. “There’s either do it or not live with us.”

He was already planning on not being around most of the time, and that after we told him we expected him to not do that, so I don’t expect he’ll be at FAR Manor tomorrow night. Or maybe even tonight: he agreed to help Mrs. Fetched with the chickens but didn’t get up this morning.

At least Mrs. Fetched and I are agreeing on something. Bailing out of FAR Manor and downsizing would prevent a lot of this; there wouldn’t be room for him….

To Move or Not to Move

In my last post, I disclosed my Master Plan for getting out of FAR Manor and away from the bane of my existence.

Funny how life will throw you a curveball. A night or so later, I saw this rather disturbing article. I showed it to Mrs. Fetched, who understood the charts pretty quickly.

It’s one thing to look at a theory and understand that it makes sense; it’s quite another to see potential proof. If the Saudis have really topped out their oil production, despite tripling their drilling rig count in the last two years, then “it” will hit the fan in a year or two.

The question is, where would the best place to be when it happens, here or in the city? Definitely not the 'burbs; if design they have, the design is around cheap transportation… and that’s going to get hard to come by. In fact, I expect to see the urban poor displaced to the suburbs as the inner-city areas rapidly gentrify. There are three ways to look at it:

1) The “Earth” (very good book, by the way) scenario: we muddle along, staving off major problems with new technologies. People start carpooling or working from home, and the electrical and phone systems continue to work well and improve. In this case, staying put would work just as well as anything else.

2) The “Crash” scenario: the economy goes to hell in a handbasket for some time, while everything readjusts to new realities. Utilities become unreliable, and suburbs empty out as people go either to the city or to the country to find work. In this case, it’s a toss-up: we might be better off staying put and becoming landlords, or not.

3) The “Olduvai” scenario: we’re all screwed, so it doesn’t matter.

I suppose I should point out that I tend to have a gloomy outlook on our collective future, and have since I was in high school. The graphs in the referenced article could well be completely wrong, and the Saudis will continue to pump as much oil as needed for as long as needed… in which case, getting out of here is clearly the best course of action. But getting Mrs. Fetched to go any closer than Outer Suburbia would be a hard sell: when she and Daughter Dearest were in Savannah, she complained about all the night-time traffic keeping her awake.

However, she’s on board with one of my oldest dreams: to become more energy self-sufficient. Time to start looking into wind systems.

When is beach grass not beach grass?

Answer: when there’s no beach. Then I guess it’s broom grass. Mrs. Fetched says so anyway, and I have no reason to doubt her.

Shortly after I took this picture, I got the weed-eater and cut it all down — I figure it will come back better now that it’s gone to seed. Before that, I zapped the frondy border plants that are supposed to be cut back every year. I cleaned up some of the big garage, finding three washer hoses (all bad, according to Mrs. Fetched, so why were they in there?), several half-used bottles of motor oil, infinity dead ladybugs, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff that will get carted to the community yard sale (I think they start next month). Daughter Dearest’s boyfriend got an NTSC monitor for his PlayStation, one of four that Mrs. Fetched had laying around from her analog editing days — to my surprise, he took the smallest one because it wouldn’t require a lot of space. I think I’ll take the other three to the yard sale too, mark them as “gamer monitors,” and see if anyone bites. Somewhere in there, I put the wick in the kerosene heater, but I think I need to dump the old kerosene and try again.

But I digress. I also began a pine eradication program harvested my mulch garden. I’ll let them dry out for a month or so then feed them to the chipper-shredder. We transplanted some bushes, then I got the Mantis out and tilled up a bed and planted some garlic that my friends gave to me. I covered the dirt with some of the brush grass, hoping that will keep the dogs from digging in it. Finally, we fixed the weatherstripping on the bottom of a door. Yeah, it’s been a busy day, but it beats chicken house work. :-) Besides, it’s part of my escape plan: we can’t get away from the chicken houses unless we sell FAR Manor, and we’ll have a better chance of selling it if the place is cleaned up. So I’m going to work on getting rid of stuff we don’t need, which will make the rest easier to keep tidied up!

March has definitely come in like a lion. The claws (heavy storms) went well south of us, but the roaring wind is still with us and probably will be through tomorrow.

Losing Cool

We now return to our regular topics.

Monday morning started off with a case of DDPMS. As I do most weekday mornings, I called up the stairs to make sure Daughter Dearest was moving. I heard a muffled response, and called back, “What?” She flung her door open, snarled, “I said I’m up!” and slammed the door. A few minutes later, she stormed into the kitchen and started in on me calling up the stairs instead of coming up: “people [by which she means her boyfriend] are trying to sleep!” I explained I was just trying to give her a little privacy, she snarled a justification, and I called her by her mom’s name. From her non-poker face, she looked both stung and peeved, but stuck a sock in it. Neither one of us said much on the way to school, which was fine with me. She’s showing signs of getting over herself, thankfully.

Speaking of the boyfriend, he’s starting a job at Home Despot. But unlike the lumber yard summer job I had between years of college, you don’t just start working. You have two days of orientation, some unspecified training time, tests… heck, it’s easier getting a job in hi-tech and the pay’s better. The orientation isn’t a simple matter of watching a dull video at the store you’re working at… no, they have to have this idiotic idea of “centralized orientation,” which involves driving to a Home Depot located in the middle of some of the worst suburban Atlanta rush hour traffic. To top it off, it starts at 8 a.m. and they warn you that being late means getting shut out of the orientation until they do it again next month! All this for a crappy retail job? GMAFB.

Since I used to work in that area, back before traffic got impossible, I volunteered to drive him down there. After all, I knew the back ways. We left at 6:30 and barely got there at 8 — in fact, we got there at 8:03 but they were either bluffing about the lockout or their clocks were slow. He hooked up with some people who will be working at the same store as him, and they’re carpooling tomorrow. But on the way down, I got a familiar whiff of antifreeze — which did nothing to improve my mood, seeing as the Civic has a new radiator complements of The Boy’s mishap last fall. But the car wasn’t overheating, so I got to work and reminded myself to look at it more closely at lunch.

A quick trip to Subway, and this time I saw a trickle of antifreeze running out from under the car. I popped the hood, and saw it was leaking from the same hose I tightened a while back. It was still tight, but definitely dripping. I called Mrs. Fetched and told her I’d need her to come down to pick up the boyfriend and take me to an auto parts store for a new radiator hose. Traffic was terrible on the way to Home Depot, and we were stuck in front of a Pep Boys — 10 minutes and $10 later, I had a new hose and we continued the crawl. Although it was night when we got back to the Civic, the hose was right on top and took all of two minutes to replace (it was cracked underneath). It took longer to go into the office and get some water to replace what had leaked.

One overheating problem takes care of itself after a week, the other is a simple repair involving only a screwdriver. If only all of life’s problems were that easy to fix.

Universal Healthcare: Necessary but not Sufficient

Family Man wrote a brief post about the state of what could laughably be called “healthcare” in this country, after he found that his insurance wouldn’t cover a stop-smoking medication (WTF??). My response got a bit long for a comments page, so I decided to put it here.

This actually started with a trip to the chiro-cracker today. A little money shook loose and we were all feeling somewhat kinked (in the neck & back, not the other way), so Mrs. Fetched called them up and got us back on the monthly plan. There’s a big whiteboard behind the counter, where they usually flag their evening seminars and the like; today it had a bunch of negative statistics about the medical profession. I have a feeling there was a lot of FUD involved, but the things that stood out for me were the huge number of unnecessary surgeries (for whatever definition of “unnecessary”) and the number of emergency cases due to drug interactions or allergic reactions to drugs. Both of those could be attributed to the profit motive — in other words, a system devoted to healthcare rather than profitcare would naturally attempt to minimize both.

In the system we have today, everything in the medical system is geared toward maximizing profit. Providing some level of healthcare is necessary to keep people from demanding change (although that has begun, and may be too late to stop), but that hasn’t been the primary concern for quite some time. We’ve all heard of — or perhaps experienced — the assembly line-like visits of “managed health care,” and read the articles about people with cancer or other major illnesses whose doctors have their hands tied by HMO bean counters. The Boy’s diabetes medication, now that he is not covered by our insurance (not at home and not in school), is pretty much unaffordable for him. Drug companies have to recoup their “research costs,” although much of that research is funded by taxpayers (that is, you and me) and their marketing budgets are often higher than their research budgets. Then, of course, you get episodes like Merck trying to downplay (or even hide) serious side effects with Vioxx — because, after all, there’s money to be made.

FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market.

(The numbers were on Wikipedia, take with an appropriate amount of no-salt.)

The other side of the coin, of course, is how the profit motive promotes unhealthy activity — smoking this cigarette makes you cool, drinking that soda improves your life, open a beer and you’ll immediately be surrounded by Hot Babes™. This processed-to-hell-and-back "food product" is soooo easy to fix and tastes great! (just don’t look at how much sodium & cholesterol is in it) Oh, and by the way, watch this TV show and that TV show — it’s much more relaxing than exercise.

Now you have a McMansion you can barely afford and can’t get rid of, and you spend two (or more) hours a day commuting to/from a job that stresses you out. Your spouse works a similar job, so neither one of you have the time or energy to fix healthy meals. Breakfast is a sausage and egg biscuit in the car, lunch is a dash to the burger stand, and supper is a pre-packaged whatever.

So one day you wake up: you’re 45 and your weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol are in the “sucks” range. The doc diagnoses your spouse as “pre-diabetic” (you don’t exactly know that that means, but it sounds scary) and tells you both to get some exercise and start eating better. Oh, and by the way, here’s your prescriptions.

But we don’t have time to take care of ourselves! We have a lifestyle to maintain!

And you, one might say, are the “lucky” ones. You make your weekly pilgrimage to Wal-Mart, buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need and gripe about how shoddy it is, without a single thought about the people wearing the blue vests. They have many of the same problems as those of us “comfortably” in the middle class, but when the time comes to make that trip to the doc, the price tag attached to those prescriptions is simply beyond their means.

More and more people are standing up and demanding universal healthcare. President Clinton tried taking the initiative, but it was shot down by the usual suspects and their shills in Congress and talk radio. But these days, even Bush-league must at least pay lip service to the grass-roots demand that something be done. Katiebird has a series of articles on Eat4Today that are simply titled, “Cover Everyone” — great stuff.

Universal healthcare will help those folks in retail jobs, not to mention people who can't find a job that can put food on the table, but it isn’t enough. For many of us, from the middle class on down, our very lifestyles have become toxic. We’ve bought into the mantra of “more” (try chanting it, drawing out the ‘O’), not realizing that it has given us less: less time because it’s wasted in a long commute, less money because we buy too much house and fill it with too much stuff, less health because we don’t take the time to exercise or eat right. We’re on a treadmill, all right, but it’s not the kind we should be on.

There’s no pill that can cure lifestyle problems (unless the drug companies are hiding a formula that will make people resistant to marketing… not likely), but it’s our lifestyle that is making many of us sick. We could create a perfect health care system that covers everyone, but the Constitution won’t let us ban marketing or even destructive lifestyles. I’m not sure we could even legally ban unhealthy food (especially since a certain amount of things like carbs, fat, sodium, and cholesterol are necessary nutrients). No, if we want health for ourselves and our neighbors, it has to start with us. We should work to Cover Everyone — that’s only right — but we also need to invent a better way of life, one that will keep us out of the doctor’s office in the first place.

Podcast from FAR Manor #4 — News, phones, music

After an unwanted January hiatus, I have returned to the podwaves! I’ve got the latest news from the free-range insane asylum, cellphone chatter, and an interview with Daughter Dearest’s band.

Listen up! direct link (14.7MB MP3) | archive page (listen online)

Here’s a shot of the band, practicing in the big garage…



…and their Myspace page, with more music and even a logo!

Contents:

00:00 - Intro
01:51 - News from FAR Manor
04:33 - Shiny Things, the all-cellphone edition (scoring iPhone predictions, Samsung Sync)
09:33 - An interview with the band “Short Buss”
23:52 - Wrap-up

Thanks to everyone out there listening to these podcasts. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to leave comments here, on the archive page, or email text (or even audio comments) to FARfetched58 at aim.com.

Production Notes
Audio was recorded using an XtremeMac MicroMemo iPod accessory, a Samsung Sync, and a Blue Snowball USB mike (and that’s why the audio changes here and there). Audio files were edited on a MacBook Pro, running 10.4.8, using Audacity 1.3.2 beta.

Theme music: “Jump Around” by Psycho Maniak (no link/contact info available — help!).

Audio content hosted on:

Friday Night Cinema

Why waste gas and money to see a movie? Friday Night Cinema brings free flicks straight to your screen!

If you can open them, that is. Living on the leading edge has always required someone to work the help desk — and tonight, you’ll see what the helpdesk worker (A.D. 150) had to deal with…

Cam This Thing

Coming in from work Tuesday, I hit the garage door opener, and saw the door twitch and stop. Figuring I just didn’t hold the button down long enough, I did it again and this time it worked.

Then it turned out to be the last time. After that, it would move an inch or so one way or the other, then stop.

Mrs. Fetched took it better than usual; inconvenience usually puts her in a foul mood. She seemed to enjoy the sight of Daughter Dearest and her boyfriend holding up the door as she backed Barge Vader in & out of the garage, though. But she told me (on several occasions) where to find the manual for the opener, and asked me to fix it (if possible) before they got back from Savannah.

With she, Daughter Dearest, and Barge Vader safely out of the way, I got the ladder and had a look while the boyfriend pushed the button. It quickly became apparent that a bumper (attached to the chain) was in the wrong place. The arm that connects the door to the mechanism was pushing alarmingly far, so I figured something had jumped the track somewhere. Getting out the manual, this is what I found:



The “down limit cam” (circled in the above drawing, in the position where it should have been) was instead all the way around the pulley, where the red X is. Figuring the “up limit cam” was similarly shifted, I had the boyfriend hoist the garage door so I could measure the amount of necessary travel. I moved the cams where I thought they should be and tried again.

This time, the door stopped going up about two feet short. That cam was in the right place to begin with, it seems. After a few iterations, I got the cams in the right place and drove my car back inside for the night.

If only paying off the mortgage were so easy.

Spring has sprung?

Well, maybe not, but it’s definitely going to be a bit warmer than it had been the last two weeks.

But The Boy got sprung today. Seems the legal system still does most stuff by snail-mail, and the President’s Day holiday put all that behind by a day. But the judge’s office faxed the waiver to the jail after she signed it, and they turned him loose.

Naturally, Mrs. Fetched was stuck at the chicken houses, helping to bring in the new batch of chicks — so he walked to his apartment. She went by there later, and found nobody at home, so they must have gone out to celebrate or something.

I get a few days of freedom, too: Mrs. Fetched is taking Daughter Dearest to Savannah for the All-State Chorus performance. Well, I have to work tomorrow and Friday, so one day of freedom. If that: I’ve been committed to attend a birthday party. I’ll deal, especially since Daughter Dearest’s boyfriend is stuck here too.

Oh, speaking of freedom, M.A.E. moved out today. She really hadn’t been here much anyway, but she got all her stuff this evening. That didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would!

Hyacinth

Hyacinth

I got this for Mrs. Fetched on Valentine’s Day, and it had three blooms on it then. It has been busy in the last week!

I also got a shot with Clickzilla; it’ll be interesting to see how much detail got picked up on that film thing.

Best Euphemism EVER

“Accidental Ingestion of Airborne Protein” — it sounds so much more pleasant than “swallowing a bug.”

Visitation

We went to see The Boy today, on his scheduled visitation. He looked resplendent in his orange jumpsuit, let me tell you. He should be out either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on whether they count Friday as a full day.

I can’t tell if he’s learned anything from this or not — he makes the right noises, but he’s good at that. I think he’s going to come home for a day or so then go back to his apartment. The bad part about that is that he’ll be back in with the same friends that got him where he is; the good part is that he’ll be closer to wherever he finds work (which is important since his driver’s license has been suspended for six months).

The preacher met us at the jail, and he gets a pass to come in any time, so he’s going to have some one-on-one with The Boy tomorrow. I hope that goes well.

Good News, Bad News

Bad news first. Things at work have been absolutely crazy the last week or so. Trying to catch up, I brought a couple of projects home with me that are getting down to the wire. I managed to finish the first one this afternoon; trying to decide whether I want to do more than poke at the second one tonight.

The good news is that the documentation projects have rescued me from a weekend of chicken house duty. Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the work work any day.

We have snow flurries outside, and a good fire inside. Stay warm. Family Man, do some extra slacking for me tomorrow….

Friday Night Cinema

Looks like the warming trend starts next week… right on time. But tonight, it’s too cold to get out and you have no cash anyway. Never fear, Friday Night Cinema brings free flicks right to your computer screen!

With The Boy in the clink for the next 5 to 10 days, maybe something longer than the usual short-short would be appropriate. How about…

A blast from the past, all the way back to 1938: yes, it’s Reefer Madness!

Days of confinement

Looks like this is more of a short-term kick in the head. The Boy reports to his probation officer tomorrow, a cop picks him up and carts him to the clink. He spends up to 10 days there, on a “2 for 1” basis: every day of good behavior is one day off. So if he doesn’t screw up, he’ll be there 5 days. He doesn’t get to smoke, so that’s probably going to be the worst part (immediately, at least).

More importantly, he loses his driver’s license for six months — and worst of all, loses the chance to have his record deleted after he completes his probation. No fun.

Hello Again

Guess who’s back at the free-range insane asylum?

Yup, M.A.E. her own self.

When we last saw M.A.E., she was on her way out the door to move in with her new boyfriend. That lasted all of a week or two, when she found out he had been playing around on the side all along (or was she the one on the side?). She wound up with her psycho mom for a while, then landed with some people in the next town south. That blew up last week, precipitated by the same thing that got her out of FAR Manor (spending the night with some “people” they didn’t know) and she finally got around to asking us over the weekend if she could come back here.

Mrs. Fetched and I were both against the idea. Neither one of us thought she’d learned much, or would be willing to deal with The Rules — but our renters need some help with their grand-triplets (the mom is there but not helping) so we thought maybe she could stay with them. That isn’t happening either. However, she’s lined up a place with some friends who have moved to Virginia, so Mrs. Fetched decided she could use FAR Manor as a staging area — basically, her tax return will pay for a bus/train ticket on outta here. In the meantime, she’ll be spending a couple of days per week dealing with the triplets. I think this will be good for her; she’s always fancied herself a daycare worker.

That’s the plan, anyway. I figure she’ll be here for months. Oh well: I don’t get to walk around in my undies anymore, but she always makes for interesting blog material.

Abandoned Farmhouse

Abandoned Farmhouse

This long-abandoned homestead caught my eye a couple of weeks ago on a sunny weekend afternoon.

How Much Weirder Can Life Get??? (UPDATED)

Here’s one straight out of the X-Files.

Russian fishermen don’t know what they caught, but they ate it anyway

This video is just… well, I hope it’s faked.

UPDATE!
The mystery is solved: Scott on Techcomm tells us, “It's a guitarfish (a.k.a. shovelnose ray, shovelnose shark), and they're actually very tasty fish.” Whew. Just knowing it's just strange instead of other-worldly makes me feel better. :-)

R.I.P. Lapdancer

The rework fix to Lapdancer, my iBook, seems to have been temporary — or rather, the fix let it live long enough for something else to happen.

I was happily plonking around online yesterday, playing some music, when I took my headphones off for a short break. Hearing the iBook fan humming along, I reached around to find things were pretty warm in the back. I decided to shut it down, but too late — it locked up before I could do it.

Coming back a few hours later, after things had cooled down, I started it up. I heard the chimes, but got nothing on the screen and the USB ports weren't talking either. I’m afraid that the heatsink I put on the graphics chips may have contributed to the problem.

So it’s definitely time for a new computer. Daughter Dearest’s iBook didn’t respond to the rework fix, although the technician told me to bring it back if it didn’t work and she would give it a second try. Maybe we’ll get one of them working.

Friday Night Cinema (double feature)

Too late to go see a movie! But don’t worry, Friday Night Cinema brings short flicks right to your computer, so you’ll still have time to brush your teeth and let the dog out.

Tonight, we have a double feature of commercials that (for whatever reason) were never aired — and both of them crank the laugh knob to 11!

Bottle opener

Answer the… phone…

Jailhouse Blues

I really don’t know how to finesse this one. The Boy went to his scheduled probation visit on Tuesday, they gave him a drug test, and you can guess how that went. They’re giving him until next Friday to report to the clink. He’s not too happy about it, obviously… and is trying to tell us he wasn’t doing anything like that. Um, yeah, right. Can second-hand smoke show up on a drug test? I really don’t know, but I still think he had a little something here & there. He just doesn’t believe in consequences.

He mentioned running, although Mrs. Fetched warned him what would come of that. I just wish they’d stick him in boot camp or something; he might learn to take some responsibility for himself.

Reality is Stranger Than Fiction

Here’s the plot. Work with me on this one, OK? You’ve got these three astronauts, two women and a man. One of the women gets jealous, drives 1600 miles to confront her, and gets charged with attempted murder. Great late-night movie plot, right? Oh, never mind.

All right, let’s say you’re a huge company and your product isn’t selling in Asia as well as you thought it would. What do you do: survey your potential customers to see what you could do better… or insult them?

Dang. It’s a good thing I never tried to become a novelist — you just can’t make up stuff as weird as what reality throws at you.

Surprised?

Looks like iTunes has problems with Vista. In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning and it’s cold in the winter. I don’t remember where I said it, but I had figured the development motto at Microsoft was “Vista ain’t done ’til iTunes won’t run.”

Microsoft, according to the article, “has a team working with Apple to make iTunes fully functional on Vista.” Call me cynical, but I wonder whether they’ll actually slow things down — whether they mean to or not.

In the News

From The Register, of course…

From the “Quit While You’re Ahead” department: you bet WHAT on that hand?

OK, I remember what high school was like. I could understand shucking your clothes and running amok in the cafeteria… but what’s with the grapeseed oil?

Questions abound.

Friday Night Cinema

Man, has this week ever gotten away from me — still haven’t finished the podcast, and now it’s going to be a January/February edition. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have time to sit through a full-length movie right now.

It’s winter out there, so let’s warm things up with a FLAMING TUBA!

Hello Wet Snowy February

This isn’t the first time a change of month has been somewhat dramatic.

4–5 inches of snow in front of FAR Manor

We were up pretty late last night; some co-workers drove all the way up to FAR Manor to avail themselves of Mrs. Fetched’s video editing services. As always, it took several hours longer than expected; they didn’t get out of here until nearly midnight (and she charges by the hour, cha-ching!). But they were happy, and that’s what counts.

So the weather dudes were predicting possible light icing and up two 2 inches of snow “in the higher elevations.” Oops.

The good part is, we were up so late wrapping up with file conversions that I needed a good excuse to sleep late this morning. Looks like I got it! Unfortunately, I have to get into the office today; I have a critical project that needs finishing and I have to deliver the video files to the co-workers.


I’ll wrap this up with some more snow…

More snow

A second picture of today’s snow…


…and a video clip of last year’s snow, two weeks short of a year ago.

Stay warm and dry if you can. (Yeah, yeah, Solar, I know you will!)

Dreams Deferred Are Dreams Denied?

Some mornings, I hold my nose and see what commercial radio has to say for itself. I just skip from station to station as the commercials come on, until I get tired of it and retreat to Album 88. But a part of a segment caught my ear earlier this week.

One pair of chatterboxes was talking — I’m not sure if it was about someone who called in or how they heard about it — about a woman who was pretty sure her boyfriend planned to “pop the question” on Valentine’s Day. Amazingly enough, she had a problem with it: while she loves him, she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, and he earns about half what she does. The callers were predictably falling into the “marry him anyway” camp, even the one guy out of the five calls they aired. My own thoughts were rather uncharitable as well. But something one of the callers said stuck with me, and it came back to mind this morning: it’s good she has this dream, but could they not put off having kids until they got more financially secure and then she could do the full-time hausfrau career?

When I got out of college, I had a few dreams of my own — but as John Lennon said, “ Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” I wanted to be completely debt-free by now, and on track to retire by 50: I have a mortgage that might be paid off when I’m 73. I wanted a place that was as energy self-sufficient as possible: no money for as much as a single solar panel. I dreamed of being able to schedule work around my life: our lives revolve around four chicken houses that don’t belong to us.

Mrs. Fetched wondered why I didn’t tell her I had these dreams when I was objecting to the runaway psychotic episode that ended with us buying FAR Manor. I did, repeatedly, and not just then. She just wasn’t listening.

So after thinking about it, I’m not sure what the right thing is for the woman in question. It’s good to love someone. And yet, if things don’t work out and she has to scuttle her plans — especially if her potential husband is the reason — she could end up resenting him in the end. But if she marries someone else simply because he can support her dream, where’s the self-respect?

I’m glad I don’t have to make the decision for her.

The Bane of My Existence

Courtesy of Google Earth

Look upon its evil and tremble! Approach only with your nose held firmly shut against its stench! Tarry not, lest you find your weekends sacrificed to its endless need!

(It's a pretty recent shot, judging from the debris on the north side.)

Friday Night Cinema

It’s too cold to go out and catch a movie. Pour yourself something to warm you up and watch a short flick for free!

As I’ve written here before, I’m not the biggest fan of spiders. But this week, it’s OK to give them a little pity as we learn what happens to Spiders on Drugs.